ethical writing
Ethical Viewpoints Assignment - EXAMPLE
Research Question
Is a college education worth the cost for all students?
Viewpoint 1
Yes, a college education provides better career opportunities.
Direct Quotations
· “Education remains the chief American institution that promotes economic and social mobility for poor and disadvantaged citizens. It's not an evasion; it's the direct answer to the question of what the nation needs to improve its talent pool and improve economic opportunity and social equality.”
· “Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz find that the growing difference in the earnings of college graduates and high-school graduates explains between 60% and 70% of the rise in wage inequality between 1980 and 2005.”
· “MIT economist David Autor has an instructive thought experiment: The increase in wages for the top 1% between 1980 and 2005, if divided among the bottom 99%, would provide each household about $7,000 in additional income. But the wage gains of college graduates over the same period, divided among high-school graduates, would provide each household with $28,000 of additional income.”
· “The premium attached to a college education -- the difference in wages between those with degrees and those with high-school diplomas -- increased even as the market was flooded with university graduates.”
· “In 1980 only 16 million Americans, or 21% of those in their prime working years (ages 23 to 54), held a bachelor's degree or higher; by 2013, that figure was 38 million, or 37%. When supply increases, economists expect the price to fall. But instead the college-wage premium grew from 33% to 62% between 1980 and 2013.”
T.R.A.P. Evaluation
T: This article was published on April 10, 2015, which is within the past three years.
R: Ongoing debates about the value of an education persist; however research findings from this article suggest that education is the key to closing the earnings gap in the job market. There are great economic divides between those who attain a higher education degree and those who do not. It is difficult to ignore the state of individuals who are economically disadvantaged. While there are many ideas about how to help them rise above the state they are in, this article focuses on the impact of education beyond high school. Even during times when it seemed like the job market was oversaturated with college degrees, the possibility for career advancement over time was still there, when compared to advancement for those who only graduated from high school. For those wishing to change the economic state of their lives and possibly the lives of generations to come, higher education is still encouraged as the right course of action.
A: The experts mentioned in this article include Dan Greenstein from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jamie Merisotis from the Lumina Foundation, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz from Harvard University, and David Autor from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.
P: Over a span of 25 years, research conducted on the earnings of high school graduates versus college graduates reveals education as the reason for the differences in household income. The number of Bachelor’s degrees attained since 1980 has increased. During this same time, the wages of college graduates increased, as well, when compared to those who only earned a high school diploma.
MLA Citation:
Greenstein, Dan, and Jamie Merisotis. "Education Does Reduce Inequality." <I>Wall Street Journal</I>. 10 Apr. 2015: A.13. <I>SIRS Issues Researcher.</I> Web. 30 Nov. 2016.
Viewpoint 2
No, a college education does not guarantee employment and many college graduates are burdened by student loan debt.
Direct Quotations:
· “Last month President Obama announced the creation of a "Student Aid Enforcement Unit" that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars and reduce access to career training in the U.S.”
· “Housed in the Education Department, this unit follows the president's complaint last year that many schools -- especially career-training, for-profit schools -- rely heavily on federally funded loans yet do not reliably graduate students equipped for jobs.”
· “Now that students are being encouraged to claim that they were misled, a small industry has already taken root, with online forms asking students if they feel they have been misled and then detailing how they can file for relief from loan repayment.”
· “Bankruptcies at the for-profit schools are the likely outcome, which will decimate this form of career education that today includes well over 10% of all postsecondary students.”
· “After finding last year that the for-profit Corinthian colleges had misled students with false claims about job-placement rates, the Education Department began to enforce the regulations on behalf of tens of thousands of claimants.”
· “Using Education Department data, we estimate that at Corinthian, roughly 8% of student loans have been forgiven, and 10% are likely to be granted relief after all claims are evaluated.”
· “Certainly, the federal government has a responsibility to protect students from bad schools engaged in deceptive practices, especially since the federal government provides over $100 billion in loans each year to students enrolled in public, private and proprietary college and universities.”
T.R.A.P. Evaluation
T: This article was published on March 4, 2016, which is within the past three years.
R: President Obama is concerned that students are taking out loans to pay for career training at colleges, but not finding employment after graduation, putting them at-risk for not repaying their loans. When students don’t repay their loans, it places the higher education institution at risk for closing down. Some of the students who receive career training with empty promises of employment have fought and succeeded in having their debt forgiven. This student loan debt adds to our national debt and ends up being paid, ultimately, by the taxpayer. Individuals who attend expensive colleges they really cannot afford sometimes do not graduate and end up carrying debt they cannot repay. Or, they graduate but end up unemployed or underemployed so they are burdened, economically, from a college education.
A: The experts mentioned in this article include Jorge Klor de Alva from Nexus Research and Policy Center, Mark Schneider from the American Institutes for Research in Washington, and the U.S Department of Education.
P: A couple of Department of Education regulations were initiated in the early 1990s to protect students from false claims colleges were making about their ability to place students in jobs after college graduation. The federal government loans billions of dollars to institutions to provide education and training, which should, but doesn’t always, lead to jobs. Graduates who are unemployed or underemployed fall deeply into debt, therefore making college a risky investment that may not provide expected returns.
MLA Citation
Klor de Alva, Jorge, and Mark Schneider. "The Feds and Students vs. Taxpayers." <I>Wall Street Journal</I>. 04 Mar. 2016: A.13. <I>SIRS Issues Researcher.</I> Web. 30 Nov. 2016.
Reflection
I am viewing this topic through the eyes of a life-long educator who, for the past 18 years, has promoted higher education as the way to increase career opportunities and leave a legacy of education to the next generation. While I have strong feelings about this topic, I will also attempt to speak to it from a point of view different from my own. For this assignment, I was tasked to research whether or not a college education is worth the cost for all students. The articles I found did not provide a strict black/white, yes/no view of my topic, which I fully expected. With much of the current education research pointing toward the benefit of post-secondary training, I would be hard-pressed to find an article disputing these benefits; however, I did find an article that focused on the economic hardship of student loans on college graduates. Before writing about this topic, I had an openness to discover what experts on the other side of the issue were saying, but I have to admit that I was skeptical about what I might find. I am a life-long learner who fully understood the benefits of a college education, from personal experience and from the point of view of my students, whose lives have been transformed by a college education.