Blue Collar and College
Is College Worth It?
Is college the only way to success? If the answer is yes, so why Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are college dropouts and millions of graduated students with degrees from four-year higher education institutions cannot find jobs. Today, a college education does not guarantee you anything. It is not an automatic ticket to get a good job as people believe. These issues are viewed more sharpen via two writers’ point of views Mike Rose and Caroline Bird. Based on their essays, Rose with “Blue-Collar Brilliance” and Bird with “College is a Waste of Time and Money”, both suggest college is not the only way to succeed and that society mistakenly overvalues a college education. It is time to rethink the idea about college.
By showing that knowledge can be acquired outside the classroom, Rose repudiates that people who spend more time in school, are not more brilliant than those who do not. He says, “Though work-related actions become routine with experience, they were learned at some point through observation, trial and error.” Even if people are not college educated, they can deal with various problems that they face in the work by using their experiences that colleges do not teach them. Rose’s mother, Rosie was a waitress; the restaurant became the place where she studied human behavior, puzzling over the problems. Rose’s uncle, Joe Meraglio, worked in a factory; he observed the factory was like schooling, a place where he was constantly learning. Life experience can teach a person a tremendous amount. True, it would be in a different manner than a formal education would, yet still a very lofty education can be learned through hands-on actives, outside a classroom setting. Everyone is smart on their own level. However, Rose stresses the point that their “brilliance” is not recognized or, if it is, it is looked down upon by people who are more "educated." In the same way with Rose, Bird argues that college is a waste of time because the majority of
Is college the only way to success? If the answer is yes, so why Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are college dropouts and millions of graduated students with degrees from four-year higher education institutions cannot find jobs. Today, a college education does not guarantee you anything. It is not an automatic ticket to get a good job as people believe. These issues are viewed more sharpen via two writers’ point of views Mike Rose and Caroline Bird. Based on their essays, Rose with “Blue-Collar Brilliance” and Bird with “College is a Waste of Time and Money”, both suggest college is not the only way to succeed and that society mistakenly overvalues a college education. It is time to rethink the idea about college.
By showing that knowledge can be acquired outside the classroom, Rose repudiates that people who spend more time in school, are not more brilliant than those who do not. He says, “Though work-related actions become routine with experience, they were learned at some point through observation, trial and error.” Even if people are not college educated, they can deal with various problems that they face in the work by using their experiences that colleges do not teach them. Rose’s mother, Rosie was a waitress; the restaurant became the place where she studied human behavior, puzzling over the problems. Rose’s uncle, Joe Meraglio, worked in a factory; he observed the factory was like schooling, a place where he was constantly learning. Life experience can teach a person a tremendous amount. True, it would be in a different manner than a formal education would, yet still a very lofty education can be learned through hands-on actives, outside a classroom setting. Everyone is smart on their own level. However, Rose stresses the point that their “brilliance” is not recognized or, if it is, it is looked down upon by people who are more "educated." In the same way with Rose, Bird argues that college is a waste of time because the majority of