Saturday, October 19, 2013

20131019.0628

There are all too many online articles such as this one, Anne Wynter's Yahoo! Education article "College Degrees that Could Leave You Unemployed," articles that talk about what degrees to pursue and not to pursue.  Most of them frame their discussions in terms of what degrees will lead to dollars, working from the assumption that the point of going to college is to get a job that pays well.  Even if, as in the Anne Wynter piece linked above, there is the note that "a student should ultimately select a field of study that truly interests him or her," it is only a passing note; the real thrust of the article has nothing to do with interest--except financial.

It would not be terribly difficult to analyze the layout and graphics of the article for how they reinforce the message of the words.  It would be easy to note, for instance, that the sheer size of the discussion of what majors to follow to find jobs indicates Wynter's insistence upon the importance of finding a job--despite her meliorating reference to LaMeire.  It also would be easy to note that the presence of graphics in the two-column discussion focuses attention on it, instead of on the prefatory text that establishes context for it and aids in understanding it, promoting jumping into the columnar section and hasty generalizations therefrom.  It similarly would be easy to note that positioning the preferred majors to the right of their disfavored counterparts leads English-language readers from the erroneous to the correct along a naturalized pattern (since English-language text leads left to right, and since a long intellectual tradition tells us that what happens later remains in the mind longer, the right-side choices are favored by position alone).  And it would be easy to note that the increased amount of text, including hypertext, in the right column suggests through the provision of more materials--since more often reads as better--does more to subtly lead the reader to the same view that the author obviously holds.

My years of teaching technical writing and of analyzing paratextual features in the service of my research have done me some good in that they let me see such things.  If it can be called good that I see so clearly ways in which readers are manipulated (although I suppose I do much the same thing with my own text, something I may have discussed).

Honestly, though, I am struck by the lack of liberal and fine arts degrees on the list of those to avoid (again, despite the reference to LaMeire which suggests, ironically in the work of a writer, that work as a writer is not worth pursuing).  Such lists usually inveigh against the supposed idiocy of degrees in English or history or dance--and, if it is the case that the bachelor's degree exists to help students get jobs, it makes sense, since none of those degrees leads directly to work that pays decently or is reliable.  (I am not sure that the baccalaureate gets the jobs, though; associates degrees tend, in my experience, to be more job-focused, and on jobs lees prone to being outsourced.  Installation and service still require physical people to do, and those jobs will never go away; associates degrees are those that end up making better service technicians, making them better job training.)  Maybe the absence proceeds from the assumption that the readership has already decided to avoid such traps, to have already determined themselves away from eminently "useless" degrees in the arts and humanities.

If that is the case...I am not sure how I feel about it.  Some part of me laments the implication that people have given up on the kind of self-improvement that such degrees as those in the arts and humanities permit.  Another part of me celebrates the promised reduction in competition.  Yet another looks ahead with some fear for the continuation of my own job, particularly given the needs of my family...

No comments:

Post a Comment