Chavez, Jasmin: Credentialing

            The present generation believes that going to college is essential especially if they wish to attend professional schools. They also believe in the “American Dream,” where anyone from any social class can thrive in society through hard work. However, this vision of America being “the land of opportunity” is being called into question and attacked by the article Death by Degrees. The article describes universities as money machines that only care about enriching themselves and not about making the public more knowledgeable. This article creates doubt in the middle class college students who strive to attend professional schools and to better themselves in society. The article shows how difficult it is for lower and middle class students to move up in society.

            For example, if college students plan to attend medical or law school it is a requirement for them to obtain bachelor’s degrees before attending professional school. “The corporate-sponsored consolidation of the medical establishment changed undergraduate education from a choice to a necessity,” this quote from Death by Degrees shoes how becoming a doctor became a time and financial burden. One example was the adoption of the Johns Hopkins model of medical training, where it became the only path available for inspiring doctors to follow. With all the obstacles college students must confront it seems that it is the money obstacle that is most difficult to overcome, and with society only allowing one path to becoming a doctor makes the path all the more difficult for middle/lower class students to achieve their goals.

It seems that the American Dream is fading fast in our society because money is becoming more and more the key factor in education as stated in Death of Degrees. “Those who want to join have to pay to play, and may never recover from the entry fee,” this explains how people wanting to better themselves must pay for college/school before they ever step foot onto the playing field. The quotation also shows that many do not overcome the financial part making education in America less accessible to the lower/middle class strata because fewer of them can afford to pay.

Middle/lower class college students were brought up in the American Dream and to believe that they could achieve anything through hard work, but the society we live in today has made the dream nearly unreachable. With universities only worried about money and not their impact on the public who knows if the American Dream will still be alive much longer.