Shankel-Lowery 1 Larry Shankel-Lowery Noah Tysick English 111 19 February 2014 Comparative Analysis In this day of age going

to college and getting a degree is a main priority for most people. What happens when the cost of going to college rises though? In the past years the cost of a higher education has risen dramatically. If most employers these days look for a college degree, it is safe to say that going to college is a good thing. When adding up the expenses, though, going to college can be the biggest struggle for most. An article and an essay address these issues. They are Oh, So Thats Why College is So Expensive by Steve Cohen and A Matter of Degrees: Why College Is Not an Economic Cure-All by Clive Crook. The authors both choose great arguments, but Crooks article provides more of an argument than Cohens. In his article, Cohen makes his point by describing why college costs so much. He uses his own experience of attending college as well as the information he gathered from his college visits to explain what a college student is actually getting in the ever-so increasing cost of a higher education: When I attended college 30 years ago, my freshman year at Notre Dame cost my parents $5,500. That included room, board, and tuition. Today, top colleges cost 10 times as much. As my daughter and I visited colleges from South Carolina to Indiana to Maryland, one of the things I wanted to find out was: Just what does the extra 50 grand a year get you? (Cohen 1)

Shankel-Lowery 2 Cohen is giving himself credibility by providing an example of the cost of college when he attended compared to the cost of college today. A students parents should look over this article in order to get a better understanding of why college is so expensive these days. The most likely people to be reading this article are the business people and therefore they understand money. In this case it would be safe to say that Cohen isnt as credible as he would like to be. If a students parents work for a large corporation, who wouldnt say that the extra 50 grand a year would be like pocket change for them. Crook on the other hand makes himself out to be more credible than Cohen. By giving his audience the clear picture and better understanding of his main topics Crook has made himself not only trustworthy and reliable, but also very credible. An example of this comes from his essay where he provides an assumption that an everyday person knows already, but then backs it up with the truth behind the whole assumption. Everybody understands that, as a rule of thumb, more school means a bigger paycheck. On average, having a college degree, rather than just a high-school degree, increases your earnings by about twothirds (Crook 366). On average this assumption is true, but in most cases it is dependent upon a students level of learning. Lets say that a student gets an extra year of high school or college. This extra year may or may not increase the students productivity. In return, the student would see an increased income or wouldnt see any change at all. In his essay, Crook makes his point by explaining why the connection between education and economics is not as most make them out to seem. Crook states that To rest the case for improving schools and colleges largely on economic grounds is a mistake (366). This would distort the education policy and according to Crook there is more at stake than a slight increase in economic growth (366). What Crook is saying here is that why worry about the slight increase in economic growth when there is a ton of other worries in the world. For example,

Shankel-Lowery 3 world hunger or a cure for cancer. Education is very important, but it is not meant to be connected to economics as most would think. Crook wrote this essay in a hope to bring a better understanding of the true connection between education and economics. His audience, mainly high school graduates, should read his essay to get a sense of what is going on in the real world. Upon reading Crooks essay it is clear that he has made himself a very reliable person. He backs his claims up with evidence and he provides his audience with just enough information to know what is going on. An example of this comes from page 367 of his essay. He says, For countless other jobs that once required little or no formal academic trainingpreschool teacher, medical technician, dental hygienist, physical-therapy assistant, police officer, paralegal, librarian, auditor, surveyor, software engineer, financial manager, sales manager, and on and on- employers now look for a degree. What Crook is doing here is warning whoever may read this article that most, if not all, jobs will require a degree in the near future. The occupations in the quote above will most likely be closed to nongraduates soon, if they havent already. Cohen on the other hand is reliable as well, in a sense. If a student wants to find out why they are paying nearly 55 grand a year for college then they can read his article. Using his own experience and the college visits he went on make him pretty reliable, but Crooks essay uses more information as well as goes more in depth on a more challenging topic. Figuring out the true connection between education and economics is quite a struggle when you have to cover a broader array of topics like illiteracy and the feeling of being imprisoned. Illiteracy has always cut people off from the possibility of a prosperous life, from the consolations of culture, and from full civic engagement. In the future, as horizons broaden for everybody else, people lacking these most basic skills will seem even more imprisoned (Crook 368). What Crook is saying here is that people who cannot read, write, and lack any other basic

Shankel-Lowery 4 skills are always put in the background and left out as everyone else is center stage. These people have to learn how to read, write, and speak well. Not to mention they tend not to get jobs. Not being able to get a job because of the lack of basic skills is a very true feeling of imprisonment. Most, if not all, jobs require a person to be able to read, write, and speak well. If you are lacking any of these you will not likely get the job. In conclusion, Crooks essay A Matter of Degrees: Why College Is Not an Economic Cure-All turned out to be the better written source. Crook made himself more credible and reliable than Cohen. Cohens article Oh, So Thats Why College is So Expensive really didnt go into much detail. Cohen started out by giving his audience an experience from when he was in college and how much it cost his parents. From there he provides some support to why colleges today cost nearly 50 grand more by explaining that he went on some college visits. After that he lists some luxuries and expenses that are included in this extra $50,000 a year a student or his/her parents pay for college. Though Cohen makes it seem like he is credible, he really isnt. Cohen published his article through Forbes, which is more of a business company. Most likely a students parents who work for a large business will be the ones who read Cohens article. In the end that extra $50,000 a year will not be any hassle to some of them. Crook on the other hand made himself to be not only credible, but also reliable. By backing up the assumptions he provides with the actual truth behind them, he provides a new sight as to what is actually going on between education and economics. There is a deeper realization between the true connection of education and economics that Crook brings forth to his audience, and for that reason Crooks essay is a more reliable and credible source than Cohens article. Cohen might have put up an okay fight but in the end Crook was the one who came out on top.

Shankel-Lowery 5 Works Cited Crook, Clive. "A Matter of Degrees: Why College Is Not an Economic Cure-All." Exploring Relationships: Globalization and Learning in the 21st Century. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2013. 366-368. Print. Cohen, Steve. "Oh, So Thats Why College is So Expensive." Forbes Mag., 28 Aug. 2012. Print. 23 Jan. 2014.