Summary Of College Pressures

By William Zinsser

In William Zinsser's essay, "College Pressures," he discusses the pressures that college students faced in the late 1970's. Zinsser focuses on four main pressures, which include economic, parental, peer, and self–induced pressures. Zinsser feels that these college students are under so much pressure, but they should also realize that there is no "right" way to get ahead, and a career does not have to be preplanned. While I agree with Zinsser that these four kinds of pressures exist, I also think that there are new and different pressures today.

Zinsser says that we live in a brutal economy, when explaining why he feels that students are under economic pressure. The costs for most private colleges, in the late 1970's were about 7,000 dollars per year. He says that students never got ahead, because after they graduated, they were working to pay off their loans (128–129). I agree with Zinsser that there is a lot of economic pressure. Today, costs for private schools are soaring at anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 dollars per year in Minnesota. Quite a jump from the costs he was talking about. Most of us college students don't make that much money each year. Most college students I know are likely to be working a full time job, just to pay for their schooling. And even when they do that, there are still loans they need to pay for all of it. Zinsser never mentions that students did this in the late 70's. Although I know there were pressures when Zinsser was writing, I

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"College Pressures"

Content "I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self induced pressure," (p.g. 239, paragraph 7). William Zinsser writes an informative article on how the pressures of students in college in the past has been elevated throughout the years. Zinsser shows that because of inflation students are now buried in economic pressure already setting them back. He then goes on the explain how students are under parental pressure. Parental pressure is when a parent choses the path of a students college career, in hopes of securing their future. Parents always want their students to succeed and students want to succeed for their parents which adds more Get