Fallacy Of College

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College is something imprinted on the minds of the young from the time they are able to acquire knowledge to when they no longer have to raise their hand for permission to use the bathroom, and it is easy to understand why when looking at it from a distance: college holds the promise of success, wealth and self-discovery. It has grown to be debatable just how much one can learn in the back of a classroom because “without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged” (Crawford). Over the past one hundred or so years, college has lost its worth due to the ridiculous expenses, restricted environment and constant dipping wages in the economy. One of the main…show more content…
It is universally known that people go to college to “help [themselves] to discover what they love to do, to get better at it, and to develop the ability to continue learning” (Roth). What some fail to realize is that, other than draining bank accounts, college drains the desire to learn. In Ben Wieder’s excerpt for The Chronicle of Higher Education, he speaks of Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, and how he payed 24 students $100,000 “not to go to college for two years and to develop business ideas instead.” This is important for many reasons, but the main one is centered on motivating students to go off and explore what they are capable of instead of being confined to a classroom for two years. Wieder stated on the topic, “The fellowship seeks to help winners develop their ideas more quickly than they would at a traditional university”. Some would disagree with Thiel’s decision, arguing that, “The American model of liberal arts education emphasizes freedom”, but that would be incorrect (Roth). Nothing ‘emphasizes freedom’ more than the ability to live on one’s own terms and make decisions based off what they want to do, not what parents or school administrators want students to do. That is why the restrictions college puts on its students makes it less worthy: because the lines between what students want versus what the parents or teachers want become blurred until it is hard to decipher the
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