Name: Samia Al Rayess

Article Critic

College is known as a place where someone can build their subject knowledge
and learn a variety of skills. Recently, with the rising costs of college tuitions,
many people view a college degree as irrelevant.This matter is discussed by
Archer(2013) in his article “College debt: necessary evil or Ponzi scheme?”.
Despite the fact that many people agree with the issue he discusses, his argument
cannot be agreed on due to many flaws.

In the article “College debt: necessary evil or Ponzi scheme?”, Arther(2013)

argues that college is not as worth as it used to be. To begin with, he highlights
that college leaves students with high loans and debts that they can’t pay.
Furthermore, a diploma does not provide a decent and a high paying job or many.
Finally, a person can gain more from a trade schools than college.

Archer relies on a variety of evidence to backup his claim appealing mostly to

logo and pathos. First, he provides a load of statistics like the one on the median
household income, a study done by Harvard School of Education and a fact about
the national student loan. Yet all of the above Logos lack resources which makes
them unreliable. In addition, there was a huge appeal to pathos through including
the readers by asking questions and uses emotionally loaded words as phrases
like “dead wrong”, “now what?”, “big losers”. This clearly shows how assertive
and accusatory Archer was. Despite the evidence being correctly related to his
grounds, the presence of illogical fallacies was a weak point in the article.
Comparing owning a house to owning a degree wasn’t the best way to start an
argument. Moreover, the writer highlights that a student would either leave
college with a loan or they will not find a good paying job, leaving the good
options aside and . Finally, he distracts the readers by focusing on attacking the
nation (“This is America!”).

Based on the above, the writer weakly backed his claim. First, the usage of
plenty of evidence without mentions any resources displays a lack of credibility.
Second, the constant contrast between the past college tuitions and today’s
weakens his article considering the difference between the past and present. In
addition, Archer’s judgement is clearly shaped by his personal opinion which
made the article less reliable. In brief, the writer’s direct attack on colleges led the
article to be less logical.

In conclusion, Archer’s claim that college is not worth it anymore is arguable

due to the lack of credibility. The argument could be stronger through some
changes. For example, he could add resources, be more objective and stick to the
topic by avoiding analogy.