Cadet Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH 102

4/24/2017

HR: peer review, spell check, works cited

Until coming to VMI I have never been a fan of reading or writing, and in many ways I despised it. I came in as chemistry major and just wanted to get my credits done and get out of there, and never take an English course again. This has all change for me over the year and I have grown to really enjoy writing. I have learned a lot this year, and found ways to improve my writing which makes my writing better and more enjoyable. I have learned to use Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos to connect the reader and really draw them in to the reading. I have also learned the importance exigence, in writing with a specific purpose to a specific audience. And possibly the strategies that have improved my grade the most this semester are the changes I have made in my writing process. I have learned the importance of drafting and peer review in producing a final paper. And I have also changed the way I prepare my final draft to turn in. All of the things that I have learned and the changes I have made this semester have improved my writing tremendously, and have made writing so much more enjoyable for me.

Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos are a very important aspect of any piece of writing that some people either just skip over or don’t even know they are using it. After we learned about them early on in the semester I was able to recognize them and utilize them in every piece of writing we did for the rest of the semester. The second paper I wrote this semester entitled “Is the reality of waking up and getting ready for school coming to an end?” was riddled with and pathos. A lot of pathos was used when giving the reasons online education should not be denied. I used the effect on family who could not attend school for financial reasons, and the effect on people working with not enough time attend school to effect the readers emotions and feel sympathy for these people (Briggs,2).  The last paper I wrote entitled “Breaking the bank with Higher Education” on the other hand was loaded with logos. I use a lot of data and much statistical information to persuade the reader of my topic. After research I was able to support points such as “According to a news article written in 2015, the U.S. news reports that the average cost of tuition for an in state university has risen two hundred and ninety six percent from the years 1995 to 2015(Mitchell).”(Briggs, 1). This gives the reader hard evidence to persuade them of my topic in order to make a decision on their side of the story. All of these methods have improved my writing tremendously over the past semester. Knowing these methods I can now be much more persuasive and appeal to the reader in many ways.

Another thing we have learned to do is writing with a specific exigence to argue a specific point. In order to write a persuasive topic you need to have a purpose for writing your paper and a specific argument that you are going to persuade the reader of. All of your supporting points should then build off of this argument to develop your argument. If you also know your argument before you begin it will also help you to stay on track and not stray from the thesis. If you also know the audience who you ae writing to it will be tremendously helpful. Writing with a specific exigence is very important to the overall success of your writing. Although I learned about writing with a specific exigence last semester I continue to improve and make my argument stronger. This was very important in my last paper when trying to persuade the reader that schools need to watch their spending in order to improve tuition and allow more students to attend their school (Briggs, 2). This would affect a lot of employees and professors and man many people would not be happy with the idea. So you use these effective ways of persuading them to change their mind.

Possibly the most important changes I have made this year to my writing is the changes in my writing process. The first major change in my writing process is a change in my drafting of my essays. Up until this year I hadn’t seen drafts as very important to my final essay because inevitably they were going to be edited and changed anyway, so I gave half effort in writing them because I know they were going to be changed anyway. Over the course of this year I have learned that the peer reviewing of the drafts can really help outline things that need to be fixed. Just having another set of eyes can be a tremendous help. And as a bonus If you write every draft as a final then when it actually comes time for the final it is not only a much better paper but easier to finish. Drafting is very important to writing a good paper. Another major thing I have changed in my writing process is my method of reviewing my own paper. Before submitting my paper, I now read them aloud to make sure the sentences and structured and the whole piece flows much better. This has improved my writing tremendously over the course of the last semester.  These small changes have led to big differences in my writing.

Who would have known I would enjoy writing as much as I do today. The improvements I have made this semester to my writing have made my writing much better and the writing process much more enjoyable. The things I have learned this semester such as ethos, pathos, logos, Kairos, and exigence have made my writing a lot more persuasive and have helped me to write a much more structured argument. Knowing these strategies we can now writing a persuasive argument on any topic even if it is not one our favorites. The improvements I have made to my writing process are also very important to the development of my writing. Now that I take time to reread my paper aloud and I take drafting very seriously, my papers have improved tremendously. My papers flow a lot smoother and my sentence structure is much better. The things I have learned in ERH 102 and changes I have made to my writing have improved my writing tremendously over the semester and have made writing much more enjoyable.

Word Count: 1,124

Works Cited

1. Briggs, Mason. “Is the reality of waking up and getting ready for school coming to an

end?” VMI. March 4, 2017.

2. Briggs, Mason. “Breaking the Bank with Higher Education” VMI. March 27, 2017.

Cadet Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH 102

March 27, 2017

Help received: Purdue Owl, Works Cited, peer review

Could you imagine living in a world where the cost of higher education is higher than it already is? Some families are spending up to seventy thousand dollars or more per year on one child alone. According to a news article written in 2015, the U.S. news reports that the average cost of tuition for an in state university has risen two hundred and ninety six percent from the years 1995 to 2015(Mitchell). The cost has almost tripled in only 20 year; this could mean thousands and thousands of dollars out of some family’s pockets.  According to advisorperspectives.com the median household income is actually one thousand dollars lower in 2017 than in the year 2000(Mislinski). In a previous writing I wrote that “If the cost of tuition has tripled and the average family income has dropped, how are families expected to pay that much, if many could not afford it before the price increased? Some people just do not have that much money in their budget to pay for the school.  This has prevented many people from attending college and in many cases from getting a good job.  A college degree is very important in today’s world to get a good paying job. Many people are also complaining about where all the money is going. They say that the money from tuition and board are going toward programs such as the sports teams and not toward their kids’ education.  The money needs to be going towards the books and classes and not random things (Briggs, Mason, 1).”  We also need to come up with plans to make college more affordable to all families regardless of their background. The governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has proposed a plan in order to make tuition in New York free to families making an annual income of less than $125,000 (Lobosko). These ideas need to be considered when the cost of tuition continues to rise as it is. Colleges and universities are raising the costs of tuition for a variety of reasons which is causing many kids to not enroll in school and this needs to be changed.

One of the reasons for this is the extreme competition between universities. Now day’s schools want to be the most appealing to the upcoming students to get the most people to apply to their school. Schools are literally dumping tons of money in to things like landscape, housing, facilities, and meal plans for students in order to attack as many students as possible. In an article written by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, entitled “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important Drivers of College Cost?” many examples are given on where this money is going.   One place a lot of this money is feeding in to heating and air conditioning in dorms. Many rooms did not have heating or cooling until the last few years. A chart on page thirty four of Robert Archibald and David Feldmans article shows the trend in the room prices at private universities. Since 1965 the cost of rent has gone up nearly two hundred and fifty percent. They calculated a six point six four percent increase every year which is very significant when you are talking about tens of thousands of dollars. The cost of meal plans has also gone up close to a hundred dollars (Archibald and Feldman). Schools want to offer high end foods to make the school look more attractive but all that money has to come from somewhere. Schools are trying to offer foods like sushi and steak to attract my applicants. During my interview with High school AP Physics teacher, Jennifer Briggs, I asked where she thought all of the money for tuition was going. She went on to tell me about a tour she took her students on to High Point University to show them what the college experience was like. She told me about the “amazing facilities”, “grass that looked like Disney world”, and “free ice-cream!!” (Briggs, Jennifer). She used the tem free very lightly because then she went on to tell me approximately how much it costs per year to go there. She said for tuition and board it cost somewhere around seventy thousand dollars a year which is absurd (Briggs, Jennifer). These upgrades may seem nice but all that money has to come from somewhere. Students are not even given the option wither they want theses amenities or not, and these can raise the cost in some cases thousands of dollars.

Over the past years college has gotten so expensive that many kids can no longer afford to go there. Many people question whether it is still even worth the cost to go there. In some cases now a days colleges can cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a four year education. Many students come out of college with so much debt it takes a good portion of their life to pay it off, if they can even pay it off. In many cases in today’s world in order to get a good paying job you need a masters or a Phd, in order to get the job you want and earn an affordable living. Does the cost even outweigh the benefits of going to college? Because of the huge rise of the cost of higher education, this thought has been brought to the minds of thousands all over the world. College is a crucial point in a person’s life that cannot be passed up. It is often seem to help transition you from childhood to adulthood. Jennifer Briggs said it is an important experience of living on your own and learning how to socially adapt to those around you. It helps you manage your own finances, belongings, and prepares you to live on your own (Briggs, Jennifer). The thought of not attending college because of finances should never happen.

I am currently a student of the Virginia Military Institute paying an annual tuition of fifty two thousand dollars a year. If the tuition is increasing at an exponential rate while the cost of the annual family income has dropped almost one thousand dollars over the last fifteen years, and the average family income in the United States is right at fifty thousand dollars how do they expect some family’s to pay that (Mislinski). Fifty percent of the population makes less than enough to pay for one year of education for one person. And although the Virginia Military Institute is a great school there are even more expensive ones out there.  How can they send their kids to a good school and get an education to get a good job, if they make less in a year than the cost of one year of school. They would have to spend a majority of their life paying off their college education. That is just unfair to the families who do not make enough money to send their kids to school

Another conclusion I would like to bring up is that a ton of this money for tuition is also being brought in to get better teachers. Universities want to get the best professors that they can and this like before leads to more competition, causing an exponential growth in teacher salaries per year. Based on the chart provided By John Thelin, we learn that the annual cost of instructors can be extremely high. At the University of Wisconsin the average annual salaries is the instructing staff is approximately $489,810 dollars and at Columbia University they can even get up to $1,145,000 dollars per year (Thelin, 589). If you think about it, if you have fifty to a hundred professors at a university that is going to be a large sum of money. All of that money has to come from somewhere and that usually means from the students pockets once again. Just because the schools want to be the most appealing it is causing many kids to decide not to go to school, and the students need an education to be successful.

Are schools right in justifying their reasons behind raising the price of tuition for students? Schools need to cut back on their spending on appearance and many more kids would be able go to school. Archibald and Feldman gave many examples of were a lot of the money is going. Schools are putting a lot of money in to things that are making the school look aesthetically pleasing. They are putting large sums of money in to heating and air-conditioning, Landscaping, facilities, and amazing meal plans that will now serve high end food. They are trying to draw the attention of students to get them to apply and come to their school (Archibald and Feldman). A lot of money is also being put in to get the best professors they can which leads to competition. Some universities are even paying up to millions of dollars for their professors. The university of Columbia is paying on average 1.4 million to its professors, and and last time I checked that money doesn’t just appear (Thelin). This may be very good for education but leads to competition among the schools which has been raising the cost of tuition at an exponential rate making it very hard to afford. Higher education is very important for a student to get a good job after graduation, have a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood, and do something that they enjoy doing. Many families cannot afford to send their kids to college now days. Schools need to monitor their spending or come up with alternate plans to allow lower income families to attend their school. Although these things are appealing they are not as important as getting a degree and a good job. And if the colleges are not going to change what they are spending they need to create new opportunities for lower income families to send their kids to school. One option is they could provide opportunities such as the ones provided in New York implemented in the year 2017. New York is offering free tuition to families making less than a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year, thus allowing those families to attend college (Lobosko). Opertunities like this counld help lower income families attend universities that they could not before. Schools tuition has been increasing at an exponential rate and if schools do not rethink their budget and spending students all over the world will soon not be able to attend college. College is a very important part of people lives and development and it should not exclude anyone from attending and getting a degree.

Word Count: 2,015

Works Cited

Abel, Jaison R. and Richard Deitz. “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?.”

Current Issues in Economics & Finance, vol. 20, no. 3, Mar. 2014, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=96880995&site=ehost-live.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important

Drivers of College Cost?.” Change, vol. 43, no. 1, Jan/Feb2011, pp. 31-37. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1080/00091383.2011.538649.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs.”

Journal of Higher Education, vol. 79, no. 3, May/Jun2008, pp. 268-295. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31597078&site=ehost-live.

Briggs, Jennifer. Personal Interview. April 10, 2017.

Briggs, Mason. “Proposal: Breaking the Bank with Higher Education” March 4, 2017.

Lobosco, Katie. “ New York Governor proposes free tuition at state colleges.” CNN Money,

January 4, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/pf/college/cuomo-new-york-free

tuition/index.html, Accessed April 12, 2017.

Mislinski, Jill. “January Real Median Household Income: Little change from December at

$58,056.”Advisor Perspectives

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/03/02/january-real-median

household-income-little-change-from-december-at-58-056

Mitchell, Travis. “See 20 Years of Tuition Growth in National Universities” U.S. News

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for

college/articles/2015/07/29/chart-see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities.

Accessed March 4, 2017.

Thelin, John. “Why Did College Cost so Little? Affordability and Higher Education a

Century Ago.”Society, vol. 52, no. 6, Dec. 2015, pp. 585-589. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1007/s12115-015-9953-8.

“Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding.” ASHE Higher Education Report, vol. 39, no. 2,

May 2013, pp. 71-77. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/aehe.20008.

Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH 102

3/19/17

HR; Peer Review

Why is the cost of higher education increasing at an exponential rate while the rate of annual income per house hold is decreasing? The growing expenses of higher education have cause very many problems throughout the United States. Now a days even if you are an instate student, one year of school can cost you tens of thousands of dollars. Many people can just not afford these raising costs. Many students cannot go to college, or have to work for many years before school just to go to college. Where is all this extra money going? Is it even worth spending the money to go to college anymore? These are just a few of the questions raised by thousands of Americans when choosing to go to college. I plan to explore the reasons why college’s tuition fees are increasing so much and whither the benefits outweigh the costs of higher education.

In order to prove the trend in the cost of tuition is increasing, I used an article written by John Thelin entitled “Why Did College Cost so Little? Affordability and Higher Education a Century Ago.” Thelin gives very reliable data describing the change over the last century in the cost of tuition for universities. He displays his data in very detailed and organized graphs, which is very easy to read. Another point Thelin describes is the trend in the average annual salary of professors at the major institutions. This point would be used to answer the question of where the money is going. And lastly Thelin talks about state endowment at these major universities, and how more money is coming in.  This point could be used in favor of the colleges and how they are providing more scholarships to students. This article will be used to support universities are becoming too expensive to attend.

The second article I gathered was written by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, entitled “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important Drivers of College Cost?”  I found this source to use more data to detail where a lot of the cost of tuition nowadays is going. This article informs us that a lot of universities put their money into things that make the campus and living more enjoyable and elegant. Archibald gives us strong data on how universities over the past years have added heating and cooling units to almost every building on campus to make it more enjoyable. The article also tells us how the universities are dumping money in to the landscape and the food that they serve to draw more students in to go there. Although all of these things are appealing all of the money has to come from somewhere and unfortunately that is the student’s pockets. This article will be used against the argument that schools are justified in their raising of tuition over the past years.

The third article I discovered written by Jaisin Abel and Richard Diaz, entitled “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?” justifies that colleges can raise their prices for tuition and fees. It describes the benefits of going in to the work force with a college degree how you would benefit from it. It describes how the majority of times you will get jobs that are much higher paying than a job without a college degree. This higher paying job will allow you to pay off the college debt and provide a lot more than not having a degree. Not only will you be able to get a better paying job, you will also be able to get a job that is enjoyable to you. You will have more opportunities to do what you want to do not what you have to do. This article will be used as an argument article, describing why colleges are justified in raising tuition fees.

The fourth article that I will use is entitled “Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding.” This article describes how many colleges have been cutting their enrollment to students in coming years; this would lead to an increase in the amount they would have to charge each student. If there are fewer students than each student would need to pay more in order to cover the schools fees. I will use this point on the side of the school, saying that the schools need to raise tuition in order to cover expenses.

The last article I used was also written by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, entitled “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs.”. This article was very similar to the other article written by the duo, it describes where all the money is going. It also describes the Bowens revenue theory on how the tuition will continue to rise at a constant rate for many years to come. This would allow us to predict how much universities are going to cost in the near future. I will use this article as information to back up the side of universities nit being justified in raising tuition.

I don’t know about you but gourmet food and heating in my room sounds pretty good, but the expenses of tens of thousands of dollars for these does not make much sense.  After all of my research I do believe colleges need to cut cost in order to make higher education more available to students that cannot afford it, but also colleges are justified in their reasoning behind raising tuition.

Word Count: 1,053

Works cited

Thelin, John. “Why Did College Cost so Little? Affordability and Higher Education a

Century Ago.”Society, vol. 52, no. 6, Dec. 2015, pp. 585-589. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1007/s12115-015-9953-8.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important

Drivers of College Cost?.” Change, vol. 43, no. 1, Jan/Feb2011, pp. 31-37. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1080/00091383.2011.538649.

Abel, Jaison R. and Richard Deitz. “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?.”

Current Issues in Economics & Finance, vol. 20, no. 3, Mar. 2014, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=96880995&site=ehost-live.

“Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding.” ASHE Higher Education Report, vol. 39, no. 2,

May 2013, pp. 71-77. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/aehe.20008.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs.”

Journal of Higher Education, vol. 79, no. 3, May/Jun2008, pp. 268-295. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31597078&site=ehost-live.

Cadet Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH-102

February 19, 2017

Help received: text cited in works cited, Purdue owl to cite anthology

Kids of today’s world could not imagine growing up in a world without the use of the internet and other aids to get them through. Now full classes and even degrees are available for you to take online at your own convenience from the comforts of your own home. In the article titled “The changing face of higher education: the future of the traditional university experience” by Chrissie Long, the importance of online courses is described in many ways. Online courses can be extremely helpful for people with full time jobs, people supporting a kid, people who can’t afford college, and many more reasons. Online courses are also a great aid to students when it comes to learning or relearning a topic that you don’t understand very well in the class, no matter what the level of education is (Long, 456, 19). The matter of online education has also brought up many problems in the education world. Many colleges and universities are concerned that with available free and online education there will be no need for students to enroll and go to a college or university. Though enrollment could dip a little you would not see much of an effect to the higher education systems (Long, 456, 11-17). Online courses are a very important to the overall success to the modern student and in some cases they only recourse people have to get an education. Online courses should not be removed as an option for higher education, and if anything they should be improved and expanded to help anyone that they can.

For thousands of people in today’s world an online education is the only chance they have at getting a degree. Long goes as far as saying “ Online learning allowing students to more easily study abroad or time off due to personal issues” (Long, 456, 19). When I read personal issues I thought of even more reasons online learning is very helpful. People who have full time jobs do not have time during the day to attend a class room setting in order to get an education. The only way they can go to class is outside of work and for some people that can be late at night. An online education allows them to take classes at their own convenience, from wherever they need to take it. Online classes would also be very helpful to some parents or young adults who need to support a kid. These adults may need to work during the day and take care of the kids when they are not at work, but still want to get an education. Possibly the most important reason to make available online courses are for people who cannot afford college. In today’s age college can cost an arm and a leg to get in to. Many of today’s colleges and universities can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend. This is just not plausibly in the budget for some people. Online courses are usually much cheaper if not free, and you can get the same education. This opportunity gives people the possibility of getting an education and a good job no matter of what your time schedule and financial circumstances are.

Other online learning opportunities are available to students no matter what the education level they are in. Long brings up the idea of flipped classroom style learning. This allows students to learn the material at home and do example problems in class and ask questions (Long, 457, 20). Another great resource is online lessons such as Khan Academy and crash course. Inevitably over the course of your education wither in elementary school, middle school, high school or even college some courses will not come easy to you. You may either have trouble with learning the material, or you may not be able to understand the teachers teaching style. With these resources available you can re learn the lesson over and over at home if that helps you. From my experience this method has been extremely effective. I have used these online resources to relearn my class topics, and in many cases it has saved my grade. Online learning devices such Khan Academy, crash course and flipped classes are very helpful and effective resources to the students of today’s world.

Even though these advancements in education are extremely helpful and important, many people are very concerned with how this will affect schools. This point was highlighted by Long in the impact on campus based education section. She states “there is some concern that the rise of online education will purge institutions” (Long, 456, 12). And what she means by this is that with the rise of the free online courses and educations the amount of enroll students could drop tremendously. From my experience at VMI this would not be the case. Most of the people attending the Virginia military institute are intending on joining the military. In order to get the training needed and hands on skills learned you would need to attend a school. Without the hands on skills learned in a military school we could have no military. Long brings up another good point in opposition to these criticisms. She says “AS far as the undergraduate level, the ivy-covered brick towers, dorm room keg parties, and large lecture halls still have their place. Experts agree that campuses serve as an important venue for the transition from adolescent to adulthood” (Long, 456, 16). Many kids just want to get out and learn to live on their own and have some freedom from their parents, without being kicked straight in to the world. Although many people argue that these new technologies will hurt the enrollment to schools, it is likely to have little to no effect on enrollment.

The use of online education as a source of education is crucial to the success of many people in today’s world. Many people for various reasons are not able to attend a higher education and would still be able to with these online resources. Many people also use these sources as a means of prep and learning of classes they are currently in in a normal school. And though many people argue that it would hurt the enrollment of universities, it would have little to no effect at all. Online education is a glimpse in to a more prepared and well educated society.

Work Cited:

Long, Chrissie. “The Changing Face of Higher Education: The Future of the Traditional

University Experience.” Writing Argument, edited by John D. Ramage, John C. Bean,

June Johnson, Pearson Education ,2016, 455-459.