Lesson 57 : [Reasons Not Everyone Needs to Go to Elite Colleges]

[MTM 운영자]

[Reasons Not Everyone Needs to Go to Elite Colleges]

 

This is the season when nail-biting high-school seniors along with their high-achieving anxious parents nervously await word from colleges about admissions and rejections. Hence, we should ask whether college is the indispensable ticket to the good life, and also, whether elite colleges are invariably better than the less highly ranked institutions.

Enigmatically, graduating from college, especially elite ones, has come to be a mantra for accomplishment, "top" styles of living, and a harbinger of success for the individual as well as the community and beyond. But the data may be skewed toward a higher-education bias that has now taken on a distinctive panache, a perception that pleads for scrupulous examination and demonstrable validity.

It is not an iron-clad guarantee that college graduates fare better in coveted aspects of life than those who have not attended college. The data do show that college graduation is associated with higher income levels, but there is a whole cluster of attributes that goes with attending college in the first place, some of them relating to the wealth and education of the child's family before he or she even enrolls in college.

We all know of many individuals who are intelligent, accomplished and "well placed" in so many different ways as to defy belief that a college education is the "open sesame" be-all and end-all that it's glibly cracked up to be. How is it, why is it, that so many parents believe they must start early, even in an infant's first year, preparing their offspring for a college education and even a professional education for their children to be worthwhile human beings? Many men and women who have never been to college are in so many senses of the word successful that it is truly a matter of great demeaning assessment that we regard them as odd untutored souls, and they often suffer from our exclusionary practices.

Sometimes such individuals emerge victorious and enormously successful. Immediately springing to mind are such luminaries as Erik Erikson, the prolific and iconic child psychologist, psychoanalyst, and biographer of Martin Luther and Mahatma Ghandi. With no more than a pre-college art-school certificate, he nonetheless became an acclaimed author and full professor at Harvard University, the same university from which the enormously talented folk singer, composer, and environment expert, Pete Seeger, decided not to graduate after some time studying there. We can include Microsoft's Bill Gates, one of the most innovative and wealthiest men in the world, as another drop-out from the "traditional education track."

Let us not also regard Harvard graduation as the elixir of accomplishment. Note that the most visible and highest paid entertainers and sports champions in the world who have grown up in America are not college graduates from anywhere, many of them high-school dropouts. They are highly motivated and self-schooled for the most part, and have expertise in pursuing with passion their special areas of talent and interest.

The middle-class obsession with formal education in America is of relatively recent origins. One or two generations ago, young folks could become doctors and lawyers without attending undergraduate college. They could go to law school or medical school and become outstanding professionals with what we would today regard as minimal formal education. We recognize that in some disciplines where the technical details and technological advances have increased dramatically in complexity, longer periods of advanced education are required to assure safety and responsibility in the handling of, for example, medical crises. Some occupational streams now require that professionals and academicians receive training that can take years to master. We argue only that society must acknowledge that there are many paths to success.

The bottom line is that since life is complex, multi-faceted, and does not follow a straight line or comparable path for all individuals, society must recognize that college is not necessary or useful for all people and, elite institutions of higher learning are not necessarily better in all respects than their lesser-ranked cohorts.

■ Vocabulary

Find the meaning of the words below.

-         indispensable:

-         invariably:

-         enigmatically:

-         mantra:

-         harbinger:

-         skewed:

-         bias:

-         panache:

-         scrupulous:

-         validity:

-         iron-clad:

-         coveted:

-         cluster:

-         defy:

-         glibly:

-         cracked up:

-         demeaning:

-         assessment:

-         exclusionary:

-         prolific:

-         iconic:

-         elixir:

-         cohorts:

■ Discussion Questions

1.         Considering your society, do you think graduating from an elite college is the best path to success in life? Why or why not?

2.         Why do you think people go to college?

3.         What is the role of colleges in our society? What effects do colleges have on our society?

4.         According to recent news articles, the average registration fee for a semester in college is about 3,000,000 won~3,500,000 won. It is over 100,000,000 won for a semester at medical school. Do you think this is reasonable? And is it worth to pay that much money?

5.         How about the quality of education at colleges? Do you think students are being provided with enough education from their schools to fulfill what they are paying?

6.         Most university students in Korea, even students majoring in English, go to private schools and leave Korea to learn English and special skills on vacations spending extra money. Why is that? Do you understand this situation? Is it impossible to receive that kind of education in their school?

7.         Have you ever met someone who has majored in English and studied in Korea in their whole life and who has the ability to talk with foreigners without any difficulties? If she took professional education regarding her major for 4 years in school, why didn’t she have sufficient ability and skill even though she paid over 120,000,000 won for her degree? Is it because students are stupid? The colleges are foolish? The parents who let their children go college are idiots? Or is the Korean government is silly? What could be the reason for this unacceptable situation?

8.         Have you figured out how much money Korean parents who want their children to go to elite colleges spend on private schools? Do you think intelligent and bright students go to elite colleges, or students with having rich parents? If graduating from elite colleges guaranteed success in life, all students would like to go to those schools, but can they truly have an equal chance?  

9.         The youth unemployment rate is high in Korea. Even students who graduates from elite colleges are suffering from the difficulties of finding a good job. Do we still have to push students to go to elite colleges? What can help solve this serious problem?

10.      Do you know someone successful who didn’t take higher education such as the people in this article? Are you someone who thinks that everyone needs to go to on elite college? If your children don’t want to go college, how will you deal with it?

11.      Do you agree or disagree with the writer’s opinion that society must recognize that college is not necessary or useful for all people and, elite institutions of higher learning are not necessarily better in all respects than their lesser-ranked cohorts?