The College Experience and the Students Who Strive for It

Whitt Bonner

Pierce

ENGL 1301

The college experience and the students who strive for it

In her article The Biggest Misconception About Today’s College Students, writer Gail Mellow expresses her concerns about how todays low-income college students are struggling to keep up with all the financial burdens that come along with attending college. But it’s not only the students who struggle, the community colleges they attend are in need of funding to provide resources to low-income students and their surrounding communities.

Through the use of common stereotypes about college students in the US, Mellow seemed to write for an affluent audience. An audience, who may have attended college themselves, but were fortunate enough to have no need to work a fulltime job while trying to afford a family and college tuition. She adopts a persuasive tone to inform her readers and sway their view by sharing the struggles of the student’s everyday life in contrast to the readers. Mellows voices her view by stating:                

 “Correcting society’s perception of who attends college in the United States is the first step toward helping these hard-working and ambitious students, eager to make a better life for themselves and their families.”  (Mellow)

         Throughout her article, Mellow appeals to her audience using a logical approach while acknowledging an emotional connection to the struggling students. She provides her readers with statistics from research groups such as the Urban Institute, Wisconsin Hope Lab, the U.S. Department of Education, as well as statistics from her own community college. Allowing her reader to become knowledgeable to the impacts of the students and the community colleges they attend.

Mellow also uses her own personal observations to talk about some of the students at La Guardia community college where she is President. She states that many of her own students at La Guardia indeed struggle on a daily basis.

“…Many of our students start their days by taking their child to day care on the bus. Then they take the subway to college, then ride a different bus to their job…”         (Mellow)

With burdens like these, her students aren’t able to support themselves, their children, and their school work. Getting a degree could help some of these students raise their annual income by nearly 20 percent than with just having a high school diploma. But going to school full time isn’t option for these students, so for these students that struggle could continue for two to six years.

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