Colleges Advertising to Attract Applicants: Critiquing 'This Little Student Went to Market' - Essay Sample

Introduction

When the race to join colleges start, the institutions turn o advertising to attract applicants. Most of these institutions advertise to acquire more applicants for business purposes as opposed to the core mandate of schools of a transformation of the society and production of a wholistic community. This paper gives a detailed analysis of the article "This Little Student Went to Market." The discussion seeks to critic the document and bring to the limelight the primary concept the authors of this article sought to clarify to the audience.

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The authors in the article argue that the university focuses more on the creation of image and branding themselves at the expense of recruiting and dubbing the process advertisement. The colleges constitute a frantic race to gain a customer as compared to the production of competent products that suits the employment industry in different ways (Kirp and Holman). The authors present to the audience an expository type of writing that seeks to explain to the public the misrepresentations and half baked truths that the concept of higher education sells to the general public and the desperate students seeking to join the institutions of higher learning. The likelihood of students enrolment in the institutions stands at very minimal chances, and the schools continue luring students with financial aids, which they rarely offer for the students with higher enrollment slots.

The article also illuminates the reality that in the recent times, the concept of advertisement surpasses the core of colleges and the institution end up hiring image creators in pursuit to remain relevant in the competition possed by other institutions of higher learning (Kirp, and Holman). The schools forego the concept of equality and end up pampering the top students as top consumers whose preferences need satisfaction first.

The article presents evidence of the colleges showing aspects of competition to remain relevant in the higher learning sector through advertisements and offering of education standards that do not benefit the student. The main aim of these education providers entails the quest to remain relevant and overlooking the need for better services to the students (Kirp and Holman). There exist cases when Beavers group changed their name to Arcadia University and got into quarrels with Dickinson college. The two institutions got into a frantic race for the best university, and the school faced the danger of dropping in all the American magazines.

The Authors Reasoning

The authors present a fallacious argument that uses untrue facts from research carried out from various colleges and universities. The results also draw opinions from the students of the colleges, and these statistics help in the article's argument, and this case presents forms of biases in several ways. The instances of logics appear from the use of Dicsons instances where the institution employs projection model in determining the likelihood of students enrollment in the campus proves a fallacy (Kirp and Holman). These arguments present false information since the institution employs the projection model to estimate its class size, and in cases of adjustments, the school admits more students.

Kip and Holman present a misunderstanding of the concept of discount that applies both to the needy and the gift aid as opposed to the merit-based aid (Kirp and Holman). The reduction of the number of aided students by Dickinson for sustainability, the reduction included both the merit-based and the needy students. The author gives false information by assuming that the reduction constituted 20 per cent more than the aid of based students as compared to the needy students.

The case made by Holman and Kirp also employs the concept of omission. Dickinson gets exonerated for the move to reduce first age bracket students by half amount wherein real sense the correct percentage adds up to a third implying inconsistency in the statistics. These statistics imply that all first-generation students represent needy cases (Kirp and Holman). The statistics also neglect to recognise the fact that Dickinson had the highest number of first-generation scholars among the peers and this little attention attracts recognition due to the tripling intake of coloured students in the college.

The authors assume that most colleges do not offer quality education ut seek high-end students to better their performance and ride on the success story of these scholars. The public colleges and universities also resort in looking for such shortcuts to glory and creation of a performing record through the admission of bright students at the expense of other students (Kirp and Holman). The practice of encouraging more applicants and blocking them from accessing the higher education benefits on merits ranking presents an assumption that education represents the definition of success. The author bases his claims on the exploitation of the less fortunate students economically and assumes that higher education applies only for the financially able scholars in society.

The Authors' Language

The article applies a persuasive language which seeks to convince the audience the need to view the concept of higher education from a different perspective. The author tries to employ statistics and known facts obtained from research (Kirp and Holman). The language used seeks to convince the readers why they should not always find higher education concept as an eradication for poverty since the idea only appears as a reserve for the rich in society. The concept of merit and advertisement presents the primary argumentative language employed in the article.

Work Cited

Kirp, David, and Jeffrey Holman. "This Little Student Went To Market". The American Prospect, 2002, retrieved from https://prospect.org/features/little-student-went-market