Jacob Joseph
2 April 2015
Mr. Rushing
1­AVID

Ivory Tower
Ivory Tower is a 2014 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by
Andrew Rossi. The film questions the value of higher education in an era when the price of college has increased more than any other service in the United States. It explores the different types of higher education and the many issues that students face in their journey.The film focuses on community colleges, four year universities, vocational schools, online courses, and less traditional forms of education, and argues that the high cost of tuition is at a breaking point. The documentary also delves into the loan debt crisis faced by college graduates and looks at how campuses are experimenting with ways to teach that don’t also bankrupt those enrolled. While the film focuses on these points, not only has it helped me a gain substantial amount of information regarding higher education in America, it has also made me question if I should continue in my dreams to aspire for more than a high school education. At the end of the film, I came to an answer, That answer is yes.
The driving force and principal question being answered by the documentary is:
Is
college worth the cost? Out of all of the many topic discussed in the documentary, this was the one that I paid most attention to. As I watched the film and took notes, I kept this question at the forefront of my analyzation. Ever since I could remember, I knew that once you graduate high

school, you pack up your things, move out, and go to a university to start your own life. But while you are a child you never take into consideration the all of the factors, you only look at the bigger picture and not the details. But now that I’m older and the picture is right in front of me, I see that the price of going to a university is worth hundred of thousand of dollars, and requires a lot of my time. I would have never guessed that one trillion dollars is the amount of student loan debt acquired by the higher education system in the Unites States. Hearing this number I contemplated how much I would be adding when I go to college.
As the film progressed, it touched on how the various universities are spending the accumulated money they get from their students. Whether this money was going toward a new academic building, residence hall, or recreational amenity, the money was going toward the school. And even though the money is going towards the schools, the cost of college tuition has risen roughly 1,100 percent since 1980. That is more than any other goods or service in the US economy. I knew that the career I aspired for required devoting many years of my life to higher education. But even though the cost increased, I still felt that to have a better life, that was part of the contract.
For much of American history, college has been sold as the key to a successful and bright future. As time goes on, it’s a key that’s becoming harder to pay for. By this key being harder to pay for, I am meaning that if you actually graduate and earn your degree, you are also earning thousands of dollars in student loans. More programs means more facilities, more facilities means more students. And all of it means more tuition. As stated previously, the cost of an education has increased more quickly in the past few decades than any other good or service.

And because federal money has been taken away from our country’s education, the loan movement has begun to increase at just the same rate, only in a shorter amount of time.
This documentary has truly helped me understand the extent to which higher education goes. Even though it should be about gaining a priceless education, its not only about that. Many factors that are behind the scenes of universities are coming to center stage. People are wondering why the system has changed so much since there parent went to college. I have the same question and concerns, but finding the answer won’t affect my decision. Education is priceless and knowledge is power. If I have to pay whatever amount of money to get a higher education, I will be willing to find a way.
Besides the documentary exposing many facts of how colleges have changed for the worse, TEDTalks speaker Julien Gordon also influenced my decision to continue and gain a higher education. Mr. Gordon talked about many changes and how as a new generation, we can graduate from college with a job that we love and less debt. His first claim was in order to successfully navigate a life of uncertainty in this fast­paced world, you need both book smart and street smarts. You can’t just go out into the world and rely on everything that you have learned from school to be successful. You have to have combine what you learned with what the world want you to know.
The second claim that Mr. Gordon makes is that we are “Generation Why?”. He calls us this because as a generation, we asks the tough questions. We ask, “Why are things the way they are?” and “Why can’t I do it this way?”. We need to ask ourselves why do we want to go to college. Is it for money, because college graduates make more than a high school graduate? Is it

to get a job so you can support yourself? Or is it to purely gain and learn more than what you were taught for 12 years?
Unlike past graduates, my generation I am competing with everyone in my age group, in the entire world. This is the effect of globalization and the expansion of the internet, and being
American does not give men any competitive advantage. Because the world of higher education has changed so much since our parents, and grandparents have attended colleges and universities, we as the next generation can no longer take “easy street”. We have to pave our own pathway, and Mr. Gordon helps us do this by using the 4.0 that really matters. This 4.0 consists of 2 parts and 4 capitals. The first part is internal resources. and that is my personal capital and intellectual capital. The second part is my external resources, and those are my social capital and financial capital. All in all, Mr. Gordon presented valuable information about how I can make my experience with higher education successful.
The two resources have helped me so much, but I know that every individual is unique. I can’t try to plan my life off of what other people say, or their experiences. I still want to continue down my path of higher education and will know what I have to do to be successful.

Works Cited
Gordon, Jullien, and TEDxMidwest. "How to Graduate College with a Job You Love &
Less Debt." YouTube. YouTube, 26 June 2012. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29tJAgc54RA>.
Ivory Tower. Dir. Andrew Rossi. Perf. Elizabeth Armstrong, Richard Arum, Jamshed Bharucha

and David Boone. Participant Media, 2014. DVD.