Holder 1

Logan Holder
Writing 2010
Jessie Richards
2/19/16

Synthesis 1
This synthesis is about nine articles that I have put on a map using the app called
Popplet.com. Popplet is a complicated program to do maps in. One of the biggest problems with
mapping these articles was trying to find clusters or camps to put them in. I look at some major
similarities that occurred in most of the articles. What I found about these articles was the call for
reform or change. This thesis applied to Hacker and Dreifus, Hurtado, Wallis, Soley and
Bonewits, and Irvin. This thesis applied to those articles because they were focused on making
changes for better to the university education system. Another thesis that stood out to me was
how each university thought of corporations and if they were hurting or helping students or
teachers at the university. The articles that apply to this thesis are Kezar, Williams, Hanke and
Hearn, Reay et Al. I had subcamps that were only for the corporations thesis because the article
made several good points that only related to that thesis.
When I set up this map, I thought about how to configure the thesiss and articles. After a
moment of thought, I decided to put the camps below around the articles and make a Venn
diagram. I decided that a Venn diagram map would be confusing, so I decided to put the camps
under the names of the articles and connect them from there. After a bit of rereading, I came up
with the camps I would use. One of the camps was Corporations. This camp has all of the
articles that were for or against corporations. If the article had any ideas that dealt with
companies and how it was impacting students or professors, it would go into this camp. Another
camp that I came up with was Changes in the education system; if any article called for a

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change in the education system, I would see through it into this camp. I wouldnt put any articles
that wanted change but also talked about core into this camp because I would have a sub-camp
for corporations that I would throw that articles ideas corporations too. That is why it is so
difficult to organize this map. Corporations articles also deal with reform to education articles.
To split them up I would just make sub-camps.
Before I organized the articles into camps and sub-camps, I have brief explanations of the
articles. These brief explanations are the thesis points that I found from that article. Now I can
explain how these all fit together in similar ways. I put Kezar piece into the corporations camp
as a whole. It also has a sub-camp that states, higher education are becoming a corporation and
private (431). That short statement is the words of Kezar. I found them significant because it
relates to Hacker and Dreifus. Their article explains that colleges are getting to be too much
money for the average student. They want to make changes both to the university and students.
Corporations are requiring students to go to the universities to grad school to do more research.
They use it as a job securing benefit. All of the articles that mention research for corporate gain
is a real thing. However, the catch is the money the student will have to spend. The tuition rises
from the money that it takes to do that research. Soley and Bonewits mentions, Corporate
involvement in the university has become pervasive (89). What they mean by that statement is
that corporations are spreading their will and money into the university in order to get their name
out to advertise or to get people to work for them in the future. That is why corporations put
money into big universities. Students pay all the money that is required to get an education and
are treated poorly by the university they are paying. Instead of getting the actual professor they
signed up for, they get a grad student trying to make his way up. Even though he is putting in

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good work, it will never be as good as the experienced professor who has been doing it for a
while and who the students pay for.
This brings me to my other main camp, Changes in the university system. I used this
name because there are quite a few articles that call for change in the education system. Reay et
Al talk about how universities are changing to get a more diverse society; more people can go to
school to get an education. Reay et Al says, the concern necessarily has always been focused on
those working-class students who were excluded from higher education (859). They are saying
that they are looking past this diverse cultural discrimination to get more people in for a higher
education. They are looking to reform universities just like Hurtado wants to do. That is one of
the closest similarity that I have found. Reay et Al and Hurtado want to make a university culture
diverse. With that diversity, you could get more out of the society. If the diverse culture is just
discriminated on, what they are saying would just be pointless. That is why Hurtado wants to
teach diversity in schooling so we can just naturally get into the diverse culture. Not be pushed
into it randomly. That would make things worse.
In conclusion, to this synthesis, I have come up with two main camps that I put the
articles in: a corporation and changes in the education system. These camps have sub-camps:
Higher education is becoming corporate and private, teaches students how to think, academia
concerns with corporate influence, and against technological innovation. These articles would
best fit these camps because they are just sects of what the similarities that the articles describe. I
chose the ones that I thought fit the best. Walliss idea made the most sense to me and how it fit
in the camp. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with
knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and
essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding

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ourselves over and over: this is water, this is water (22:00) The values of both theses are for
improvement in the education system. Corporate and change are a significant similarity in all
arguments from these articles. Thats why it is confusing and difficult to separate them and
organize them.