Casual argument: definition, structure, and everyday reasoning

English Literature

Casual Argument

The current Pell grant system helps students pay for college. The system makes it easy to start college, but not to complete it. Thirty-seven percent of college student's end up dropping out, with thirty-five doing so within their first year. Most students who drop out do so during their first two years, yet they obtain almost as much aid in their freshman year as their senior year. This means the billions in Pell grants invested in these students' education goes wasted. Those who drop out have little to show for their efforts, with no degree, in debt and students can't even say they learned anything academic. A recent study suggests that because of the university focus on research over teaching, students don't actually learn until junior and senior years. This means dropouts walk away with little more than the right to check some college on paperwork (Poro, 2011).

The trouble comes about when students who are disadvantaged economically and want to go to college are academically subpar. What the Department of Education now does is just give these people loans as well as grants. What the Department of Education should do is to accompany the grants for these students with a caution that in the light of their records, success in college is problematical and an offer to make available programs to progress their chances of doing well at the college they wish to go to. Getting a grant should not be basis for contentment. Colleges need to set up remedial programs for underprepared grant students in order to reduce the dropout rate that now exists (Toby, 2010).

Giving grants to academically underprepared students to attend college and not helping them endure academically is heartless. It basically sets some Pell grant recipients up for failure and dropping out before finishing college, which is not what was intended in setting up these education grants for needy students. Unlike college commanded remedial programs, these programs would be considered for students whose prior academic records do not give good reason for federal education loans. They are on caution that getting a Pell grant does not mean that they are fully equipped to succeed. Students who genuinely accept the offer of help are much more likely to be successful. The financial burden of remediation is beyond the resources of many colleges. As a consequence, their efforts to repair shortages of student preparation lean toward remediation but are not demonstrably effective. Setting up separate programs for federal grant beneficiaries with academic deficiencies would alleviate colleges of part of their direct remedial burdens and help them economically to deal with their other students with remediation troubles more efficiently. The significance of these federally supported programs, tied as they would be to grants to needy students, is achievement in college, not just the repair of past deficiencies. Even though the money will come from the Department of Education, the program itself will be designed individually at each college under agreement with the Department, therefore providing an occasion for comparing programs that work better with programs that are not as effectual (Toby, 2010).

Research has found that community college enrollment increased by more than two hundred thousand students from 2008 to 2010, while the total number of Pell Grants increased by almost four hundred thousand during those academic years. Throughout that time, full-time corresponding enrollment, consisting of students who took twelve credit hours per semester, saw a fourteen percent increase, as compared with a nine percent increase in total enrollment at other institutions. In the summers of these years, full-time enrollment (FTE) grew by fifteen percent, while total enrollment saw a ten percent increase. Researchers have concluded that extended Pell grants appear to be enabling students to attend community colleges full-time, predominantly in the summer, and therefore are increasing drop out rates when these same students are not academically prepared (ISU researchers on team showing Pell Grant impact on community college expansion, 2011).

Because of the current economy many people are either going back to school and are choosing community colleges over four-year institutions because of money. This means that the enrollment in most community colleges is up. This also means that they amount of Pell grants that are being awarded to those students who are attending those colleges are also up. Many of these students are not prepared for college on an academic level. This is causing an increase in the drop out rate among those students because they are not able to perform at the academic levels that are required to continue their education.