Saturday, May 23, 2020

The Prices Of College Tuitions - 967 Words

The trend continues with the skyrocketing prices of college tuitions. This is not an uncommon issue the days of college tuition being affordable are slowly fading into the past. This conundrum has brought to light the idea of using tax money to help pay tuition. This idea has vast potential, but can it reach its potential. This is an issue that affects many people thus there is a multitude of literature on the issues of tax money being used for tuition. The literature ranges from an online to radio and through these mediums will provide the views on this issue. That range from the college and the use of funding from sports to the student. (NEEDS HEADING) Rise in tuition is often seen as a school trying to gauge as much as money as they can from the students. A view most forgotten in this argument is that of the school. The school has to have money to feed the students and house the students plus teach them. Those three things are a necessity for the students. Schools would face lawsuit after lawsuit if they failed to feed the students. The school also has to pay its employees and hire new ones that leave. The online article best value schools provide a view from a schools stance by informing the reader on issues schools face. The author points out the common issues. The more students the more money needed to support them and if a school wants to make money it will take as many as it can get (unknown). The schools also rely on government funding to help defray some of theShow MoreRelatedThe Price Of College Tuition1162 Words   |  5 PagesWe’re at a point of our high school career when we are looking at colleges and thinking about possible careers we want to pursue in the near future. But has the price tag on certain colleges have you thinking â€Å"I can’t afford that†, and made you look the other way? Well, I am here today to show you that the price of college tuition is an investment and will benefit you in your future careers. My opponent here might say that college costs have been increasing, or prestigious universities have pricedRead MoreRising Tuition Pri ces1384 Words   |  6 Pagesorder to get a good paying job, a college degree is required. More people are attending college in order to get better paying jobs, but is going to college worth a good job with rising tuitions across the nation? According to College Board, from 2002-2003 to 2012-2013, the average tuition and fees for a private institution rose about an average of 2.4% every year. As tuition prices increases every year, it affects millions of college students. It affects college students who have to use governmentRead MoreThe Cost of Tuition Among Colleges and Universities in Highly Diversified and Indefinite926 Words   |  4 PagesThe cost of tuition among colleges and universities is highly diversified and indefinite. Students shouldn’t be financial problems that are associated with the high tuition cost for their education because it creates unnecessary stress and financial problems. The student’s primary concern should be their academic performance a nd learning. The tuition fee includes extracurricular expenses such as lifestyle amenities that may not be essential toward the student education yet they are still being chargedRead MoreAmerican University Should Seriously Consider Lowering Tuition Costs892 Words   |  4 Pages The price of a Soft Taco Supreme at Taco Bell is $1.49. The price of attending New York University (NYU) is about $61,997 (Jacobs, 2013). That is approximately 41,609 Soft Taco Supremes from Taco Bell, enough to feed someone for 38 years if they ate one for every meal. While most universities in the USA do not cost quite as much as NYU, tuition is still very high, even for in-state public schools. If tuition continues to rise, the amount of students that cannot afford to go to college will increaseRead MoreShould College Tuition Be Paid?884 Words   |  4 PagesIn America college tuition has quadrupled in the last 35 years. College administrators like to tell the story that baby boomers paid their college tuition from the money they made during summer break. A few years later colleges decided to raise tuition price because people wanted to get a college degree. Colleges were seeing that people wanted to go to college they decided to raise the prices and make business out of it. In Germany, however college tuition is free, and by doing this Germany getsRead MoreThe Tuition Increase Affected Enrollment Rate1473 Words   |  6 Pagesthe Board of Ursinus College, raised its tuition from $19,331 to $23,460. This turned out to be a 17.6% increase. Surprisingly, the tuition increase proved to be a positive change for Ursinus College. The college received more than 200 applicants than its previous year (Brickley, Smith and Zimmerman, 2009, p. 110). Other regional institutions such as University of Notre Dame, Bryn Mawr College and Rice University also experienced a similar trend once they increased their tuition rates (Brickley, SmithRead MoreDriving The Cost Of Higher Education1063 Words   |  5 PagesDriving the Cost of Higher Education It seems as though the correct step for young people to follow after high school is college. We are constantly told that if we wish to be successful, then we must get a degree. However, with the rising costs, it’s seeming like fewer people are willing or able to take the next step into higher education. Cries about the sheer insanity of the rising costs blur into a cacophony of anger and frustration. The discussion of whether it’s even worth the cost have alsoRead MoreAffordability Of Our Education : Is A College Education Worth The Cost?1729 Words   |  7 Pagesfew decades the tuition fee for most public and private colleges increased by 250 percent while income increased by 16 percent (Politico, 2013). The statistics have since then become a trend that has now evolved each year, hence; making it difficult for parents to send their children to school that can cause them to miss out on great opportunities (Dorfman, 2013). According to Justine Draeger (2009) â€Å"W ith the cost of college rising, many have asked a central question: Is a college education worthRead MoreCollege Tuition1075 Words   |  5 Pagesacknowledged them through correct documentation.† Student Loans Today college tuition prices are rising. Paying for college can often be a stressful responsibility. A college education is very important for many students, but when stressing on how to pay for college gets in the way, it becomes more of a burden. Kim Clark effectively states the rising prices of college tuition in her article, â€Å"The Surprising Causes of Those College Tuition Hikes.† Clark states that the cost of attending a public universityRead MoreTuition Increases at University of Pennsylvania962 Words   |  4 PagesIn 1914, the tuition cost to go to the University of Pennsylvania at the Wharton School estimated at about $150 with a general fee of $10. This does not include other expenses such as room and board- which estimated to $180 and textbooks- estimated to $10. It is now 2014, one century later, and the tuition cost to go the exact university and school is $40,594, general fee of $3,772, technology fee of $716, and a recreation fee of $324. Once more, this d oes not include the expenses of residence halls

Monday, May 18, 2020

The First Form Of Education - 1411 Words

What was the first form of education in China? I have traced the first form of education in China back to the Shang Dynasty (16-1405 BCE). Education was necessary to achieve desired positions in the civil service (the administrative system of the government who ran the daily affairs in China) which were the key to wealth. By establishing an educational system for the young of the elite, the positions in the civil service became a cycle of the designated offspring being the most educated and the educated being the most elite people in China. Most schools were divided into political entities to gain social influence. The main focuses in the education of young Chinaman were the teachings of Confucian. The curriculum was based on the philosophy of Confucianism. Confucianism is a form of Humanism (a devotion of the humanities) with the main focus on educating people in the beliefs, values and practices that govern life within the family and between family and state. The teachings of Confu cianism were taught from four books and the five classics. The four books are Chinese classic texts that illustrated the core value and belief systems of Confucianism. The five classics were key text of Confucianism; these were sacred books of traditional Chinese beliefs. Book one of the four books was the Analects of Confucius (the saying of ideas recognized only by the Chinese), Book two was Mencius, Mencius was a fourth-century BCE (before the common/current/Christian era) Chinese philosopherShow MoreRelatedPlato Education Reform Essay1574 Words   |  7 Pagesthat â€Å"education is the craft concerned with..turning around and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it† (Plato 190). In this paper, I will propose Plato’s reform for the American education system through analyzing his account of education, the nature and different kinds of education using the allegory of the cave, its correlation to kallipolis, the nature of the soul, and his metaphysical theory of forms. I shall argue that Plato would propose the American education systemRead MoreThe First Secondary School For Four Years After The End Of World War II894 Words   |  4 PagesNations mandate, Britain occupied Tanganyika and Zanzibar, at the same time adding subsidies to the education system previously under German control. By the contrast, the people in Tanganyika did not appreciate the colonial education, they instead, viewed it as an interruption to their agriculture routine as it intended to profit the colonial regime instead of people (Ingham, 2013). In the meantime, education fashioned aristocracies and servers, where indigenous people saved as servants to the colonialRead MorePedagogy Of The Oppressed By Paulo Freire1215 Words   |  5 PagesHow do we sum up what education is? Is it just the practice of memorization, or is it something we obtain through experience? Paulo Freire does a good job analyzing education in chapter 2 of â€Å"Pedagogy of the Oppressed†. He reveals that there are two main types of education (banking education and problem-posing education) and shows how they contradict each other. By first giving a description of how both styles work, by showing how each one mirrors society, and then by showing the contradictionsRead MoreThe Colonial Rule Of Under The United Nations ( Un ) Mandate880 Words   |  4 Pagesmandate, Britain occupied Tanganyika and Zanzibar, at the same time adding subsidies to the education system previously under German control. In contrast, the people in Tanganyika did not appreciate the colonial education; they instead, viewed it as an interruption of their agricultural routines, as it favored the colonial regime’s benefit, instead of the indigenous people (Ingham, 2013). In the meantime, education fashioned aristocracies and servers, where indigenous became servants to the colonial rulersRead MoreEssay about Business Education726 Words   |  3 Pages Argumentative Draft Formal Education Is the Key to Success nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The advancement of technology in the last decade has increased the demand for Americans to seek higher and formal education. No longer do we live in the age of manual labor, family owned amp; operated conveniences, but rather a computerized age. Thirty-years ago job seekers could find stable and secure work that would ensure stability and a prosperous future. Those white collar jobs could be obtainedRead More Dance In Public School Curricular Essay1490 Words   |  6 Pages DANCE IN PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULA nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Dancing is a form of art that allows many children to express themselves through body motion while developing many skills. Children throughout the world have been dancing since the day they began walking. When a child to take their first steps and puts together the simplest combination of movements, that would be considered as dancing. Music also plays a major role in the development of children understanding dance, because it is canRead MoreEvolution Of Education : How Much Has Education1545 Words   |  7 PagesEvolution of Education How much has education developed in the past 3,000 years? From the earliest civilizations, to Greece and Rome, to present day education has been around, and evolving. Education started off very basic, learning everyday tasks, all the way to military strategy. Then it blossomed into writing, rhetoric, science, debate, and as if it wasn’t complex enough it developed from there. However, what time period had the most rigorous education, answers to the question may vary, but logicRead MoreThe Education Of Distance Education929 Words   |  4 Pageslike online learning or distance education, thoughts of digitized content, and images of different types of technological media frequently come to mind. However, traditionally it has been revealed that distance education is actually not a new phenomenon at all. Historically speaking one could actually uncover that distance education was practiced in the United States in the form of correspondence schools as early as the eighteenth century. In fact, one of the first educational programs to provideRead MoreAmerican Higher Education Of The Deaf And Dumb At Columbia University1413 Words   |  6 Pagesestablishment of the division for the deaf and dumb at Columbia University in 1864. American Higher education has been influenced and responsive to changes in federal civil rights protections for students with disabilities while facing both internal and external pressures on how to deal with persons with disabilities. The establishment of students with disabilities in an American higher education context found its start with the admission of students with sensory disabilities, primarily deaf andRead MoreAnalytical Essay Michelle Obama1034 Words   |  5 Pagesï » ¿Delprà ¸ve 2, opgave B Analytical essay of †Remarks by the First Lady at Education Event with DC High School Sophomores† The speech was held by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, at the DC High School as an educational event for the sophomores. The overriding subject of the speech is education which is an area Michelle Obama and her husband, Barack Obama, has spent a lot of time and resources on. After the introduction of the speech she speaks of a goal that her husband has set for America. She tells

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Anselm s Ontological Argument On The Existence Of God

Anselm’s Ontological argument sets out to not only prove God’s existence, but to show that God’s existence is self-evident. Similar to other ontological arguments, it uses a priori knowledge to argue its validity, meaning that the propositions made are derived from internal reasoning instead of sense experience. The argument begins with Anselm defining the term God as â€Å"that, than which nothing greater can be conceived† (pg.26). Although simple, once this term is accepted Anselm believes he has successfully proven the existence of God. This becomes clearer with further analysis. If God is a being that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, it naturally follows that God would possess all properties of greatness. An example of this would be omnipotence. Omnipotence would be such a property because it is greater to have ultimate power than to have limited power, therefore, God being the greatest conceivable being would possess the property of omnip otence. Likewise, it is greater for something to exist in both reality and the mind, than to exist only in the mind. Thus, just as omnipotence was ascribed to God so must the property of existence, for if God did not exist, he would be lacking a great making property, and consequently would be only a great being, but not the greatest conceivable being. Existence being am inherent property of God’s essence is why Anselm believes God’s existence to be self-evident. However, as Anselm states â€Å"the fool has said in his heart, ThereShow MoreRelatedValidity And Effectiveness Of Anselm s Ontological Argument On The Existence Of God1095 Words   |  5 Pagesexamining the validity and effectiveness of Anselm s Ontological Argument on the existence of God. I will begin by presenting Anselm’s Ontological Argument from the ground up. This includes the argument, basic idea, initial assumptions, Anselm’s definition of god, and Anselm s distinctions which are needed to completely understand the nature of my argument. Furthermore, I will present concepts of logic and define what makes an argument valid, and circular argument because they are necessary for understandingRead MoreThe Existence Of God : Ontological Argument Essay1696 Words   |  7 PagesThe question of the existence of God has troubled mankind for t housands of years. Many philosophers and theologians have always searched for prove whether God exists. Many of them constructed valid arguments which support theist believes. The existence of God was once never denied, as His presence, His existence was evident in miracles and the people s faith. But time and the advancement of modern science have called God and His very nature into question. The Perfect Being has become the sourceRead MoreThe First Chapter Of Anselm s Argument961 Words   |  4 Pages The first chapter of Anselm s Monologian focuses on Anselm s argument that there is something that is the best, the greatest, the highest, of all existing things. It is through this unknown something that all things possess their goodness. According to the argument he puts forth, the goodness of things in this world must be caused and must therefore stem from one thing that is good, or from many. If goods can be comparable as goods, it follows that there must be some general and uni fied way ofRead MoreExploring the Ontological Argument1746 Words   |  7 PagesExploring the Ontological Argument For nearly a thousand years, the ontological argument has captured the attention of philosophers. The ontological argument was revolutionary in its sequence from thought to reality. It was an argument that did not require any corresponding experiment in reality; it functioned without the necessity of empirical data. Despite flaws and problems found in some ontological arguments and the objections raised to those arguments, ontological arguments still provide aRead MoreAnshelm ¬Ã‚ ¥s Proof of God ¬Ã‚ ¥s Existence1466 Words   |  6 PagesThe question about the existence of God or, more generally speaking, of a supernatural entity that steers the course of the world, is probably as old as humanity itself. Many great philosophers were concerned with this basic and yet so important question which remains to be a controversial issue to this day! In the following I will commit myself to the above-mentioned question by firstly reconstructing Anselm ´s proof of God ´s existence an d secondly considering his position in the light of the critiqueRead MoreOntological Argument For The Existence Of God1083 Words   |  5 Pagesdiscuss the argument of Anselms ontological argument for the existence of god. His basis of his argument being an analytical breakdown for the reason fot gods exsistence. While also establishing that Anselms inferences found with his use of deduction and logical means to prove the existence of a higher being are indeed true. In addition I will defend Anselms argument by depicting other people’s objections against his argument. Specifically the argument made by Gaunilo, who disagreed with Anselms argumentRead MoreThe Arguments For The Existence Of God1056 Words   |  5 Pages16 November 2015 Rough Draft for The arguments for the Existence of God. The question Does God Exist? is a well-known asked question in the world. Most people believe they know the answer to it. The religious people would say, well of course he does, while the non-religious people or atheist would say no He does not exist. Because evil exist and chaos exists, God cannot be all-powerful. In the modern world, there are many different opinions as to whether a God exists or not. This has been an issueRead MoreThe Argument Of The Existence Of God1480 Words   |  6 PagesThe arguments trying to â€Å"prove† the existence of God are by far some of the most controversial philosophical arguments out there. When some of the people who created these philosophies it was illegal or even punishable by death to even question his existence, let alone try to come up with a logical explanation to â€Å"prove† he is real. The two main arguments used today are the ontological argument and the cosmological argument. Neither one of these arguments are correct nor incorrect; moreover, theRead MoreEssay on Anselm’s Ontological Argument1217 Words   |  5 PagesThe ontological argument for God’s existence is a work of art resulting from philosophical argumentation. An ontological argument for the existence of God is one that attempts the method of a priori proof, which utilizes intuition and reason alone. The term a priori refers to deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is the type of reasoning that proceeds from general principles or premises to derive particular information. The argument works by examining the concept of God, and arguing that it impliesRead MoreOntological Argument Is Not Reliant On An Posteriori933 Words   |  4 Pages Ontological Argument Saint Anselm created the â€Å"Ontological Argument†. Saint Anselm was the archbishop of Canterbury. The premise of Saint Anselm’s Ontological Argument is that, no greater being can be conceived than God. The Ontological Argument is an a priori or deductive argument. An a priori argument does not have to be supported by real or factual evidence just by reason without observation. Thus, the Ontological Argument is not reliant on an a posteriori premise. An a posteriori argument

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

The Holocaust - 1225 Words

Sabrina Liu Mrs. Osmonson English 2 8 May 2014 The Holocaust The Holocaust was one of the world’s darkest hours, a mass murder conducted in the shadows of the world’s most deadly war. The Holocaust also known as Shoah, means a systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews during the WWII by German Nazi. Adolf Hitler the leader of Nazis, who afraid Jews would take power over Germans; also, many Germans felt they were mistreated by the lost so Jews were like a scapegoat from the previous war lose so they can treat them inhumanely (â€Å"The Holocaust†). Millions of Jews were sent to the concentration camps around Europe. In there, they were tortured and killed. Many horrible things happened†¦show more content†¦The jewelries would help him to tread a bad conditions for living, but Haskel put the father in-law to death. Betrays from own people is more painful from the crime that Nazis did to the Jews. After Jews were released from concentration camps, they were still suffering pains and guilt from their terrible experience, even the next generations had bad influence on it. In the book Maus, Anja felt sorry and guilty for her dead parents and siblings, plus she was a sensitive person so she committed suicide and let her son carried guilt after she passed (Spiegelam). It is very lucky and difficult can live through the Holocaust, and Anja was that lucky survivor, but ridiculously, she could alive under the horrible conditions that Nazis put on her, but she committed suicide after all the pain had passed. The lasting effect on Anja brought more damage than she went in the concentrating camp. Not only sensitive mother can have that strong lasting effect, but also Vladek that smart father totally changed his personality. When Artie’s friend left him, Vladek didn’t say thing to comfort him, â€Å"Friends? Your friends?† (2). Life after the Holocaust didn’t b ring much happiness than before the war. Vladek also became cheap and doubtful. The lasting effect also has on the next generation. Artie is the son of Vladek and Anja, he was growing up in a very negative condition, he had night mare about the SS will take him away from school and putShow MoreRelatedHolocaust : Holocaust And Holocaust1247 Words   |  5 Pages History of holocaust Holocaust Term Paper Jewish people were tortured, abused, and subjected through horrific unfathomable situations by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Despite all of the unpragmatic hardships Jews all over Europe faced, many stayed true to their faith and religion. There are numerous stories in which Jewish people tried to keep the roots of their religion well knowing the risk of torture and death. The never ending fear of Jewish people living in the Ghettos and trying to surviveRead MoreHolocaust : The Holocaust And Holocaust1247 Words   |  5 PagesWe all know the horrific experience, the Jews faced during the Holocaust and after it. Even after some survived the holocaust physically, they will always be tormented and haunted by those gruesome memories from those inhumane actions that were directed towards them. After, all they went through it is obvious the holocaust affected the survivor s drastically, but how about the future generations of Jews. In which I believe the holocaust did in fact affect the second generation, but the third generationRead MoreThe Holocaust : A Holocaust930 Words   |  4 PagesThe Holocaust is one of the most well known genocides that have taken place. It had destroyed millions of Jewish lives and has caused a historical pain to these people that cannot be taken away till this day. The Holocaust can be seen from Goldhagen’s perspective of eliminationism. It did have all of the five steps and yet there was uniqueness about the Holocaust. The first one that can be looked at is the concentration camp itself. The history of the camp and the stories are still being unfoldedRead MoreHolocaust : The Holocaust And Holocaust1328 Words   |  6 PagesThe Holocaust The holocaust is a term originally referred to a religious rite in which an offering is incinerated. But today, has another meaning; is any human disaster of great magnitude and importance, mainly refers to the extermination of the Jews who lived in Europe conducted by the Germany government. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Jewish community was improving their situation and their rights equalized to those of other citizens in most European countries. But despite this, these peopleRead MoreHolocaust : An Examination Of The Holocaust1117 Words   |  5 Pages In the summer of 1944 the soviets freed the Jewish from the concentration camps like Belzec, Treblinka and the most infamous killing camp Auschwitz. In an examination of the holocaust I will converse the effects of the holocaust and their worlds response, to its victims and perpetrators. The aftermath of the holocaust shows the mass Genocide people found, as Germany cures itself it showed civilization that we should not let someone manipulate us, and let them change our ideals and beliefs. I willRead MoreThe Holocaust Of The Jewish Holocaust858 Words   |  4 PagesThe Jewish Holocaust is often described as the largest, most gruesome holocaust in history. It began in 1933 with the rise of Adolf Hitler and lasted nearly twelve years until the Nazi Party were defeated by the Allied powers in 1945. The expression â€Å"Holocaust† originated from Greece which is translated to â€Å"sacrifice by fire†. This is a very proper name considering the slaughter and carnage of Jewi sh people inflicted by the Nazis. In addition to the Jewish, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexualRead MoreThe holocaust959 Words   |  4 Pagesï » ¿Year 10 Humanities 2013 Unit 2: World War 2 Task 2 The Holocaust The Causes of the Holocaust The Process of the Holocaust In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Germany would occupy during World War II. By 1945, the Germans killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the Final Solution, the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger toRead MoreThe Holocaust971 Words   |  4 Pagesof the Holocaust The Holocaust was one of the most horrible and dreaded events in history. Millions of Jews were killed, leaving many families devastated and hopeless. With the goal of racial purity, Adolf Hitler- along with many other Germans believed the Jews caused the defeat of their country, and led the Nazis to the elimination of Jews. For this reason, â€Å"Even in the early 21st century, the legacy of the Holocaust endures†¦as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day† (The Holocaust). LaterRead MoreHolocaust Final Draft : Holocaust1495 Words   |  6 PagesAnthony Harmon Holocaust Final draft World History The holocaust started when Adolf Hitler became Germany’s dictator, and they started the organization called the Nazis. They started by terrorizing the Jewish community in Germany, then eventually put them all into concentration camps. In one of the bigger camps, they experimented and took newborn babies away from the nursing mothers and they were seeing how long they would survive without feeding. Between 1945 and 1985, about 5,000 NaziRead MoreThe Holocaust And The Jewish Holocaust3822 Words   |  16 PagesNoam Hiltzik Holocaust Dr. John Christian Bailey Term Paper Hundreds and thousands of people are shoved into a confined space, very few resources are granted to them. The little money that they have left can barely buy food for a week. The rations that are provided for several days barely can last one. These people are forced to perform backbreaking labor, and those who cannot work, do not get to eat and thus cannot survive. This is what the Jews of Europe experienced in the Ghettos. This stage

The Subtle Knife Chapter Six Free Essays

Chapter Six Lighted Fliers â€Å"Grumman?† said the black-bearded fur trader. â€Å"From the Berlin Academy? Reckless. I met him five years back over at the northern end of the Urals. We will write a custom essay sample on The Subtle Knife Chapter Six or any similar topic only for you Order Now I thought he was dead.† Sam Cansino, an old acquaintance and a Texan like Lee Scoresby, sat in the naphtha-laden, smoky bar of the Samirsky Hotel and tossed back a shot glass of bitingly cold vodka. He nudged the plate of pickled fish and black bread toward Lee, who took a mouthful and nodded for Sam to tell him more. â€Å"He’d walked into a trap that fool Yakovlev laid,† the fur trader went on, â€Å"and cut his leg open to the bone. Instead of using regular medicines, he insisted on using the stuff the bears use – bloodmoss – some kind of lichen, it ain’t a true moss. Anyway, he was lying on a sledge alternately roaring with pain and calling out instructions to his men – they were taking star sights, and they had to get the measurements right or he’d lash them with his tongue, and boy, he had a tongue like barbed wire. A lean man, tough, powerful, curious about everything. You know he was a Tartar, by initiation?† â€Å"You don’t say,† said Lee Scoresby, tipping more vodka into Sam’s glass. His daemon, Hester, crouched at his elbow on the bar, eyes half-closed as usual, ears flat along her back. Lee had arrived that afternoon, borne to Nova Zembla by the wind the witches had called up, and once he’d stowed his equipment he’d made straight for the Samirsky Hotel, near the fish-packing station. This was a place where many Arctic drifters stopped to exchange news or look for employment or leave messages for one another, and Lee Scoresby had spent several days there in the past, waiting for a contract or a passenger or a fair wind, so there was nothing unusual in his conduct now. And with the vast changes they sensed in the world around them, it was natural for people to gather and talk. With every day that passed came more news: the river Yenisei was free of ice, and at this time of year, too; part of the ocean had drained away, exposing strange regular formations of stone on the seabed; a squid a hundred feet long had snatched three fishermen out of their boat and torn them apart†¦ And the fog continued to roll in from the north, dense and cold and occasionally drenched with the strangest imaginable light, in which great forms could be vaguely seen, and mysterious voices heard. Altogether it was a bad time to work, which was why the bar of the Samirsky Hotel was full. â€Å"Did you say Grumman?† said the man sitting just along the bar, an elderly man in seal hunter’s rig, whose lemming daemon looked out solemnly from his pocket. â€Å"He was a Tartar all right. I was there when he joined that tribe. I saw him having his skull drilled. He had another name, too – a Tartar name; I’ll think of it in a minute.† â€Å"Well, how about that,† said Lee Scoresby. â€Å"Let me buy you a drink, my friend. I’m looking for news of this man. What tribe was it he joined?† â€Å"The Yenisei Pakhtars. At the foot of the Semyonov Range. Near a fork of the Yenisei and the – I forget what it’s called – a river that comes down from the hills. There’s a rock the size of a house at the landing stage.† â€Å"Ah, sure,† said Lee. â€Å"I remember it now. I’ve flown over it. And Grumman had his skull drilled, you say? Why was that?† â€Å"He was a shaman,† said the old seal hunter. â€Å"I think the tribe recognized him as a shaman before they adopted him. Some business, that drilling. It goes on for two nights and a day. They use a bow drill, like for lighting a fire.† â€Å"Ah, that accounts for the way his team was obeying him,† said Sam Cansino. â€Å"They were the roughest bunch of scoundrels I ever saw, but they ran around doing his bidding like nervous children. I thought it was his cursing that did it. If they thought he was a shaman, it’d make even more sense. But you know, that man’s curiosity was as powerful as a wolf’s jaws; he would not let go. He made me tell him every scrap I knew about the land thereabouts, and the habits of wolverines and foxes. And he was in some pain from that damn trap of Yakovlev’s; leg laid open, and he was writing the results of that bloodmoss, taking his temperature, watching the scar form, making notes on every damn thing†¦ A strange man. There was a witch who wanted him for a lover, but he turned her down.† â€Å"Is that so?† said Lee, thinking of the beauty of Serafina Pekkala. â€Å"He shouldn’t have done that,† said the seal hunter. â€Å"A witch offers you her love, you should take it. If you don’t, it’s your own fault if bad things happen to you. It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can’t do is choose neither.† â€Å"He might have had a reason,† said Lee. â€Å"If he had any sense, it will have been a good one.† â€Å"He was headstrong,† said Sam Cansino. â€Å"Maybe faithful to another woman,† Lee guessed. â€Å"I heard something else about him; I heard he knew the whereabouts of some magic object, I don’t know what it might be, that could protect anyone who held it. Did you ever hear that story?† â€Å"Yes, I heard that,† said the seal hunter. â€Å"He didn’t have it himself, but he knew where it was. There was a man who tried to make him tell, but Grumman killed him.† â€Å"His daemon, now,† said Sam Cansino, â€Å"that was curious. She was an eagle, a black eagle with a white head and breast, of a kind I’d never set eyes on, and I didn’t know how she might be called.† â€Å"She was an osprey,† said the barman, listening in. â€Å"You’re talking about Stan Grumman? His daemon was an osprey. A fish eagle.† â€Å"What happened to him?† said Lee Scoresby. â€Å"Oh, he got mixed up in the Skraeling wars over to Bering-land. Last I heard he’d been shot,† said the seal hunter. â€Å"Killed outright.† â€Å"I heard they beheaded him,† said Lee Scoresby. â€Å"No, you’re both wrong,† said the barman, â€Å"and I know, because I heard it from an Inuit who was with him. Seems that they were camped out on Sakhalin somewhere and there was an avalanche. Grumman was buried under a hundred tons of rock. This Inuit saw it happen.† â€Å"What I can’t understand,† said Lee Scoresby, offering the bottle around, â€Å"is what the man was doing. Was he prospecting for rock oil, maybe? Or was he a military man? Or was it something philosophical? You said something about measurements, Sam. What would that be?† â€Å"They were measuring the starlight. And the aurora. He had a passion for the aurora. I think his main interest was in ruins, though. Ancient things.† â€Å"I know who could tell you more,† said the seal hunter. â€Å"Up the mountain they have an observatory belonging to the Imperial Muscovite Academy. They’d be able to tell you. I know he went up there more than once.† â€Å"What d’you want to know for, anyway, Lee?† said Sam Cansino. â€Å"He owes me some money,† said Lee Scoresby. This explanation was so satisfying that it stopped their curiosity at once. The conversation turned to the topic on everyone’s lips: the catastrophic changes taking place around them, which no one could see. â€Å"The fishermen,† said the seal hunter, â€Å"they say you can sail right up into that new world.† â€Å"There’s a new world?† said Lee. â€Å"As soon as this damn fog clears we’ll see right into it,† the seal hunter told them confidently. â€Å"When it first happened, I was out in my kayak and looking north, just by chance. I’ll never forget what I saw. Instead of the earth curving down over the horizon, it went straight on. I could see forever, and as far as I could see, there was land and shoreline, mountains, harbors, green trees, and fields of corn, forever into the sky. I tell you, friends, that was something worth toiling fifty years to see, a sight like that. I would have paddled up the sky into that calm sea without a backward glance; but then came the fog†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Ain’t never seen a fog like this,† grumbled Sam Cansino. â€Å"Reckon it’s set in for a month, maybe more. But you’re out of luck if you want money from Stanislaus Grumman, Lee; the man’s dead.† â€Å"Ah! I got his Tartar name!† said the seal hunter. â€Å"I just remembered what they called him during the drilling. It sounded like Jopari.† â€Å"Jopari? That’s no kind of name I’ve ever heard of,† said Lee. â€Å"Might be Nipponese, I suppose. Well, if I want my money, maybe I can chase up his heirs and assigns. Or maybe the Berlin Academy can square the debt. I’ll go ask at the observatory, see if they have an address I can apply to.† The observatory was some distance to the north, and Lee Scoresby hired a dog sledge and driver. It wasn’t easy to find someone willing to risk the journey in the fog, but Lee was persuasive, or his money was; and eventually an old Tartar from the Ob region agreed to take him there, after a lengthy bout of haggling. The driver didn’t rely on a compass, or he would have found it impossible. He navigated by other signs – his Arctic fox daemon for one, who sat at the front of the sledge keenly scenting the way. Lee, who carried his compass everywhere, had realized already that the earth’s magnetic field was as disturbed as everything else. The old driver said, as they stopped to brew coffee, â€Å"This happen before, this thing.† â€Å"What, the sky opening? That happened before?† â€Å"Many thousand generation. My people remember. All long time ago, many thousand generation.† â€Å"What do they say about it?† â€Å"Sky fall open, and spirits move between this world and that world. All the lands move. The ice melt, then freeze again. The spirits close up the hole after a while. Seal it up. But witches say the sky is thin there, behind the northern lights.† â€Å"What’s going to happen, Umaq?† â€Å"Same thing as before. Make all same again. But only after big trouble, big war. Spirit war.† The driver wouldn’t tell him any more, and soon they moved on, tracking slowly over undulations and hollows and past outcrops of dim rock, dark through the pallid fog, until the old man said: â€Å"Observatory up there. You walk now. Path too crooked for sledge. You want go back, I wait here.† â€Å"Yeah, I want to go back when I’ve finished, Umaq. You make yourself a fire, my friend, and sit and rest a spell. I’ll be three, four hours maybe.† Lee Scoresby set off, with Hester tucked into the breast of his coat, and after half an hour’s stiff climb found a clump of buildings suddenly above him as if they’d just been placed there by a giant hand. But the effect was only due to a momentary lifting of the fog, and after a minute it closed in again. He saw the great dome of the main observatory, a smaller one a little way off, and between them a group of administration buildings and domestic quarters. No lights showed, because the windows were blacked out permanently so as not to spoil the darkness for their telescopes. A few minutes after he arrived, Lee was talking to a group of astronomers eager to learn what news he could bring them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog. He told them about everything he’d seen, and once that topic had been thoroughly dealt with, he asked about Stanislaus Grumman The astronomers hadn’t had a visitor in weeks, and they were keen to talk. â€Å"Grumman? Yes, I’ll tell you something about him,† said the Director. â€Å"He was an Englishman, in spite of his name. I remember – â€Å" â€Å"Surely not,† said his deputy. â€Å"He was a member of the Imperial German Academy. I met him in Berlin. I was sure he was German.† â€Å"No, I think you’ll find he was English. His command of that language was immaculate, anyway,† said the Director. â€Å"But I agree, he was certainly a member of the Berlin Academy. He was a geologist – â€Å" â€Å"No, no, you’re wrong,† said someone else. â€Å"He did look at the earth, but not as a geologist. I had a long talk with him once. I suppose you’d call him a paleo-archaeologist.† They were sitting, five of them, around a table in the room that served as their common room, living and dining room, bar, recreation room, and more or less everything else. Two of them were Muscovites, one was a Pole, one a Yoruba, and one a Skraeling. Lee Scoresby sensed that the little community was glad to have a visitor, if only because he introduced a change of conversation. The Pole had been the last to speak, and then the Yoruba interrupted: â€Å"What do you mean, a paleo-archaeologist? Archaeologists already study what’s old; why do you need to put another word meaning ‘old’ in front of it?† â€Å"His field of study went back much further than you’d expect, that’s all. He was looking for remains of civilizations from twenty, thirty thousand years ago,† the Pole replied. â€Å"Nonsense!† said the Director. â€Å"Utter nonsense! The man was pulling your leg. Civilizations thirty thousand years old? Ha! Where is the evidence?† â€Å"Under the ice,† said the Pole. â€Å"That’s the point. According to Grumman, the earth’s magnetic field changed dramatically at various times in the past, and the earth’s axis actually moved, too, so that temperate areas became ice-bound.† â€Å"How?† said one of the Muscovites. â€Å"Oh, he had some complex theory. The point was, any evidence there might have been for very early civilizations was long since buried under the ice. He claimed to have some photograms of unusual rock formations.† â€Å"Ha! Is that all?† said the Director. â€Å"I’m only reporting, I’m not defending him,† said the Pole. â€Å"How long had you known Grumman, gentlemen?† Lee Scoresby asked. â€Å"Well, let me see,† said the Director. â€Å"It was seven years ago I met him for the first time.† â€Å"He made a name for himself a year or two before that, with his paper on the variations in the magnetic pole,† said the Yoruba. â€Å"But he came out of nowhere. I mean, no one had known him as a student or seen any of his previous work†¦Ã¢â‚¬  They talked on for a while, contributing reminiscences and offering suggestions as to what might have become of Grumman, though most of them thought he was probably dead. While the Pole went to brew some more coffee, Lee’s hare daemon, Hester, said to him quietly: â€Å"Check out the Skraeling, Lee.† The Skraeling had spoken very little. Lee had thought he was naturally taciturn, but prompted by Hester, he casually glanced across during the next break in the conversation to see the man’s daemon, a snowy owl, glaring at him with bright orange eyes. Well, that was what owls looked like, and they did stare; but Hester was right, and there was a hostility and suspicion in the daemon that the man’s face showed nothing of. And then Lee saw something else: the Skraeling was wearing a ring with the Church’s symbol engraved on it. Suddenly he realized the reason for the man’s silence. Every philosophical research establishment, so he’d heard, had to include on its staff a representative of the Magisterium, to act as a censor and suppress the news of any heretical discoveries. So, realizing this, and remembering something he’d heard Lyra say, Lee asked: â€Å"Tell me, gentlemen – do you happen to know if Grumman ever looked into the question of Dust?† And instantly a silence fell in the stuffy little room, and everyone’s attention focused on the Skraeling, though no one looked at him directly. Lee knew that Hester would remain inscrutable, with her eyes half-closed and her ears flat along her back, and he put on a cheerful innocence as he looked from face to face. Finally he settled on the Skraeling, and said, â€Å"I beg your pardon. Have I asked about something it’s forbidden to know?† The Skraeling said, â€Å"Where did you hear mention of this subject, Mr. Scoresby?† â€Å"From a passenger I flew across the sea a while back,† Lee said easily. â€Å"They never said what it was, but from the way it was mentioned it seemed like the kind of thing Dr. Grumman might have inquired into. I took it to be some kind of celestial thing, like the aurora. But it puzzled me, because as an aeronaut I know the skies pretty well, and I’d never come across this stuff. What is it, anyhow?† â€Å"As you say, a celestial phenomenon,† said the Skraeling. â€Å"It has no practical significance.† Presently Lee decided it was time to leave; he had learned no more, and he didn’t want to keep Umaq waiting. He left the astronomers to their fogbound observatory and set off down the track, feeling his way along by following his daemon, whose eyes were closer to the ground. And when they were only ten minutes down the path, something swept past his head in the fog and dived at Hester. It was the Skraeling’s owl daemon. But Hester sensed her coming and flattened herself in time, and the owl’s claws just missed. Hester could fight; her claws were sharp, too, and she was tough and brave. Lee knew that the Skraeling himself must be close by, and reached for the revolver at his belt. â€Å"Behind you, Lee,† Hester said, and he whipped around, diving, as an arrow hissed over his shoulder. He fired at once. The Skraeling fell, grunting, as the bullet thudded into his leg. A moment later the owl daemon swooped with a clumsy fainting movement to his side, and half lay on the snow, struggling to fold her wings. Lee Scoresby cocked his pistol and held it to the man’s head. â€Å"Right, you damn fool,† he said. â€Å"What did you try that for? Can’t you see we’re all in the same trouble now this thing’s happened to the sky?† â€Å"It’s too late,† said the Skraeling. â€Å"Too late for what?† â€Å"Too late to stop. I have already sent a messenger bird. The Magisterium will know of your inquiries, and they will be glad to know about Grumman – â€Å" â€Å"What about him?† â€Å"The fact that others are looking for him. It confirms what we thought. And that others know of Dust. You are an enemy of the Church, Lee Scoresby. By their fruits shall ye know them. By their questions shall ye see the serpent gnawing at their heart†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The owl was making soft hooting sounds and raising and dropping her wings fitfully. Her bright orange eyes were filming over with pain. There was a gathering red stain in the snow around the Skraeling; even in the fog-thick dimness, Lee could see that the man was going to die. â€Å"Reckon my bullet must have hit an artery,† he said. â€Å"Let go my sleeve and I’ll make a tourniquet.† â€Å"No!† said the Skraeling harshly. â€Å"I am glad to die! I shall have the martyr’s palm! You will not deprive me of that!† â€Å"Then die if you want to. Just tell me this – â€Å" But he never had the chance to complete his question, because with a bleak little shiver the owl daemon disappeared. The Skraeling’s soul was gone. Lee had once seen a painting in which a saint of the Church was shown being attacked by assassins. While they bludgeoned his dying body, the saint’s daemon was borne upward by cherubs and offered a spray of palm, the badge of a martyr. The Skraeling’s face now bore the same expression as the saint’s in the picture: an ecstatic straining toward oblivion. Lee dropped him in distaste. Hester clicked her tongue. â€Å"Shoulda reckoned he’d send a message,† she said. â€Å"Take his ring.† â€Å"What the hell for? We ain’t thieves, are we?† â€Å"No, we’re renegades,† she said. â€Å"Not by our choice, but by his malice. Once the Church learns about this, we’re done for anyway. Take every advantage we can in the meantime. Go on, take the ring and stow it away, and mebbe we can use it.† Lee saw the sense, and took the ring off the dead man’s finger. Peering into the gloom, he saw that the path was edged by a steep drop into rocky darkness, and he rolled the Skraeling’s body over. It fell for a long time before he heard any impact. Lee had never enjoyed violence, and he hated killing, although he’d had to do it three times before. â€Å"No sense in thinking that,† said Hester. â€Å"He didn’t give us a choice, and we didn’t shoot to kill. Damn it, Lee, he wanted to die. These people are insane.† â€Å"I guess you’re right,† he said, and put the pistol away. At the foot of the path they found the driver, with the dogs harnessed and ready to move. â€Å"Tell me, Umaq,† Lee said as they set off back to the fish-packing station, â€Å"you ever hear of a man called Grumman?† â€Å"Oh, sure,† said the driver. â€Å"Everybody know Dr. Grumman.† â€Å"Did you know he had a Tartar name?† â€Å"Not Tartar. You mean Jopari? Not Tartar.† â€Å"What happened to him? Is he dead?† â€Å"You ask me that, I have to say I don’t know. So you never know the truth from me.† â€Å"I see. So who can I ask?† â€Å"You better ask his tribe. Better go to Yenisei, ask them.† â€Å"His tribe†¦ you mean the people who initiated him? Who drilled his skull?† â€Å"Yes. You better ask them. Maybe he not dead, maybe he is. Maybe neither dead nor alive.† â€Å"How can he be neither dead nor alive?† â€Å"In spirit world. Maybe he in spirit world. Already I say too much. Say no more now.† And he did not. But when they returned to the station, Lee went at once to the docks and looked for a ship that could give him passage to the mouth of the Yenisei. Meanwhile, the witches were searching too. The Latvian queen, Ruta Skadi, flew with Serafina Pekkala’s company for many days and nights, through fog and whirlwind, over regions devastated by flood or landslide. It was certain that they were in a world none of them had known before, with strange winds, strange scents in the air, great unknown birds that attacked them on sight and had to be driven off with volleys of arrows; and when they found land to rest on, the very plants were strange. Still, some of those plants were edible, and they found rabbits that made a tasty meal, and there was no shortage of water. It might have been a good land to live in, but for the spectral forms that drifted like mist over the grasslands and congregated near streams and low-lying water. In some lights they were hardly there at all, just visible as a drifting quality in the light, a rhythmic evanescence, like veils of transparency turning before a mirror. The witches had never seen anything like them before, and mistrusted them at once. â€Å"Are they alive, do you think, Serafina Pekkala?† said Ruta Skadi as the witches circled high above a group of the things that stood motionless at the edge of a tract of forest. â€Å"Alive or dead, they’re full of malice,† Serafina replied. â€Å"I can feel that from here. And unless I knew what weapon could harm them, I wouldn’t want to go closer than this.† The Specters seemed to be earthbound, without the power of flight, luckily for the witches. Later that day, they saw what the Specters could do. It happened at a river crossing, where a dusty road went over a low stone bridge beside a stand of trees. The late-afternoon sun slanted across the grassland, drawing an intense green out of the ground and a dusty gold out of the air, and in that rich oblique light the witches saw a band of travelers making for the bridge, some on foot, some in horse-drawn carts, two of them riding horses. Serafina caught her breath: these people had no daemons, and yet they seemed alive. She was about to fly down and look more closely when she heard a cry of alarm. It came from the rider on the leading horse. He was pointing at the trees, and as the witches looked down, they saw a stream of those spectral forms pouring across the grass, seeming to flow with no effort toward the people, their prey. The people scattered. Serafina was shocked to see the leading rider turn tail at once and gallop away, without staying to help his comrades, and the second rider did the same, escaping as fast as he could in another direction. â€Å"Fly lower and watch, sisters,† Serafina told her companions. â€Å"But don’t interfere till I command.† They saw that the little band contained children as well, some riding in the carts, some walking beside them. And it was clear that the children couldn’t see the Specters, and the Specters weren’t interested in them; they made instead for the adults. One old woman seated on a cart held two little children on her lap, and Ruta Skadi was angered by her cowardice: because she tried to hide behind them, and thrust them out toward the Specter that approached her, as if offering them up to save her own life. The children pulled free of the old woman and jumped down from the cart, and now, like the other children around them, ran to and fro in fright, or stood and clung together weeping as the Specters attacked the adults. The old woman in the cart was soon enveloped in a transparent shimmer that moved busily, working and feeding in some invisible way that made Ruta Skadi sick to watch. The same fate befell every adult in the party apart from the two who had fled on their horses. Fascinated and stunned, Serafina Pekkala flew down even closer. There was a father with his child who had tried to ford the river to get away, but a Specter had caught up with them, and as the child clung to the father’s back, crying, the man slowed down and stood waist-deep in the water, arrested and helpless. What was happening to him? Serafina hovered above the water a few feet away, gazing horrified. She had heard from travelers in her own world of the legend of the vampire, and she thought of that as she watched the Specter busy gorging on – something, some quality the man had, his soul, his daemon, perhaps; for in this world, evidently, daemons were inside, not outside. His arms slackened under the child’s thighs, and the child fell into the water behind him and grabbed vainly at his hand, gasping, crying, but the man only turned his head slowly and looked down with perfect indifference at his little son drowning beside him. That was too much for Serafina. She swooped lower and plucked the child from the water, and as she did so, Ruta Skadi cried out: â€Å"Be careful, sister! Behind you – â€Å" And Serafina felt just for a moment a hideous dullness at the edge of her heart, and reached out and up for Ruta Skadi’s hand, which pulled her away from the danger. They flew higher, the child screaming and clinging to her waist with sharp fingers, and Serafina saw the Specter behind her, a drift of mist swirling on the water, casting about for its lost prey. Ruta Skadi shot an arrow into the heart of it, with no effect at all. Serafina put the child down on the riverbank, seeing that it was in no danger from the Specters, and they retreated to the air again. The little band of travelers had halted for good now; the horses cropped the grass or shook their heads at flies, the children were howling or clutching one another and watching from a distance, and every adult had fallen still. Their eyes were open; some were standing, though most had sat down; and a terrible stillness hung over them. As the last of the Specters drifted away, sated, Serafina flew down and alighted in front of a woman sitting on the grass, a strong, healthy-looking woman whose cheeks were red and whose fair hair was glossy. â€Å"Woman?† said Serafina. There was no response. â€Å"Can you hear me? Can you see me?† She shook her shoulder. With an immense effort the woman looked up. She scarcely seemed to notice. Her eyes were vacant, and when Serafina pinched the skin of her forearm, she merely looked down slowly and then away again. The other witches were moving through the scattered wagons, looking at the victims in dismay. The children, meanwhile, were gathering on a little knoll some way off, staring at the witches and whispering together fearfully. â€Å"The horseman’s watching,† said a witch. She pointed up to where the road led through a gap in the hills. The rider who’d fled had reined in his horse and turned around to look back, shading his eyes to see what was going on. â€Å"We’ll speak to him,† said Serafina, and sprang into the air. However the man had behaved when faced with the Specters, he was no coward. As he saw the witches approach, he unslung the rifle from his back and kicked the horse forward onto the grass, where he could wheel and fire and face them in the open; but Serafina Pekkala alighted slowly and held her bow out before laying it on the ground in front of her. Whether or not they had that gesture here, its meaning was unmistakable. The man lowered the rifle from his shoulder and waited, looking from Serafina to the other witches, and up to their daemons too, who circled in the skies above. Women, young and ferocious, dressed in scraps of black silk and riding pine branches through the sky – there was nothing like that in his world, but he faced them with calm wariness. Serafina, coming closer, saw sorrow in his face as well, and strength. It was hard to reconcile with the memory of his turning tail and running while his companions perished. â€Å"Who are you?† he said. â€Å"My name is Serafina Pekkala. I am the queen of the witches of Lake Enara, which is in another world. What is your name?† â€Å"Joachim Lorenz. Witches, you say? Do you treat with the devil, then?† â€Å"If we did, would that make us your enemy?† He thought for a few moments, and settled his rifle across his thighs. â€Å"It might have done, once,† he said, â€Å"but times have changed. Why have you come to this world?† â€Å"Because the times have changed. What are those creatures who attacked your party?† â€Å"Well, the Specters†¦Ã¢â‚¬  he said, shrugging, half-astonished. â€Å"Don’t you know the Specters?† â€Å"We’ve never seen them in our world. We saw you making your escape, and we didn’t know what to think. Now I understand.† â€Å"There’s no defense against them,† said Joachim Lorenz. â€Å"Only the children are untouched. Every party of travelers has to include a man and a woman on horseback, by law, and they have to do what we did, or else the children will have no one to look after them. But times are bad now; the cities are thronged with Specters, and there used to be no more than a dozen or so in each place.† Ruta Skadi was looking around. She noticed the other rider moving back toward the wagons, and saw that it was, indeed, a woman. The children were running to meet her. â€Å"But tell me what you’re looking for,† Joachim Lorenz went on. â€Å"You didn’t answer me before. You wouldn’t have come here for nothing. Answer me now.† â€Å"We’re looking for a child,† said Serafina, â€Å"a young girl from our world. Her name is Lyra Belacqua, called Lyra Silvertongue. But where she might be, in a whole world, we can’t guess. You haven’t seen a strange child, on her own?† â€Å"No. But we saw angels the other night, making for the Pole.† â€Å"Angels?† â€Å"Troops of them in the air, armed and shining. They haven’t been so common in the last years, though in my grandfather’s time they passed through this world often, or so he used to say.† He shaded his eyes and gazed down toward the scattered wagons, the halted travelers. The other rider had dismounted now and was comforting some of the children. Serafina followed his gaze and said, â€Å"If we camp with you tonight and keep guard against the Specters, will you tell us more about this world, and these angels you saw?† â€Å"Certainly I will. Come with me.† The witches helped to move the wagons farther along the road, over the bridge and away from the trees where the Specters had come from. The stricken adults had to stay where they were, though it was painful to see the little children clinging to a mother who no longer responded to them, or tugging the sleeve of a father who said nothing and gazed into nothing and had nothing in his eyes. The younger children couldn’t understand why they had to leave their parents. The older ones, some of whom had already lost parents of their own and who had seen it before, simply looked bleak and stayed dumb. Serafina picked up the little boy who’d fallen in the river, and who was crying out for his daddy, reaching back over Serafina’s shoulder to the silent figure still standing in the water, indifferent. Serafina felt his tears on her bare skin. The horsewoman, who wore rough canvas breeches and rode like a man, said nothing to the witches. Her face was grim. She moved the children on, speaking sternly, ignoring their tears. The evening sun suffused the air with a golden light in which every detail was clear and nothing was dazzling, and the faces of the children and the man and woman too seemed immortal and strong and beautiful. Later, as the embers of a fire glowed in a circle of ashy rocks and the great hills lay calm under the moon, Joachim Lorenz told Serafina and Ruta Skadi about the history of his world. It had once been a happy one, he explained. The cities were spacious and elegant, the fields well tilled and fertile. Merchant ships plied to and fro on the blue oceans, and fishermen hauled in brimming nets of cod and tunny, bass and mullet; the forests ran with game, and no children went hungry. In the courts and squares of the great cities ambassadors from Brasil and Benin, from Eireland and Corea mingled with tabaco sellers, with commedia players from Bergamo, with dealers in fortune bonds. At night masked lovers met under the rose-hung colonnades or in the lamp-lit gardens, and the air stirred with the scent of jasmine and throbbed to the music of the wire-strung mandarone. The witches listened wide-eyed to this tale of a world so like theirs and yet so different. â€Å"But it went wrong,† he said. â€Å"Three hundred years ago, it all went wrong. Some people reckon the philosophers’ Guild of the Torre degli Angeli, the Tower of the Angels, in the city we have just left, they’re the ones to blame. Others say it was a judgment on us for some great sin, though I never heard any agreement about what that sin was. But suddenly out of nowhere there came the Specters, and we’ve been haunted ever since. You’ve seen what they do. Now imagine what it is to live in a world with Specters in it. How can we prosper, when we can’t rely on anything continuing as it is? At any moment a father might be taken, or a mother, and the family fall apart; a merchant might be taken, and his enterprise fail, and all his clerks and factors lose their employment; and how can lovers trust their vows? All the trust and all the virtue fell out of our world when the Specters came.† â€Å"Who are these philosophers?† said Serafina. â€Å"And where is this tower you speak of?† â€Å"In the city we left – Cittagazze. The city of magpies. You know why it’s called that? Because magpies steal, and that’s all we can do now. We create nothing, we have built nothing for hundreds of years, all we can do is steal from other worlds. Oh, yes, we know about other worlds. Those philosophers in the Torre degli Angeli discovered all we need to know about that subject. They have a spell which, if you say it, lets you walk through a door that isn’t there, and find yourself in another world. Some say it’s not a spell but a key that can open even where there isn’t a lock. Who knows? Whatever it is, it let the Specters in. And the philosophers use it still, I understand. They pass into other worlds and steal from them and bring back what they find. Gold and jewels, of course, but other things too, like ideas, or sacks of corn, or pencils. They are the source of all our wealth,† he said bitterly, â€Å"that Guild of thieves.â⠂¬  â€Å"Why don’t the Specters harm children?† asked Ruta Skadi. â€Å"That is the greatest mystery of all. In the innocence of children there’s some power that repels the Specters of Indifference. But it’s more than that. Children simply don’t see them, though we can’t understand why. We never have. But Specter-orphans are common, as you can imagine – children whose parents have been taken; they gather in bands and roam the country, and sometimes they hire themselves out to adults to look for food and supplies in a Specter-ridden area, and sometimes they simply drift about and scavenge.† â€Å"So that is our world. Oh, we managed to live with this curse. They’re true parasites: they won’t kill their host, though they drain most of the life out of him. But there was a rough balance†¦ till recently, till the great storm. Such a storm it was! It sounded as if the whole world was breaking and cracking apart; there hadn’t been a storm like that in memory.† â€Å"And then there came a fog that lasted for days and covered every part of the world that I know of, and no one could travel. And when the fog cleared, the cities were full of the Specters, hundreds and thousands of them. So we fled to the hills and out to sea, but there’s no escaping them this time wherever we go. As you saw for yourselves.† â€Å"Now it’s your turn. You tell me about your world, and why you’ve left it to come to this one.† Serafina told him truthfully as much as she knew. He was an honest man, and there was nothing that needed concealing from him. He listened closely, shaking his head with wonder, and when she had finished, he said: â€Å"I told you about the power they say our philosophers have, of opening the way to other worlds. Well, some think that occasionally they leave a doorway open, out of forgetfulness; I wouldn’t be surprised if travelers from other worlds found their way here from time to time. We know that angels pass through, after all.† â€Å"Angels?† said Serafina. â€Å"You mentioned them before. They are new to us. Can you explain them?† â€Å"You want to know about angels?† said Joachim Lorenz. â€Å"Very well. Their name for themselves is bene elim, I’m told. Some call them Watchers, too. They’re not beings of flesh like us; they’re beings of spirit. Or maybe their flesh is more finely drawn than ours, lighter and clearer, I wouldn’t know; but they’re not like us. They carry messages from heaven, that’s their calling. We see them sometimes in the sky, passing through this world on the way to another, shining like fireflies way, way up high. On a still night you can even hear their wingbeats. They have concerns different from ours, though in the ancient days they came down and had dealings with men and women, and they bred with us, too, some say.† â€Å"And when the fog came, after the great storm, I was beset by Specters in the hills behind the city of Sant’Elia, on my way homeward. I took refuge in a shepherd’s hut by a spring next to a birch wood, and all night long I heard voices above me in the fog, cries of alarm and anger, and wingbeats too, closer than I’d ever heard them before; and toward dawn there was the sound of a skirmish of arms, the whoosh of arrows, and the clang of swords. I daredn’t go out and see, though I was powerfully curious, for I was afraid. I was stark terrified, if you want to know. When the sky was as light as it ever got during that fog, I ventured to look out, and I saw a great figure lying wounded by the spring. I felt as if I was seeing things I had no right to see – sacred things. I had to look away, and when I looked again, the figure was gone.† â€Å"That’s the closest I ever came to an angel. But as I told you, we saw them the other night, way high aloft among the stars, making for the Pole, like a fleet of mighty ships under sail†¦ Something is happening, and we don’t know down here what it may be. There could be a war breaking out. There was a war in heaven once, oh, thousands of years ago, immense ages back, but I don’t know what the outcome was. It wouldn’t be impossible if there was another. But the devastation would be enormous, and the consequences for us†¦ I can’t imagine it.† â€Å"Though,† he went on, sitting up to stir the fire, â€Å"the end of it might be better than I fear. It might be that a war in heaven would sweep the Specters from this world altogether, and back into the pit they come from. What a blessing that would be, eh! How fresh and happy we could live, free of that fearful blight!† Though Joachim Lorenz looked anything but hopeful as he stared into the flames. The flickering light played over his face, but there was no play of expression in his strong features; he looked grim and sad. Ruta Skadi said, â€Å"The Pole, sir. You said these angels were making for the Pole. Why would they do that, do you know? Is that where heaven lies?† â€Å"I couldn’t say. I’m not a learned man, you can see that plain enough. But the north of our world, well, that’s the abode of spirits, they say. If angels were mustering, that’s where they’d go, and if they were going to make an assault on heaven, I daresay that’s where they’d build their fortress and sally out from.† He looked up, and the witches followed his eyes. The stars in this world were the same as theirs: the Milky Way blazed bright across the dome of the sky, and innumerable points of starlight dusted the dark, almost matching the moon for brightness†¦ â€Å"Sir,† said Serafina, â€Å"did you ever hear of Dust?† â€Å"Dust? I guess you mean it in some other sense than the dust on the roads. No, I never did. But look! There’s a troop of angels now†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He pointed to the constellation of Ophiuchus. And sure enough, something was moving through it, a tiny cluster of lighted beings. And they didn’t drift; they moved with the purposeful flight of geese or swans. Ruta Skadi stood up. â€Å"Sister, it’s time I parted from you,† she said to Serafina. â€Å"I’m going up to speak to these angels, whatever they may be. If they’re going to Lord Asriel, I’ll go with them. If not, I’ll search on by myself. Thank you for your company, and go well.† They kissed, and Ruta Skadi took her cloud-pine branch and sprang into the air. Her daemon, Sergi, a bluethroat, sped out of the dark alongside her. â€Å"We’re going high?† he said. â€Å"As high as those lighted fliers in Ophiuchus. They’re going swiftly, Sergi. Let’s catch them!† And she and her daemon raced upward, flying quicker than sparks from a fire, the air rushing through the twigs on her branch and making her black hair stream out behind. She didn’t look back at the little fire in the wide darkness, at the sleeping children and her witch companions. That part of her journey was over, and, besides, those glowing creatures ahead of her were no larger yet, and unless she kept her eye on them they were easily lost against the great expanse of starlight. So she flew on, never losing sight of the angels, and gradually as she came closer they took on a clearer shape. They shone not as if they were burning but as if, wherever they were and however dark the night, sunlight was shining on them. They were like humans, but winged, and much taller; and, as they were naked, the witch could see that three of them were male, two female. Their wings sprang from their shoulder-blades, and their backs and chests were deeply muscled. Ruta Skadi stayed behind them for some way, watching, measuring their strength in case she should need to fight them. They weren’t armed, but on the other hand they were flying easily within their power, and might even outstrip her if it came to a chase. Making her bow ready, just in case, she sped forward and flew alongside them, calling: â€Å"Angels! Halt and listen to me! I am the witch Ruta Skadi, and I want to talk to you!† They turned. Their great wings beat inward, slowing them, and their bodies swung downward till they were standing upright in the air, holding their position by the beating of their wings. They surrounded her, five huge forms glowing in the dark air, lit by an invisible sun. She looked around, sitting on her pine branch proud and unafraid, though her heart was beating with the strangeness of it, and her daemon fluttered to sit close to the warmth of her body. Each angel-being was distinctly an individual, and yet they had more in common with one another than with any human she had seen. What they shared was a shimmering, darting play of intelligence and feeling that seemed to sweep over them all simultaneously. They were naked, but she felt naked in front of their glance, it was so piercing and went so deep. Still, she was unashamed of what she was, and she returned their gaze with head held high. â€Å"So you are angels,† she said, â€Å"or Watchers, or bene elim. Where are you going?† â€Å"We are following a call,† said one. She was not sure which one had spoken. It might have been any or all of them at once. â€Å"Whose call?† she said. â€Å"A man’s.† â€Å"Lord Asriel’s?† â€Å"It may be.† â€Å"Why are you following his call?† â€Å"Because we are willing to,† came the reply. â€Å"Then wherever he is, you can guide me to him as well,† she ordered them. Ruta Skadi was four hundred and sixteen years old, with all the pride and knowledge of an adult witch queen. She was wiser by far than any short-lived human, but she had not the slightest idea of how like a child she seemed beside these ancient beings. Nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling. But they expected nothing else: she was very young. At once they beat their wings and surged forward, and she darted with them, surfing on the turbulence their pinions caused in the air and relishing the speed and power it added to her flight. They flew throughout the night. The stars wheeled around them, and faded and vanished as the dawn seeped up from the east. The world burst into brilliance as the sun’s rim appeared, and then they were flying through blue sky and clear air, fresh and sweet and moist. In the daylight the angels were less visible, though to any eye their strangeness was clear. The light Ruta Skadi saw them by was still not that of the sun now climbing the sky, but some other light from somewhere else. Tirelessly they flew on and on, and tirelessly she kept pace. She felt a fierce joy possessing her, that she could command these immortal presences. And she rejoiced in her blood and flesh, in the rough pine bark she felt next to her skin, in the beat of her heart and the life of all her senses, and in the hunger she was feeling now, and in the presence of her sweet-voiced bluethroat daemon, and in the earth below her and the lives of every creature, plant and animal both; and she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her. And she rejoiced, too, that she was going to see Lord Asriel again. Another night came, and still the angels flew on. And at some point the quality of the air changed, not for the worse or the better, but changed nonetheless, and Ruta Skadi knew that they’d passed out of that world and into another. How it had happened she couldn’t guess. â€Å"Angels!† she called as she sensed the change. â€Å"How have we left the world I found you in? Where was the boundary?† â€Å"There are invisible places in the air,† came the answer. â€Å"Gateways into other worlds. We can see them, but you cannot.† Ruta Skadi couldn’t see the invisible gateway, but she didn’t need to: witches could navigate better than birds. As soon as the angel spoke, she fixed her attention on three jagged peaks below her and memorized their configuration exactly. Now she could find it again, if she needed to, despite what the angels might think. They flew on farther, and presently she heard an angel voice: â€Å"Lord Asriel is in this world, and there is the fortress he’s building†¦Ã¢â‚¬  They had slowed, and were circling like eagles in the middle airs. Ruta Skadi looked where one angel was pointing. The first faint glimmer of light was tinting the east, though all the stars above shone as brilliantly as ever against the profound velvet black of the high heavens. And on the very rim of the world, where the light was increasing moment by moment, a great mountain range reared its peaks – jagged spears of black rock, mighty broken slabs, and sawtooth ridges piled in confusion like the wreckage of a universal catastrophe. But on the highest point, which as she looked was touched by the first rays of the morning sun and outlined in brilliance, stood a regular structure: a huge fortress whose battlements were formed of single slabs of basalt half a hill in height, and whose extent was to be measured in flying time. Beneath this colossal fortress, fires glared and furnaces smoked in the darkness of early dawn, and from many miles away Ruta Skadi heard the clang of hammers and the pounding of great mills. And from every direction, she could see more flights of angels winging toward it, and not only angels, but machines too: steel-winged craft gliding like albatrosses, glass cabins under flickering dragonfly wings, droning zeppelins like huge bumblebees – all making for the fortress that Lord Asriel was building on the mountains at the edge of the world. â€Å"And is Lord Asriel there?† she said. â€Å"Yes, he is there,† the angels replied. â€Å"Then let’s fly there to meet him. And you must be my guard of honor.† Obediently they spread their wings and set their course toward the gold-rimmed fortress, with the eager witch flying before them. How to cite The Subtle Knife Chapter Six, Essay examples

Elites and the masses Essay Example For Students

Elites and the masses Essay Elites and the MassesThere are many theories pertaining to the nature of power in society. In modern society, it is important to identify where and when power is exercised, who benefits and who suffers from it being exerted upon them. In this tradition, it is useful to examine the managerialist perspective. Managerialism focuses on organizations as the basis, or unit of analysis of society, to which all other aspects of society are subordinate to. These organizations use their resources in an attempt to dominate each other and society. Managerialism tells us that power is concentrated among a group of elites who control organizations, and use them as an instrument to gain more power and expand their realm of control. Organizational power is increasingly the most important force that explains the direction of change in both state and society (Alford and Friedland, p.174). Thus, elites are becoming the most important factor that determines our society, and do not serve the full interests of society, but rather attempt to manipulate the masses to better serve itself. Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy lends itself to the notion of the managerialism. He claims that as society becomes more integrated and complex, organizational elites come to be more dependent on specialists and expert s, or bureaucracies to advise and influence them on decisions. Bureaucracies are groups of individuals doing specialized tasks which blend into a cohesive and efficient unit. Power becomes increasingly centralized within bureaucracies and the elites who control them because as they grow, becoming more powerful, they use that power to gain more control over the masses. Weber saw the historical development of societies as a movement toward rational forms of organization, that is, groups organized not on the basis of the authority of personalities and traditions but on the basis of specific functions to perform or objectives to meet (Marger p. 72). Weber often used the notion of a machine to illustrate what he meant by modern organizations, referring to people as â€Å"cogs† that serve the machine, losing their identity and creativity in the process. Although Weber admitted that both mechanization and bureaucracy together created an extremely efficient and productive economic sy stem, they also worked to build an iron cage around the individual. The iron cage is the idea that increased mechanization and bureaucracy alienates and removes the individual from direct control over their environment and depersonalizes them to the point of being like machines. The increased use of assembly lines in production is a prime example of depersonalization within bureaucracy. Weber identifies several different types of authority. One is traditional legitimacy, which states that authority is bestowed upon someone based on traditional roles of authority, such as the pope or even the parents of children. Charismatic authority tells us that some are granted legitimacy to have authority over our lives by sheer charisma, such as Martin Luther King jr., Adolf Hitler and Gandhi. The third type of authority is rational-legal authority. This states that we grant legitimacy based upon the office they serve. An example of this is the inherent authority of Jesse Ventura over the people of Minnesota, simply because he holds the title of governor. In the managerial perspective, the economy is seen as a process of three different factors: industrialization, elite competition and bureaucratic rationalization. Industrialization is characterized by the increased role of technology as an integral factor of production. As industrialization and science further blend together, the economy becomes increasingly large and complex, making bureaucratic organizations more and more of a necessary function to the advancement of the economy and society at large. The advance of large scale corporations with more coordination within markets forces our government to become more bureaucratized to efficiently regulate the economy. The seeming inevitability of bureaucracies to handle increased industrialization reflect the functional emphasis within managerialismIn the managerial perspective, democracy is seen as a consequence of elite competition (Alford and Friedland, p.176). Organizations such as political parties and interest groups are dependen t upon mass membership and participation, but participation is mobilized by the elites of these organizations, who compete for more power. They gain power by accumulating more popular support, and could further use their power to manipulate information that gets filtered down to the masses to benefit themselves. The interests of elites to undermine mass participation illustrates the political emphasis of managerialism. Sourcery School of Hogwarts EssayThe writings of C. Wright Mills reflect the political bias within the managerialist perspective. Mills argues that the power of elites, specifically elites within the political, military and economic realm are the decision makers in society to which all other areas of society are subordinate to. Each of the three are interrelated and have tended to come together to form â€Å"the power elite†. Although the three do work together to form a sort of coalition of interests, Mills sees the economic elite as the most influential, because the political and the military are controlled to a degree by the money supplied to them by the economic realm. The most common interpretation of the American system of power suggests the image of balance and compromise, which Mills contends has become a part of the middle level of power, with the elites at the top levels. The many competing forces making up the middle levels of political decisions are often concern ed with issues that involve the specified interests of specific groups, not concerning the upper echelon of politics. The actions of such middle-level powers may indeed have consequence for top-level policy; certainly at times they hamper these policies. But they are not truly concerned with them, which means of course that their influence tends to be quite irresponsible (Farganis, p. 295). Thus the middle level of politics is not where the big decisions of national and international concerns are made. Interest group cannot affect decisions made by elites, but merely react to them. Mills also believes that the dimensions of the middle class have changed from small businessmen and farmers to white-collar employees working for large corporate bureaucracies. The old middle class was an independent power base within society and the new middle class is not unified enough to be an important factor for social change. The public often becomes an administrative fact (Farganis, p.298). There are many big differences which set pluralism and managerialism apart. One major one is the role of the individual. Pluralism holds the values of the individual as a paramount force in society, where managerialism states that the values of the mere individual are inconsequential because they are not powerful enough to affect the will of the elite. Power is decentralized in pluralism, spread out among individuals with common interests who join together for a common goal, while managerialism believes that power is centralized among a small group of elites who work to get more power, and will even manipulate the masses in their own best interest. Pluralism believes that the citizens dictate to our government the proper policies to enact, when managerialism says that people in a position of power dictate policies to the public. In addition, pluralism assumes a consensus of values among individuals, while managerialism sees society working by conflict and coercionBibliographyAlford a nd Friedland, Chapter Seven, â€Å"State and Society in Managerial Perspective,† in Powers of Theory, 1985, p.161-83. Martin Marger, Ch.4, â€Å"The Elite Model,† in Elites and Masses (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1981). George Ritzer, â€Å"The Weberian Theory of Rationalization and the McDonaldization of Contemporary Society,† p 37-62 in P. Kivisto (ed.), Illuminating social like (Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge Press, 1998). C. Wright Mills, â€Å"The Structure of Power in America,† in James Farganis (ed.), Ch. 11 â€Å"Conflict Theory,† Readings in Social Theory (NY: Mcgraw-Hill, 1996).

Friday, May 1, 2020

College Tuition free essay sample

A Hardship for American Families To flourish in America today, the average student will have to go to a high-quality college, earn a degree and land a successful job to eventually support a family. However, success is easier said than done, because all of those steps are vital. The step that many Americans struggle with is affording a high-quality college, not because they arent smart or skilled enough, but because Americans cannot pay for the pricy tuition and additional expenses. The rising of college tuition scares many, even though they yearn for a college degree. Two reasons for this struggle are that college costs are taking a monumental percentage out of Americans salaries, and most importantly the large amount of debt students await after graduation. Even though many people succeed in our country today, most Americans struggle to send their child to a good college to fulfill his or her dream. Even though many Americans succeed in our country today, most Americans struggle to send their child to a first-class college to fulfill his or her dream. B ooks, housing, tuition, and transportation combined for college dents a hole in Americans annual income. The cumulative college expense is stealing too much money out of Americans wallets. Even though many think college is worth the price; is it worth risking all that money? For example, in 2012, college cost took 55% of the lowest income Americans salaries compared to only 39% from 1999- 2000. For those Americans, college seems like a long shot because they still have to pay for the of living, which includes food, housing, and paying taxes (Update:  College  Tuition Costs) . Also, college costs took 25% of the total salary of middle- income families and16% of upper- middle income families (Update:  College  Tuition Costs). For those families, college is a huge possibly, but those students will still have a large amount of debt to pay off afterwards. The impact of these percentages rising is the fact that Americans might not be able to send their child to the college of his or her choice because of rising costs. Americans may argue that these rising percentages cause colleges to make more money and eventually put more Americans to work by establishing different programs. In order for colleges to succeed, they will an increase in enrollment, to eventually force colleges to make the college dream more affordable. If the price of college decreases, the debt that awaits most students post graduation will decrease immensely. The rising college costs are pinning Americans with thousands of dollars of debt post graduation. Recent studies show that sixty nine percent of families eliminated college choices because of costs (Adams). Parents want the best for their children, and want to do anything for them. Conversely, at the end of the day, families need to think what they can financially afford; and in our economy today college is not affordable. For example, in 2012, the average student debt after college was $25,250. 0. Because of this massive amount of debt, Americans are constantly scrambling to earn extra money to eventually pay off the debt (Average Student Loan Debt: $25,250). The impact of college debt is that Americans are struggling to spend more money on necessities because they are too busy worrying about their college debt. Americans may counterclaim that most Americans eventually pay off their college debt. That is not the point. The point is that most Americans walk out of graduation with thousands of dollars of debt, and that in some cases it is unavoidable. The Pew report found that even the richest twenty percent of households, owed the biggest share of student debt (Yen). Even families whose income exceeds seventy thousand a year struggle with paying tuition. Should families sacrifice college in order to save money? No, college is important and tuition must be lowered in order for family and students to constantly stop worrying about finances. The combination of the price to afford college and the amount of debt that awaits most Americans after graduation is outrageous. Even though many Americans succeed in our country today, many Americans struggle to financially afford to send their child to a commendable college in order to acquire a prestigious degree. This is truly a shame, but in some unfortunate cases, inevitable. In these tough economic times, Americans need to be a part of at an excellent college, but they will first have to overcome huge obstacles. Someone has to give in order for Americans to succeed. Christine McKeon Mrs. Hayes Honors English IV 12 December 2012 Works Cited- Argumentative Paper Finnegan, Leah. Average Student Loan Debt: $25,250.   The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost. com, 03 Nov. 2011. Web. 06 Dec. 2012. Update: College Tuition Costs.   Issues amp; Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 22 Feb. 2010. Web. 7 Jan. 2013. lt;http://www. 2facts. com/article/i1400140gt;. Adams, Caralee J. College Choices Shift in Tough Economy.   Education Week  8 Aug. 2012: 4. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Yen, Hope. Student Loan Debt Stretches To New Record Number Of Households: Pew Research Analysis.   The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost. com, 26 Sept. 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Gale Database: Update: College Tuition Costs.   Issues amp; Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 22 Feb. 2010. Web. 7 Jan. 2013. lt;http://www. 2facts. com/article/i1400140gt;. A record 18. 4 million students enrolled in U. S. colleges for fall 2009, the last year for which data are available. A college degree or advanced degree—whether an associates degree, which typically takes two years to earn; a bachelors degree, which often takes around four years; or a degree that requires even more study, such as a masters or doctorate—is seen as essential for a person wishing to join the so-called knowledge-based economy. If one aspires to any of a variety of jobs, whether a low-level office worker, a heart surgeon or an investment banker, the pursuit of that position starts with obtaining a college degree. College tuition, however, is increasingly expensive, and typically rises each year, often at a rate that far exceeds the rate of growth of the consumer price index, an economic indicator that tracks changes in prices. Consequently, the inflation-adjusted cost of attending college in the 2008–09 academic year was approximately three times more than the cost of attending college in 1973–74. Many critics have questioned that drastic increase, arguing that it is not fair for todays college students to pay tens of thousands of dollars more for a college degree than students did several generations ago. [See  Update: College Tuition Costs] In December 2007, the U. S. entered an economic recession, further complicating the college-tuition debate. The recession has caused colleges across the U. S. to tighten their belts and reduce spending. At the same time, most schools have raised their tuition, although the rate at which they have done so for recent school years was not nearly as drastic as in past years. The average four-year public college or university increased tuition 6. 5% between 2008–09 and 2009–10, while tuition at private colleges and universities went up 4. 4%. Both of those rates are higher than the overall rise in the consumer price index over that time, 3. 8%. Nevertheless, college tuition remains a source of fierce debate among parents, students, college administrators and government officials. In 2009–10, the average four year-public college charged in-state students $15,213 in tuition plus room and board; the average private institution charged $35,636. Does college in the U. S. cost too much? Critics of college tuition costs say that college is becoming increasingly the domain of the wealthy, with a growing number of lower-income and middle-class families unable to pay the stratospheric costs, including tuition, room and board, books and other miscellaneous expenses. College students who manage to graduate are typically saddled with enormous debt, critics say; they note that many students have even begun paying their tuition with credit cards. Critics also assert that many students do not even receive an adequate education in return for their money. Because college is so expensive, most students graduate with significant amounts of debt. A College Board report found that roughly 66% of students who earned their bachelors degree in 2008 graduated with outstanding student loan debt. On average, students graduating in 2008 owed $23,200, according to a study by the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit organization. That figure represented an increase of about 25% increase over the corresponding 2004 data, suggesting that student debt is growing at an alarming rate. Finnegan, Leah. Average Student Loan Debt: $25,250.   The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost. com, 03 Nov. 2011. Web. 06 Dec. 2012. Members of the college class of 2010 who took out student loans owed on average $25,250 upon graduation, a 5 percent increase from the year before, according to a new analysis released Thursday. The figures, compiled using college survey data by The Project on Student Debt, indicate average indebtedness increasing at about the same annual rate as in the last five years, but still give a fresh snapshot of what many advocates and experts call an alarming reliance on borrowed money to pay for college. Roughly two-thirds of the class of 2010 borrowed for college, and they were hit especially hard because the unemployment rate for new college graduates stood at 9. 1 percent the year they graduated – though thats less than half the rate for counterparts who only have a high school degree. Another cause for concern: because of data limitations, the figures do not include students at for-profit college, where other recent data show 96 percent of graduates have loans and they borrow nearly 50 percent more than those who graduate from other four-year schools. Debt levels do vary widely from school to school, and from region to region. The average level at individual colleges ranges from $950 to over $55,000. The report identifies 15 nonprofit institutions where students graduate with unusually high debt levels, a list that encompasses schools ranging from Regent University in Virginia to New York University to a number of art schools. Meanwhile, students in the Northeast and Midwest generally had substantially higher debts than those in the West. New Hampshire had the highest average graduating debt of any state at $31,048, while Utah was lowest at $15,509.