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Is College Too Expensive

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College prices aren’t skyrocketing—but they’re still too high for some

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, phillip levine phillip levine nonresident senior fellow - economic studies , center for economic security and opportunity.

April 24, 2023

21 min read

Discussions about the rising cost of college routinely miss the point . At four-year public and private institutions, the total cost of attendance almost tripled between 1979-80 and 2020-21, accounting for inflation. But only students from higher-income families pay that full cost, or “sticker price,” featured in headlines. Most students pay less because they receive financial aid in the form of grants (sometimes called scholarships). This means they pay a “net price” that is less —often much less—than the sticker price. Determining the net price for individual students is difficult, and tracking changes over time is even harder. But if we want to understand changes in college affordability, we need to track not only the highly visible sticker prices but also financial aid and net prices.

While the net price is what’s relevant for understanding college affordability, unfortunately it is not as easy as it should be to find reliable information on net prices and how they have changed over time. To help fill this void, I have been collecting better net price data for selected colleges.

These data confirm that lower- and middle-income students pay a net price that is typically much less than the sticker price. And net prices have actually been falling , on average, in recent years, not rising. But the data also show that the net price many lower-income students must pay is still too high at most institutions. This lack of college affordability for lower-income students, not the dramatic rise in sticker prices which only higher-income students pay, is what should capture our attention.

Net prices have actually been falling , on average, in recent years, not rising.

There are several steps that should be taken to address these problems. First, we need better information regarding college costs that are specific to individuals’ financial circumstances. The focus on sticker prices is perhaps understandable since institutions are required by law to report it annually. Net prices are specific to the individual, and generating that information is difficult. Finding better ways to report and track net price is sorely needed. Re-labelling the sticker price as the “maximum cost of attendance” is an easy first step to help clarify misperceptions regarding college pricing. To reduce the net price for lower-income students, increasing the maximum size of Pell Grants (the largest form of federal financial aid that does not need to be repaid) would go a long way towards fixing that problem.

Sticker prices are misleading and net prices are hard to find

A college education is one of the biggest expenses individuals face during their lives. College is not necessarily right for everyone, but the decision about whether and where to attend college should be based on accurate pricing information. What a student needs to know is not how much college costs in general but how much it will cost them. For most students the sticker price is misleading. Averages are not that informative either since the net price depends on individual circumstances.

Similarly, if policymakers, advocates, and commentators want to understand trends in college affordability over time for different types of students, they need to track net prices, not sticker prices. Almost a decade ago, I wrote about how difficult it is to determine how much colleges charge students with different financial circumstances. In terms of publicly available data, not much has changed since then. Figuring out how much a student can expect to pay to attend different colleges is still too difficult.

The federal government requires higher education institutions to post their “cost of attendance (COA),” an amount sometimes referred to as the “sticker price” that includes tuition, fees, room and board (soon to be relabeled as housing and food), travel, books, and other expenses. But most students pay less than that because they get financial aid. The “net price” is the sticker price minus the total grant aid a student receives (grant aid does not have to be paid back). Many students will qualify for federal student loans and the work-study program, which they can use to cover the net price they are expected to pay.

Any remaining amount not covered by grants, federal student loans, and work-study earnings must be paid for separately by students and their families. These remaining expenses are often referred to as “out-of-pocket” costs because they need to be paid by students and their families directly to the institution (i.e., by “writing a check,” back in the day before electronic payment systems). The funds to cover those payments could come from many sources, including savings or other sources of debt (including “Parent PLUS” loans), but out-of-pocket costs represent the additional burden on students and families that are not otherwise accounted for by the financial aid system.

Recognizing the need for more accurate information about how much students can expect to pay for college, the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act mandated that institutions provide a tool that students could use to estimate their net price based on their personal financial circumstances; these tools are known as “net price calculators.” The law also requires institutions to report statistics on the net price paid by their students, overall and separately for specific income ranges. 1 These data are reported on the College Scorecard .

Department of Education data show average net prices increase more slowly than sticker prices and have declined recently

Despite the limitations of the publicly available data, they do provide some useful information on trends in college pricing. For example, Figure 1 shows trends in the average COA and average net price (adjusted for inflation) since 2006-07, separately for public and non-profit private four-year institutions.

Between 2006-07 and 2019-20, COA increased by around 27% at both types of institutions, but declined by 7-8% in the few years after that. The recent decline occurred because colleges posted similar nominal COA increases as in the past, but inflation was higher. Overall, COA increased by almost 20% over those 16 years at both types of institutions.

But average net prices rose at a considerably more modest pace. Between 2006-07 and 2019-20, average net price increased by 13% and 7% at public and private four-year institutions, respectively. Those increases reversed in the post-COVID years. Overall, average net prices are largely unchanged, adjusted for inflation, compared to 2006-07.

But the average net price for all students reported here includes both those who receive financial aid and those who pay full price. Since those who pay full price faced higher prices over time, net prices among those who receive financial aid must have fallen. Without additional information, we cannot say more about how net price changed for different types of students, but the fact that net price is falling for students who receive financial aid is important and not consistent with public perception.

New data for tracking college pricing

Over the past decade, I have focused on finding ways to construct data that better communicate the level and trend in college costs for students with different financial circumstances. These data cover a more limited set of institutions and time periods than the Department of Education data described above, but they provide a more consistent and accurate picture of changes in net price over time.

I have taken two approaches. First, I draw on detailed data from institutions and the MyinTuition model I developed to track net prices for institutions who agree to participate. The second approach uses the net price calculators described above to track net prices at a random sample of institutions. In both cases, I track net prices for hypothetical dependent students with no siblings in college for three different family income levels (in 2022$): $40,000, $75,000, and $125,000. These incomes correspond roughly to the 25 th , 50 th , and 75 th percentile of the income distribution for families with college-aged children. 3 To estimate net prices, I also assume typical asset levels, adjusted for inflation, at each income level.

Consistent with the average net price data described above, these new data sources show declining net price for lower-income students in recent years. They also highlight ongoing problems with the levels of net prices for many students. Across the board, low- and moderate-income families pay net prices that are well below the posted sticker price; but in many cases, the net prices for these families are still too high. Notably, highly selective private colleges with large endowments have some of the highest sticker prices but the lowest net prices for low-income students.

Net prices at MyinTuition institutions have declined substantially

Almost a decade ago, I wrote about the work I did at Wellesley College to create a simplified tool to estimate college costs based on families’ basic financial characteristics. 4 That led to the creation of MyinTuition , which provides estimates of what a students’ financial aid award might look like based on data on current students whose families had similar financial characteristics. MyinTuition provides both a best estimate and a 90% confidence interval to convey the uncertainty about the estimate.

MyinTuition uses institution-specific data for each student receiving need-based financial aid to generate its predictions. These data are higher quality than that available from any public source, but they are only available for participating institutions. For this analysis, I focus on 14 of the 78 participating institutions for whom my data extends back to 2015-16. 5 They are all highly selective private non-profit colleges and universities that have large endowments (they would fall in the “private, non-profit, large endowment” category in the analysis described below).

Figure 2 shows trends in the net price for dependent students with no siblings in college at different levels of family income (assuming typical assets and adjusted for inflation). These data are based on MyinTuition’s best estimate of net price for these students in each year. Students from middle- and lower-income families now pay less to attend these institutions than they did seven years ago. The trend began before the COVID-19 pandemic and has accelerated since then. At the same time, sticker prices (i.e., COA) initially increased and then reversed, ending the period at roughly the same level as they started.

Figure 2 also demonstrates how the level of sticker price can skew perceptions of college costs. These institutions have among the highest sticker prices in the country—around $80,000 in 2022-2023. This amount is clearly unaffordable for all but high-income families. But those are the only students who are asked to pay that amount. Students with incomes around $40,000 (roughly the bottom quartile of the income distribution) pay a net price of $5,000 on average at these institutions. They could cover that amount through Federal student loans, work study wages, or perhaps a summer job, so families would have to pay little or nothing out-of-pocket in this situation (though the student would have to pay back any student loans with interest).

These institutions can use these pricing strategies because of their large endowments and market power. Their endowments generate revenue through investment returns that help subsidize students. Their market power enables them to charge high sticker prices to high-income students, which also helps subsidize attendance of lower-income students. This is not a pricing strategy that most institutions can pursue.

Net price calculators also show that prices are down across sectors

Despite their flaws, data from net price calculators can also be used to understand college pricing. Generating these data requires physical entry of relevant values into each net price calculator, including different income and asset levels in each one. 6 My research team and I undertook this time-consuming analysis, collecting data for 200 randomly selected institutions, 50 from each of four categories: (1) private, non-profit colleges with large endowments, (2) other private, non-profit colleges, (3) public flagship and other “R1” institutions (four-year colleges with significant research activity), and (4) other public institutions. 7 I focus here on the change between 2018-19 and 2022-23.

The results shown in Figure 3 shows the inflation-adjusted percent change in net price for the four types of institutions and at the three levels of family income, as well as the full COA. COA fell 5-10% across all types of institutions, with the largest decline among public flagships/R1s. Net prices fell even more: In all institution types, aside from other public institutions, net prices declined by about 10-15%. Net prices at other public institutions also declined but somewhat less, by about 5-10%.

Declining net prices are good news for students and their families, but these data also point to ongoing affordability problems for lower-income students. Table 1 shows the levels of net price for students by family income level for 2018-19 and 2022. For lower-income families with income around $40,000, public institutions still charge these students a net price of around $14,000 on average. That is around $1,000 less than what they charged 4 years ago. It is also much less than the sticker prices of roughly $25,000 to $30,000.

But net prices are still too much for these lower-income families to afford. Students in that income range would also be eligible for Federal Student Loans of $5,500 in each of their first two years in college and for employment supported by the Federal Work-Study Program, which typically amounts to about $2,500. These two additional forms of federal financial aid can contribute $8,000 towards the cost of college. That still leaves a gap of $6,000 that these students or their families would need to pay out of their own pockets. With a family income of $40,000 and limited assets, out-of-pocket payments of that size represent a substantial obstacle to college access.

Private institutions with large endowments come closer to filling the gap. Low-income students at those institutions would have out-of-pocket expenses of $2,700, around half the level at public institutions. Other private institutions, though, leave a gaping hole in affordability, with remaining expenses of around $13,000 that are clearly unaffordable for these students.

Why have college costs been falling recently?

Colleges and universities surely have social objectives, but they also face budget constraints and make pricing decisions in line with their business interests. What is changing in the market for higher education that is leading to these patterns in college pricing?

Inflation has played an important role. In the decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, sticker prices at four-year institutions increased about 3% per year, on average; that was about 1.5% above the average rate of inflation. In the post-COVID era, though, inflation increased, hitting 7% in 2021 and 6.5% in 2022. In a low-inflation environment, sticker price increases on the order of 3% may fly under the radar, even though they correspond to modest increases in inflation-adjusted terms. But sticker price increases greater than today’s much-higher rate of inflation would appear very large even if the real increase, after adjusting for inflation, was the same as before. To avoid public backlash, institutions mostly increased their sticker prices at rates comparable to earlier nominal increases. That led to the inflation-adjusted decline in sticker prices shown in the data above.

But that real decline in sticker prices reduces revenue to the institution that needs to be made up somehow to meet rapidly rising costs. One potential approach to filling that gap is to reduce financial aid, increasing the cost for lower-income students. The lack of transparency in the financial aid system would mask those cost increases.

Colleges do not appear to have taken that approach in the last few years. One possible explanation is that institutions had other sources of revenue that were able to fill those gaps. Stimulus funding provided by the federal government to states and to higher education institutions may have prevented colleges from reducing financial aid and/or increasing sticker prices to cover rising costs. It remains an open question how college pricing will respond now that those federal funds are no longer available.

The situation is somewhat different at highly selective institutions, which typically meet the full financial need of their students. This means that students and their families pay an amount out-of-pocket based on what a formula says they can afford (based on FAFSA and the CSS Profile , an additional financial aid application run by the College Board used by some colleges). Students are also often expected to take out some student loans and participate in work-study, but they will not be expected to contribute more out-of-pocket than the formula says they can afford.

Low- and moderate-income families pay net prices that are well below the posted sticker price; but in many cases, the net prices for these families are still too high.

Based on the MyinTuition data for 14 such colleges, net prices for lower- and middle-income students have fallen considerably since 2015-16. For families with incomes around $40,000, their net price has fallen by 23% after adjusting for inflation. For $75,000 and $125,000 income families, net price has fallen 22% and 14%, respectively. Much of that decline is driven by the fact that the expected work-study earnings and loans have been largely fixed in nominal dollars over that period, declining in real terms. At institutions that meet full need, declines in the real value of student loans or work-study earnings need to be matched by greater grant aid, not by increasing out-of-pocket cost. Greater grant aid drives down real net prices. Some of these institutions have also adopted more generous financial aid policies that have also contributed to this decline.

Pricing at most institutions that do not meet full need is more complicated. Families are often expected to pay out-of-pocket more than the formula says they can afford. How much more depends on institutional policy. Those institutions, though, also include work-study jobs and loans in their financial aid packages, which are part of how students are expected to cover their net price. Again, these values have largely been fixed in nominal dollars and contribute to falling net prices at these institutions.

Policy Implications

Despite the public focus on sticker prices, discussions regarding college pricing should emphasize college affordability for lower- and moderate-income students more. This means focusing on net prices, which, for low-income students, are much lower than sticker prices. Without diminishing the difficulties that higher-income students may face in paying for college, the struggles lower- and moderate-income students experience are considerably greater.

Elsewhere, I have argued for doubling the Pell Grant to help overcome this problem. In addition to more financial support for low-income students, we need to address the lack of transparency in college pricing. Data on trends in college pricing needs to better represent the costs that lower- and moderate-income students face. Without such data, students, families, and policymakers cannot easily recognize the magnitude and nature of the college affordability problem, and efforts to fix it are often misdirected.

Ironically, our recent bout with inflation has lowered net prices for college for all students. At highly selective institutions, that decline appears to have started earlier for all but higher-income students. It remains to be seen whether these trends continue, not just for sticker prices but for the net prices that lower- and moderate-income students face. If we do not find better ways to track college costs for students with different family financial circumstances, we will not easily know if that happened. Students and their families will continue to make one of the most important financial decisions of their lives half in the dark.

The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here . The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.

It is now possible to obtain institution-level data on the average net price paid by full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students who receive any form of federal financial aid (including student loans). These data have been available since 2006-07. In addition to the aggregate average net price, the law also required institutions to provide average net prices within a series of family income categories: less than $30,000, $30,000 to $48,000, $48,000 to $75,000, $75,000 to $110,000, and greater than $110,000 (approximate quintile cut-offs of family income at that time).
These data suffer from several potential problems. First, financial aid is based on income and assets, which are not always directly linked. Second, use of the median would be a significant improvement because of the possibility of outliers. Third, income categories are fixed in nominal dollars. Over time, inflation has changed the composition of students in each category. My examination of these data from institutions whose pricing systems I know well (described below) revealed significant deviations between the reported level and trend in net prices by income level and what students could realistically expect to pay. These discrepancies are highlighted in the difference in net price trends reported in the media using these data and the results reported below using data that addresses these limitations.
These cut-offs are rounded. They were established using the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances for families with children approaching college age (between 13 and 17) and have been adjusted for inflation by the Consumer Price Index in subsequent years, arriving at these values in 2022.
After developing the model at Wellesley College, I worked to expand the use of MyinTuition to more colleges and universities. In 2017, I started a non-profit corporation, MyinTuition Corp , severing its link (although not my own) to Wellesley College to avoid the appearance of any conflict of interest. For each institution using MyinTuition, I have access to a limited set of financial aid data, including all components needed to construct net prices for each aid recipient (with all appropriate security and privacy concerns contractually addressed). The data available to me are proprietary and cannot be shared.
These institutions are Amherst College, Bowdoin College, Carleton College, Colorado College, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Mount Holyoke College, Pomona College, Rice University, Vassar College, Washington and Lee University, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College.
We use the same values of income and assets as described in our analysis of MyinTuition data. Along with income and assets, we also entered reasonable values of all other requested inputs. We first constructed these data for the 2018-19 academic year and repeated the same exercise for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years.
I define high endowment private institutions include those whose endowment per student is greater than $150,000 in 2017. This includes a broad range of institutions, including Wabash College, with a current endowment per student that is roughly one-tenth of the value at Princeton University. See my recent book for more detail.

Economic Studies

Center for Economic Security and Opportunity

Rachel M. Perera, Jon Valant, Katharine Meyer

August 12, 2024

Kelly Rosinger, Robert Kelchen, Justin Ortagus, Dominique J. Baker, Mitchell Lingo

August 9, 2024

July 31, 2024

Adam Davidson: Is College Tuition Really Too High Essay (Article Review)

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In his article “Is College Tuition Really Too High?”, Adam Davidson discusses such a trend as the rising cost of education in the United States. The author provides statistical data showing that many families find it more difficult to afford tuition fees (Davidson par. 2). These expenditures have increased dramatically relative to the median income of households (Davidson par. 2). This tendency can be observed in both private and public educational institutions. According to available estimations, these costs have increased by approximately 500 percent (Noack par. 1). Overall, it is crucial to identify the underlying causes of this problem and review possible solutions. One should also evaluate the arguments put forward by Adam Davidson. Much attention should be paid to the relevant questions that are not thoroughly discussed in this article.

This journalist focuses on the factors that can contribute to this trend. In particular, the writer notes that public funds are usually transferred to the most prosperous classes of the community. In contrast, people, who represent lower classes, receive a very small share. For instance, the author states that students, who attend private schools, can receive $25,000 from the state (Davidson par. 27). In contrast, learners, who go to “non-selective public schools”, get approximately $13,500 (Davidson par. 27). Thus, one should pay attention to the inefficient distribution of public funds. The only limitation is that Adam Davidson does not specify the sources that he uses to make his arguments.

One should bear in mind that some schools are very selective. They focus on the students who have the highest scores. Moreover, these learners can better meet the requirements set by these educational institutions. As a rule, they attend either public or private schools that employ the most skilled and competent educators. However, many children are deprived of this opportunity. Thus, these learners may lack the knowledge and skills that are required for the successful performance in very selective public schools.

Therefore, many talented students will not be able to work with the best teachers. Furthermore, Adam Davidson discusses various mechanisms that contribute to the rising cost of education. For instance, one can refer to the increasing prices of textbooks. Finally, the writer notes that the investment in higher education can be justified in the long term. In particular, a person, who receives at least a graduate degree, is more likely to become a taxpayer. Currently, many students believe that college administrators have to justify the reasons why they raise tuition fees. Very often, they do not involve student associations in decision-making (Anderson par. 10). Thus, this problem requires the cooperation of different stakeholders such as college administrators, economists, and legislators.

Adam Davidson gives many significant insights that are necessary for explaining the increasing costs of higher education. Nevertheless, the writer does not consider other important factors that exacerbate this problem. One should examine the deficiencies in the functioning of educational organizations. For instance, Paul Campos notes that the governmental expenditures on higher education have increased considerably during the last three decades. However, tuition fees have not become more affordable to learners (Campos par. 10). In turn, the author notes that educational organizations have become more bureaucratic. Much attention should be paid to the increasing number of college administrators (Campos par. 10). This author does not reject the necessity to invest in public education. Nevertheless, he insists that state-funded universities should make an efficient use of the resources that are available to them (Campos par. 10). This issue is not sufficiently discussed by Adam Davidson in his article, but this detail should not be overlooked by policy-makers.

Furthermore, one should note that some rules existing in colleges can make the cost of education much higher. In particular, in some cases, many first-year students are required to live on campus. The problem is that they do not have the opportunity to pay the price of a campus dorm (Douglas-Gabriel par. 2). Many of them can find less expensive apartments outside the campus. Thus, it may be necessary to re-evaluate some of the existing procedures because they can have an adverse effect on many students whose income level is not very high. The problem is that they often encounter bureaucratic barriers that have no rationale.

Journalists also note that the problem of rising costs becomes more complicated due to the challenges that learners face after their education. In particular, these individuals cannot raise their status in the society, and their annual income does not exceed $ 25.000 (Selingo par. 10). Therefore, one can argue that the rising cost of tuition may not be perceived a significant problem if college graduates can always derive substantial benefit from their education. The key problem is that in many cases, they do not receive any significant rewards. So, it is important to study the macroeconomic environment of the United States.

In my opinion, Adam Davidson convincingly demonstrates that it is necessary to make education more affordable. However, the author does not discuss a broad range of strategies that can be used to address this issue. At first, one should consider the measures advocated by Paul Campos, who believes that is necessary to cut administrative expenses. At the same, journalists discuss the plan that is intended to refinance student loan programs (Healy par. 1). This policy can minimize the problem of students’ debts. Provided that college administrators and governmental officials cannot cope with this problem, a greater number of American learners may decide to study abroad. For instance, they may prefer German universities in which tuition fees are smaller (Noack par. 2). Moreover, it is necessary to consider the policies adopted in various European countries because in this way, one can find efficient approaches to the problem of increasing tuition fees (Noack par. 2). Thus, one should not overlook the best practices that have been applied in different countries.

Overall, this discussion indicates that the rising cost of tuition is one of the critical problems for the American society. If this issue is not addressed, a considerable part of young adults will be denied access to higher education. As a result, they will not be able to raise their social status. However, it is important to understand the mechanisms that contribute to this tendency. For instance, one should not overlook the detrimental impacts of bureaucracies existing in educational organizational and governmental institutions.

Apart from that, one should not forget about the ineffective redistribution of wealth. The key issue is that policy-makers should not regard these expenditures as a burden. More likely, these expenses should be viewed as the investment in the future of American people. Moreover, these funds are essential for promoting the economic growth of the country. One can argue that Adam Davidson’s article can help a person get a better idea about the main trends affecting the economy of higher education. Nevertheless, other sources are also useful for understanding various factors that increase the cost of tuition.

Works Cited

Anderson, Nick. “U-Va. board approves 11% increase in tuition, fees for in-state freshmen.” The Washington Post . Washington Post, 2015. Web.

Campos, Paul. “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much.” The New York Times . New York Times, 2015. Web.

Davidson, Adam. “Is College Tuition Really Too High?” The New York Times . New York Times, 2015. Web.

Douglas-Gabriel, Daniel. “Freshman residency rules sometimes force students to pay prohibitive costs.” The Washington Post . Washington Post, 2015. Web.

Healy, Patrick. “Hillary Clinton to Offer Plan on Paying College Tuition Without Needing Loans.” The New York Times . New York Times, 2015. Web.

Noack, Rick. “7 countries where Americans can study at universities, in English, for free (or almost free).” The Washington Post . Washington Post, 2015. Web.

Selingo, Jeffrey. “Is college worth the cost? Many recent graduates don’t think so.” The Washington Post . Washington Post, 2015. Web.

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Page One Economics ®

Is college still worth the high price weighing costs and benefits of investing in human capital.

is the cost of college too high argumentative essay

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

—Benjamin Franklin

Students have several options for life after high school, including enrolling in college, pursing a technical training program, starting a career, or enlisting for military service. While college has been a popular choice, college enrollment for recent high school graduates has dropped from its peak of 70% in 2009 to 61% in 2021. 1 In fact, some people are challenging the notion that college is the best route for the majority of students. A March 2023 survey found that only 42% of Americans believe college is worth the cost because it leads to better job opportunities and higher income , while 56% believe that earning a college degree is not worth the cost. That has changed a lot in 10 years: A 2013 study found that 53% believed college was a good decision, while 40% believed it wasn't. 2

Of course, attending college is an individual decision, as each person must weigh the costs and benefits of their options. While some costs of college are immediate (your tuition payments), the benefits are spread over an entire career. This article looks at the costs and benefits of a college education and explains the rate of return of going to college, viewing higher education as an investment. Economists often use the word investment to refer to spending on capital, but that does not mean just physical capital (tools and equipment); it can mean investment in human capital (education and training) too.

Costs and Benefits of Attending College

It's true that the cost of going to college has risen significantly in recent decades. The first row of Table 1 shows the average annual tuition for colleges and universities in 1980, 2000, and 2020. The last row of the table shows how much college tuition costs in terms of 1980 dollars, showing that in real (inflation adjusted) terms, attending college cost over twice as much in 2020 as it did in 1980.

Now, let's examine the financial benefits of going to college, which include how much more money a person with a college degree earns than someone without one; this is sometimes called the college wage premium . Figure 1 shows the annual earnings differences, adjusted for inflation, between workers with a college degree and workers with no more than a high school education.

More specifically, each line in the graph represents how much more money workers with a college degree earn in a year than those with only a high school diploma, for 1980, 2000, and 2020. For each set of data, the college wage premium starts relatively small, but it increases as workers age and acquire skills and experience. For example, in 1980 (yellow line), new college graduates earned about $1,000 more than those with only a high school diploma; but, by mid-career, college-educated workers earned about $10,000 more than high school-educated workers. In 2000 and 2020, however, you can see that the differences in income between education groups were much larger. In 2020 (green line), those with a college degree earned nearly $5,000 more after graduation; but, by mid-career, college-educated workers earned $18,000 more than high school-educated workers. Note that these numbers are adjusted for inflation (stated in 1980 dollars).

What Is the Return on Investing in a College Education?

Let's again consider the costs of a college degree. In 1980, the price paid for a college education, on average, was $13,996 (4 x $3,499). If you add up the extra income these workers received each year after graduation, the rate of return on the college tuition they initially paid is very large. For example, a White woman who invested in a college education in 1980 could expect to make back in annual income the cost of her college education plus 21.6%—all of this in addition to the income she would have made without a college degree. By 2020, this rate had risen to 22.7%. Table 2 shows the rates of return on a college education for several demographic groups in 1980, 2000, and 2020.

Of course, there are other ways to invest money besides a college education. For example, instead of paying for four or more years of college, a person could invest money in a financial asset and go straight into the workforce. In this case, the person might have a lower wage, but invested funds and capital gains would add to their income. Although the rates of return on a college education vary greatly across time, gender, and race, they are still considered higher than the returns on financial assets, such as stocks and bonds. For example, investing in the stock market has returned about 10% per year since 1957 3 ; in 2020, returns on a college education varied from 13.5% to 35.9%. By this measure, a college degree is an excellent investment.

What Is This Calculation Missing?

Calculating the rate of return on a college education is imperfect because it is not a tangible asset . A numerical calculation excludes certain intangible aspects that may affect the estimated rates of return on a college education. These include a person's inherent skills, employment status, and career satisfaction.

The Skill Sets Behind Higher Earnings

The rates of return shown in Table 2 were calculated from data collected on the earnings of college-educated workers. However, it is possible that college-educated workers have skills—ones they had even before attending college—that make them simultaneously better at earning high incomes and more likely to pursue a degree. The question here is are people more highly skilled because they went to college or are highly skilled people simply more likely to go to college? 4 It's difficult to tell the difference, so this may cause the rate of return on a college degree to be overestimated.

Unemployment

You can only collect income data from someone who has a job, meaning everyone accounted for in this calculation is employed. This information does not account for the fact that high school-educated workers tend to experience higher rates of unemployment. That is, if you have only a high school diploma, you are more likely to be unemployed than someone with a college education. This concept is depicted in Figure 2, which shows the unemployment rates for varying levels of education. You can see that the more educated a person is, the more likely they are to have a job. This issue could cause the rates of return on a college degree to be underestimated.

Career Satisfaction and Non-Financial Benefits

As previously stated, people attend college (or don't) for many different reasons. This article did not include any factors aside from financial ones. For example, high school-educated and college-educated workers may work different hours, work in different conditions, or face different stressors. This calculation does not account for career satisfaction, or lack thereof, that one might get from a specific type of job.

Conclusion

Students have many options for life after high school. One of the most popular options is college. Even though college enrollment has dropped and people have a more dismal outlook on the returns on investing in a college education, the data suggest it is still one of the best investments a person can make. In fact, the advice former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke gave in 2007 still seems to ring true: "When I travel around the country, meeting with students, businesspeople, and others interested in the economy, I am occasionally asked for investment advice…. I know the answer to the question, and I will share it with you today: Education is the best investment." 5

1 The Economics Daily, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 23, 2022; https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/61-8-percent-of-recent-high-school-graduates-enrolled-in-college-in-october-2021.htm .

2 "Americans Are Losing Faith in College Education, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds." Wall Street Journal , March 31, 2023; https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-are-losing-faith-in-college-education-wsj-norc-poll-finds-3a836ce1 .

3 See https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1957?amount=100&endYear=2022/ .

4 Wolla, Scott A. "College: Learning the Skills To Pay the Bills?" Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Page One Economics ®, December 2015; https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2015/12/01/college-learning-the-skills-to-pay-the-bills/ .

5 Bernanke, Ben S. "Education and Economic Competitiveness." Speech presented at the US Chamber Education and Workforce Summit, Washington, DC, September 24, 2007; https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20070924a.htm .

© 2023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.

Asset: A resource with economic value that an individual, corporation, or country owns with the expectation that it will provide future benefits.

Benefits: Things favorable to a decisionmaker; rewards gained from an action/activity.

Costs: Things unfavorable to a decisionmaker.

Financial asset: A contract that states the conditions under which one party (a person or institution) promises to pay another party cash at some point in the future.

Income: The payment people receive for providing resources in the marketplace. When people work, they provide human resources (labor) and in exchange they receive income in the form of wages or salaries. People also earn income in the forms of rent, profit, and interest.

Investment: An asset purchased with the hope that it will gain value and provide a financial return.

Investment in human capital: The efforts people put forth to acquire human capital. These efforts include education, experience, and training.

Rate of return: A useful measure to compare how different assets may increase your wealth.

Real: Monetary values, wages, or prices, adjusted for inflation and measured in constant prices—that is, in prices of a given or base period. Real monetary values are obtained by adjusting nominal wages or prices with a price measure such as the CPI.

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How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

Make a claim
Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
Cite data to support your claim
Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
Highlight the problems with this position
Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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You'll no doubt have to write a number of argumentative essays in both high school and college, but what, exactly, is an argumentative essay and how do you write the best one possible? Let's take a look.

A great argumentative essay always combines the same basic elements: approaching an argument from a rational perspective, researching sources, supporting your claims using facts rather than opinion, and articulating your reasoning into the most cogent and reasoned points. Argumentative essays are great building blocks for all sorts of research and rhetoric, so your teachers will expect you to master the technique before long.

But if this sounds daunting, never fear! We'll show how an argumentative essay differs from other kinds of papers, how to research and write them, how to pick an argumentative essay topic, and where to find example essays. So let's get started.

What Is an Argumentative Essay? How Is it Different from Other Kinds of Essays?

There are two basic requirements for any and all essays: to state a claim (a thesis statement) and to support that claim with evidence.

Though every essay is founded on these two ideas, there are several different types of essays, differentiated by the style of the writing, how the writer presents the thesis, and the types of evidence used to support the thesis statement.

Essays can be roughly divided into four different types:

#1: Argumentative #2: Persuasive #3: Expository #4: Analytical

So let's look at each type and what the differences are between them before we focus the rest of our time to argumentative essays.

Argumentative Essay

Argumentative essays are what this article is all about, so let's talk about them first.

An argumentative essay attempts to convince a reader to agree with a particular argument (the writer's thesis statement). The writer takes a firm stand one way or another on a topic and then uses hard evidence to support that stance.

An argumentative essay seeks to prove to the reader that one argument —the writer's argument— is the factually and logically correct one. This means that an argumentative essay must use only evidence-based support to back up a claim , rather than emotional or philosophical reasoning (which is often allowed in other types of essays). Thus, an argumentative essay has a burden of substantiated proof and sources , whereas some other types of essays (namely persuasive essays) do not.

You can write an argumentative essay on any topic, so long as there's room for argument. Generally, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one, so long as you support the argumentative essay with hard evidence.

Example topics of an argumentative essay:

"Should farmers be allowed to shoot wolves if those wolves injure or kill farm animals?"
"Should the drinking age be lowered in the United States?"
"Are alternatives to democracy effective and/or feasible to implement?"

The next three types of essays are not argumentative essays, but you may have written them in school. We're going to cover them so you know what not to do for your argumentative essay.

Persuasive Essay

Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative essays, so it can be easy to get them confused. But knowing what makes an argumentative essay different than a persuasive essay can often mean the difference between an excellent grade and an average one.

Persuasive essays seek to persuade a reader to agree with the point of view of the writer, whether that point of view is based on factual evidence or not. The writer has much more flexibility in the evidence they can use, with the ability to use moral, cultural, or opinion-based reasoning as well as factual reasoning to persuade the reader to agree the writer's side of a given issue.

Instead of being forced to use "pure" reason as one would in an argumentative essay, the writer of a persuasive essay can manipulate or appeal to the reader's emotions. So long as the writer attempts to steer the readers into agreeing with the thesis statement, the writer doesn't necessarily need hard evidence in favor of the argument.

Often, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one—the difference is all in the approach and the evidence you present.

Example topics of a persuasive essay:

"Should children be responsible for their parents' debts?"
"Should cheating on a test be automatic grounds for expulsion?"
"How much should sports leagues be held accountable for player injuries and the long-term consequences of those injuries?"

Expository Essay

An expository essay is typically a short essay in which the writer explains an idea, issue, or theme , or discusses the history of a person, place, or idea.

This is typically a fact-forward essay with little argument or opinion one way or the other.

Example topics of an expository essay:

"The History of the Philadelphia Liberty Bell"
"The Reasons I Always Wanted to be a Doctor"
"The Meaning Behind the Colloquialism ‘People in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones'"

Analytical Essay

An analytical essay seeks to delve into the deeper meaning of a text or work of art, or unpack a complicated idea . These kinds of essays closely interpret a source and look into its meaning by analyzing it at both a macro and micro level.

This type of analysis can be augmented by historical context or other expert or widely-regarded opinions on the subject, but is mainly supported directly through the original source (the piece or art or text being analyzed) .

Example topics of an analytical essay:

"Victory Gin in Place of Water: The Symbolism Behind Gin as the Only Potable Substance in George Orwell's 1984"
"Amarna Period Art: The Meaning Behind the Shift from Rigid to Fluid Poses"
"Adultery During WWII, as Told Through a Series of Letters to and from Soldiers"

There are many different types of essay and, over time, you'll be able to master them all.

A Typical Argumentative Essay Assignment

The average argumentative essay is between three to five pages, and will require at least three or four separate sources with which to back your claims . As for the essay topic , you'll most often be asked to write an argumentative essay in an English class on a "general" topic of your choice, ranging the gamut from science, to history, to literature.

But while the topics of an argumentative essay can span several different fields, the structure of an argumentative essay is always the same: you must support a claim—a claim that can reasonably have multiple sides—using multiple sources and using a standard essay format (which we'll talk about later on).

This is why many argumentative essay topics begin with the word "should," as in:

"Should all students be required to learn chemistry in high school?"
"Should children be required to learn a second language?"
"Should schools or governments be allowed to ban books?"

These topics all have at least two sides of the argument: Yes or no. And you must support the side you choose with evidence as to why your side is the correct one.

But there are also plenty of other ways to frame an argumentative essay as well:

"Does using social media do more to benefit or harm people?"
"Does the legal status of artwork or its creators—graffiti and vandalism, pirated media, a creator who's in jail—have an impact on the art itself?"
"Is or should anyone ever be ‘above the law?'"

Though these are worded differently than the first three, you're still essentially forced to pick between two sides of an issue: yes or no, for or against, benefit or detriment. Though your argument might not fall entirely into one side of the divide or another—for instance, you could claim that social media has positively impacted some aspects of modern life while being a detriment to others—your essay should still support one side of the argument above all. Your final stance would be that overall , social media is beneficial or overall , social media is harmful.

If your argument is one that is mostly text-based or backed by a single source (e.g., "How does Salinger show that Holden Caulfield is an unreliable narrator?" or "Does Gatsby personify the American Dream?"), then it's an analytical essay, rather than an argumentative essay. An argumentative essay will always be focused on more general topics so that you can use multiple sources to back up your claims.

Good Argumentative Essay Topics

So you know the basic idea behind an argumentative essay, but what topic should you write about?

Again, almost always, you'll be asked to write an argumentative essay on a free topic of your choice, or you'll be asked to select between a few given topics . If you're given complete free reign of topics, then it'll be up to you to find an essay topic that no only appeals to you, but that you can turn into an A+ argumentative essay.

What makes a "good" argumentative essay topic depends on both the subject matter and your personal interest —it can be hard to give your best effort on something that bores you to tears! But it can also be near impossible to write an argumentative essay on a topic that has no room for debate.

As we said earlier, a good argumentative essay topic will be one that has the potential to reasonably go in at least two directions—for or against, yes or no, and why . For example, it's pretty hard to write an argumentative essay on whether or not people should be allowed to murder one another—not a whole lot of debate there for most people!—but writing an essay for or against the death penalty has a lot more wiggle room for evidence and argument.

A good topic is also one that can be substantiated through hard evidence and relevant sources . So be sure to pick a topic that other people have studied (or at least studied elements of) so that you can use their data in your argument. For example, if you're arguing that it should be mandatory for all middle school children to play a sport, you might have to apply smaller scientific data points to the larger picture you're trying to justify. There are probably several studies you could cite on the benefits of physical activity and the positive effect structure and teamwork has on young minds, but there's probably no study you could use where a group of scientists put all middle-schoolers in one jurisdiction into a mandatory sports program (since that's probably never happened). So long as your evidence is relevant to your point and you can extrapolate from it to form a larger whole, you can use it as a part of your resource material.

And if you need ideas on where to get started, or just want to see sample argumentative essay topics, then check out these links for hundreds of potential argumentative essay topics.

101 Persuasive (or Argumentative) Essay and Speech Topics

301 Prompts for Argumentative Writing

Top 50 Ideas for Argumentative/Persuasive Essay Writing

[Note: some of these say "persuasive essay topics," but just remember that the same topic can often be used for both a persuasive essay and an argumentative essay; the difference is in your writing style and the evidence you use to support your claims.]

KO! Find that one argumentative essay topic you can absolutely conquer.

Argumentative Essay Format

Argumentative Essays are composed of four main elements:

A position (your argument)
Your reasons
Supporting evidence for those reasons (from reliable sources)
Counterargument(s) (possible opposing arguments and reasons why those arguments are incorrect)

If you're familiar with essay writing in general, then you're also probably familiar with the five paragraph essay structure . This structure is a simple tool to show how one outlines an essay and breaks it down into its component parts, although it can be expanded into as many paragraphs as you want beyond the core five.

The standard argumentative essay is often 3-5 pages, which will usually mean a lot more than five paragraphs, but your overall structure will look the same as a much shorter essay.

An argumentative essay at its simplest structure will look like:

Paragraph 1: Intro

Set up the story/problem/issue
Thesis/claim

Paragraph 2: Support

Reason #1 claim is correct
Supporting evidence with sources

Paragraph 3: Support

Reason #2 claim is correct

Paragraph 4: Counterargument

Explanation of argument for the other side
Refutation of opposing argument with supporting evidence

Paragraph 5: Conclusion

Re-state claim
Sum up reasons and support of claim from the essay to prove claim is correct

Now let's unpack each of these paragraph types to see how they work (with examples!), what goes into them, and why.

Paragraph 1—Set Up and Claim

Your first task is to introduce the reader to the topic at hand so they'll be prepared for your claim. Give a little background information, set the scene, and give the reader some stakes so that they care about the issue you're going to discuss.

Next, you absolutely must have a position on an argument and make that position clear to the readers. It's not an argumentative essay unless you're arguing for a specific claim, and this claim will be your thesis statement.

Your thesis CANNOT be a mere statement of fact (e.g., "Washington DC is the capital of the United States"). Your thesis must instead be an opinion which can be backed up with evidence and has the potential to be argued against (e.g., "New York should be the capital of the United States").

Paragraphs 2 and 3—Your Evidence

These are your body paragraphs in which you give the reasons why your argument is the best one and back up this reasoning with concrete evidence .

The argument supporting the thesis of an argumentative essay should be one that can be supported by facts and evidence, rather than personal opinion or cultural or religious mores.

For example, if you're arguing that New York should be the new capital of the US, you would have to back up that fact by discussing the factual contrasts between New York and DC in terms of location, population, revenue, and laws. You would then have to talk about the precedents for what makes for a good capital city and why New York fits the bill more than DC does.

Your argument can't simply be that a lot of people think New York is the best city ever and that you agree.

In addition to using concrete evidence, you always want to keep the tone of your essay passionate, but impersonal . Even though you're writing your argument from a single opinion, don't use first person language—"I think," "I feel," "I believe,"—to present your claims. Doing so is repetitive, since by writing the essay you're already telling the audience what you feel, and using first person language weakens your writing voice.

For example,

"I think that Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

"Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

The second statement sounds far stronger and more analytical.

Paragraph 4—Argument for the Other Side and Refutation

Even without a counter argument, you can make a pretty persuasive claim, but a counterargument will round out your essay into one that is much more persuasive and substantial.

By anticipating an argument against your claim and taking the initiative to counter it, you're allowing yourself to get ahead of the game. This way, you show that you've given great thought to all sides of the issue before choosing your position, and you demonstrate in multiple ways how yours is the more reasoned and supported side.

Paragraph 5—Conclusion

This paragraph is where you re-state your argument and summarize why it's the best claim.

Briefly touch on your supporting evidence and voila! A finished argumentative essay.

Your essay should have just as awesome a skeleton as this plesiosaur does. (In other words: a ridiculously awesome skeleton)

Argumentative Essay Example: 5-Paragraph Style

It always helps to have an example to learn from. I've written a full 5-paragraph argumentative essay here. Look at how I state my thesis in paragraph 1, give supporting evidence in paragraphs 2 and 3, address a counterargument in paragraph 4, and conclude in paragraph 5.

Topic: Is it possible to maintain conflicting loyalties?

Paragraph 1

It is almost impossible to go through life without encountering a situation where your loyalties to different people or causes come into conflict with each other. Maybe you have a loving relationship with your sister, but she disagrees with your decision to join the army, or you find yourself torn between your cultural beliefs and your scientific ones. These conflicting loyalties can often be maintained for a time, but as examples from both history and psychological theory illustrate, sooner or later, people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever.

The first two sentences set the scene and give some hypothetical examples and stakes for the reader to care about.

The third sentence finishes off the intro with the thesis statement, making very clear how the author stands on the issue ("people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever." )

Paragraphs 2 and 3

Psychological theory states that human beings are not equipped to maintain conflicting loyalties indefinitely and that attempting to do so leads to a state called "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance theory is the psychological idea that people undergo tremendous mental stress or anxiety when holding contradictory beliefs, values, or loyalties (Festinger, 1957). Even if human beings initially hold a conflicting loyalty, they will do their best to find a mental equilibrium by making a choice between those loyalties—stay stalwart to a belief system or change their beliefs. One of the earliest formal examples of cognitive dissonance theory comes from Leon Festinger's When Prophesy Fails . Members of an apocalyptic cult are told that the end of the world will occur on a specific date and that they alone will be spared the Earth's destruction. When that day comes and goes with no apocalypse, the cult members face a cognitive dissonance between what they see and what they've been led to believe (Festinger, 1956). Some choose to believe that the cult's beliefs are still correct, but that the Earth was simply spared from destruction by mercy, while others choose to believe that they were lied to and that the cult was fraudulent all along. Both beliefs cannot be correct at the same time, and so the cult members are forced to make their choice.

But even when conflicting loyalties can lead to potentially physical, rather than just mental, consequences, people will always make a choice to fall on one side or other of a dividing line. Take, for instance, Nicolaus Copernicus, a man born and raised in Catholic Poland (and educated in Catholic Italy). Though the Catholic church dictated specific scientific teachings, Copernicus' loyalty to his own observations and scientific evidence won out over his loyalty to his country's government and belief system. When he published his heliocentric model of the solar system--in opposition to the geocentric model that had been widely accepted for hundreds of years (Hannam, 2011)-- Copernicus was making a choice between his loyalties. In an attempt t o maintain his fealty both to the established system and to what he believed, h e sat on his findings for a number of years (Fantoli, 1994). But, ultimately, Copernicus made the choice to side with his beliefs and observations above all and published his work for the world to see (even though, in doing so, he risked both his reputation and personal freedoms).

These two paragraphs provide the reasons why the author supports the main argument and uses substantiated sources to back those reasons.

The paragraph on cognitive dissonance theory gives both broad supporting evidence and more narrow, detailed supporting evidence to show why the thesis statement is correct not just anecdotally but also scientifically and psychologically. First, we see why people in general have a difficult time accepting conflicting loyalties and desires and then how this applies to individuals through the example of the cult members from the Dr. Festinger's research.

The next paragraph continues to use more detailed examples from history to provide further evidence of why the thesis that people cannot indefinitely maintain conflicting loyalties is true.

Paragraph 4

Some will claim that it is possible to maintain conflicting beliefs or loyalties permanently, but this is often more a matter of people deluding themselves and still making a choice for one side or the other, rather than truly maintaining loyalty to both sides equally. For example, Lancelot du Lac typifies a person who claims to maintain a balanced loyalty between to two parties, but his attempt to do so fails (as all attempts to permanently maintain conflicting loyalties must). Lancelot tells himself and others that he is equally devoted to both King Arthur and his court and to being Queen Guinevere's knight (Malory, 2008). But he can neither be in two places at once to protect both the king and queen, nor can he help but let his romantic feelings for the queen to interfere with his duties to the king and the kingdom. Ultimately, he and Queen Guinevere give into their feelings for one another and Lancelot—though he denies it—chooses his loyalty to her over his loyalty to Arthur. This decision plunges the kingdom into a civil war, ages Lancelot prematurely, and ultimately leads to Camelot's ruin (Raabe, 1987). Though Lancelot claimed to have been loyal to both the king and the queen, this loyalty was ultimately in conflict, and he could not maintain it.

Here we have the acknowledgement of a potential counter-argument and the evidence as to why it isn't true.

The argument is that some people (or literary characters) have asserted that they give equal weight to their conflicting loyalties. The refutation is that, though some may claim to be able to maintain conflicting loyalties, they're either lying to others or deceiving themselves. The paragraph shows why this is true by providing an example of this in action.

Paragraph 5

Whether it be through literature or history, time and time again, people demonstrate the challenges of trying to manage conflicting loyalties and the inevitable consequences of doing so. Though belief systems are malleable and will often change over time, it is not possible to maintain two mutually exclusive loyalties or beliefs at once. In the end, people always make a choice, and loyalty for one party or one side of an issue will always trump loyalty to the other.

The concluding paragraph summarizes the essay, touches on the evidence presented, and re-states the thesis statement.

How to Write an Argumentative Essay: 8 Steps

Writing the best argumentative essay is all about the preparation, so let's talk steps:

#1: Preliminary Research

If you have the option to pick your own argumentative essay topic (which you most likely will), then choose one or two topics you find the most intriguing or that you have a vested interest in and do some preliminary research on both sides of the debate.

Do an open internet search just to see what the general chatter is on the topic and what the research trends are.

Did your preliminary reading influence you to pick a side or change your side? Without diving into all the scholarly articles at length, do you believe there's enough evidence to support your claim? Have there been scientific studies? Experiments? Does a noted scholar in the field agree with you? If not, you may need to pick another topic or side of the argument to support.

#2: Pick Your Side and Form Your Thesis

Now's the time to pick the side of the argument you feel you can support the best and summarize your main point into your thesis statement.

Your thesis will be the basis of your entire essay, so make sure you know which side you're on, that you've stated it clearly, and that you stick by your argument throughout the entire essay .

#3: Heavy-Duty Research Time

You've taken a gander at what the internet at large has to say on your argument, but now's the time to actually read those sources and take notes.

Check scholarly journals online at Google Scholar , the Directory of Open Access Journals , or JStor . You can also search individual university or school libraries and websites to see what kinds of academic articles you can access for free. Keep track of your important quotes and page numbers and put them somewhere that's easy to find later.

And don't forget to check your school or local libraries as well!

#4: Outline

Follow the five-paragraph outline structure from the previous section.

Fill in your topic, your reasons, and your supporting evidence into each of the categories.

Before you begin to flesh out the essay, take a look at what you've got. Is your thesis statement in the first paragraph? Is it clear? Is your argument logical? Does your supporting evidence support your reasoning?

By outlining your essay, you streamline your process and take care of any logic gaps before you dive headfirst into the writing. This will save you a lot of grief later on if you need to change your sources or your structure, so don't get too trigger-happy and skip this step.

Now that you've laid out exactly what you'll need for your essay and where, it's time to fill in all the gaps by writing it out.

Take it one step at a time and expand your ideas into complete sentences and substantiated claims. It may feel daunting to turn an outline into a complete draft, but just remember that you've already laid out all the groundwork; now you're just filling in the gaps.

If you have the time before deadline, give yourself a day or two (or even just an hour!) away from your essay . Looking it over with fresh eyes will allow you to see errors, both minor and major, that you likely would have missed had you tried to edit when it was still raw.

Take a first pass over the entire essay and try your best to ignore any minor spelling or grammar mistakes—you're just looking at the big picture right now. Does it make sense as a whole? Did the essay succeed in making an argument and backing that argument up logically? (Do you feel persuaded?)

If not, go back and make notes so that you can fix it for your final draft.

Once you've made your revisions to the overall structure, mark all your small errors and grammar problems so you can fix them in the next draft.

#7: Final Draft

Use the notes you made on the rough draft and go in and hack and smooth away until you're satisfied with the final result.

A checklist for your final draft:

Formatting is correct according to your teacher's standards
No errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation
Essay is the right length and size for the assignment
The argument is present, consistent, and concise
Each reason is supported by relevant evidence
The essay makes sense overall

#8: Celebrate!

Once you've brought that final draft to a perfect polish and turned in your assignment, you're done! Go you!

Be prepared and ♪ you'll never go hungry again ♪, *cough*, or struggle with your argumentative essay-writing again. (Walt Disney Studios)

Good Examples of Argumentative Essays Online

Theory is all well and good, but examples are key. Just to get you started on what a fully-fleshed out argumentative essay looks like, let's see some examples in action.

Check out these two argumentative essay examples on the use of landmines and freons (and note the excellent use of concrete sources to back up their arguments!).

The Use of Landmines

A Shattered Sky

The Take-Aways: Keys to Writing an Argumentative Essay

At first, writing an argumentative essay may seem like a monstrous hurdle to overcome, but with the proper preparation and understanding, you'll be able to knock yours out of the park.

Remember the differences between a persuasive essay and an argumentative one, make sure your thesis is clear, and double-check that your supporting evidence is both relevant to your point and well-sourced . Pick your topic, do your research, make your outline, and fill in the gaps. Before you know it, you'll have yourself an A+ argumentative essay there, my friend.

What's Next?

Now you know the ins and outs of an argumentative essay, but how comfortable are you writing in other styles? Learn more about the four writing styles and when it makes sense to use each .

Understand how to make an argument, but still having trouble organizing your thoughts? Check out our guide to three popular essay formats and choose which one is right for you.

Ready to make your case, but not sure what to write about? We've created a list of 50 potential argumentative essay topics to spark your imagination.

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The price of college is rising faster than wages for people with degrees

Between 2000 and 2019, the price the average college student paid for tuition, fees, and room and board increased 59%.

Updated on Tue, May 18, 2021 by the USAFacts Team

How much does college cost?

The average college student paid $24,623 for tuition, fees, and room and board for a year of school in 2019, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics . That is an increase of 59% compared to 2000, when the inflation-adjusted price was $15,485. Wages have not kept pace. Between 2000 and 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings for people with a bachelor’s degree rose 5%.

Tuition for the average student across all types of institutions has risen faster than tuition for students at four-year or two-year colleges, where prices have increased 53% and 42%, respectively. Part of the rise in attendance cost is a shift towards four-year colleges.

The price the average college student pays for a year of school has risen 59% since 2000.

Four-year institutions are more expensive than two-year ones. The price of attending a year of courses at a two-year school was about 40% of attending a four-year one in 2019. More students attending four-year institutions rather than two-year schools would increase the price of college for the average person even if costs at both types of institutions remained stable.

The percentage of people with a college degree is growing across the board. But increases have been greatest for degrees that require four years or more of college, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) data on highest level of education earned. Between 2000 and 2020, the share of Americans with an associate degree increased by three percentage points, from 8% to 11%. The percentage of Americans with a bachelor’s degree rose twice as much, from 17% to 23%. The share of Americans with an advanced degree rose five percentage points, from 9% to 14%.

It is more common than ever for Americans to have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Slow wage growth comes as bachelor’s degrees are becoming more common in non-professional occupations..

Professionals like scientists, engineers, and teachers continue to be the likeliest to have a bachelor’s degree or higher — at a rate of 80%, according to CPS data. That has changed little compared to 2000, when it was 79%.

Bachelor’s degrees are becoming more frequent in non-professional occupations.

The share of non-professional positions with a four-year degree or higher increased since 2000. The greatest percentage point increase in people with four-year degrees or more was for technicians, where the rate doubled from 18% to 36%. The rate for management-related positions like accountants, agents, and people working in personnel and HR rose over 17 percentage points, from about 54% to 71%. People working as police and firefighters, administrative support personnel, salespeople, and managers each became over 13 percentage points more likely to hold a four-year college degree. The likelihood of someone working in cleaning, food, childcare, or other services having a four-year degree or higher rose 10 percentage points to 17%.

People with at least a bachelor’s degree have the highest wages and more job security.

Wages have risen 5% for people with bachelor’s degrees and 5.5% for people with advanced degrees. While that lags behind the rise in tuition, it is higher than the 3% wage growth for people with a high school diploma or equivalent and the 0.1% growth for people with some college or an associate degree.

Wages for people with bachelor’s degrees have risen 5% since 2000, compared to 0.1% for people with some college or an associate degree.

Wage growth for people with bachelor’s degrees is less than the 14% increase in wages for people who never graduated high school. People with bachelor’s degrees still make double the median wages per week than those without a high school diploma.

People with bachelor’s degrees or higher also fared better at keeping jobs or getting new ones during the pandemic . The group’s total employment fell 6% in April 2020 and has almost returned to pre-pandemic job levels as of March. The number of people working remained down 7% for people with some college or an associate degree, 9% for high school graduates, and 10% for people without a high school diploma or equivalent.

People with bachelor’s degrees have almost recovered to pre-pandemic employment levels.

How cost-effective is a college degree.

Comparing tuition costs to wage earnings in 2019 dollars can give a sense of the financial benefits of a college degree. An employed person with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $392 more a week compared to a person with some college or an associate degree in 2019. Those holding a bachelor’s degree earned $502 more per week than a person with a high school diploma.

A person who started school at a four-year institution in the fall of 2015 and graduated in the spring of 2019 would have spent on average about $111,547 on their education, adjusted for inflation. The average American with a bachelor’s degree would earn back the cost of their college education in additional earnings in about four and a quarter years of work with their starting wage compared to someone with a high school diploma. This does not include potential earnings lost by being a student rather than working for four years.

The cost of college for a 2000 graduate was $71,533 when inflation-adjusted to 2019 dollars. That person’s starting wage would average $690 more per week than a person with a high school diploma. Class of 2000 graduates’ starting wages would meet the cost of college in about two years, less than half the time of the class of 2019.

This analysis does not consider the impact of student loans on college students . For those holding student loans, the cost of monthly payments and the interest accrued is an additional financial impact of attending college. Student loan debt, both federal and otherwise, hits lower-income families the hardest. Among households with student loans in the bottom 20% of income earners in 2019, median debt was $15,000 — or 92% of their median income. The US reported $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt in 2020, almost triple the amount of debt in 2007.

Read more about the state of education at The State of the Union in Numbers and get the data directly in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.

Correction: A previous version of this piece mislabeled the year in the headline of the first chart as 2019 rather than 2000.

Data shown for rate of bachelor's degrees or higher among occupational groupings is based on the IPUMS-standardized variable OCC90LY. The professional specialty category includes engineers, math and computer scientists, natural scientists, health practitioners, therapists, teachers, librarians, social scientists, social, recreation, and religious workers, lawyers and judges, and writers, artists, entertainers, and athletes. For more information, see the link to the IPUMS CPS data.

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College costs out of control.

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College is expensive. Ask any family with post-secondary students and they will tell you just how outrageous are the costs of college education today. And yes, gas, food, and life in general are expensive. But college costs have risen much faster than average inflation for decades so this isn’t a short-term phenomenon. College costs are soaring, seemingly all on their own.

First, let’s remember just how important education over the lifetime of a person. An individual who does not graduate from high school earns on average $23,452, less than the U.S. average wage of $41,444 per year. Further, 68% of the prison population is made up of non-high school graduates. So the first conclusion is that people need to graduate from high school to hope for a “normal” life in this country. Next , someone with an associate of arts degree, or two-year degree, from college earns about the average salary. A four-year college graduate earns on average $55,000 per year and people with post-graduate degrees, master’s degrees, and PhD’s, earn $65,000 per year and beyond. So the statistics show that level of education correlates directly with level of earnings and wealth over time. Further, the unemployment rate correlates with level of education with the highest rates for the lowest education.

Education is the great equalizer in this country. It is the facilitator of the American Dream. People can grow up poor, in an urban or rural setting, but can hope to pull themselves up out of poverty with education. Unlike many other areas of the world, America mostly is a meritocracy facilitated by education. As a society we have recognized this and require elementary and high school education to be provided “free” (paid by tax dollars) to all young people and most states require attendance to age eighteen . Still, 15% of the U.S. population does not have a high school diploma. College, on the other hand, is voluntary and requires payment by the individual. Unfortunately, only 17% of the U.S. population has earned an undergraduate degree.

State colleges and universities even have controlled prices to students somewhat by throwing more tax dollars at institutions and through private fund raising. But recently that trend has reversed, as states have had to deal with their own fiscal crises. The problem is that the underlying costs keep rising and there is seemingly little effort being expended to control those costs. Imagine what college costs would be if they weren’t underwritten partially by other tax dollars!

Universities, of course, are subject to inflation like all of us: food, water, fuel, electricity, etc. all increase for them as it does for households. And some inflation is due to increased spending on facility construction, especially lab and computer costs. But most of these capital expansions are paid for with donations and debt. The overwhelming cost culprit is labor costs. Between 1993 and 2007, total university expenses rose 35%. But administration expenses rose a whopping 61% and instruction expenses rose 39%. In fact, as a 2010 Goldwater Institute study finds , “universities have in recent years vastly expanded their administrative bureaucracies, while in some cases actually shrinking the numbers of professors.” While enrollment rose between 1993 and 2007 by 14.5%, administrators employed per 100 students rose nearly 40% and spending on administration per student rose by 66%.

Part of the issue is due to the tenure policy at universities. Tenure virtually guarantees employment for life at these institutions regardless of productivity of professors. About half of full-time faculty members have tenure. Senior professors at elite universities now get sabbaticals every third year rather than “just” every seventh year. In 2011 , 20 of Harvard’s 48 history professors were on leave.

Another issue is demand. The baby boomlet or baby boom echo group born between 1988 and 1995 have flooded colleges with demand for a limited number of spots. Even so, the college-enrollment has risen by 138% over the past 40 years. This rising demand has tolerated increased costs and allowed universities to raise prices uninhibited by normal economic forces.

Where will it end? Hopefully, capacity will be added at universities to allow greater participation. But even then, if salary and overhead increases continue at the current pace, universities will price themselves out of the reach of most Americans. Perhaps when this happens administrators will be forced to get serious about cost control. Or maybe populist anger will turn from its current focus and realize that the American Dream is being denied them by the profligacy of these college administrators and professors.

People need to wake up and begin to demand fiscal accountability from institutions of higher learning so that future generations have the ability to access higher education and therefore the American Dream.

-- Steve Odland

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The Argument for Tuition-Free College

Soaring tuitions and student loan debt are placing higher education beyond the reach of many American students. It’s time to make college free and accessible to all.

by Keith Ellison

April 14, 2016

(Shutterstock)

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act into law, laying the groundwork for the largest system of publicly funded universities in the world. Some of America's greatest colleges, including the University of Minnesota, were created by federal land grants, and were known as "democracy's colleges" or "people's colleges."

But that vision of a "people's college" seems awfully remote to a growing number of American students crushed under soaring tuitions and mounting debt. One hundred and fifty years after Lincoln made his pledge, it's time to make public colleges and universities free for every American.

This idea is easier than it looks. For most of our nation's history, public colleges and universities have been much more affordable than they are today, with lower tuition, and financial aid that covered a much larger portion of the costs . The first step in making college accessible again, and returning to an education system that serves every American, is addressing the student loan debt crisis.

The cost of attending a four-year college has increased by 1,122 percent since 1978 . Galloping tuition hikes have made attending college more expensive today than at any point in U.S. history. At the same time, debt from student loans has become the largest form of personal debt in America-bigger than credit card debt and auto loans. Last year, 38 million American students owed more than $1.3 trillion in student loans.

Once, a degree used to mean a brighter future for college graduates, access to the middle class, and economic stability.

Today, student loan debt increases inequality and makes it harder for low-income graduates, particularly those of color , to buy a house, open a business, and start a family.

The solution lies in federal investments to states to lower the overall cost of public colleges and universities. In exchange, states would commit to reinvesting state funds in higher education. Any public college or university that benefited from the reinvestment program would be required to limit tuition increases. This federal-state partnership would help lower tuition for all students. Schools that lowered tuition would receive additional federal grants based on the degree to which costs are lowered.

Reinvesting in higher education programs like Pell Grants and work-study would ensure that Pell and other forms of financial aid that students don't need to pay back would cover a greater portion of tuition costs for low-income students. In addition, states that participate in this partnership would ensure that low-income students who attend state colleges and universities could afford non-tuition expenses like textbooks and housing fees . This proposal is one way to ensure that no student graduates with loans to pay back.

If the nation can provide hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas industry and billions of dollars more to Wall Street , we can afford to pay for public higher education. A tax on financial transactions like derivatives and stock trades would cover the cost. Building a truly affordable higher education system is an investment that would pay off economically.

Eliminating student loan debt is the first step, but it's not the last. Once we ensure that student loan debt isn't a barrier to going to college, we should reframe how we think about higher education. College shouldn't just be debt free-it should be free. Period.

We all help pay for our local high schools and kindergartens, whether or not we send our kids to them. And all parents have the option of choosing public schools, even if they can afford private institutions. Free primary and secondary schooling is good for our economy, strengthens our democracy, and most importantly, is critical for our children's health and future. Educating our kids is one of our community's most important responsibilities, and it's a right that every one of us enjoys. So why not extend public schooling to higher education as well?

Some might object that average Americans should not have to pay for students from wealthy families to go to school. But certain things should be guaranteed to all Americans, poor or rich. It's not a coincidence that some of the most important social programs in our government's history have applied to all citizens, and not just to those struggling to make ends meet.

Universal programs are usually stronger and more stable over the long term, and they're less frequently targeted by budget cuts and partisan attacks. Public schools have stood the test of time-let's make sure public colleges and universities do, too.

The United States has long been committed to educating all its people, not only its elites.

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Free Argumentative Essay On Is The College Tuition Cost Too High

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Education , Time , Finance , Enrollment , Economics , Banking , Community , Students

Words: 1600

Published: 02/23/2020

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Value-neutral history/background of the college curriculum and the rise in the tuition cost

For many decades now tuition in colleges has been on the rise with some figures completely exhausting parents who cannot afford to send their children to college. The cost of raising a child and taking him or her through the college curriculum is relatively high comparing with the earlier times. In his works, Bowen, (2012) depicts the rise in cost of education in colleges and has been on the rise with as much as 10% inflation in the period between 2000 and 2010. The cost of college tuition has risen. However, there are reasons, which have contributed to the rise such as economic upheavals. It had been previously thought that a rising trend had been mostly thought to be in the private sector but that is not the case; the public sector too is hit. Evidence shows that there is a sharper consistent increase in price higher education as compared to general inflation (Archibald & Feldman, n.d.). This phenomena is well defined by the various aspects of college life; textbooks, tuition, residential life among other aspects. College cost is not just affected by internal forces; economic forces in the market, which influence prices too, also influence it. The big picture is that the education prices in colleges rise and sometimes become a burden to parents. Taking a good example of this case is the Pomona College in California. The college was founded in 1887 and is one of the top colleges offering courses in fine arts in USA. it houses close to 1600 students each evenly divided between male and female with a student to faculty ratio of 8:1. This means that students access more of the items in the faculty more easily. To achieve this quality education, the cost of tuition thus rises as a result. While many individuals cannot afford a degree in college, it is difficult to get a job without a college degree. With this condition in the jobs market, it is almost essential one to acquire a degree to find a job. the expenses of college tuition thus continue to increase, with the large enrollment numbers of students in search of college degrees. When students enroll, the financial cost to maintain them in the college rises with their number. Community colleges are cheaper but students transfer from this colleges after maybe two years and join more expensive where they can access academic facilities. This is a clear argument on the rise of tution cost in the college curriculum. Is there any solution to this issue? It is not a constraint that has gone unnoticed and many individuals are complaining and have cried foul over the progressive increase in tuition costs. However if many countries do not lower their college tuition rates then they are going to be in a state like that of Chile. Many students who are complaining about the college expenses and demanding education reform are protesting the Chilean education structure, closely styled on the United States private and public learning institutions. If countries do not look at this issue then the same situation could rise (Thelin, 2013).

Acknowledgment the rise in the rise in the cost of college tuition

Even if the cost is high, we can look at the issue in another way. All students need to remember that the public option is available. The technical schools and community colleges are still affordable. It is not necessary for one to attend a university that is very expensive so that one can get a degree it matters with the student. What does the student want to achieve? Does he have the right and the required skills in his or her course? If a student studies seriously it does not matter the type of college he or she studied at, what matters is whether he or she has the skills needed for him or her to get a job. This shows that there are still affordable colleges which individuals can attend to and acquire degrees hence find jobs (Cooper, 1992).

How and under what conditions the rise in the rise of college tuition is not valid

Despite the concern about the increasing cost of higher education, most individuals believe that if a student want to get an education there are modes to make that happen. Such a student will have to make compromises like attending to a school that is less expensive or going to part time jobs, but if motivation is less education is within reach. If an individual really wants to go to a university, one can get a way of paying to it, even if one has to go to school and still work. Many individuals also feel and see that financial help is available, particular to a student who has the will to take or borrow money, which is loan. Almost anyone who requires financial assistance to enroll to a college can get financial help or loans. Community colleges are seen to be less expensive hence many people attend this colleges for like two years so that they can save and go to a n expensive college with the money the individual saved for the rest of the other two years. One will acquire a degree without even indicating that one once attended a community college. This position is valid when looking at this issue because if an individual really want to go to a college he or she will work or do what he or she can to enroll. He or she can borrow loans or even do part time jobs so that he or she can get a chance of attending a college no matter the expenses,(Langwith, 2009).

Reconcile the two sides and the benefits of reconciliation

It is clear that the college tuition is expensive. In the past few years, it has gone high with no sign of posing. With the increase of cost of living, it is turning out to be a challenge for individuals to pay for education and therefore acquire degrees. This leads to many individuals being employed to less wage jobs so that they can avoid the huge debts they might accumulate by attending a college. The college tuition is high as statistics show. However, should people stop attending colleges? No, individuals should accept the situation and start to look in ways of adapting or working out to look at the issue. The best way to approach this situation is by accepting it, those who can afford the high cost will go straight to college not minding whether it is expensive or not while those who cannot afford they will find ways in which can make them enroll in a college. These ways are such as first attending less expensive colleges so that one can save money to attend an expensive college which offers a degree of high quality, borrowloans, study while still dong part time jobs. This will really help because each individual will accept his or her situation that is whether he or she can afford the high cost of college tuition or not and find a way of looking at the matter. With this there will be less compliant of the issue about the high cost of college tuition despite the truth is that it is high bit there are ways to overcome the issue even if it is not an easy way.

It is evident that the college tuition cost is rising as each days goes. This is contributed by the difficult economic conditions being experience globally. There is an enormous impact of this rise in college education. However, the institutions should take several actions to lower their cost of tuition because they are the one who have expensive tuition. This is to prevent the cost barrier which hinder the students from enrolling into the universities. Students on the other hand should try to adopt the economic changes. They can do this by attending school while working part time and borrowing loans to pay their college fees. Those individuals who are not aware of this will end up being employed in low wages jobs with the qualification of high school marks because they cannot afford the high cost. To conclude on the whole issue is that as long as there are affordable options out there if people get to know about them then they will not be concerned whether there are also expensive choices and hence any individual who is really motivated to attend a college will definitely do (Vedder 2004).

Vedder, Richard K. Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much. Washington, D.C: AEI Press,2004. Print Langwith, Jacqueline. College. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Print Cooper, Mary H. Paying for College. Washington, D.C: CQ Press, 1992. Internet resource. Thelin, J R. The Rising Costs of Higher Education: A Reference Handbook. , Thelin,2013. Print. Dynarski, Susan M, and Judith E. Scott-Clayton.College Grants on a Postcard: A Proposal for Simple and Predictable Federal Student Aid. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution, 2007. Print Tanabe, Gen S, and Kelly Y. Tanabe. Get Free Cash for College. Belmont, CA: SuperCollege, 2009. Print

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The Commonwealth Times

Lowering the cost of public college is essential and reasonable

Illustration by Tom Foody

Ethan Kuhstoss, Contributing Writer

That’s the average cost of public university tuition over a four year period. That number doesn’t account for housing, fees, student loan interest, textbooks and the many other expenses associated with attending college. When taking these costs into consideration, a bachelor’s degree can cost more than $400,000.

For the majority of students — primarily low-income students of color — salvaging these costs is simply not feasible, saddling young professionals with overwhelming debt.

To ensure that hard-working students can obtain higher education while affording basic needs, it is imperative to vastly reduce or eliminate the cost of public four-year universities before it is entirely unobtainable for lower-income Americans.

Over 60% of all college graduates receive their diplomas from public institutions according to the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. Despite the clear necessity of public colleges, a 2020 study from the College Board found that their exorbitant prices have caused the average graduate to saddle $27,000 in debt .

The National Center for Education Statistics revealed that, when adjusted for inflation, the annual cost to attend a public four-year institution has increased by over 148% since 1970 . However, the average household income has not kept pace; with an increase in income of only 48.6% , families today have a far more difficult time financing their childrens’ education than the previous generation.

Public colleges earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year from tuition and federal subsidies , yet fail to return their services in an affordable manner. In turn, the totality of student debt has passed $1.73 trillion .

As American student loan debt totals surpass Canada’s GDP , the racial wealth gap also continues to widen. In 2020, Black Americans were the group most likely to be paying off student loan debt and to be behind on payments.

65% of Black students are financially independent and have the highest rate of full-time employment compared to other groups of students, according to a 2018 study from the United Negro College Fund. Moreover, this leaves them more vulnerable to the socio-economic effects of COVID-19, as job insecurity can make or break their ability to afford college.

It isn’t as simple as choosing a cheaper school, either. A study from the Institute for Higher Educational Policy revealed that lower-income students can only afford one to five percent of colleges; compounded with the fact that poor families have a shorter travel radius due to a lack of transportation, it’s clear why college is so unobtainable for so many.

With the infeasibility of higher education, it is no surprise that the United States’ college graduation rates are quickly falling behind other developed nations. In a 2012 OECD study , America scored 19th out of 28 countries.

One of the most common concerns about lowering the cost of public universities is that higher education would lose its value. Thus, American students display their willingness to “go the extra mile” by putting their financial security at risk, showing future employers that they are prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals.

This is an inaccurate and biased system, however. Poorer students assume far more risk and stress by enrolling in college, yet the end result appears the same. Can we really call America a meritocracy if disadvantaged populations have to work harder to get to the same position as those born more privileged than them?

Higher education significantly improves personal income , leading to increased revenue for every level of government through taxation. Additional spending money also stimulates more economic activity. Throughout their lifetime, bachelor’s degree holders inject $278,000 more into local economies than those who only graduated high school.

There are a number of avenues the government can pursue to lower the cost of public higher education. In addition to improving economic activity, Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-V.T., Tax on Wall Street Speculation Act illustrates how we can raise $2.4 trillion for educational funding in the next decade.

The act gains funding through the implementation of taxes under 1% on the trade of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Considering the price tag of public universities is $79 billion annually, Sanders’ plan would solely fund the price of tuition. This legislation is not unprecedented, either; financial transaction taxes (FTT) were imposed in America from 1914 to 1965 , demonstrating that such a plan is feasible.

The ethical, rational and feasible decision to lower the price of public universities has been delayed for far too long. The American government has a moral obligation to ensure equality for academic opportunities to disadvantaged populations.

Embracing diversity: The importance of cultural representation at VCU

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College Is Too Expensive Essay

Today, the problem of rising costs of higher education evokes heat debate among the public and policy-makers. In actuality, the high costs of higher education become an unsurpassable barrier for many students living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and belonging to low-income families. In this respect, specialists (Breneman & Finney, 1997) argue that students should have an opportunity to carry on their education in college depending on their academic skills and potential rather than on their financial position, social status, or other factors, such as cultural background or race.

First of all, specialists argue that the public funding is ineffective (Cabrera, Norn, & Castaneda, 1992). The state and federal funds are used ineffectively, whereas the quality of the public education remains extremely low, especially compared to private education. As a result students graduating from public schools have fewer opportunities to enter and succeed in college compared to students graduating from private schools.

Furthermore, costs of higher education are unaffordable for many students (Heller, 1997). Today, costs of college education keep growing and students cannot afford paying for their college education, whereas educating children becomes an unaffordable burden for many families.

As a result social gaps widens that leads to the exclusion of students from low-income families belonging to lower classes from the college education (McDonough, 1997). In fact, the costs of college education becomes the barrier preventing students from low-income families from entering.

In addition, many specialists argue that racial gaps also widen depriving minority students of the possibility to obtain the college education (Freeman, 1997). In this regard, African Americans and other minority students are in a disadvantageous position. In spite of existing programs for minority students as well as for low-income students, they are ineffective and social and racial gaps persist.

In this regard, the high costs of tuition is one of the major factors that put students in an unequal position and prevent them from equal access to college education (Kaltenbaugh, John, & Starkey, 1999). In such a way, many students need the assistance from the part of the state and federal agencies to afford college education.

Finally, cultural differences also affect the availability of college education along with the high costs of college education (McDonough, 1998). Some students are not prepared to pay high costs for college education, even if they can afford it, because of their cultural traditions. However, cultural differences are probably the least significant compared to the high costs of college education and tuition. In addition, the high costs of living increase the costs of college education. In such a situation, a considerable part of students from low-income families is just left aside of college education.

In such a situation, many specialists () draw attention of the public to the problem of the negative effects of low educational level on the personal and professional development of people. What is more important, the lack of access to the college education because of the high costs of college education raises the problem of the growing social tension. At this point, it is important to understand that people with the higher education have better job opportunities. In addition, technologies keep progressing and education is essential to help people to keep pace with progressing technologies. As a result, in a long-run perspective, the society can be divided into two antagonistic groups: educated and non-educated people. Educated people will enjoy all benefits of using and developing new technologies, whereas non-educated people will suffer from the lack of access to new technologies and they will be marginalized in the highly technological society.

Proposal for Position

Obviously, the lack of access to college education for students from low-income families and from minorities is dangerous for the further development of the US society. Widening gaps between students and the lack of access to college education will lead to social and racial conflicts in the US society. In such a situation, the government should develop effective state and federal aid programs which can provide all students with equal opportunities to access the college education and to obtain their higher education to realize their full potential. On the other hand, the main problem is the effective use of public funds. In this respect, the community control can be an effective measure that provides students in need with better opportunities to obtain college education. In fact, local community members know better than state or federal authorities which students need aid and local communities should have an opportunity to use public funds to aid students in need. Therefore, public funds should be redistributed at the local level to provide students in need with essential financial aid to continue their education and to enter colleges.

Breneman, D., & Finney, J. (1997). “The changing landscape: Higher education finance in the 1990s.” In P. M. Callan & J. E. Finney (Eds.), Public and private financing of higher education. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. The authors focus on funding of the higher education. The authors distinguish private and public sources of funding stressing that the public funding is not always effective and deprives many students of the possibility to obtain higher education.

Cabrera, A. F. (1994). “Logistic regression analysis in higher education: An applied perspective.” In J. C. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research, 10, New York: Agathon. The author explores the development of the higher education and its future prospects. The author arrives to the conclusion that education will shift to higher costs and wider use of information technologies.

Cabrera, A. F., Norn, A., & Castaneda, M. B. (1992). “The role of finances in the persistence process: A structural model.” Research in Higher Education, 33, 57 1-593. The authors reveal existing models of funding of college education, uncovering persisting gaps between low-income students and students from upper-classes. The existing structure of the college education and its funding is ineffective and widens gaps between students.

Cabrera, A. F., Nora, A., & Castaneda, M. B. (1993). “College persistence: Structural equations modeling test of an integrated model of student retention.” Journal of Higher Education, 64, 123-139. The authors attempt to elaborate an efficient model of the assessment of effectiveness of funding college education and costs of college education.

Freeman, K. (1997). “Increasing African Americans’ participation in higher education.” Journal of Higher Education, 68, 523-550. The author focuses on the problem of the lack of access of African American students to college education. The author defines ways which can increase the share of African American students in college education and open college education for minorities.

Grubb, W. N. (1996). Working in the middle. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. The author discusses the development of the modern higher education and education system at large. The author identifies numerous problems, among which high costs of higher education are among the most serious problems that put students in unequal position.

Heller, D. E. (1997). “Student price response in higher education: An update to Leslie and Brinkman.” Journal of Higher Education, 68, 624-659. The author draws the audience’s attention to growing costs of higher education and forecasts that costs of college education will grow even more. In addition, the author discusses negative effects of high costs of college education.

Hossler, D., & Schmitt, J. (1995). “The Indiana postsecondary-encouragement experiment.” In E. P. St. John (Ed.), Rethinking tuition and student aid strategies. New Directions in Higher Education, 89, 27-39, San Francisco: Jossey Bass, The authors explore efforts of the Indiana authorities to encourage college education. They evaluate critically state aid to needy students and suggest using Indiana experience in other states.

Kaltenbaugh, L. S., St. John, E. P., & Starkey, J. B. (1999). “What difference does tuition make? An analysis of ethnic differences in persistence.” Journal of Student Financial Aid, 29 (2), 21-31. The authors of the article raise the problem of high costs of tuition, which becomes an unsurpassable barrier for many students on their way to college education.

McDonough, P. M. (1997). Choosing colleges: How social class and schools structure opportunity. Albany: SUNY Press. The author explores the problem of the impact of social class of students on their education opportunities. The author stresses that students from low-income families have little opportunities to obtain higher education.

McDonough, P. M. (1998). “Structuring college opportunities: A cross-case analysis or organizational cultures, climates, and habiti.” In C. A. Torres & T. R. Mitchell (Eds.), Sociology of education: Emerging perspectives, 181-210, Albany: SUNY Press. The author studies the impact of the cultural background on students’ performance in college revealing differences between different cultural groups.

Paulsen, M.B. & P. J. Edward. (2002). “Social Class and College Costs: Examining the Financial Nexus between College Choice and Persistence.” Journal of Higher Education, 73(2), 189-197. The authors reveal the wide gap between students belonging to different social classes. The authors argue that social class is an important factor preventing students from or admitting to higher education.

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Nate Silver on Kamala Harris’s Chances and the Mistakes of the ‘Indigo Blob’

By Ezra Klein

Nate Silver on How Kamala Harris Changed the Odds

Nate Silver came to fame in American politics for election forecasting. But before Silver was in politics, he was a poker player. And after getting into politics, he went back to being a poker player. He’s been running through poker championships and out there on tables — partly because he’s been writing a book about risk.

The book is called “ On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything .” And it applies the frameworks of the gambler to politics, to A.I., to venture capital.

The way Silver thinks about politics I find very useful. So I invited him on my podcast to talk about how that thinking has guided him over the past year and how he’s thinking about the election going forward.

This is an edited transcript of part of our conversation. For the full conversation, watch the video below, or listen to “ The Ezra Klein Show .”

The election forecaster discusses 2024 and what politicians can learn from gamblers.

“Nate Silver came to fame in American politics for election forecasting. He built models that were pretty damn successful at predicting American politics.” “Nate Silver is the founder of fivethirtyeight.com, a polling website that correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states in the last presidential election.” “Election Oracle, ESPN’s Nate Silver, he predicted every state in the last presidential election.” “And once again, Nate Silver completely nailed it.” “The guy’s amazing.” “But before Silver was in politics, he was a poker player. And after getting into politics, he went back to being a poker player. He’s been running through poker championships and out there on tables —” “Savage, savage bluff by Silver. Oh, my God.” “— partially because he’s been writing a book about risks. The book is called ‘On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.’ And it applies the frameworks of, I would say, the gambler, maybe say the poker player, to politics, to AI, to venture capital. Nate, the way he thinks about politics I find very useful. I find that he thinks more clearly about risk and probabilities than a lot of people do and maybe more people should follow. So I wanted to have him on to talk about how that thinking has guided him over the past year and how he’s thinking about it in the election going forward. As always, my email, [email protected].” [THEME MUSIC] “Nate Silver, welcome to the show.” “Thank you, Ezra. Happy to be here.” “Last I looked, your model has Harris winning the election at around 52 percent. It might be mildly different today. But this has been an unusual election. So how much stock do you put in your model right now?” “I think the model is balancing the different factors pretty well. I mean, there are some things you could argue are favorable to Harris, one of which is that for the past few weeks we’ve been in what the model thinks is supposed to be the convention bounce period for republicans, where typically you poll pretty well after your convention. There’s the afterglow of the new nomination and things like that — the afterglow of the VP pick, often, too. And Kamala Harris kind of stomped on Donald Trump’s news cycle. So maybe it’s an overly favorable assumption for Harris. There’s also in polls what’s known as nonpartisan response bias. So when voters get more enthusiastic, you’d rather have that than not as a candidate. But it also means that they sometimes are more likely to respond to polls. At the same time, her momentum has been pretty good, which usually I dismiss. We don’t really kind of know what the baseline is here, right? You know, Hillary Clinton, who was, I think, kind of a terrible candidate, won the popular vote by two points. Is she a little bit better than Hillary Clinton? Probably, right? So can she win by three or four? Well, if you win by three or four, then you win the electoral college in most instances.” “I don’t think many people expected — if you did, I’d like to know it — the turnaround in her numbers we have seen since she’s become the presumptive nominee. She’s gone to net favorables, which I would not have bet a ton of money on at this speed at least. People were looking at a lot of data on Harris and assuming that data was solid. That data was not solid.” “When a candidate’s a hypothetical candidate, you have to treat that polling very carefully. People are — I think it’s a weird thing to ask, you know, what if Gavin Newsom ran against Trump. It’s not the same thing as when you actually have the candidate in front of you, and have the advertisements, and have the news articles, and everything else to actually evaluate. I mean, I think this is, like, on the higher side for a jump in favorables, but, you know, she was amazingly well-organized at getting the entire establishment behind her within literally minutes [LAUGHS]: of Biden announcing that he was going to step down. And so that suggested that maybe she did have more support in the party than she let on. And also, you know, I don’t — I think the Biden people may have been in somewhat bad faith. Maybe not consciously, but I’m not sure they weren’t trying to undermine her. Because the obvious thing to do would be to have this qualified, if not always that politically adept, you know, much, much younger vice president take over for you when you’re about to be 82. But they gave her the border. They gave her voting rights, which is kind of the one major domestic policy area where they got very little done. So I don’t think they gave her a very good hand to play. But meanwhile, she’s getting a lot of reps, and giving speeches, and building connections, and played the game really well. I have a lot of respect for that.” “Well, the key thing, I think, is that Biden had a huge amount of influence over how the party viewed her in both directions. There was a long period, I would say, when the quiet signals out of Biden world were this isn’t going well.” “Yeah.” “And when there was pressure to push Biden off the ticket, those signals got louder — Harris cannot do this. If you get rid of him, you’re going to get her. You’re going to lose. But then the thing you saw happen is a moment Biden actually stepped aside and fully endorsed her. That was a signal so powerful that it functionally won the potential primary for Harris instantly. Nobody was going to go against Joe Biden in that moment. And so, in both directions, Biden had, and the team around him, a lot of influence. When implicitly Biden world told the Democratic Party Harris can’t do it, the Democratic Party believed them. And then when explicitly Biden himself told the Democratic Party and the world Harris could do it, the Democratic Party believed him. And by the way, from what I could tell, it seems he was right. And I don’t blame Biden, I think, for things that happened earlier in the administration. That was a lot of staff talk. And to be fair, it was based on some things. There were problems in her office. There were reasons to be skeptical. But he and they had tremendous power. In a way, this was not, to me, like a mini primary. This was a parliamentary process, right? The party came together and chose a leader through endorsements from elected officials. That’s functionally what happened.” “Yeah, it felt very British. It felt like —” “It felt very British.” “— the Liz Truss kind of thing or something, right, where, yeah. There’s a loss of confidence. Those are fascinating dynamics to study. But yeah, it’s interesting to have the inside view versus the outside view a little bit. And, you know, again, we talk about this in the book a little bit, but I come at a position where I’m more skeptical about the competence of people who work in politics. Right? Even if I like the candidates they endorse — I mean, I plan to plan to vote for Kamala Harris. I would not have voted for Joe Biden, by the way. I think it was deeply irresponsible to nominate him, and I would have voted libertarian or something. But I have a more skeptical view, and I think even the rationales they state out loud are sometimes maybe the rationales they believe or not. But, you know, I think human behavior is pretty strategic when you understand people’s incentives, and kind of information set, and things like that. And I think it was in Biden’s narrow self-interest to make Harris look weaker. And I think that plays a role at all sorts of subconscious margins in terms of how she was treated.” “Well, let’s talk about that skepticism. You and I have known each other a long time. We’re old-school bloggers. And my read of you is that somewhat over the 2016 election, then specifically over the pandemic —” “Yeah.” “— and your experience, I think, with online liberalism in the pandemic, you became much more disillusioned with the people who once felt to you like your group, your coalition, your tribe. There’s been a kind of an alienation for you. Is that a fair read?” “Yeah, I’d say it’s three things, right. Number one, the 2016 aftermath, I thought a lot of the kind of liberal and centrist news media, kind of were in denial about their own role in the ‘But her emails’ stuff and then picked scapegoats for Trump’s victory that were not the real reasons that he won. You know, Russian bot farms have approximately nothing to do with why Donald Trump won the 2016 election. And the Russia stuff, in general, I think was treated with an order of magnitude more importance than it probably objectively had. And blaming Facebook and the tech industry for that, I thought that was irresponsible. And also kind of the obsession over the polls in 2016, where I think there was some revisionist history where the polls actually showed a pretty close race. I mean, we had Trump with a 30 percent chance. And it was kind of the conventional wisdom that assumed that he was dead in the water. So the ability to conveniently lie a little bit or manipulate facts and spin facts, I mean, that was part one. Part two was the pandemic. Absolutely. And, you know, ‘orange man bad,’ I think, was often the reason that people believed a lot of what they believed. Because in some ways, the move to shut down society in some ways kind of went against the values of traditional liberalism, right? There’s a transfer of welfare from younger people [LAUGHS]: and people who are not able to work from home to wealthy suburbanites and older people who you’re protecting their health, but you’re undermining the education of millions and millions and millions of schoolkids around the country, and essential workers are still putting themselves at risk that you deem unacceptable for people who are able to work with laptops to take. So I thought it was very self-serving, and I thought kind of expertise was co-opted and corrupted by political partisans. And then third was the Biden stuff.” “Well, it seemed to me it happened for you before the Biden stuff.” “Yeah. I mean —” “And you were crosswise with a lot of liberals on Twitter. I mean, I came back to Twitter for three weeks during the height of Bidenmania to try to be sort of in touch with that sentiment and mostly stay away from it. But Twitter is a place that groups that exist outside the online hothouse purify inside the online hothouse. So there’s the public health community outside Twitter, and then there’s how it acts inside Twitter — political scientists outside Twitter and then inside Twitter, republicans outside Twitter, then inside Twitter. And my sense was that you ended up in a lot of fights with liberals who had a much lower risk tolerance than you did. And between that and what was, I believe, unfair criticism of the 2016 model, which got the election much more right than most did, that it sort of — you began to see habits of — you call it ‘the village.’ The village is your term for —” “Yeah. And that’s been a term that’s been used by other right. But the village is basically media, politics, government, progressive —” “The establishment.” “The establishment, ‘The New York Times,’ Harvard University.” “The regime.” “The regime. Yeah. The Democratic White House. Maybe not a Republican White House, but that’s a more complicated kind of edge case.” “Or maybe a different Republican White House.” “Yeah.” “Right? George W. Bush was part of the village.” “Absolutely.” “Maybe Donald Trump wasn’t.” “Absolutely.” “I think you’ve also called it the indigo blob in different ways, that you began to see it as a kind of set of aligned cognitive tendencies that you disagreed with. What were they?” “So one of them is the failure to do what I call decoupling. It’s not my term. Decoupling is the act of separating an issue from the context. So the example I give in the book is that if you’re able to say I abhor the Chick-fil-A’s CEO’s position on gay marriage — I don’t know if it’s changed or not, but he was anti-gay marriage, at least for some period of time — but they make a really delicious chicken sandwich. Like, that’s decoupling.” “I abhor their treatment of chickens.” “Yeah.” “I have a strong direct take on Chick-fil-A. I don’t like how they treat chickens.” “O.K. Or you can say or separate out, you know, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, separate the art from the artist kind of thing. Right? You know, that tendency goes against kind of the tendency on the progressive left to care a lot about the identity of the speaker in terms of the racial or gender identity and in terms of their credentials. And this other world that I call ‘the river,’ the kind of gambling, risk-taking world, all that matters is that you’re right.” “The river is your name for the community of people who think about risk roughly the way you do and are willing to make big bets, willing to accept loss. The river is your — it’s your world of gamblers at all levels of society.” “Capital and lowercase g gambling.” “So hedge funds —” “Expected value.” “— venture capitalists.” “Yeah. And then you get kind of the more —” “Crypto.” “— groundwater stuff where it’s like crypto, and meme stocks, and things like that. It doesn’t matter who you are, it matters that you’re right and you’re able to prove it or bet on it in some way. And that’s very against, I think, the kind of credentialism that you have within the progressive Democratic left, which I also call the indigo blob, because it’s a fusion of purple and blue. There’s not a clear separation between the nonpartisan, centrist media and the left-leaning progressive media that’s kind of rooting for Democrats. Different parts of ‘The New York Times’ have both those functions in place. And as someone who’s kind of more on the nonpartisan side, even though, again, I would prefer to see Kamala Harris than Donald Trump, I think people are exploiting the trust that institutions have earned for political gain. And particularly in the kind of pre-Elon pandemic-era Twitter days, the pile-ons were kind of insane, and 98 percent of people don’t have the tolerance for that. But I didn’t really care because these people are not my friends, and I have a good life outside of Twitter, and because, you know, to some extent, even if you run a newsletter, being a little polarizing is O.K., right? If I have 10 random people yelling at me on Twitter and 10 people sign up to be paid subscribers to ‘Silver Bulletin,’ then I come out like way ahead in that deal. And so I think I couldn’t do my job without running afoul of this group of people.” “Let me ask you about the definition of decoupling there, because I think decoupling is interesting. And I found the examples you pick also interesting but contestable.” “Yeah.” “So in the Chick-fil-A example, I’m between a vegetarian and vegan these days, so I got my own issues with Chick-fil-a, but was not a believer necessarily in boycotting it if you didn’t have my issues. But I understood it as more like a boycott, that theory, right? You don’t want to give money to something that’s going to work against your interests. The question of decoupling art and artist, which I’m more on the side of decoupling, but also has a dimension of — those both strike me as versions of activism, right? What you want to do, what people who hold those positions are trying to do, is affect change in the world by applying consequences to beliefs. And maybe you don’t want that, or you don’t agree that the beliefs they are trying to affect should have those consequences on them. But it’s kind of different than the idea of things are being pressed together that don’t go together. I think an interesting sort of decoupling issue that happened in the pandemic was the same public health voices who were at one point saying you had to be so careful, even outside oftentimes were then pro joining the George Floyd protests, which a lot of people found very upsetting. What people were looking to the public health world for right then was not their views on protests but their views on distancing. And that felt like it coupled things in a way that undermined one to achieve another.” “Well, and they framed it in, like, oh, this is good for public health reasons, right? If they had said, look, I’m a big believer in racial equity; there is a little bit of risk here; but outside, wear a mask, and probably not a huge problem — I mean, that would be honest, right?” “Which ended up being true too.” “Yeah. But instead it was in the name of public health, right? I think people don’t do enough thinking about thinking and don’t read enough of the literature on cognitive biases. Ironically, this is kind of like the expert literature on how powerful the human mind is at confirmation bias, and how powerful a drug political partisanship is, and how smart people are maybe better rationalizes in certain respects. I mean, a lot of irrational traits are like rational on some halfway approximate different version of the universe. You know what I mean?” “My first book was on polarization. And what I understand you as doing in the book in part is making an interesting cut in society between people with different forms of both risk tolerance and thinking about risk. And you write something that caught my eye where you say, quote, ‘COVID made those risk preferences public, worn on our proverbial sleeves and our literal faces.’ And you go on to say, quote, ‘People are becoming more bifurcated in their risk tolerance, and this affects everything from who we hang out with to how we vote.’” “Yeah.” “Tell me about both sides of that — the way that it made risk tolerance visible, but then your view that since then risk tolerance is becoming a deeper cleavage in society.” “I mean, on the one hand, there are lots of signs that risk tolerance is going down, right? Among young people in particular, they’re smoking less, drinking less, doing fewer drugs, having less sex. A different type of risk tolerance, they are less willing to defend free speech norms if it potentially would cause injury to someone. That’s kind of a — free speech is kind of a pro-risk kind of take in some ways because speech can cause effects, of course. On the other hand, you have this boom and bust, and various booms and busts, in crypto. You have Las Vegas bringing in record revenue. You have record revenue in sports betting and things like that. You have the CEO of OpenAI saying, yeah, this might destroy the universe, but it’s worth it. It’s a good gamble to take. You have FTX and all this stuff. And the first trip I made after COVID was to a Casino in Florida, which is every bit the shit show that you think it might be. And the tournament drew record numbers of Poker players. And so it just seems to me like we are in a world now where institutions are less trusted. And some people respond to that by saying, O.K., I make my own rules now, and this is great, and I have lots of agency. And some respond by kind of withdrawing into an online world, or maybe clinging on to beliefs and experts that have lost their credibility, or just by becoming more risk averse. I mean, I think the pandemic also revealed that there’s a lot of differences in introversion versus extroversion. I just can’t deal with being cooped up inside all day. This doesn’t work for me at all. But I think some people kind of secretly like the idea that, O.K., there’s no more FOMO. I can kind of be cozy all day. And that’s fine. There’s differences in desire for human companionship and things like that too.” “Let’s talk about a couple of those people. One of the things that’s kind of fun about the book is you spend time with people whose approach to risk you find sophisticated and interesting.” “Yeah.” “One of them is Peter Thiel. What were your impressions of Peter Thiel? What did he learn spending time with him?” “The first impression is that he’s a weird dude. I interviewed him by phone. And the first question I asked him he took half an hour to answer. So he’s very thoughtful. And the question was what I thought was kind of a softball question. It’s like, if you ran the world 1,000 times or 10,000 times, how often do you think you’d wind up in a situation like the one that you’re in? And it was kind of a nerdy way to ask, do you think you got lucky. Which in Thiel’s case is interesting. There’s an anecdote in the book about this famous or infamous car trip he took with Elon Musk. They were going to pitch Michael Moritz at Sequoia Capital, and Elon had a new McLaren F1 and was going way too fast, and spun out of control in the middle of whichever Sand Hill Road or whatever, and they totaled the car. They could easily have been killed. And instead, they actually hitchhiked to this meeting and saved what was then called Confinity — it was like the future of Paypal, right? And so this twist of fate, twist of good fortune, kind of helped [LAUGHS]: Peter Thiel out. But most people understand, like —” “Wait, how did it help him out? I mean, he didn’t die.” “Well, he didn’t die. So he avoided — yeah, he avoided dying, I guess I’d say. So probably the expectation was not that he’d die. But the point is still that you can easily have a world in which Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are not a part of it if there’s a car going the wrong way and the other side of the road. So most people, when you ask that question — I asked Mark Cuban, for example — they’ll give the politically correct response. Which is, oh, of course I’ve been very lucky, and I’m a talented person, but of course it’s a 1 in a million thing. Right? And Thiel objected to the question. He said, you know, well, if it’s predetermined, then the odds are 100 percent. And if the world’s not predetermined, then the odds are probably approximately zero. But that doesn’t really make sense. Like, how can you perturb the world by exactly this amount? But I think he kind of believes in predestiny a little bit. And —” “As a spiritual thing or as a matter of classical physics?” “There’s a good book by I think Max Chafkin was the journalist — or ‘Chaff-kin’— I don’t how you say his last name — about Peter Thiel called ‘The Contrarian,’ which is convincing that Thiel is actually quite conservative, more than libertarian, and probably quite religious. But I also think that if you ARE one of these people, just the amounts of wealth, and success, and power that Silicon Valley has, I do think some of these people kind of pinch themselves and wonder if they have been one of the chosen ones in some ways or been blessed in some ways, or, maybe the nerdy version of it, think they’re living in a simulation of some kind. Like, what odds would you give yourself that that actually makes sense that you’re the protagonist of the story? It must be kind of weird, right?” “So I used to interview Thiel. Not super regularly but every so often. My impression of him, which has been my impression of a lot of the I would call them ideologist VCs, which is not all VCs, but the ones who are heavily behind or out online and sort of pushing a kind of what I would think of as like VC ideology that leans now right, talking to him always interesting. Because over the course of a conversation, he would offer like 15 or 20 ideas. I would call them more thought experiments than analytical arguments. They were not empirically backed, typically. And you would leave and be like, 13 of those seem genuinely ridiculous to me. Two of them might be very importantly right. I’m not 100 percent sure which are the two and which are the 13. And Peter Thiel, I think, is very — he is a sort of template of the VC mind, and a lot of VCs try to be him. And he’s been very successful. I mean, he’s a guy who has backed a number of very important companies, found a number of very important founders. He is able to do something there. But it is oriented towards being right in important and counterintuitive ways, like, three out of 20 times and doesn’t care about being wrong 17 out of 20 times. Whereas if you think about media, media is oriented towards being right 17 out of 20 times, and the three that it gets wrong are going to be really big because they’re going to be correlated across the entirety of American institutions. But it’s a very different way of thinking about risk. It’s like you want big payouts, not a high betting average.” “And that’s because this is core to the VC mindset. The two things that you hear from every VC, one is the importance of the longer time horizon. So you’re making investments that might not pay off for 10 or 15 years. But number two, even more important, is the asymmetric ability to bet on upside. They are all terrified because they all had an experience early in their career where Mark Zuckerberg walked through their door, or Larry Page or Sergey Brin walked through their door, and they didn’t give them funding. And then they wound up missing on an investment that paid out at 100x or 1000x or 10,000x. And so if you can only lose 1x your money, but you can make 1000x if you have a successful company, then that changes your mindset about everything, and you want to avoid false negatives. You want to avoid missed opportunities. And I think there’s a tendency for a certain type of smart person to provoke, to troll a little bit. I think he’s like that a little bit mean. This is also partly the thing on Twitter, right? I kind of us Twitter sometimes as a sketch pad [LAUGHS]: a little bit for slightly irreverent, half-trollish ideas that might later turn into newsletter posts or something like that, or might be developed further, and probing around and seeing what things land and what don’t. Like a stand mic night at a comedy show or something. And I think that’s how Twitter is meant to be used. But other people use it for enforcing consensus. But we’ve already talked about Twitter. But yeah —” “Well, you can never talk about it enough, particularly with these people. The one thing I will say on that, and I think this is true for virtually everybody I know who has been on that platform for a long period of time, is they will tell you that I have this persona on Twitter.” “Yeah.” “Right? Twitter is not real life. I mean, I use it to provoke. I’m having fun. I’m shitposting. I’m trolling. And people, over time, if they spend a lot of time there, become more like who they are there. That is true for Marc Andreessen, another person who you profile and talk to in the book. It’s true for lots of people in politics I know. Ted Cruz has become his Twitter persona even more than he once was. It happened in Democratic politics I think in 2020. Different campaigns became more like their Twitter incarnations than that person had been in politics before. And I think it has to do with social dynamics. Because over time, the people you get praise from become more persuasive and credible to you. The people who begin to hate you, you sort of repel from. People I think always think they can be playful in their social dynamics, but actually who you end up surrounding yourself, even online, you become them. It’s very, very hard to maintain that kind of separation.” “I mean, clearly, Elon Musk maintained a stance for a while that, oh, I’m just kind of a libertarian moderate. Like, no, he’s kind of like a right-pilled conservative.” “Yeah. And I’m just having fun. I’m posting funny things. He’s his Twitter persona now. You spent some time with Sam Bankman-Fried.” “Yeah.” “Tell me what you learned from him or learned about him.” “I think Sam is kind of insane [CHUCKLES]:, and I’m not very sympathetic to him. I mean, I’m sympathetic in the sense that this is this very dramatic reversal of fortune, where he’s kind of literally emerging and on top of the whole world, and shooting commercials with Tom Brady, and it kind of all collapses, and he becomes very abandoned overnight. So he’s kind of reaching out to a couple of journalists to have conversations because he basically no friends left in the Bahamas anymore. And his parents are there and two of his employees are there, but everyone else has fled the island. Sam is somebody who has to be owned by the river. But, you know, he is unabashedly a part of that world. I mean, he had his tentacles in every part of that world. He was active in Democratic and actually, under the radar, Republican political donations. He was trying to figure out how to get into sports betting legally and things like that. And so he is kind of everywhere. And of course, most of all, with the effect of altruists — in the original plan for the book, there was this awkward transition between the chapter on crypto and the chapter on effective altruism. I’m like, how do I have a natural transition? And then SBF is very important in both worlds, and it’s a very strange connection that somehow crypto profits are funding these people who want to cure malaria or something in Africa. But, you know, I think there are a couple of things. One is that I think people were overly impressed by SBF, partly because he was able to manipulate his self image. I mean, he’s not the most conventionally normal guy, right? But he was very aware that founders — the founder algorithm, the VC algorithm is like we can’t — weirdness is good for VCs. The fact that SBF would play video games in investor pitch meetings or things like that, or dress down, or have a fidget spinner, they’re like, oh, he’s a little bit on the spectrum, and that’s actually probably good for a founder because you want the single-minded devotion. And he’s a little weird, but you want variance, variance, variance.” “Sleeps on a beanbag. Right? There was a real mythos around him.” “Which is kind of carefully constructed. He’s kind of inhabiting a character which is inspired by some inner SBF. And he’s kind of playing that character and then kind of forgets what has ever inner core values, whatever they were, might have been. But he is not a very competent manager of risk. He invested all this money in this Democratic primary for a candidate named Carrick Flynn in Oregon’s — I forget which — six or seventh district, maybe eighth district. And the candidate had been ahead in the polls by 15 points and wound up losing by 15 points. Because to spend $8 million in a congressional primary is kind of insane if you’re not in the New York media market or something. So the candidate would go to people’s houses, and they’d be like, hey, I’m Carrick Flynn. I’m a candidate for the Oregon primary. And they’re like, oh, I have your literature and bring out a stack of 20 flyers that SBF’s super PAC had sent on behalf of Carrick Flynn and made him look like a weird freak backed by this mysterious crypto billionaire. So, yeah, he had a tendency — and this is based on testimony from both the court case and an interview I did with Tara MacAulay I think his her name, his original co-founder at Alameda. He had the kind of often good initial instincts, and being a good estimator is an important skill in my world, but then would kind of double down on that a lot and rationalize things a lot. And there was also a bystander effect problem where so many people vouched for him — Sequoia Capital and all these Oxford philosophers, these effective altruists. And he’s on stage with Bill Clinton or whatever, and he’s invited to the Met Gala, and Tom Brady is shooting commercials with him. So what could possibly be wrong with this guy? I mean, maybe he seems a little bit weird to me, but all these other people are kind of in his corner. But no one was doing the due diligence. And he kind of figured out that despite — there’s a little contradiction in the river, where on the one hand we tend to think of ourselves as being contrarian. On the other hand, we’re pretty big fans of markets, because we know that it’s kind of hard to beat the Las Vegas point spread or it’s hard to beat the S&P 500 Index funds or things like that. So the market judgment is that SBF is a credible actor, and how would I trust my own judgment over the market judgment a little bit. And there was too much deference toward that and too much actually groupthink about SBF, because the problems were evident the whole way. I mean, he told Tyler Cowen that if he could flip a coin to double the amount of utility in the world plus 1 epsilon or something but there’s a 50/50 chance of blowing the world up, that he would take the coin flip and repeatedly.” “So you’re actually getting two earths, but you’re risking a 49 percent chance of it all disappearing.” “And again, I feel compelled to say caveats here of how would you really know that’s what’s happening, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Put that aside. Take the hypothetical — the pure hypothetical. Yeah. Yeah.” “And then you keep on playing the game. So what’s the chance we’re left with anything? Don’t I just Saint Petersburg paradox you into non-existence?” “Well, not necessarily. Maybe Saint Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That’s the other option.” “I remember seeing that Tyler Cowen interview and thinking, that’s nuts. But I think it gets at a kind of nuts that there is a bias towards in the world you’re describing. There is an aesthetic around talking in probabilities. There’s an ability to think in probabilities, and there’s an aesthetic around probabilities — people attaching, I would often say, almost random probabilities to things. I see this a lot in Silicon valley, people who I would call it like faux Bayesian reasoning where they’re given some probability, but they have no reason to base the probability — 50 percent of this. And it makes you sound much more precise. It makes you sound like what you’re talking about. SBF was known for always talking in terms of expected value. Which is very appealing to the kinds of people you’re describing, maybe the kind of person even that you are. And people who know how to talk like that get through a lot of filters, because you sort of assume, if they’ve converted everything into probabilities, and they’re great at math, and he worked at Jane Street. I worried about this a lot with effective altruists for a while, which is a group I have a lot more sympathy for than most people now have. But there can be this tendency, I think, to fetishize a certain form of discourse. It’s like the first people into that form of discourse are doing something valuable, and then, after that, I think it can become a kind of costume of sloppy thinking. This worries me about models too. I’m curious how you think about it, because I often find that people talk in terms of probabilities but people hear them in terms of certainties. That somehow talking in terms of probabilities makes people more willing to believe you without actually being skeptical or attaching a failure risk to you.” “Yeah. I mean, there’s two things here. One is just there is a kind of jargon. In some ways I liken being from the river to being from the South of the United States or something, where there’s just a lot of shared cultural norms and unspoken discursive tendencies — it’s just the way we communicate, I think, in the river. But also, it’s really easy to build bad models. Even in narrow problems, like I want to forecast the NFL or something or build an election model, it’s easy to build bad models. And on these open-ended problems, it’s really easy to fall in love with the incomplete model of the world and then forget that — what’s the Kamala Harris coconut tree quote? A model does not fall from a coconut tree. It exists —” “It exists in the context of all that came before it. Sure.” “So a model is supposed to describe something in the real world. And if you lose sight of the real world and it fails to describe the real world, then it’s the model’s fault and your fault for building the model and not the real world’s fault. And that’s a lesson that people, I think, have a lot of trouble learning.” “Bankman-Fried is in prison. Thiel might in some ways be responsible for destroying the Republican ticket this year. I mean, in a close election, JD Vance now seems to have about as much negative value as we’ve seen from a recent Vice President. I’m not saying Peter Thiel’s the only reason Vance got chosen for the ticket, but he is one of the key reasons Vance is in politics. Before now, you would said JD Vance was Peter Thiel’s political bet that paid off best.” “Yeah.” “And now it might be his political bet that pays off worst. You mentioned Bankman-Fried’s political donations, which were kind of disastrous in a direct way sometimes. Also ended up taking a lot of other people down over time. If these guys are so good at making bets or seem to be so good at making bets, what are they missing in politics? As somebody who straddles those worlds, what is not in their models? So both these groups, both the river and the village, are groups of elites. And I think, ironically, both groups’ critiques of one another are kind of true, right? I mean, they kind of can be epistemic trespassers, but they are not very data driven when it comes to politics. And part of it, too, is that if you’re a VC, and you’re evaluating a lot of pitches and a lot of opportunities, you have very quick twitch reflexes for saying, O.K., something about this founder seems smart. Let’s investigate further. Let’s do an initial seed round of investing. But it’s like thin slicing and not necessarily — for this part of the river, the VC part of the river — more profound analytical takes on things. And so you’re surrounded by people that are inclined to agree with you, and you kind of see enemies on the other side. He thought maybe that people had some deeper intuitive sense in 2016 that something was wrong with Hillary Clinton, even though she was ahead in the polls. And to his credit, he did back Trump at a time when that seemed like a big risk to take. It seemed like it was probably going to be the wrong bet, and it seemed like he was losing a lot of credibility. And now, it turns out that he was kind of ahead of the curve. You know, people like Peter Thiel thought that the village had been discredited by 2016 and other things. You can’t really trust the polls, and they said Trump would never do x, y or z. But no, I mean, these guys often are pretty dumb about [LAUGHS]: politics. And it’s the same — the guys in the hedge fund poker game that I play sometimes are the guys that are like, I think Gavin Newsom is going to replace Joe Biden on the ticket. And it’s like, you actually were kind of right about part of this, but why Gavin Newsom? What is the infatuation with Gavin Newsom.” “I heard so many versions of that. I always thought it was so crazy.” “Yeah.” “But, you know, it’s funny. I would say what they’ve often missed, and Thiel’s particular on this, is how human beings react to different human beings. So JD Vance, for instance, wildly underperforms in the Ohio Senate race. And Vance’s problem right now, he’s pushed onto the ticket by, as best we can tell, people like Steve Bannon, Don Trump, Jr., Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk — so the very online, very reactionary pale, the people around Trump. And what is missed about him is he’s kind of offputting. He doesn’t talk to other people in a way they would like to be spoken to. He’s able to make even popular ideas like a child tax credit sound completely bizarre when he talks about them in terms of punishing childless adults — that there is something here, I think, when people look at the world — and I’ve seen this in a lot of different dimensions of these kinds of folks — when they look at the world too much in numbers, the intangibles begin to dissolve for them.” “Although I think some of these tangibles aren’t so intangible. Right? Where you can look at JD Vance’s margins in Ohio, you can look at historically candidates who don’t have experience getting elected to some lower office and then ascending the ranks, underperform. It’s been a factor in our congressional midterm models for years, for example. But, look, in some ways, these VCs are obviously incredibly, deeply flawed people. And so, why do they succeed despite that? I think because the idea of having a longer time horizon, number one, and being willing to make these plus expected value, positive expected value, high risk, but very, very, very high-upside bets, and gathering a portfolio of them repeatedly, and making enough of these bets that you effectively do hedge your risk, those two ideas are so good that it makes up for the fact that these guys often have terrible judgment and are kind of vainglorious assholes — half of them, right? They’re interesting people too. I mean, they’re very interesting I think. And they — I’m happy that the book is able to present, I think, a complete journalistic portrait of some of them. But they have lots and lots of flaws, and it’s made up for by the fact that this is kind of a magic formula for making money.” “Let me get us back to the election. So we mentioned before Harris’s approval ratings have gone from significantly underwater to net favorable very, very fast. She’s now leading in head-to-head polls. More than that, there’s a real deep, whatever Republicans have convinced themselves to the contrary, organic enthusiasm that has unleashed itself around her. She turns out to be very memeable in a way I’m not sure people quite predicted. I know most Democrats didn’t predict this. I don’t think you predicted it. So what was missed here? What wasn’t in the Harris model that should have been?” “Yeah, maybe you really can meme your way to victory. [CHUCKLES]: I don’t know. I wouldn’t necessarily have thought that. I mean, there’s something about how it’s off trend a little bit, and it’s kind of unexpected a little bit. And there’s something about that, that I think people were ready for a vibe shift, right? I think people in politics neglect just how annoying the pedantic, dramatic, no fun tone of politics was and the having to be like serious all the time. And if the worst Republicans can say about Kamala Harris, oh, she laughs a lot, maybe it kind of suits the mood a little bit after so many years of doom and gloom. So maybe it was just spontaneous and lucky. I mean, it’s also the case maybe when Kamala Harris was a candidate for the nomination in 2019, I had these tiers, and the top tier was Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And the line was always, O.K., I got one of those right and one of those about as wrong as possible. But she was seen as this rising, up-and-coming political talent, and maybe the combination of misaligned strategy in 2019 and then not being marketed well by the White House, and we debated before what the reasons for that are, maybe that was the underperformance. And the rising star that people thought she was kind of the real Kamala Harris after all.” “So Harris ended up choosing Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her VP pick. You made a case that it should have been Josh Shapiro. Tell me why.” “Pennsylvania, number one. There’s about a 4 percent chance in our model that Harris will lose the election because of Pennsylvania, where she wins the other Midwestern swing states but she’s 19 votes or fewer electoral votes fewer because of Pennsylvania. And if you’re a probabilist, then a 4 percent chance — because campaigns often don’t make a difference, right? If we go into a recession in the third quarter, then Harris will probably lose through no fault of her own. But in the worlds where campaign strategy can make a difference, then the VP being from Pennsylvania is a reasonably big upgrade. And the fact that he has demonstrated his popularity with this very diverse state that’s kind of a microcosm of the US as a whole — in Pennsylvania, you have the Northeast, you have the Midwest, and even you have a little bit of the South creeping in the Appalachian part of the state. You have the suburbs, you have rural areas, and you have one of the biggest cities in the United States. You have a big African-American vote. You have lots of famous colleges and things like that. You have everything there, and he’s 15 points above water approval-wise. And that’s pretty powerful information to work with. I happen to think that Tim Walz is an above-average pick, better than most, better than JD Vance. Not a particularly high bar, but better than a lot of the recent picks. I mean, I think he’s kind of memeable as America’s goofy dad kind of way, and he had a pretty moderate track record in Congress. And again, my premise is that, generally speaking, moderation wins. A lot of people disagree with that, but I think the empirical evidence is strong there. More progressive governance, of course, in Minnesota. But I think it was a somewhat risk-averse decision. Now, if you read —” “Why do you say that? I found this argument you’ve made very weird. So I think there’s a very good chance — I always told people on the VP pick my head says Shapiro and my heart says Walz.” “Yeah.” “I think that because I am a cautious person, if I were running for president, worried about losing Pennsylvania, I would have found it very hard not to pick Shapiro. Because if you don’t pick Shapiro, and you end up in a we lost Pennsylvania scenario, everybody’s going to blame you for blowing the decision that could have won Pennsylvania. In terms of the expected value, both on the front end and the back end, I understood Walz as a choice on vibes, this sort of energy, this momentum she has created. He was sort of able to upend and remake all Democratic messaging in a single morning Joe appearance. There is some intangible charisma to Walz that has made him — developed him overnight, this huge online fan base, that the cautious candidate, the one, listening to the consultants, the one reading Nate Silver polls, that candidate goes with Shapiro. Walz is something else. Why did you say that you understood Walz as risk averse?” “Because I think they were worried about news cycles where the left got mad, and/or the Gaza issue was elevated, and/or you had protests at the convention in Chicago in a couple of weeks. I think they were worried about that, and maybe kind of undermining what is clearly good vibes right now, and maybe overrating — I mean, maybe it’s not. Maybe I just think it’s the lower expected value decision of what gives Kamala Harris a higher chance of winning the electoral college in November.” “I think one of the questions I’ve been reflecting on — because I often think about, where do I disagree with writers I otherwise agree with? And I think I’m typically pretty aligned with you on a bunch of things, or Iglesias, or [INAUDIBLE], or some others. But a lot of you have really gotten into a view that I think takes the median voter theorem almost too seriously. That it’s like as if politics is unidimensional, and how close you are to ideologically the median voter is what decides elections. Which I do think moderation has an effect in. I mean, we see this in the political science research. But that doesn’t have a lot of room in that model for energy, for enthusiasm, for the mediation of politics — the thing that happens in between the candidate and the public for what is happening on social media, for what is happening on cable news. And you can often sort of back out explanations here and there. But I, for instance, think this sort of in retrospect explanation that what led Obama to victory was careful moderation — one of the things he did was moderate on some issues like gay marriage. Another thing he did was unleash astonishing levels of enthusiasm in the electorate for reasons orthogonal in many ways to his policy positions. And so I’m curious how you think about that. Because to me, one of the questions Shapiro and Walz raised, Shapiro and Harris sort of are a lot like each other. I think they sort of come off as the two smartest members of the law review. Right?” “Yeah, that’s interesting —” “Which is like kind of —” “— for sure.” “— not necessary the visual you want — maybe it is but might not be — and that there is something here that is I guess people call it vibes now. I feel like it’s a little dismissive. But how you play out in earned media, in social media, how much people want to talk about you, that feeling of enthusiasm, how do you think about that as somebody who builds models and handicaps politics?” “I mean, look, if you’re literally building a congressional model, there’s a model that forecasts the vote based on fundamentals, which means not the polls if you don’t have polling, for example, based on whatever it is, seven or eight factors. And one of those factors, if you’re incumbent, is how often do you vote with your party. And the more often you buck your party, actually the more often — like Susan Collins or Joe Manchin — then you tend to overperform in your congressional race. Now, that’s also one of eight factors. Right? And even when you have all eight factors, there’s still quite a bit of uncertainty in the race. So to me, it’s like this is something where if you’re used to looking at larger data sets, you can come up with counterexamples of Jon Tester is pretty progressive actually and somehow manages to get reelected in Montana with this kind of maybe Tim Walz-like folksy personality or something —” “Sherrod Brown. Sort of similar to that.” “Also pretty progressive. But if you take all the data from every congressional race since 1990, then it becomes clear in the aggregate, right? And I’d also say, if we could get progressives to the point where — I don’t know who we is in this sentence, because I’m not sure I identify as progressive — liberal but not progressive, I’d say — if we could get them to the point where they said, yes, the median voter theorem is mostly true but sometimes outweighed by other factors. But yeah, to get them to that point, instead of thinking, oh, you win elections by winning the base — I mean, that might have narrowly been true in an earlier —” “Wait, you’re turning this around on progressives. Because I’m asking it of you. I agree that progressives should take the median voter theorem more seriously. But I am asking you whether energy, enthusiasm, media — I just think attention in politics is undertheorized. I think if you look at Donald Trump, and you do a thing that I’ve seen people do, and say, look, he is more like the median voter on certain things like immigration, et cetera, or at least he was perceived as more moderate than Hillary Clinton and that’s why he won, I think that is an undertold story about Donald Trump that is somewhat true. I think that missing the showmanship of Donald Trump, the entertainment value, the energy he unlocks in people. There’s a reason that Trump had Dana White from the UFC and Hulk Hogan on his night of the RNC. So in 2020, Joe Biden’s view is that the election should be about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump’s view is that the election should be about Donald Trump. And that was a theory of attention they both agreed on, and it worked out for Joe Biden. In 2024, Joe Biden’s view is the election should be about Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s view was the election should probably be about Donald Trump. And that was a bad theory of attention. Biden had no way of shifting a narrative that wasn’t any good for him.” “Yeah.” “And so I guess this is what I’m getting at, that one thing that I worry about in some of this thinking among people I like is that attention is important. Candidates have different theories of it, but I don’t know that we know how to think about it as rigorously as I wish we did.” “Look, I agree. I mean, again, with Harris, maybe you do have to revise your views a little bit. I think also maybe in a campaign that’s a sprint and not a marathon, then maybe you never reach the long run. It seems possible. Usually, I’d say don’t worry about momentum over the next two weeks, because inevitably you’re going to have a bad news cycle later on. It’s just how the media works and it’s how elections work. It is possible they can just sprint their way to a memeified victory in this shortened, modified campaign. That they have a good convention, and that she wins whenever the debate is held, and then you’re in October and everyone’s crazy and explicitly partisan, they may be able to sprint to a narrow electoral college victory without having this skeptical news cycle. So that may be an argument for Walz, I think.” “One of the reasons on my mind is not actually Walz. And as I said before, because I do want to say this, I’m not sure who she should have picked as VP. I actually have very conflicted views on this, although I really, really enjoy Tim Walz, and really enjoyed interviewing him, and think he’s a pretty unusual political talent. But I think you could say the same about Josh Shapiro in different ways, and Pennsylvania is a very big state. But I’ve been interested in the shift in — look, you have a campaign staffed by many of the same people, particularly in the first two weeks, and yet the campaign’s tenor has completely changed. The tone of press releases is now they are trying to get you to talk about them and doing that by courting controversy, by being kind of mean in a way. Democrats have not been mean in a long time. That Tim Walz actually made a JD Vance couch joke in his introducing himself as her vice presidential pick speech — let’s put it this way, that is not something that Joe Biden campaign was going to do. They want people to talk about them. They want to court kind of controversy, outrage. They want attention. But I think the reason it’s all on my mind is what I am seeing in them is a radically different relationship to attention than the campaign that the same people were running two weeks ago.” “Yeah. And this why we rely on you for how much these people overlap. Like, that’s not something I really —” “They overlap tremendously.” “Yeah.” “I mean, it’s not the exact same people. Mike Donilon isn’t running things anymore. But there’s enough of the same people here that you’re not dealing with ‘nobody knew how to write these press releases’ a month ago.” “It is interesting that Joe Biden, based on the polling, would probably have been better off in election with low turnout. The one thing that might have saved him is if you get that special election, midterm election, lower turnout where people aren’t very happy about it, but they go to the polls and vote for Biden and the Trump people don’t bother to show up. Because unlike in the past, the marginal voters have been more likely to vote for Trump than for Biden. So maybe by having a really boring campaign, it kind of suited their interests. With Harris, who is bringing back some of the younger voters and some of the voters of color that had defected to Kennedy, or defected to Trump, or defected to sitting out the election, those are also some of the more marginal voters. And so, now, all of a sudden, she probably doesn’t mind as much higher turnout which is going to get young Latino women to vote for her or young Black men to vote for her when they might not have voted for Biden. And so it kind of matches the incentives of where you want to turnout to be on November 5.” “Tim Alberta in the Atlantic had a great piece on the way the Trump campaign was thinking about the race that came out around the time of the debate or right after the debate. And they felt they had Nevada, North Carolina completely locked up — and Georgia — and that this was really a race in three, maybe four states. My understanding is Harris and her team think they have re-expanded the map. They think that Nevada, Arizona, Georgia are for sure back in play. They think that North Carolina might be back in play. Do you think that’s true? Do you think the map has gotten bigger?” “I think that’s right. Because, again, look at the voters that Biden was falling off with. Nevada, people don’t remember, they think of it as kind of libertarian old miners, right? No, Nevada is extremely diverse, and it’s working class voters of color. Big fall-off constituency for Biden. Georgia, you have tons of young professionals, and tons of great colleges and universities, and, of course, tons of Black voters — the same groups that he’s declining from a little bit. North Carolina has been, interestingly, kind of close in the polls. Arizona is the one that didn’t seem to have moved quite as much, though there was one poll yesterday with Harris ahead there. But that’s right. I mean, I think the map has expanded, and it’s obviously plausible again now that she would win Georgia, especially with the Brian Kemp stuff not helping Trump one bit. At the moment — I was playing in a poker tournament, very on-brand, right — when Trump gets shot and has the iconic photo, which I’m not a Trump fan, but you kind of have to admire that, I think a little bit, I think a lot of people assume he’s going to win the election. I mean, with Biden already, he’s not going to lose after this. They try to shoot him, and he has this great photo opportunity, right? And then it seems like he’s at a high water mark. And then he picks JD Vance, and I think got a little arrogant.” [LAUGHS] “Because his initial instinct apparently was not to pick necessarily JD Vance and kind of talked out of it by his sons. And I don’t know what influence Peter Thiel or whatever had. But the VC guys were like, oh, JD Vance is kind of one of us. And he probably is smarter than the average VP or something. But that appeal has been demonstrated not to work. I mean, you saw it with Blake Masters for example, right? It works every now and then. I guess Rick Scott had a background in I don’t know what exactly, but like —” “Medicare fraud.” “O.K., yeah. [LAUGHS]: But for the most part, these —” “The guy the guy ran a health company that was convicted of the single largest Medicare fraud at that point in history.” “What I tell my VC friends is if you have a rich guy, just have him buy a basketball team or something. He’s not going to come across very well to the average voter. And I think they don’t understand that. And then, again, in a poker tournament or a poker home cash game, when you go from having a big stack and you’re kind of like, oh, this is so nice. Man, I’m going to go home and cash out my winnings. Maybe I’ll have a nice little whiskey at the bar or something. And this is going to be — I’ll text my friends about how well my session ran. And then you lose a big pot, and then you lose another big pot, and then you go on tilt. And before long, you have no chips left.” “What is tilt?” “Tilt is playing emotionally, particularly in poker or other forms of gambling. It’s often sparked by a bad beat. Meaning that you got unlucky. Or it can be sparked by getting bluffed and getting mad at your opponent. Or bad luck. Or sometimes you can actually have what’s called winner’s tilt too, where maybe this is what Trump had in picking JD Vance. You have a bunch of things that are going really well. I mean, this election was going about as well as it could for Donald Trump. He’s not a popular guy, yet he had moved ahead in some of the National polls by four or five points. It’s pretty hard to do. I mean, he’s lost the popular vote twice.” “Trump feels very on tilt to me. When you think about him, for Donald Trump, he had been pretty on his message. He was talking a lot about immigration. He was talking a lot about inflation. He was letting it be known that he was thinking about picking Doug Burgum. He seemed to be enjoying this idea that he was — people were longing for a stability They now associated with his presidency rightly or wrongly. They wanted the lower prices back. They don’t like the war in Gaza. They don’t like the war in Ukraine. Maybe Trump is a strong man who can bring it back. And he was kind of playing into that. And since the Harris switch and him beginning to fall in the polls, you feel this old Trump returning. The Trump who goes to Georgia and begins yelling at the governor — the Republican governor — of Georgia. The Trump that goes to the National Association of Black Journalists and begins to talk about how nobody knew Kamala Harris was Black. The Trump who is just trying out attack lines, trying to find something that will work no matter what the kind of cost might be. I mean, your description of him playing emotionally — he’s not listening to anybody right now. He’s flailing.” “And the fact that, according to the reporting, that they weren’t prepared for the eventuality when Joe Biden dropped out was kind of inexcusable. I mean, if you looked at prediction markets, it was immediately a live consideration after the debate. I think they overestimated the degree to which Democrats are a personality cult. I mean, they can be. There was maybe a personality cult around Obama, or Bill Clinton, or things like that. But there wasn’t one around Joe Biden. He was kind of always the candidate of the party. And it was not in the party’s interest any longer to have him as their nominee. And so the Democratic Party is capable and powerful in a way the GOP is not. And they extrapolated from their views to how Democrats would behave and underestimated the smart decision that the party was capable of making.” “I talked to Republicans about this, about why they weren’t more prepared, and one thing I heard from them is they just didn’t think Biden was going to step aside. I mean, if you’re a party that has completely bent the knee to Donald Trump and is now years and years into not being able to convince Donald Trump of functionally anything, it might shift your sense of how people in power, particularly the apex of power, act. It’s one reason — this is a place where you and I’ve been a little bit different — I’ve been more on the side of Joe Biden did something difficult that deserves praise. Because — and I think you see this in how Republicans were thinking — leaders just often don’t do this. The kind of personality that gets you to that point is not the kind of personality that leaves power gracefully. It’s why, when people are talking about dictators, there’s endlessly this talk of how to create golden parachutes for dictators. You’re dealing with a kind of human being that has told a story about their own essentialness. Going back to your point about Elon Musk and feeling like you’re the main character of global life — particularly you’ve become the American president — you sort of were the main character of global life for a while — that does something to you. Those people don’t give it up easily.” “No. And if you look at the history of — before there was whichever Amendment it was, 20-something Amendment —” “22.” “— that prevents you from running for more than two terms, it was pretty routine for candidates to tease — Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and wanted a third term. Harry Truman had like a 32 percent approval rating and wanted a third term, second full term. Old men are often pretty stubborn. And I think the most interesting thing is that if Harris wins — or maybe comes close, but mostly if she wins — what that will say about the primary system, right? Maybe we should go back to giving a larger role to superdelegates for example.” “I want to end on a part of your book I found really interesting, which is about the physical experience of risk — in gambling, but in other things. You talk about pain tolerance. You talk about how the body feels when you’re behind on a hand and you’re losing your chips. You’ve talked about being on tilt. But I see it in politics too. I mean, there is a physical question that comes into the decisions you make. I see it on this podcast. There are times when a question is physically uncomfortable for me to ask another person. Tell me a bit about how you think about this relationship between the body and the ability to act under pressure to make intuitive decisions in moments of very high stress.” “So human beings have tens of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure which is inclined to respond in a heightened way to moments that are high stakes, that are high-stress moments. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you saw someone’s life in danger or your own life was in danger — you know, I was in LA in January, and there was an armed robbery outside the place where I was trying to get just a cup of coffee. And time kind of slows down a little bit in situations like that. And you don’t realize how stressed out you are until I texted my partner and be like, LOL, almost got shot, ha, ha. And I was kind of like, oh yeah, I was too cool for school. And then an hour later, I’m getting some tacos or something and I almost break down. It’s like, oh my god, it could have gone really, really badly. Public speaking also triggers this for people because objectively it’s a pretty high-stakes thing. If you’re playing a $1 or $2 poker game, and it’s nothing for you, your body will when you’re playing a $100-200 game where it really matters — you will just know. You’ll experience that stress. Even if you suppress it consciously, it will still affect the way that you’re literally kind of ingesting your five senses. So if your heart rate goes up, that has discernible effects. But actually, your body is providing you with more information. You’re taking in more in these kind of short bursts of time. People who can master that zone — and I use the term zone intentionally, because it’s very related to being ‘in the zone’ like Michael Jordan used to talk about, or golfers, or hockey goalies, or whatever else — learning to master that and relish that is a very powerful skill. Because you are experiencing physical stress whether you want to or not.” “How much is that, in your view, in your experience, learnable, and how much of it is a kind of natural physical intelligence some people have and some people don’t?” “I think it’s actually quite learnable. It’s a little bit like if you’ve been on mushrooms before [LAUGHS]: then you kind of learn, oh, this is the part of the brain that is — this is the things that look a little funny when you’re on mushrooms, right? You can kind of maybe tone it up or tone it down a little bit. So it’s very much like that. I mean, it’s terrifying the first time it happens. But when you start to recognize it, and you kind of make a conscious effort to slow down a little bit, and take your time, and try to execute the basics, it’s not as much about trying to be a hero. It’s about trying to execute the basics. Because when everyone’s losing their shit, if you can do your basic ABC blocking and tackling, then you’re ahead of 95 percent of people. And keeping bandwidth free for dealing with emergency situations, that will take you very far.” “It’s funny, because that feels to me like a very important question that is hard to test in politics.” “Yeah.” “People have to make profound decisions under incredibly high stress. And we have simulacrums of it. The debate, in a way, is a simulacrum of that. Very, very high stress. Speeches on teleprompters are not very good analogies for that. But this question of how good is a person at that moment —” “I mean —” “— how do you evaluate that?” “I mean, Trump, after getting shot, kind of performed very well. And I think, again, the Harris moment of leaping right into action to secure the nomination also has to be seen as very good performance under stress. And Biden’s failure under stress — I mean, he went to some kind of spiral of some kind or another, physical, or mental, or whatever else. So those kind of three pivotal moments — the assassination, the debate, and then Harris seizing the nomination in record time — speak to the difference in performance. And that’s why the two of them, Harris and Trump, are still candidates for the presidency, and Biden is not.” “I was just reading Nancy Pelosi’s new book before I was reading yours, because I just had her on the show, and she talks about how, above all, she says, that what a Speaker of the House needs is intuition. They need to be able to act. And she says that the key thing is you have to act fast. Because every moment you don’t act, your options are diminishing. And I ended up thinking, then, when reading your book, of it. Because what she was describing is quite, I think, for her, physical. Like something in her knows how to act and is unafraid to act in those moments. The thing that was crucial about her, I think, in this process, inside the Democratic Party of getting Biden out, is she was willing to act in public to take the pressure of that in ways very few people were. And somebody had to be doing that in public to create space for others to be considering it in private. But you look at her career, and she has this sort of intuitive capability to know when to move. And there’s something in it that I don’t think she can explain how she does it, but it makes her a fascinating leader. People believe that she will act. And she will act because something in her knows when to act, and she’s unafraid.” “Yeah. So is gut instinct overrated or underrated? Well, it depends on how much experience you have, right? Poker players have — because now poker is actually kind of a solved game. There are computer solvers they’re called that spit out this very complicated solution to poker. Hard to execute in practice, but it’s technically speaking a solved game. However, the best poker players can have uncannily good instincts based on reading physical tells, just the kind of vibe someone gives off. And if — you know, I played a lot of Poker and writing this book, more live poker than I have in the past, and you develop a sixth sense. Not all the time. It helps if you’re well rested. But you develop a sixth sense for whether someone has a strong hand or something. Like they’re glowing green or something almost sometimes. And you can test it, because you can say, I know that I’m supposed to fold this hand here. It’s a little bit too weak to call against a bluff. But I just have a sense that he’s bluffing. And lo and behold, you’re right more often than you’d think — more often than you need to be to make that call correct based on the odds that you’re getting from the pot. So if Nancy Pelosi has decades and decades of experience in politics and reading the moves of how the coalition is moving, I mean, that’s something where intuition probably plays a pretty good role. And also the fact that being willing to work with incomplete information — I mean, I don’t know how much longer Biden could have — maybe they could have run out the clock [LAUGHS]: potentially.” “Oh, they 100 percent could of. That day when he sent that letter to congressional Democrats and said, I’m not leaving — this conversation is over, stop trying to overturn the will of the primary voters — I was getting congressional Democrats telling me, this is done. It’s a fait accompli. He’s quelled the rebellion. It looked to me like he had. I was talking to other people. They said, 10 percent shot he’s out. Nancy Pelosi goes on ‘Morning Joe’ two days later and says, we’re really looking forward to him making a decision. And I asked her about it. And I said, what was happening? I mean, he had just sent that letter. And she said, yeah, but that was just a letter.” “Yeah.” “I didn’t accept the letter as anything but a letter. I mean, there are some people who were unhappy with the letter. Let me say it a different — some said that some people were unhappy with the letter. I’ll put it in somebody else’s mouth. Because it was a — I don’t think — it didn’t sound like Joe Biden to me.” “I’m like, oh, you read a bluff.” “So I think Nancy Pelosi might be pretty good at poker.” “Good place to end. Always our final question — what are three books you’d recommend to the audience.” “So one book is pertinent to the discussion that we had a moment ago, which is called ‘The Hour Between Dog and Wolf.’ It’s written by John Coates, who is an academic economist who then became a derivatives trader, I think, for Deutsche Bank in New York and found out that the traders that he studied were really weird. Like these traders would have strange physical and mental stress responses to the market rising or falling. And he was so fascinated by it that he went back and became a neuroscientist and basically did studies of traders. So you test the testosterone of like an options trader or a guy who works at a hedge fund and see how it varies from day to day and correlates with performance. So yeah, so he studies the physical responses of risk-takers, and the book is called ‘The Hour Between Dog and Wolf.’ So that’s one recommendation. Number two, in a totally different direction, ‘The Making of the Atomic Bomb’ by Richard Rhodes. We didn’t talk as much about some of the AI stuff today, but at the end of the book there’s a pretty long, elaborate comparison between the Manhattan Project and the building of these large language models that some people think could be potentially very dangerous. And nuclear weapons are, I think, a pivot point in human history, and this book is kind of the best history of that. The third is called ‘Addiction by Design,’ by Natasha Schüll. And Natasha is an NYU anthropologist who studied Las Vegas as her thesis basically. She did a lot of reporting just about the properties of slot machines, and how addictive they are, and about the kind of casino gambling industry in general. And of course, she draws metaphors between that and the rest of society.” “Nate Silver, thank you very much.” “Thank you, Ezra.” [THEME MUSIC]

The last I looked, your model has Kamala Harris winning the election at around 52 percent — it might be a little different today. But this has been an unusual election. How much stock do you put in your model right now?

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IMAGES

Is the cost of college too high Essay Example
What Is an Argumentative Essay? Simple Examples To Guide You
Argumentative Essay for College
College Essay Format: Simple Steps to Be Followed
How To Write a Compelling Argumentative Essay: Expert Tips & Guide
Charted: The Rising Average Cost of College in the U.S

COMMENTS

Is The Cost of College Too High: Argumentative Analysis
The Rising Cost of Tuition and Fees. Over the past 20 years, the inflation-adjusted published tuition and fees at public 4-year colleges have increased by 169%, from an average of $4,360 per year to $11,710. At private nonprofit 4-year colleges, published tuition and fees have increased by 144%, from $19,360 to $47,340 over the same time period.
Is Cost of College Too High: Argumentative Essay
The cost of college tuition increased exponentially quicker than the price of other goods and services between 1980 and 2004 then slowed near 2005. "After peaking near 10 percent in 2004, college tuition inflation has trended down over the last decade and averaged about 2 percent during 2017 and 2018" (Bunduck & Pollard 2).
Is College Too Expensive: [Essay Example], 515 words
While the argument that college is too expensive holds merit, it is crucial to also consider the value of education. Despite the rising costs, obtaining a college degree still provides numerous benefits, such as increased job prospects, higher earning potential, and personal growth. These intangible benefits should not be overlooked when ...
Is College Tuition Really Too High?
But the real outlier is higher education. Tuition at a private university is now roughly three times as expensive as it was in 1974, costing an average of $31,000 a year; public tuition, at $9,000 ...
College prices aren't skyrocketing—but they're still too high for some
For lower-income families with income around $40,000, public institutions still charge these students a net price of around $14,000 on average. That is around $1,000 less than what they charged 4 ...
Adam Davidson: Is College Tuition Really Too High?
Exclusively available on IvyPanda®. In his article "Is College Tuition Really Too High?", Adam Davidson discusses such a trend as the rising cost of education in the United States. The author provides statistical data showing that many families find it more difficult to afford tuition fees (Davidson par. 2).
Is College Still Worth the High Price? Weighing Costs and Benefits of
The first row of Table 1 shows the average annual tuition for colleges and universities in 1980, 2000, and 2020. The last row of the table shows how much college tuition costs in terms of 1980 dollars, showing that in real (inflation adjusted) terms, attending college cost over twice as much in 2020 as it did in 1980.
Argumentative Essay: The Cost Of College Tuition
The cost for college tuition is way too high. People will forever be in debt because they dont make enough money at their jobs to cover the college fee. The average tuition is $33,480 for private colleges, $9,650 for state residents at public colleges, and $24,930 for out of state residents attending public. Free Essay: A lot of young Americans ...
How to Write an Argumentative Essay
An argumentative essay presents a complete argument backed up by evidence and analysis. It is the most common essay type at university. ... You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like ...
How to Write an A+ Argumentative Essay
An argumentative essay attempts to convince a reader to agree with a particular argument (the writer's thesis statement). The writer takes a firm stand one way or another on a topic and then uses hard evidence to support that stance. An argumentative essay seeks to prove to the reader that one argument —the writer's argument— is the ...
The price of college is rising faster than wages for people ...
The cost of college for a 2000 graduate was $71,533 when inflation-adjusted to 2019 dollars. That person's starting wage would average $690 more per week than a person with a high school diploma. Class of 2000 graduates' starting wages would meet the cost of college in about two years, less than half the time of the class of 2019.
Argumentative Essay: Is College Worth The Cost?
People argue that the debt from college loans is too high, a college degree does not guarantee success, and many people succeed without attending college. ... Argumentative Essay: The Cost Of College 771 Words | 4 Pages; Argumentative Essay About Going To College 1148 Words | 5 Pages; Argumentative Essay: Should We Go To College?
Argumentative Essay: The Cost Of College
The tuition and cost of college is detrimental to thousands of families across the country and brings student debt to future graduates. Some students have seen their debt climb over $30,000. Friedman writes, "The average student in the Class of 2016 has $37,172 in student loan debt…" (Friedman). With the debts being over the average ...
Reducing College Tuition: An Argumentative Essay Example
Download. Essay, Pages 4 (966 words) Views. 1845. There is a pressing need to address the soaring costs of college tuition in America. The escalating expenses pose a significant threat to students' access to higher education. However, viable solutions exist for both parents and students to mitigate these challenges and make pursuing a college ...
College Costs Out Of Control
A four-year college graduate earns on average $55,000 per year and people with post-graduate degrees, master's degrees, and PhD's, earn $65,000 per year and beyond. So the statistics show that ...
9.3: The Argumentative Essay
In an academic argument, you'll have a lot more constraints you have to consider, and you'll focus much more on logic and reasoning than emotions. Figure 1. When writing an argumentative essay, students must be able to separate emotion based arguments from logic based arguments in order to appeal to an academic audience.
College Tuition Is Too Expensive
College tuition is too high. Since the demand for an education and the supply of schools are both high, cost should be low. ... Persuasive Essay On College Tuition. An article by HO, J.D says, "the National Center for education statistics reports an average tuition of 25,409 for the 2014-15 academic year at four-year colleges and universities ...
The Argument for Tuition-Free College
The cost of attending a four-year college has increased by 1,122 percent since 1978. Galloping tuition hikes have made attending college more expensive today than at any point in U.S. history. At the same time, debt from student loans has become the largest form of personal debt in America-bigger than credit card debt and auto loans.
Example Of Is The College Tuition Cost Too High Argumentative Essay
The cost of raising a child and taking him or her through the college curriculum is relatively high comparing with the earlier times. In his works, Bowen, (2012) depicts the rise in cost of education in colleges and has been on the rise with as much as 10% inflation in the period between 2000 and 2010. The cost of college tuition has risen.
Lowering the cost of public college is essential and reasonable
That's the average cost of public university tuition over a four year period. That number doesn't account for housing, fees, student loan interest, textbooks and the many other expenses associated with attending college. When taking these costs into consideration, a bachelor's degree can cost more than $400,000.
Want to write a college essay that sets you apart? Three tips to give
Writing the personal essay for your college application can be tough, but we're here to help. Sometimes the hardest part is just getting started, but the sooner you begin, the more time and thought you can put into an essay that stands out. Check out some tips: 1. Keep it real.
Is The Cost Of College Too High?
The cost of going through college is on upward trend creating concern among the public and the policy makers. In America, the cost of tuition increased by 297 percent from September 1990 to September 2012 (American Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2013). The importance of college education in the shrivelling job market cannot be underestimated yet ...
Is the Cost of College Too High Argumentative Essay
College Is Too Expensive Essay. Today, the problem of rising costs of higher education evokes heat debate among the public and policy-makers. In actuality, the high costs of higher education become an unsurpassable barrier for many students living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and belonging to low-income families.
Free Essay: Is the Cost of College Too High
A big question nowadays is that "Is the cost of college too high". Parents are starting to think that maybe having more than two kids will later cause them finantional issues in the future. Tuition for two kids equals over $30,000 annually for everything that is needed for college. From books, to tution, to dorming, to food.
Opinion
Nate Silver on Kamala Harris's Chances and the Mistakes of the 'Indigo Blob'