Essay ProposalEgypt PringleyWorking Title: The Balance of Credentials and FearTopic: I plan to look into the idea of How our credential based society has caused us to take drastic measures. Why do we put ourselves through so much in order to obtain a piece of paper or say that we attended a certain school?Thesis: The motive behind people inquiring large amounts of debt is the trust in the way our society works. It is understood that our workforce is paper and credential based and that fact resonates so strongly in the American people that we collectively as a country willing put ourselves into debt in the name of education..Research Question: Because many Americans are fully aware of the debt that they will inquire by attending certain universities why do they continue to do so? How strong are the desires of the middle class to stay afloat and who controls what credentials are necessary in the workforce? Are these perhaps the same people that have control over the universities?Theoretical Frame: The people that set the credentials necessary to thrive in the workforce are the same people that control the tuition prices of higher education. They are out to get us!
· Readings: Barbara Ehrenrich of the Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (more sources on other blog post)
· Topic Sentences: The connection of Privatization and the middle class fear is the fact that privatization uses the fear to continue the cycle
· Examples of how we are a credential based society and a name dropping society: people are going into debt to go to better schools because of the “name”
· The Intertwining idea of fear in different aspects of higher education
· Solutions? How do we isolate this fear and how do we prevent private investors from profiting off of it
- How does the fear connect to our credential hungry society?
- fear and irrationality
- talk about the “false claims act” brought up in Times Article
42. 6
(Jan 2012): 20-21.