Four Pillars Argument on Why College is Whack

Pillar One - Thesis Statement:

Paragraph One: "I believe higher education is broken." 

Pillar Two - Evidence

Paragraph Four: "The College Board Policy Center found that the cost of public university tuition is about 3.6 times higher today than it was 30 years ago, adjusted for inflation."

Paragraph Eight: "Employers are recruiting on LinkedIn, Facebook, StackOverflow, and Behance. People are hiring on Twitter, selling their skills on Google, and creating personal portfolios to showcase their talent."

Paragraph Four: "In the book Academically Adrift, sociology professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa say that 36 percent of college graduates showed no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, or writing after four years of college."

Pillar Three - Refutation

Paragraph Ten: "These are valid but irrelevant concerns, for the people who indulge in drugs and alcohol do so before, during, and after college." -countering the argument that people that drop out will live in a basement doing jello shots playing video games and smoking pot all day

Pillar Four - Concluding Statement 

Paragraph Ten: "We who take out education outside and beyond the classroom understand how actions build a better world. We will change the world regardless of the letters after our names."

What is he saying to his audience?

The two main demographics this type of article will draw to read it are worried college students who are coming to this conclusion through their own experiences and cynical non-students who hold an unshakable belief that dropping out is the same as claiming you are a failure. The students hold the same beliefs as the non students as they were raised with this notion that college is required to land a good career, and now that they are immersed in the college culture they are starting to have their doubts about what they are actually achieving by being there. This kind of confusion is wholly unproductive and the author acknowledges this. He claims that as long as you are willing to learn and better yourself there are very few reasons why a formal classroom should be required. For example people who develop their digital creation talents on their own in their own rooms can create portfolios and release their content to the masses. These portfolios of content are what employers in these digital businesses will look for when determining if they want to hire these individuals not their college experience. This is not so socially acceptable for doctors as the author mentions. It's a pretty bad idea to keep cadavers in your garage and study them so a formal environment such as a medical school is required. What the author is pointing out is that society has put a weight on college that is wholly unnecessary and these points he made will be comforting to both major demographics as it gives hope that there is another option to upset college students and settles worries about "dropouts" by others.