Wednesday, August 19, 2020

What Is The True Purpose Of College?

What Is The True Purpose Of College? Campus architecture became a focal point of the college experience. Technological advancements combined with growing amounts of wealth in American society led to the construction of incredible campuses during the early 1900s. In fact, the building construction done during this period was so good that it remains a strong pull for many historical universities to this day. In answering an essay prompt, you need not always do it the most normal way. If there are a lot of mistakes in your essay, it can not be pretty. At the center of the college sales pitch was the idea that a 4-year college degree was necessary to have success in the professional workforce. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United StatesBy 1950, the traditional 4-year college program had officially become mainstream. By riding the wave of government support, the college system had grown from something that was a nice-to-have into something that was now a need-to-have. The GI Bill was even nicknamed the “magic carpet to the Middle Class,” which permanently linked higher education and the American dream. Debatably the most important event in the history of college education happened in 1944 with the introduction of the GI bill. Instead of building a system that is one size fits all, it appears to be trending in the direction of one size fits none. Or to put it another way, the purpose of college has never seemed as watered down as it does now. The GI bill was created to help veterans of World War II. Among other aspects, it granted stipends to cover tuition and expenses for close to 9 million veterans. As a result, colleges saw a massive spike in enrollment in the decades following. One of the reasons was that colleges began putting an emphasis on the aesthetic of their campuses. If you are on a date, you would naturally want to be smart, funny, nice, caring, unique, not boring. You also want to have an opinion, not step back like an unthinking geek. Write your essay as though you would be a great second date. That means you should write with voice, that is, you need to write with your own personality. As a result of the decreases in funding, colleges were forced to raise tuition prices to make up the difference. This caused a shift in the college model from acting as a public service to more of a traditional business model which involved aggressively selling a service to customers. A depiction of Harvard’s Campus in 1720When the first colleges were founded, they primarily existed to serve the needs of the church to train clergymen. In fact, about half of Harvard’s first 500 graduates went into ministry, with the remaining half largely obtaining liberal arts degrees. As much as you wish to shine, the shine will be lost if your sentences and thoughts do not string together logically. Perhaps you can create a little mystery by not answering the prompt immediately. Maybe you could reveal that in the last sentence of your prompt after telling about all the little things that have some relevance to your area of study. The sources for school statistics and data is the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The list could go on, but as you can see from the above points, it seems that the college system seems to be having a bit of an existential crisis. One would think that the college system had learned from its history and created the ultimate Swiss army knife that serves multiple purposes; however, many recent trends suggest otherwise. Despite the Morrill Land-Grant Act leading to an increase in the amount of vocational education present at universities, a college degree wasn’t considered necessary for most people. However, college attendance continued to grow for other reasons. This all started to change in 1825 when the University of Virginia was founded. It’s founding was championed by Thomas Jefferson, who would push for colleges to move away from their religious ties and also become both affordable and useful enough for the general public. In summary, colleges started by only serving a small fraction of the population. For example, you might describe many natural flora, observe fauna, then list feelings you have about nature to lead up to writing that you want to study biology. What if you were to take the negative approach to answer the prompt? Maybe you can tell what your hopes are by writing what you do not hope for. If you look at things a little differently from others you stand out.

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