Is Higher Education Worth It?

Higher education is a prestigious accomplishment that the majority of young adults in the United States accomplish after they graduate from high school. But is that a good thing? Higher education has become an industry and has changed its first priority from teaching young adults the professional and social skills their careers will require to making money. Higher education has become a contest amongst Universities who pride themselves on the number of students that attend and are happy being at that University, instead of focusing on producing good adults who will be productive in the work environment.

Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus raise an important question in their article Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?, “So are colleges giving good value for those investments? What are families buying? What are individuals – and our society as a whole – gaining from higher education?” Hacker and Dreifus are questioning the value of a college education. Is it really worth going into the amount of debt that is required, to attend and graduate from a college or University? I believe profits for the universities and colleges have become more important than the education each student receives while attending.

There is a common theme in most high schools throughout the United States that pushes students towards attending a University. High school guidance counselors have become recruiters for the Universities. Guidance counselors used to, and are supposed to, help a young adult realize their potential and find their best path to go down once graduating high school. There is a stigma around

blue collar work that restricts blue collar jobs from being exciting or enticing to young adults. The problem is, if every young adult attends a University and graduates with a degree, our society will still need mechanics, commercial truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, contractors, welders, etc. Many students who would do well in the trades are pushed to take on thousands of dollars of debt to acquire a degree in a field that isn’t hiring. That same student could attend a trade school for less than fifteen thousand dollars, and quickly make between eighty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars. The stigma around the trades needs to change because they are essential to the success of our society, and a family can live comfortably on their salary, most notably because they will not have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

I do think that there is value in higher education, I am currently enrolled in a University aren’t I, but I do not think college is the end all be all. However, there are ways to use a higher education. David Foster Wallace gave a real-world explanation of how to use a higher education in his Kenyon commencement speech. In his speech Wallace says, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” Wallace is sharing life experience with the graduates he is speaking too, which is not a common trend on University campuses. These are the kinds of lessons and messages that should be taught on campus. This is the kind of message that helps young adults grow and become good adults in our society. A society based solely on profits, is a selfish society that cannot advance and is cold and lonely place.

Is Fast Food the New Tobacco?

              Obesity if the United States has become an epidemic that spans all generations. But, is it the government’s job to regulate and dictate to the citizens of the United States what we should eat, where we can eat, and how much we can eat? Absolutely not. Similar arguments that are regularly debated on the national level include tobacco and abortion. And in my opinion, right or wrong, the government is the last person or entity on earth who should be telling you, controlling you, or penalizing you for what an individual chooses to do with, or put in your body. There are consequences for every action you take, and personal accountability for those consequences is what has been lacking in the obesity/weight epidemic in the United States.

              Education is the only area in which an overseeing entity should be involved. For instance, children are taught in public schools the negative impact of using tobacco products and what the usage of said products will do to your body.  I knew the risks, and yet I chose to engage in using that product. Eventually I realized my body was growing old of the usage, and I could feel my body’s sluggish behavior and decreased lung capacity and made the decision to quit.

The surgeon general ups the ante one step further by plastering warning signs and labels on every package of tobacco sold in the United States. And yet children are still curious to try smoking for a variety of reasons. In high school and as a young adult, I knew all the warnings and had an amazing education about tobacco and still chose to smoke. I, like many others, enjoyed smoking because I liked the way it made me feel. I enjoyed the social aspect of walking out back behind a bar on a warm summer or spring night and lighting up a Marlboro. The tobacco amplified the alcohol and made the night livelier. Smoking also served as a stress reliever providing a five to ten-minute break where I could pause and refocus myself on whatever I was working on that day.

              Food is no different. The food we choose to eat is a conscious decision made before every meal. No one is holding you hostage three, four, maybe five times a day when you become hungry and need to choose a meal or a snack. Stopping at the McDonalds or Taco Bell is significantly easier than pre-planning and meal prepping your meals, it is often much tastier as well. But there are consequences to constantly eating at these establishments. The health factors alone are enough to prove that fast food is not healthy. But that is not a new or unknown fact. I simply think that in today’s fast paced, single parent household, or two full time working parents’ households preparing quality nutritional meals has fallen to the wayside. Finding the time to shop is difficult. Preparing to cook is time consuming. Cooking a meal itself is not only time consuming but also requires technical skill to achieve a finished meal. Couple that with trying to keep children contained or focused on their homework and you have a recipe for disaster, and our health is what suffers. Society today is often over worked and underpaid, but that is a topic for another day.

      

        So how do we change it? Government needs to keep their hands off the equation. Families need to become more accountable to their actions. As Radley Balko says in his article What You Eat is Your Business, “That means freeing insurance companies to reward healthy lifestyles, and penalize poor ones.” I agree with Balko. The biggest motivating force is to hit people in their wallet. If insurance companies, free from government constraints, charge a higher premium to individuals for their poor choices and charge healthy people less, it will encourage people to change their ways. Most people need to be incentivized to change. Balko also states, “If the government is paying for my anti-cholesterol medication, what incentive is there for me to put down the cheeseburger?” Balko reinforces that people are less likely to change on their own when someone else will foot the bill for them. It is not fair for the already over taxed citizen to pay higher taxes because someone else cannot motivate themselves to change their ways. Government has no right, and no role, in telling anyone what they can do to or put in their bodies.

Is Pop Culture Good for You?

              Pop culture is one of the most influential forces on our society. But is that influence a good thing? Is the influence from modern pop culture a healthy thing for developing minds of children and young adults? I do not think that it is. Pop culture has grown and developed to the point that it has actually gone to far. I believe that the amount of information available has become so inflated that most people are intimidated by fact checking or looking for another source. What I mean is, anyone and everyone can now post an article or post all over the internet without being edited. Because there is so much unedited information floating throughout the web, people have been forced to tune into the major news outlets or their favorite celebrities and align themselves with whatever information those sources are supporting. Rarely, in my opinion, do people fact check the information that they read, see, or hear anymore.

              Celebrities have become walking talking advertisements that people idolize. Society has been convinced that in order to be accepted you must dress, act, socialize, and embody that of the celebrity in which you choose. People religiously follow the lives and trends of specific celebrities but fail to invest the same amount of time and energy into their families and friends. How many people can recite intimate details of the Kardashians personal lives but can’t remember their significant other or parents’ birthdays?  We have shifted the importance away from strong family values or strength, support, and integrity and replaced them with meaningless trends, fashions, and a false sense of self-being.

              The mainstream media’s role in all of this is to sell people on the importance of pop culture. News outlets used to pride themselves on reporting factual evidence that allowed the common person to form their own opinions and conclusions. The modern media machine does the opposite. The goal or objective of the mainstream media is to captivate the audience and dictate what they should think and how they should feel, without reporting factually. This is extremely dangerous. Malcolm Gladwell quotes Evgeny Morozov and Golnaz Esfandiari in his article Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. Morozov mentions that Twitter did not play a significant role in the 2009 Iranian protests, mainly because Twitter is almost nonexistent in Iran. Esfandiari goes on to say, “Simply put, there was no Twitter revolution inside Iran.” Gladwell explains that in the case of the 2009 Iranian protests, an overwhelming majority of Tweets were from Western countries. People in Western countries were quick to praise Twitter for helping to organize protests, but very few people questioned why almost all the tweets were in English, which is not the native language used in Iran. This amplifies reporter’s and  people’s willingness to go along with the crowd and not dig any deeper than the information provided on the surface.

              Self-esteem and self-worth have also taken a massive hit. Confidence is no longer measured by a person’s accomplishments in their career, professional, or personal life. Confidence now is measured on how many likes you have received, how many followers you have, and who has re-tweeted a comment or status you have posted. Social media has a negative effect on an individual’s self-esteem and self-confidence. Moreover, take a look around a crowded restaurant on any given evening and observe how many people are engrossed with their phones and tablets. People have become too focused on what the people online will think of the fact that they’re at dinner with their friends and do not actually spend time conversing and enjoying the company of the people that they are sitting with.

              The younger generations of today do not posses some of the most basic communication skills. Most young people struggle with in person communication and interaction because most of their communication is web based. It is rare for a young adult to pick up a phone and physically call someone to relay a message or conduct business. Unfortunately, business is largely still finalized with face to face interaction. Closing a deal is as much a personal interaction as it is a business negotiation. As more and more people close themselves off from personal interaction, it is scary to think about what the future of our planet going to look like.

Introduction

My name is Matthew Lemons, and I am returning to NJCU this semester after taking a hiatus at the end of 2017. I am a career firefighter and majoring in Fire Science here at NJCU. I am currently in my junior year. I started college at Kean University after high school but stopped when I was hired to be a firefighter in 2015. I transferred to NJCU for the Fire Science program specifically to help me advance my career. Immediately following the fall 2017 semester I obtained my commercial drivers license, got engaged, and purchased a house. Since then my wife and I have renovated our home, gotten married, and we are eagerly waiting for our son to be born this coming summer. In my free time I enjoy working on and rebuilding trucks and spending time with my wife and our dogs. My current project is swapping a 1995 Powerstroke diesel engine into my 1978 Ford Bronco. Our three dogs are named Shamrock, Savannah, and Pierce. Shamrock (Shammy) is a Glen of Imaal Terrier. Shes pictured below with my wife Jaclyn. Savannah (Savy) and Pierce are both rescue Rottweilers. They are both originally from Georgia but we rescued them individually about a year and a half apart, so they are not related. Their picture is down below, Savy is on the left, Pierce is on the right.

I cannot recall an exact moment in time in which I considered myself literate, but I can intimately recall my father reading a book named Verdi to me before bed. I would beg him time and time again to repeat one specific page/passage, in which the main character (a growing python) falls from a tree after launching himself from a vine into the air. The specific passage made me laugh out loud without fail. I remember the desire to read the passage myself so that I could still laugh and enjoy the moment even when my father was not home. Although, I could never amuse myself quite like the way my father could. Looking back now, it was my father that made the moment special not just the words and the story.

             

  As I grew up, reading never became something I loved or had much affection for. I viewed it as an important skill to have because communication is one of the most important parts of our society. Because of this, I had a hard time understanding why other children, and other people in general, spoke about how much they enjoyed reading. I always preferred to be outside exploring and or riding my bike instead of being inside reading a book. I chose to use my imagination in the woods or at the park instead of reading about someone else’s adventures.

              Literacy to me hasn’t changed much as I have grown older in my life. I still think of it, and use it, as a tool. Literacy is a passage for competent communication and education to flow from one source to another. Without a literate society, there is no way that we would have been able to build the society that we now enjoy.