TOW #10 "Give the kid a holiday break"

This article is from the opinion section of today's Philadelphia Inquirer and is written by Nicolaus Mills, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College. He argues, convincingly, in my opinion, that professors should be lenient in allowing college students to miss class during Thanksgiving week. Among his reasons he explains that travel home the day before Thanksgiving is very expensive for college students and that the amount of time that they are getting to spend with their parents is decreasing. This argument may resonate with me because I am a student with a sibling in college who has taken off school to visit family in the past. I think Mills's argument is valid and convincing to those who may come from a different situation, though he does base his argument on the assumption that his audience accepts that family is one of the most important things in life. Mill's comes to the piece with an established ethos as a college professor, and he reminds his audience of his experience in the first sentence by writing "Years ago, when I began college teaching," (Mills par. 1). Then he goes on to explain how he began by expecting his students to be in class the days before the holiday, but has changed his mind because of two major reasons: the expense students must cover to travel home and the decreasing amount of time they are able to spend with their parents. This, he believes, is due to the increasing amount of education costs students are required to pay and the their need to work to pay these off and get ahead. Mills cites statistics of the cost of college to impress upon his audience with how big a task the paying off college tuition actually is. He also makes a comparison between current college conditions and the ones he encountered as a college student. In the sixties "when I was in college and grad school, my friends and I came home most summers. We got jobs, lived with our parents, and used the money we saved to help pay for our educations. We entered the job market debt-free," (Mills par. 4). Mills compares this to the situation of college students today, who may not find a job at home and must live elsewhere to work, who need to take internships to get ahead, and who finish college with thousands of dollars in debt that they must pay off. Thus Mills concludes that college students should be allowed and enabled to spend time with their parents while they can, because the demands of entering the work force and paying of education debts may inhibit that valuable time in the future.