Informal Writing #5

               For this assignment, I chose to compare and contrast Why Does College Cost So Much – And Why Do So Many Pundits Get It Wrong? by Cathy Davidson and There’s No College Tuition ‘Bubble’: College Education is Underpriced by Jeffrey Dorfman.

                In the first reading, Cathy Davidson’s argument is that college costs are too high, but not because higher education is a luxury and universities are increasing tuition costs uncontrollably for no specific reason. Her opinion is that there is not enough funding for public education to serve the public demand of higher education. Davidson uses all three rhetorical appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos, although none of them in excess. For logos, Davidson chose to quote the prices of some of the more expensive and cheaper universities around the country. This encourages the audience, primarily college students and their parents, to be persuaded using logical reasoning (in this case, statistics of prices). She applies pathos by stating the following sentence: “Blaming the ‘high cost of education’ misses this inescapable fact:  We aren't overcharging most of America's college-age youth.  We are short-changing them.” This quote appeals emotionally to the target audience by strengthening the argument for the need of more funding for higher public education. Lastly, the author uses ethos by making clear and concise arguments and being published on a credible and trustworthy website. This allows the audience to be sure of her credibility and being persuaded that her arguments are the truth. This was an interesting subject and an opinion that I have never considered before. However, I think that the author could have used more rhetorical appeals to make her argument stronger, especially the use of logos through statistical analysis.

                The second essay that I read for this assignment, written by Jeffrey Dorfman, was similar to the first in the way that the subject was also on college tuition and the target audience would be college students and their parents. However, he held a contrasting opinion. Dorfman believes that college education is not overpriced at all – in fact, his opinion is that the cost for college tuition is actually underpriced, given the standards of the current economic marketplace. Dorfman uses logos in the form of statistics, quoting the very low acceptance percentage of applicants of students for universities like Harvard and Stanford. This logical persuasive approach is continued where Dorfman argues that, in most businesses where you have such an overwhelming demand for the product, prices for that product would be raised. Like the first article, Dorfman uses ethos by making clear and concise arguments and being published on a credible and trustworthy website. Another difference between the two essays is that Davidson used pathos and a more emotional argument than Dorfman, who used primarily a logical persuasive approach.

                It is my opinion that the price of college tuition is overpriced, but I think that Jeffrey Dorfman held a stronger argument of the contrasting opinion that college tuition is actually underpriced. His essay was strongly supported by rhetorical appeals, but I was still not persuaded to change my opinion on the matter.