The Right Way to Downsize American Higher Education article review

Part one

Rachel Lu, in her article “The Right Way to Downsize American Higher Education,” argues that the university system in America is facing challenges due to its misplaced priorities of focusing more on brand-imaging, virtue-signaling, and administrative vanity projects rather than core university functions like teaching and research. According to Rachel Lu, enrollment in higher education is significantly reducing in the United States and could potentially have a devastating impact on the competitive nature of the United States in the global market. These downsize partly due to the rising cost of university education in the country. Rachel Lu notes that investments made on amenities, administration, and athletic in universities are the primary areas that need significant downsize in order to bring back sanity into the higher education system in America. Rachel Lu concludes her article by calling for the public to take this opportunity to demand the university system to clean up their act and fulfill the function which they were founded.

Lauren Weber and Chip Cutter, in their article “A Wake-Up Call for Grads: Entry-Level Jobs Aren’t So Entry Level Any More,” comprehensively explores how the current job markets in the United States has changed and only suit skilled and competent workforce. Lauren Weber and Chip Cutter argue that advancement in technology and outsourcing has taken over some of the jobs that grandaunts used to do some years ago at their entry-level into the job market. As a result, starter jobs for job seekers have become more complex and demanding. Today, workers are not given the time to hone their skills and instead are thrown into the fray where employers expect them to have the maturity and strong communication skills from the word go. However, the authors also note that these new trend has been partly beneficial to job seekers as they have the opportunity to climb their professional ladders quickly. Lauren Weber and Chip Cutter conclude their essay by calling for employers to allow new job seekers to earnest their strengths in order to be productive in the workforce.

Part 2

From these articles, I believe that the education system in the United States has failed to produce competent grandaunts that are employable in the current job market. Citing from Rachel Lu, the higher education system in the United States have failed to invest more on core function like teaching and research that can prepare grandaunts for the current job market. Instead, the education system is more focused on brand-imaging, virtue-signaling, and administrative vanity projects. Similarly, citing the work of Lauren Weber and Chip Cutter, employers have done away with entry-level jobs that provide job seekers with to hone their skills and are now looking for a skilled and competent workforce.

Brainstorm Questions

Question 1

I can personally relate to Lauren Weber, and Chip Cutter’s article “A Wake-Up Call for Grads: Entry-Level Jobs Aren’t So Entry Level Any More.” During my internship training at a particular marketing company in California, on my first day, I was tasked with the responsibility of making sales call to specific clients that demanded inquiries about the company’s new products. This was challenging and unusual to me because I had expected in the first month to data entry jobs before taking other responsibilities, leave alone making sales calls.

Question 2

Institution downsizing, especially in the education sector, is of great concern to me because we need to invest our money and time into projects that can add significant value to our students’ skills and knowledge in order to make them more competitive in the job market.