Important Dates:
November 30: Blue Book Exam #1 for Lower Ed
December 7: Peer Edit for Final Essay #5
December 12: Final Essay #5 Due
December 12 and 14: Blue Book Exam #2 based on "Unfollow" by Adrian Chen and "The Backfire Effect" from The Oatmeal.
Materials for Blue Book Exam: How Megan Phelps-Roper used critical thinking to leave a religious cult
"Unfollow" by Adrian Chen
Also, see "You're Not So Smart"
Essay #5, Your Capstone Essay, from Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that for-profit schools are so larded with deception, lies, and liabilities for the prospective student that these quasi-educational institutions must either be severely regulated or abolished altogether.
To get credit, you must have a counterargument section and a Works Cited page with no fewer than 3 sources.
Recognizing Logical Fallacies
Begging the Question
Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.
Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.
Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.
Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.
Circular Reasoning
Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.
Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.
Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.
Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.
Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.
I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.
I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time-consuming.
I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.
I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.
Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison
Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.
A toxic relationship is like cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).
Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)
Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)
"Bailey, why do you cheat?"
Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)
“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”
A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not a personal attack.
“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”
Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”
Straw Man Fallacy
You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.
“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”
Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)
“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”
“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.
Either/Or Fallacy
There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.
“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”
“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”
“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”
“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is everyday foreign policy.)
“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”
“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”
Equivocation
Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.
“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”
“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”
The seller is equivocating.
“I told you to be in bed by ten.”
“I thought you meant to be home by ten.”
“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”
“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”
“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”
“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”
Red Herring Fallacy
This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.
“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”
“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”
“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”
Slippery Slope Fallacy
We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.
“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”
“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”
Appeal to Authority
Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.
Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.
Tradition Fallacy
“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”
“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”
Misuse of Statistics
Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).
“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in a home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)
Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation
Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?
The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?
You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?
You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it a placebo effect?)
Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)
The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.
Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.
McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.
Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.
Bandwagon Fallacy
Because everyone believes something, it must be right.
“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”
“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”
John Oliver’s FP College Critique—Video
One. What is a for-profit college?
Typically, FP colleges, which enroll 30% of all college students, are trade schools: beauty, cosmetics, mechanics, technology, business, criminal justice, electrical engineering, to name several.
FP colleges have a bad reputation for using deceptive recruitment practices, for overcharging students, and for having poor student outcomes in learning and career placement.
FP colleges persuade their students to go into debt with predatory loans rather than less expensive federal student loans.
Studies show in fact that most students are so burdened by debt and bleak job prospects after graduating FP colleges that they would have been better off never attending the FP college in the first place.
FP colleges are so egregiously bad that one of Cottom’s co-workers, Michael, had the opportunity to send his two kids to the FP college he worked at with a discount, and he passed because he said he had “better options.”
What does that say when a veteran at a FP college offered a discount still won’t send his kids there? That says he knows the dirt and he won’t subject his children to the fool’s errand of going to an FP college.
Two. What kind of trickery was used by Cottom’s school when giving students an entrance test called the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test?
For starters, if you earned a 5 score, your IQ was at the level of a typical fifth grader. You needed a 6 to pass and you could take the test as many times as necessary to get that 6.
Everyone passes the test, but recruiters are trained to never tell people this. They need to make you feel “qualified” for being admitted into the school. That’s part of the sales pitch.
This is an old trick: Massage the prospective customer’s ego to make him feel he’s a good fit for your product.
Three. What other morally questionable techniques does Cottom expose in her discussion of recruiting Jason in the book’s Introduction?
She was under orders to get Jason’s aunt’s name and Social Security number and tell him he was a loser, not just to himself but to his entire family name, if he didn’t enroll the school.
Cottom is under orders to “close the deal” regardless if whether or not the school is in the student’s best interests. She is to work for her boss’s best interests and the company’s stock holders’ best interests.
Four. Why does Cottom compare educators with priests?
Because they “shepherd people’s collective faith in themselves and their trust in social institutions.” They foster faith in the school’s mission to champion the students’ best interests.
The “sin” of being a FP college recruiter is that you’re violating that faith and that trust. You’ve dragged the term “education” into the mud with deception and profit-mongering. Therefore, the FP college priests aren’t priests at all: They’re charlatans and mountebanks.
These charlatans persuaded students to sign up for predatory short-term loans that are far more expensive than federal student loans.
FP colleges piggy-back on the holy reputations of NP or “real” colleges.
But whereas FP colleges emphasize “individual good,” real colleges emphasize the “collective good” of living in a society where more and more people are educated with critical thinking skills and are part of an educated, civil society.
Educators are priests because of what is known as the “education gospel”: “our faith in education as moral, personally edifying, collectively beneficial, and a worthwhile investment no matter the cost, either individual or societal.”
FP colleges love the words, “no matter the cost.”
Today, Cottom, teaching at a real university is a real priest, and she has the perspective to cast light on the evil practices of FP colleges.
Five. Why are FP colleges philosophically unsound?
Let’s look at the following syllogism:
Premise 1: College should be about serving the needs of the student first and foremost. Of course, a college should be solvent and accredited but these goals are also in service to the student.
Premise 2: FP colleges, indicated by their very name, put profit over the students’ needs.
Conclusion: Therefore, FP colleges should not exist.
We can develop this idea by looking at other industries that become compromised when we make a conflict between public and private interests?
Should prisons be for-profit? Should we make policies designed to help the prison industry or society?
Should health care be for-profit? Should we make policies designed to help the FP health companies or public health?
Six. What is “Lower Ed”?
Cottom writes: “Lower Ed refers to credential expansion created by structural changes in how we work, unequal group access to favorable higher education schemes, and the risk shift of job training, from states and companies to individuals and families, exclusively for profit. Lower Ed is the subsector of high-risk post-secondary schools and colleges that are part of the same system as the most elite institutions.”
Lower Ed feeds of Higher Ed:
“In fact, Lower Ed can exist precisely because elite Higher Ed does. The latter legitimizes the education gospel while the former absorbs all manner of vulnerable groups who believe in it: single mothers, downsized workers, veterans, people of color, and people transitioning from welfare to work. Lower Ed is, first and foremost, a set of institutions organized to commodify social inequalities and make no social contributions . . . “
Seven. What is most damning about Lower Ed?
Of all the people Cottom meets at FP colleges, workers, students, graduates, and family members of students, NONE of them recommend FP college.
We can conclude that FP colleges don’t give to students and society. FP colleges are parasites that take more than they give.
Parasite Loans
The parasite works most effectively with student loans. We read “that decades of deregulation culture opened the federal student aid tap to predatory for-profit shills who would enroll anyone with a pulse to get their hands on sweet, sweet, publicly subsidized, government-guaranteed cash.”
This parasite is more dangerous in the New Economy:
4 Characteristics of New Economy
One. People are frequently changing jobs and therefore need to be re-trained and get additional work certificates and diplomas.
Two. Firms place greater reliance on temporary labor.
Three. There is less reliance on employers for income growth and career progression.
Four. Workers are responsible for shouldering more responsibility for their job training, healthcare, and retirement.
FP colleges thrive on the New Economy.
Eight. How is Cottom’s book about social justice?
She writes: “I make an explicit claim in this book: for-profit colleges are distinct from traditional not-for-profit colleges in that their long-term viability depends upon acute, sustained socioeconomic inequalities.”
She continues: “By their own description across various official documents, for-profit colleges rely on prospective students whose aspirations outstrip their available options for mobility.”
We have a predator seeking weak prey.
Predator Component
"When For-Profit Colleges Prey on Unsuspecting Students"
"Empty Promises of For-Profit Colleges"
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