College in America survey results

[melin720]

<p>If he doesn’t spend at least 20+ hours studying per week then he can have fun with lots of college debt.</p>

[berryberry61]

<p>

Where are the data to support this?

</p>

<p>

I try not to take unsourced statistics from a clearly-biased source with any credibility

</p>

<p>The sources for the information are right on the chart if you look hard enough. They appear quite legit. Alas, some folks see the organization hosting it and are immediately in denial</p>

[AnudduhMom]

<p>^ ^</p>

<p>Please be clear and not ‘hint-y’, berryberry. What exactly do you mean by that? What bias does the National Center for Education Statistics ([National</a> Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a part of the U.S. Department of Education](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov%5DNational”>http://nces.ed.gov)) hold in your mind?
Or is the information (which is not clearly cited in the document) questionable, because ostensibly it was found in USA Today? I assume this is it:
<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-11/college-drinking_N.htm[/url]”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-11/college-drinking_N.htm&lt;/a&gt;
When I try to find that page, I get a message: “The requested document was not found”.</p>

<p>This doesn’t look like solid citation practice to me, therefore I think quite rightly I question the source of the information.</p>

[mantori.suzuki]

<p>Well, I may as well join in.</p>

<p>

Every year, more than 2 million high school graduates enroll into college.

</p>

<p>Enroll into college? Who says that? Possibly someone who didn’t go to college?</p>

<p>

1 out of 3 drop out after the first year.

</p>

<p>“One drop out after the first year.” Nice.</p>

<p>

Or you could purchase a brand new Ferrari F430.

</p>

<p>Who in his right mind thinks a car is more valuable than a four-year education?</p>

<p>

Based on the difference in starting salary, it’d take 17 years to make up the difference in tuition for 4 years.

</p>

<p>Yeah, except Yale graduates rarely stay in their entry-level positions for 17 years.</p>

<p>

1 out of 5 students fail to properly balance a checkbook.

</p>

<p>And only 1 out of 5 can properly split an infinitive while simultaneously achieving subject-verb disagreement. Way to go!</p>

<p>

1 out of 2 students fail [sic] to correctly analyze prose like news editorials.

</p>

<p>Ah, the hard science of analyzing prose. It’s easy enough to apply to news editorials, but few can apply it successfully to prose like news editorials.</p>

<p>

6 out of 10 bachelor’s degrees are earned by a female.

</p>

<p>She must be really smart!</p>

<p>

…classes like…Arguing with Judge Judy.

</p>

<p>I’ll let Berkeley’s own course description answer this one:</p>

<p>

A fascinating aspect of these shows from a rhetorical point of view is the number of arguments made by the litigants that are utterly illogical, or perversions of standard logic, and yet are used over and over again. For example, when asked “Did you hit the plaintiff?” respondents often say, “If I woulda hit him, he’d be dead!” This reply avoids answering “yes” or “no” by presenting a perverted form of the logical strategy called “a fortiori” argument [“from the stronger”] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on “Judge Judy” and “The People’s Court” and discussing why such strategies are so widespread.

</p>

<p>Hmm, applying logic to discover fallacies in people’s arguments…sounds like something the author of College in America could have used. I wonder if he appreciates the irony. Or knows what irony is.</p>

[ChocolateBanana]

<p>^That is one of the best posts I have ever read. I laughed out loud.</p>