College = Sucess?

"Yeah, this album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothing...Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight Time to get paid...Considered a fool cause I dropped out of high school..." (Biggie Smalls). These lyrics are from rapper Biggie Smalls' song titled "Juicy"; the song implies that he "made it." The real question is "made" what? Many rappers, celebrities, athletes and other, people who are famous use this term. "I made it", this term is suppose to mean that the certain person became successful in life, but in reality this term means "I did not receive any education passed high school or in some cases receive my high school diploma but I still make more money than you". To be successful in modern this modern era requires an entirely new level of ingenuity which cannot be learned in school, guaranteed by a degree or even learned through college experiences. Louis Menand's "The Graduates" explores interesting facts about college students and graduates, which show that college, in many cases, can be a waste of time. He tells interesting facts about how irrelevant, college is to be successful in these tough economic times, for example he makes the point that college these days have become a business rather than an educational institutions, he refers to this when he makes the point that higher education in the United States is the most expensive in the world.

Facts that Louis Menand makes, presents a new thinking towards colleege. One example that comes to the mind to the reader is; it does not make any sense that a player in the NBA, NFL, or MLB has a higher salary than a surgeon, or even people such as the cast of Jersey shore. These types of famous and rich people usually have not received any form of education passed high school and if they have they do not use the degree that they have obtained. Menand's speech, in a sense, tells the graduates that although they have a college degree they will still have a hard time finding a job let alone be considered "successful" in society's point of view. "Can you name fifty colleges? Even if you could name a thousand, there would be three thousand you hadn't heard of." (Menand 279).This quote shows that Menand believes college is "overblown" and that even if everybody has graduated from college you are not guaranteed to be "successful" in life because there are so many other people graduating from other colleges who possibly either know more or less than you. "a host of competitive organizations, including traditional trade and business schools, private corporate "universities," private vendors and universities, are expanding their market efforts and, with the advent of distance learning, delivering instruction, training, and learning within the community college's traditionally "protected" service area." (Leslie). This is the fact that Menand made, there are too many colleges and most if not all are ran like a business, and since there are many not everyone can be "successful".

What people in society perceive being successful is a person who earns a high salary and live in famous cities such as Miami, New York or Los Angeles. The problem is that more times than not these successful people that society looks up to are uneducated or in fact do not use the education that they received. Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino is a classic example of how success nowadays requires more than what education or a college experience can offer. Aside from what people think of the reality show he appears in and how he portrays himself, Sorrentino did go to the College of New Jersey. He graduated college in 2004 and eventually landed a job. The problem was that he got fired and had to as a result applied for being in the MTV reality show "Jersey Shore". This show has made this man into a millionaire, made popular by mostly teenagers who go to school, which is the irony. In the year 2010 his salary rose up to 5 million dollars and he made appearances in the show "Dancing with the Stars" (Berman). He was able to find this success in his life not through his college education but rather his ingenuity and his way of perceiving the world, regardless of what others think of him.

It safely can be said that if Sorrention could have gone back in time, he probably would have never considered going to college; he would have applied to a reality show as soon as he graduated high school. This man is an example that to be successful nowadays it takes a certain ingenuity that cannot be obtained by having a diploma or even a short college experience. Instead of applying to new jobs using his degree and going to interviews, he decided to apply to a reality show that is watched by teenagers and does not require any college education. Louis Menand shows amazing statistics about college that people can still be successful without going to college.

In "The Graduates" Louis Menand compares college to a sleepover experience in which a child is shocked and awed that in his friend's mom makes a different tuna-fish sandwich than his mom, the toilet paper is pink, and there are no feathers in the pillows. Because the child is extremely shocked of this environment he vomits the tuna fish sandwich therefore his mom comes to pick him up. Menand then begins the next paragraph by comparing college this child's sleepover experience.(Menand 278)

College, from which some 1.5 million people will graduate this year, is, basically, a sleep over with grades. In college, it is not so cool to throw up or for your mother to come and take you home. But plenty of students do throw up, and undergo other forms of mental and bodily distress, and plenty take time off school or drop out. Almost half the people who go to college never graduate. Except in the case of a few highfliers and a somewhat larger number of inveterate slackers, college is a stressful experience. (Menand 278)

What Menand explains about college, comparing it to a child sleepover, is that college is stressful, like the sleepover because the child had to adjust to how his friend lived, and for this reason almost half of the people who go to college never graduate. He then goes on to say that of those who do graduate most of them are "slackers." Which can be interpreted as people who never got involved in the college lifestyle, this would consist of joining clubs or doing on campus activities and have learned virtually nothing in the classroom. Menand also goes on to say only a few of those who graduate are "highfliers". The "highfliers" that Menand refers to are the people who did learn something in the classroom. Half of people in college do not graduate and