College Drop Out

The argument that Charles Murray is stating in his article is that having a bachelor degree shouldn’t be a job qualification. He first started with president Obama’s two ideas for improving post-secondary education by expanding the use of community colleges and tuition tax credits. Then he suggests a battle cry for president Obama on education. The battle cry is “ it’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it.” Mr. Murray ‘s argument is that he feels that having a bachelor degree shouldn’t be a job qualification, for that many youths don’t have the intellectual ability to do college-level work they need to do in college. He stated that 10% to 20% of all 18 year olds can absorb the material in their parents’ old college textbooks. He also states that many college students don’t want to success in rigorous liberal arts or are too dumb to get through college. That a century ago, these students would have gone to work right after high school, but now need to have additional skills and treat college as vocational training, not a journey of learning. As Charles Murray continues his article, he talks about how colleges have adapted to the new time by expanding the range of courses and other oriented majors, but we still keep the bachelor degree as the measure of job preparedness, as the smallest requirement to get a job even for a job that doesn’t require a bachelor. He says discarding the bachelor degree wont be hard. The solution would be to use certification tests to provide evidence that someone has the skills needed for a job or to show work samples of a person’s work. The benefits of getting rid of the bachelor degree as a job qualification are huge for both employers and job applicants. Certifications would tell employers more about the applicants and many people can get the right job for them without going back to school for a degree. Also having certifications exams would even the playing field for everyone. Everyone would now be depended on their skills and not their degree(s). So in conclusion, the best way to summarize Charles Murray’s article is the battle cry he stated in the beginning, “It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it.”

The reason why I chose the article I did is because the title caught my attention. I wanted to know why the author called the article Should the Obama Generation Drop Out? I wanted to read all of the articles but this article got my attention the most compare to the other two. I knew that the author was going to talk about education, specify about college education, but I didn't know what exactly he was going to talk about. I wanted to know why he was thinking that my generation and the generation after me should drop out of college. I wanted to know what exactly he was going to talk about for that I am right now in college, debating on where I should end my academic career and if I should go get a Phd.  I don't think that this article will have any affect on me but, who knows. It could later on in life after I get my bachelor.  Lastly, I also didn't know what Obama view on education was and this article gave me some insight on his views. So that is why I chose the article that I did.