Summary Annotation

To complete a summary annotation, read the assigned selection carefully and annotate. You will need to PRINT each reading to be able to assemble successful annotations. Again, YOU MUST PRINT THE READING.

Once you understand the assigned reading, identify the thesis. Although your own essays will often present the thesis as the last sentence in the opening paragraph, a published editorial or article may state the thesis anywhere, or the thesis may be implied. To determine what the thesis is, you need to first read the entire selection and engage in the critical reading steps explained in your text.

Read the selection again and complete an informal paragraph-by-paragraph annotation by summarizing each paragraph or groups of related paragraphs (see sample annotation and original article being summarized on next pages). The paragraph-by-paragraph annotation should present the text’s main ideas in your own words.

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Sample Summary Annotation

Sample paragraph-by-paragraph summary of Thomas Sowell’s “Student Loans”

Use the following samples to help you write your summaries. You do not need to submit your paragraph-by-paragraph summaries.

Paragraphs 1-4 (from Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays): As their support of the government’s student loan program illustrates, politicians ignore the economic reality that using resources to benefit one group (students in debt) involves taking resources from another group (tax payers).

Paragraph 5-6: Debt doesn’t really pose a “crushing burden” to students b/c students can pay student loans out over a period of years and don’t have to take out more loans, like with cars.

Paragraph 7: College grads earn more than non-college graduates, so we shouldn’t be concerned about their ability to pay back the money that gave them the better paying jobs.

Paragraphs 8-9: Concern about student debt is based on low-income students who used to be the only ones who received student loans. Now wealthy get loans, too.

Paragraph 10: Wealthy people can invest money elsewhere and earn interest—not fair.

Paragraph 11: No evidence that students really need loans or that the debt is too much to pay back. Defaulters are usually irresponsible students who drop out of college.

Paragraph 12: More aid means low standards at colleges; colleges let non-serious students “hang out” and the taxpayer pays part of the tuition.

Paragraph 13: More federal aid means higher tuition rates and more money to professors, even if the professors do less teaching.

Paragraph 14-15: Aid makes no sense in economic terms, but colleges are going to pressure politicians to continue increasing loans and are going to call opponents of student loan programs “mean spirited.”

Student Loans

by Thomas Sowell, Economist

The first lesson of economics is scarcity. There is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all who do want it. (paragraph 1)

However, the first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. When politicians discover a group who is vocal about the lack of something they want, the “solution” will be to give them more. Where does “more” come from?—politicians who rob Peter to pay Paul. (2) After a while, of course, we discover that Peter doesn’t have enough. Bursting with compassion, politicians rush to the rescue. Needless to say, they do not admit that robbing Peter to pay Paul will be a dumb idea in the first place. On the contrary, they now rob Tom, Dick, and Harry to help Peter. (3)

The latest chapter in this long-running saga is that politicians have now suddenly discovered that college students graduate heavy in debt. To politicians it follows, as the night follows the day, that the government may come to the rescue with the taxpayer’s money. (4)

How big is this crushing burden of college students’ debt that they hear so much about from politicians and media deep thinkers? For those students who graduate from public colleges owing money, the debt averages a little under $7,000. For those who graduate from private colleges, the average debt is a little under $9,000. (5)

Buying a very modestly priced auto involves more debt than that. And a car loan has to be paid off faster than the ten years that college graduates get to repay his/her student loans. Moreover, students will keep buying cars several years, while one college education lasts a lifetime. (6)

College graduates, of course, earn higher incomes than other people. Why, then, should we panic in the thought that they have to repay loans, for the education giving them their opportunities? Even graduates with relatively modest incomes pay fewer than 10 percent of there annual salary on the first loan the first year—with declining percentages in future years, as their pay increased. (7)

Political hysteria and media hype may focus on the low-income student with a huge debt. This is where we get our heart-rending stories—even if they are not all that typical. In reality, the soaring student loans of the past decade have not resulted from allowing high-income people to borrow under government programs. (8)

Before 1978, college loans were available through government programs only to students whose family income was below some cut-off level, who was about double the national average income, but at least it kept out the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. But, in an era of “compassion,” Congress left off even those limits. (9)

That opened the floodgates. No matter how rich one was, it still paid to borrow money threw the government at low interest rates. The money parents had set aside for their children’s education can be invested some where else, at higher interest rates. Then, when the student loan became due, parents can pay it off with the money they had set aside—to pocket the difference in interest rates. (10)

To politicians and the media, however, the rapidly growing loans showed what a great “need” there was. The fact that many students failed to pay when time came to repay their loans showed how “crushing” their burden of debt has to be. In reality, those who don’t pay typically have smaller loans but have dropped out of college before finishing. People who are irresponsible in one way are always irresponsible in other ways. (11)

No small amount of the deterioration of college standards has been due to the increasingly easy availability of college to people who are not very serious about getting an education. College is not a bad place to hang out for a few years, if someone has nothing better to do, especially if he/she is paying for it. Its costs are staggering, but the taxpayers carry much of that burden, not only for state universities and city colleges, but also to an increasing extent even for “private” institutions. (12)

Numerous government subsidies and loan programs make it possible for many people to use vast amount of societies’ resources at low cost to themselves. Whether in money terms or in real terms, federal aide to higher education increased several hundred percent since 1970. That has enabled colleges to raise their tuition by leaps and bounds and enabling professors to be paid more and more for doing less and less teaching. (13)

Naturally, all these beneficiaries are going to create hype and hysteria to keep more of the taxpayers’ money coming in. But we would be fools to keep on writing blank checks for them.

When we way the cost of things, in economics, that’s called “trade-offs”; in politics, it’s called “mean-spirited.” Apparently, if we just assumed a different attitude, scarcity would go away. (14)

Work Cited

Sowell, Thomas. “Student Loans.” Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays. Stanford:

Hoover, 1993. 131-33. Print.