Essay Response 2

Response Essay 2

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Essay Response 2

The article The Higher Education: Not What It Used to Be by Thomas Cooley discusses the declining state of American Higher Education quality. It acknowledges that American universities have a commendable profile among the leading world universities, but intramural growth of our quality education is less progressive than the past. Cooley compares the progress of American Higher Education during the 1970s with the contemporary decade that is not appreciable indeed. The reason behind this factor is the expansive education and career insecurity that convince the students to avoid wasting money and time in universities (Cooley, Thomas. 2019). MOOCs have made the author optimistic about the future of Higher Education in America because the students can have access to quality education using online institutional channels with little money in hand than they need to get enrolled in the traditional universities like Harvard etcetera.

The article discusses the declining state of quality education and I being a student am directly related to this issue. The article notes that an online Western Governors University charges $6000 per year for a course whereas the Harvard University charges $54000 for the same course (Cooley, Thomas. 2019). Quality education indeed is a priority for a student who enters a university, but if the university fee is too much to be managed by the students, the presence of quality education makes no difference. The students stay in dilemma about whether to lend more money or to sacrifice quality education. MOOCs helped me coping with this dilemma when I found that the online courses are as admirable in quality as they are in low fee packages. I endorse the author’s analysis as a rational, realistic, and logical because I have firsthand experience of online courses and I acknowledge that I have learnt as much as I could learn in a formal institution or perhaps more than it.

Online institutions have been discussed in comparison to Formal/traditional universities analyzing their fee packages and the quality of education. The author implies that the formal universities have become too difficult to access for poor or middle-class students. They cannot pay heavy fees and this phenomenon causes mental depression and disappointment among university students. The author analyzes that the formal universities are paying much to the infrastructure and less to faculty whereas the online institutions have no issues of infrastructure that helps them to focus only on providing up-to-date education to their students.

A good writer is the one who can convince the audience(s) using only written language. Writing job is not a hot cake because the writer attempts to convince a physically absent person through pen. The writers use many techniques and strategies to convince or appeal the audience whereas Cooley has applied logos appeal. Logos appeal strategy is used by the writer to convince the reader regarding a particular topic using his/her rational side of mind. Cooley uses exact facts and figures in paragraphs as well as charts to develop his arguments in a logical style. He provides the data charts about the overall progress from 1970s to 2010s to give a visual comparison. Then he compares the respective progress using fragmented sentences and catchy words. Cooley’s article is not mere criticism on the higher education system rather he praises its performance but he identifies the factors that have frozen the universities’ upward movement that he insists that is essential for the universities of such a country like the United States of America. The identified factors are high fee packages, low ratio of investing on the faculty rather than infrastructure and decreasing interest of the government in supplementing the Higher Education sector. He explains the reasons behind the slow progress of this sector and notes that it has caused a catastrophic depression among the youngsters of the US who are the future of the country indeed. Finally, he reaches an inference with a short-term solution to this issue that can become a long-term solution as well if the authorities show interest in helping the solution to work. The solution is the promotion of MOOCs to spread more quality education with less money. Cooley’s reader starts the article with appreciation, read the middle part being conjectural, and completes the reading being optimistic having a solution to the discussed issue.

References

Cooley, Thomas. (2019). Amazon.com. Retrieved 10 November 2019, from https://www.amazon.com/Back-Lake-Reader-Guide-Third/dp/0393937364