Justification for Higher Education

Chris Harrison
Writing 39B, Assignment 1
5 February 2003
Justification For Higher Education
After analyzing William A. Henry III s In Defense of Elitism and Caroline Bird s
College is a Waste of Time and Money , it is clear that Henry s argument concerning the
purpose of an education is more rational than Bird s due to the fact that Henry supports his claims
with credible statistics, logical insight, and uses current real world scenarios. Bird, on the
contrary, bases her argument solely on manipulated statistics, overly dramatic claims, and
ridiculously out-of-this-world scenarios.
While there are various viewpoints and perspectives on the subject of higher education,
Henry for one, has landed the conclusion that in America higher education for the masses has not
only been extremely costly economically, but it has also greatly lowered the educational standards
and therefore defeated the purpose of higher education itself.
Henry s primary grievance against higher education for the masses is that the influx of
mediocrities relentlessly lowers the general standards at colleges to levels the weak ones can
meet (335). Quite simply, higher education is by no means any higher if the standards keep
lowering just so some students can barely meet the minimum standards. For example, although I
am a full supporter of the bell curve in college, it is certain that this recent innovation has had its
share in lowering the university s educational standards. This practice of calculating the students
average score on an exam and then re-scaling grades to help those who didn t fare as well is a
clear example of bringing the standard of college down to everyone s level (336). I can certainly
attest to this claim because I was recently directly affected by the bell curve. In the first quarter of
my freshman year, I received a score of 44 out of a possible 100 points on my Physics 7A final
exam. According to the general 10% increment grading scale, this would... [continues]

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