Murray’s article called “Are Too Many People Going to College” reflects on the main thesis that more people should go to college. To support this statement, he capitalized on the idea that at this time, America’s classes are only providing college education to a focused group of elites since the focus of college education in the US is liberal education instead of teaching students how to make a living.
Courses in college that are focused on the study of liberal education such as philosophy and religious studies requires a higher intellectual capacity. Students taking these courses should belong to the higher percentile. So if one student has the academic ability to take a college-level liberal course, then, by all means, he should get it. Murray cited that if one wants to become a lawyer, then he should definitely take a liberal education course in college.
But how about those students who belong to the lower percentile or are more interested in taking vocation courses instead? There are those students who just want to do blue collar jobs or do some work that requires practical knowledge and skills instead of studying liberal education. And they should be given equal opportunity to do so.
Murray says that the traditional “four-year brick-and-mortar” way of teaching in college is now becoming obsolete. He says that the issue is not on the importance or delight of one person to attend a the conventional four-year college education but more importantly, the things people consider is if the four – year education that people are taking could land them a job after college. (Murray).
Basically, what Murray is trying to say is that the traditional four-year courses should focus more on courses that really matter to the profession and not focus on a lot of other liberal courses that are not actually needed in a certain professions. He argues that “even Ph.D.s don’t require four years of course work” (Murray) and that the expertise of one person does not depend on the number of courses he has taken but rather on how one applies, uses and experiments on the specific field of specialty one has.
Works Cited
Murray, C. (2008). “Are Too Many People Going to College”. The American. American.com. Web. 22 Feb. 2012
