Ideas Critique

Edmundson presents many claims in his essay. One of them is that college has become a consumer driven establishment. He says how people are buying education as entertainment. Well, even if that is true, college has become an extreme money drain. If we are paying that much for an education, we shouldn’t be spending money to sit there all day and be miserable. He is a teacher, of course he wants the power to be back in his hands, where he can’t be judged by the student, and students have to listen and learn no matter how they present the material. Another one of his points is that students have become afraid to take risks, and are in specific majors just to get a good job in life, not to learn. The world has become a tough, money based place. For many people, money can buy happiness and make life a lot easier. Therefore, of course we are trying to get into the occupations that can help us live life to the fullest. We may want to learn about things that we can use to our full potential because of our individual skills, but we are thinking of the future. Mark Edmundson is not a student; he has his occupation set and his future set. Students are going out into an economy that is becoming more and more difficult to live in. He is considering his part and how the new consumer culture is affecting his world. However maybe there is good reason that students are becoming this way, because we need to survive the future.