Matthew Lillig Source 1

Step 1:

A) GUTMANN, AMY1. "The Fundamental Worth Of Higher Education." Proceedings Of The American Philosophical Society 158.2 (2014): 136-143. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 6 Oct. 2016.

B) Is higher education a worthwhile investment anymore?

C) Before: I have the overall opinion that higher education although valuable in terms of individual growth is a waste of money and more people should be focused on trade schools or individual study. I believe that through this article I will be able to focus my opinions on certain aspects of what is wrong with the modern university and adapt my question to a specific topic rather than higher education in general. Such as: should general education courses be a requirement, or should schools require a certain number of credit hours per semester? I know the topic of this class is basically my question so I am trying to narrow it down to something more manageable while still hitting the topic of higher ed taking our money. After: I realize this article is primarily positive showing real statistics of the vast majority of college students payouts. This source will be helpful because it shows what supporters of higher ed see and explains the values of it.

Step 2:

P1 Summarize:

This source helps to prove the point that higher education still has value in today's society. It does this by primarily showing the economic statistics of the common American with a high school deploma in comparison to that of the Higher educated student. It then in turn follows up with how some colleges are even finding ways to adjust their tuition, or ways of deciding tuition in order to make it more affordable in the general population and not just the better off. They use Penn as an example of such college, and follow it up with graphs and charts showing the payoff of higher education, that slowly turned into a plug to go to Penn, but that's not as important.

P2 Think:

This source changes my mind on a lot of things. First off I am was a strong believer that higher education in terms of value is way overpriced and students weren’t getting what they deserved. Now after reading this article and seeing the comparison of students with higher education and students without I can start to see the value more. It is hard to argue with facts and when students with higher education tend to make at least 15%, after subtracting cost of college, more annually it’s kind of a big deal. The parts that I disagree with are the fact that they never bring up the idea that trade school or individual study is a possibility. They have the bias opinion that having the title of graduating from a big name college will land you the job that will get you this higher income. I believe that their is still more value in focusing on one topic at a time and graduating a trade school with the set of tools you need to succeed. In terms of validity it is written by a college professor, but in that same right it also has the bias of being written by a college professor. They are going to “see” the value in college more than someone who is on the outside about to invest their money. I disliked how towards the end it turned toward more an analysis of a single college, Penn, I would have liked it more if they brought it other resources such as different schools or the previously mentioned trade school, but overall this helped me narrow my ideas.

P4 Questions/Plan:

After reading this article I need to now focus on instead of just higher education in terms of college but rather more affordable trade schools, and see if that brings me closer to an answer of whether or not higher education is worth it. I also have more questions: What is the general cost of college nationwide? How does this compare to the payoff? What is the trend of cost of higher education? Is it still climbing? How much? Will it ever flatline? If so when is most likely? I also want to now find an article that is against higher education in terms of cost and see if I can get anything out of that.