Throughout the 1900’s, the American value of college education steadily increased, as more students enrolled in universities each year. Wealth, happiness, success — Americans associated these values with college education more and more as time went on. Although trends predicted that American attitudes toward college education would only become more positive as time increased, recent years have shown the exact opposite: the number of Americans valuing college education has begun to decline. New polls have indicated tuition price, time, and available jobs as factors in American views on college. Many Americans believe the price of attending college outweighs the potential benefits, making it a risky investment (Salhotra).
During the early 2000s, the increased price of university tuition, along with the Great Recession, contributed to a slight decrease in college enrollment each year. Although this affected American attitudes toward college, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 drastically affected American attitudes and college enrollment rates in the past several years. In fact, one poll found that the percentage of Americans who believe college has a positive influence on the country has decreased by 14 points since 2020 (Salhotra). The implications of COVID-19, including a fall in the American economy, online schooling, and a shift in working culture, have all contributed to the new views on college education.
To start I really like your choice of topic. I think you will find a lot of interesting information and be able to put together a very solid paper. Additionally, your background information is really well set up. The lead-in and context of the situation are very informative and easy to digest. It sets the scene well for your paper and gives the reader just enough information to understand what you will present in the rest of the paper without overdoing it. If I were to make one note it would be on your thesis. The last sentence seems more of a checklist of what will be discussed in the paper rather than a statement of the specific switch. I think if you could figure out a way to conceptualize your topic to one specific moment without having to list out all your main talking points it would make for a stronger thesis.
This is a very interesting introduction. It definitely pulls the audience in with a shocking fact–that the value of an education has fallen from what it used to be. I hope to see more of an expansion on the Great Recession in the background knowledge to show just how much it had affected the American economy and subsequently the view on college. I think this is an incredibly relevant topic to what we as college students are living through, and you can write more freely on such a personal topic. I am interested to see how you develop this.
Carolyn, I think your topic of choice is fascinating! It’s something that I haven’t really thought about because most people I know have gone/are going to college. For my own essay, I read a book about culture throughout the 1900s and one of the aspects of that included education during each decade, and I found it interesting to learn about how and why people started going to college in the first place, then how big events in United States history (the Vietnam War, being one example) drastically impacted what people thought about higher education and how many people really pursued it. I hope you’re able to address those shifts as well, in your essay, because I think they’re very comparable to how COVID-19 impacted college and higher education. Overall, I think this introduction is great and effectively sets up your topic, but I hope that you go into more detail about the most major shifts. Good job!