Choose two articles from the casebook on higher education beginning on p.463 in yourCurrent Issues and Enduring Questionstextbook. (Please do not use the Delbanco and Rotellaarticles that we are discussing in class.) You will not need to do outside research for this essay.Read both articles carefully and analyze the author's main claim--his or herpositionon the issue being discussed. Determine what kinds ofevidenceand examples the author is using to support his or herclaim. What is the author trying to persuade readers to believe about the issue under consideration and possible resolutions of it?
When you have completed your analysis of both articles, you are ready tocompareand contrast the retrospectivepositionsof both authors on the issue with which they are dealing. What similarities, if any, do you find in theclaimsthey make? How do theirargumentsdiffer? Do your authors mainly agree or disagree?
Inthe concluding paragraphs of your analytical comparison, you will express your own point of view about the articles you have read. Which of your authors offers the most valid and compellingargument? Why do you find his or her perspective more persuasive? (Even if you are equally convinced by both authors'claims, you can still evaluate the relative quality of their evidence and the effectiveness of their appeals.)Please remember that you are not taking a position on the issue or topic being discussed, but on the quality and usefulness of both articles as possible research sources. Support your position with carefully chosen examples andquotationsfrom both articles.
Organizing Your Essay
A brief, informal outline of your essay might appear as follows:
Introduction:
- Introduce the central issue that both authors are discussing.
- Provide athesisstatement in which you concisely state the mainpositionof each author and offer a tentative evaluation of which position seems best supported in the articles you are studying. (You may need several sentences to state these ideas)
Body:
- Analyze the central ideas and argumentative strategies in Article 1. (Two to three well-developed paragraphs, approximately.)
- Analyze the central ideas and argumentative strategies in Article 2. (Two to three well-developed paragraphs, approximately.)
Compare and contrastthe central ideas and argumentative strategies in both articles. (Two to three well-developed paragraphs, approximately.)
- Summarize, briefly but thoroughly, the main similarities and differences in the viewpoints of your authors. (Two to three well-developed body paragraphs, approximately.)
- Acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of botharguments. (A paragraph or two.)
Conclusion:
- Rank one perspective/approach over another, or, if such a ranking is not possible upon examining theevidence, state why each perspective is equally valid and persuasive. Be sure to indicate whether either or both articles would be useful for other researchers.
Questions to Consider when Analyzing Articles
Please consider the following questions as you analyze and evaluate your articles:
When was the article published? How current is the information that it contains?
What are the author's credentials? Does the author seem to be a validauthorityon the topic?
What kind of publication did the article originally appear in? Does this publication have any apparent political bias?
Does the author refer to the works of other scholars or researchers? Has your authorcitedsources clearly, and do the sources seem to be credible? Do they add to thecredibilityof your author's perspective?
What is thepurposeof your article? Does it seek to inform audiences about atopic? Is it attempting to persuade the audience that an issue is important or that a problem needs to be solved? Does the author of the article advocate for a particular policy or course of action?
If your article is informative, whatconclusionsdoes its author draw about the issue under discussion? Are theseconclusionsreasonable?
If your article is persuasive what is the author's mainclaim? Whatargumentsandevidencedoes the author use to support that claim? Do you find theargumentsandevidenceconvincing?
Based on the considerations above, which of the two articles you have analyzed seems to be the best source for future research on this topic?
Assignment Requirements
- Your paper should be 5-6 full pages (not including your works cited page).
- Your paper shouldfollow MLA-style formatting rules, including
- Typed in Times New Roman font, size 12
- 1 inch margins on all sides
- A heading in the upper leftcorner of the first page with your name, your instructor's name, the course, and the date
- A heading in the upper right corner of every page with your last name and the page number.
- Your paper should follow MLA-style documentation rules, including
- MLA-Style parenthetical citations for all quotations and paraphrases
- A Works Cited page that lists the articles you discuss and follows MLA style.
First articleEdward Conard (b. 1956), who has an MBA from Harvard, is best known for his controversial book on the US economy, Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told about the Economy Is Wrong (2012). He has made more than one hundred television appearances, debating luminaries such as Paul Krugman and Jon Stewart. This article appeared as part of a Pro/Con debate in the Washington Post on July 30, 2013. We Don’t Need More Humanities Majors It’s no secret that innovation grows America’s economy. But that growth is constrained in two ways. It is constrained by the amount of properly trained talent, which is needed to produce innovation. And it is constrained by this talent’s willingness to take the entrepreneurial risks critical to commercializing innovation. Given those constraints, it is hard to believe humanities degree programs are the best way to train America’s most talented students. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), U.S. employment has grown roughly 45 percent since the early 1980s. Over the same period, Germany’s employment grew roughly 20 percent, while France’s employment grew less than 20 percent and Japan’s only 13 percent. U.S. employment growth put roughly 10 million immigrants to work since the BLS started keeping track in 1996 and it has employed tens of millions of people offshore. The share of people in the world living on less than $1.25-a-day has fallen from over 50 percent to nearly 20 percent today, according to The World Bank. Name another high-wage economy that has done more than the United States for the employment of the world’s poor and middle class during this time period.
Contrary to popular belief, U.S. employment growth isn’t outpacing other high-wage economies because of growing employment in small businesses. Europe has plenty of small family-owned businesses. U.S. growth is predominately driven by successful high-tech startups, such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple, which have spawned large industries around them. A Kauffman Institute survey of over 500 engineering and tech companies established between 1995 and 2005 reveals that 55 percent of the U.S.-born founders held degrees in the science, engineering, technology or mathematics, so called STEM-related fields, and over 90 percent held terminal degrees in STEM, business, economics, law and health care. Only 7 percent held terminal degrees in other areas — only 3 percent in the arts, humanities or social sciences. It’s true some advanced degree holders may have earned undergraduate degrees in humanities, but they quickly learned humanities degrees alone offered inadequate training, and they returned to school for more technical degrees. Other studies reach similar conclusions. A seminal study by Stanford economics professor Charles Jones estimates that 50 percent of the growth since the 1950s comes from increasing the number of scientific researchers relative to the population. Another recent study from UC–Davis economics professor Giovanni Peri and Colgate economics associate professor Chad Sparber finds the small number of “foreign scientists and engineers brought into this country under the H-1B visa program have contributed to 10%–20% of the yearly productivity growth in the U.S. during the period 1990–2010.” Despite the outsized importance of business and technology to America’s economic growth, nearly half of all recent bachelor’s degrees in the 2010–2011 academic year were awarded in fields outside these areas of study. Critical thinking is valuable in all forms, but it is more valuable when applied directly to the most pressing demands of society. At the same time, U.S. universities expect to graduate a third of the computer scientists our society demands, according to a study released by Microsoft. The talent gap in the information technology sector has been bridged by non-computer science majors, according to a report by Daniel Costa, the Economic Policy Institute’s director of immigration law and policy research. Costa finds that the sector has recruited two-thirds of its talent from other disciplines — predominately workers with other technical degrees. But with the share of U.S. students with top quintile SAT/ACT scores and GPAs earning STEM-related degrees declining sharply over the last two decades, the industry has turned to foreign-born workers and increasingly offshore workers to fill its talent needs. While American consumers will benefit from discoveries made in other countries, discoveries made and commercialized here have driven and will continue to drive demand for U.S. employment — both skilled and unskilled. UC–Berkeley economics professor Enrico Moretti estimates each additional high-tech job creates nearly five jobs in the local economy, more than any other industry. Unlike a restaurant, for example, high-tech employment tends to increase demand overall rather than merely shifting employment from one competing establishment to another. If talented workers opt out of valuable training and end up underemployed, not only have they failed to create employment for other less talented workers, they have taken jobs those workers likely could have filled. Thirty years ago, America could afford to misallocate a large share of its talent and still grow faster than the rest of the world. Not anymore; much of the world has caught up. My analysis of data collected by economics professors Robert Barro of Harvard University and Jong-Wha Lee of Korea University reveals that over the last decade America only supplied 10 percent of the increase in the world’s college graduates, much less than the roughly 30 percent it supplied thirty years ago. Fully harnessing America’s talent and putting it to work addressing the needs of mankind directly would have a greater impact on raising standards of living in both the United States and the rest of the world than other alternatives available today.Article twoChristian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen are senior partners at ReD Associates, a consulting firm that, in the words of its website, uses “social science tools to understand how people experience their reality” so that businesses can better reach customers. Together, Madsbjerg and Rasmussen wrote The Moment of Clarity: Using Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems (2014). This article appeared as part of a Pro/Con debate in the Washington Post on July 30, 2013. We Need More Humanities Majors It has become oddly fashionable to look down on the humanities over the last few decades. Today’s students are being told that studying the classics of English literature, the history of the twentieth century, or the ethics of privacy are a fun but useless luxury. To best prioritize our scarce education resources, we ought instead to focus on technical subjects such as math and engineering. This short-term market logic doesn’t work across the thirty-or-so-year horizon of a full career. A generation ago, lawyers made more money than investment bankers. Today, we have too many law graduates (though there appears to be data to support it’s still worth the money) and the investment banks complain about a lack of talent. It is basically impossible to project that sort of thing into the far future.
We are also told that a degree in the humanities is unlikely to make you successful. Take North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R), who, while making the case for subsidizing state community colleges and universities based on how well they do in terms of placing students in the workforce, said this in January: “ … frankly, if you want to take gender studies, that’s fine. Go to a private school and take it, but I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job…. It’s the tech jobs that we need right now.” But quite a few people with humanities degrees have had successful careers and, in the process, created numerous jobs. According to a report from Business Insider, the list includes A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble (French and History), former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (English), George Soros (Philosophy), Michael Eisner of Disney (English and Theater), Peter Thiel of Paypal (Philosophy), Ken Chenault of American Express (History), Carl Icahn (Philosophy), former Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson (English), Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (English), Ted Turner of CNN (History), and former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano (History). Business Insider has a list of 30 business heavyweights in total. One might think that most people starting out or running tech companies in the heart of Silicon Valley would be from the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Not so. Vivek Wadhwa, a columnist for The Washington Post’s Innovations section and a fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, found that 47 percent of the 652 technology and engineering company founders surveyed held terminal degrees in the STEM fields, with 37 percent of those degrees being in either engineering or computer technology and 2 percent in mathematics. The rest graduated with a healthy combination of liberal arts, healthcare and business degrees. This leads us to a very important question: What good is a degree in the humanities in the real world of products and customers? Here’s the answer: Far more than most people think. It all comes down to this: Is it helpful to know your customers? Deeply understanding their world, seeing what they see and understanding why they do the things they do, is not an easy task. Some people have otherworldly intuitions. But for most of us, getting under the skin of the people we are trying to serve takes hard analytical work. By analytical work we mean getting and analyzing data that can help us understand the bigger picture of people’s lives. The real issue with understanding people, as opposed to bacteria, or numbers, is that we change when we are studied. Birds or geological sediments do not suddenly turn self-conscious, and change their behavior just because someone is looking. Studying a moving target like this requires a completely different approach than the one needed to study nature. If you want to understand the kinds of beings we are, you need to use your own humanity and your own experience. Such an approach can be found in the humanities. When you study the writings of, say, David Foster Wallace, you learn how to step into and feel empathy for a different world than your own. His world of intricate, neurotic detail and societal critique says more about living as a young man in the 1990s than most market research graphs. But more importantly: The same skills involved in being a subtle reader of a text are involved in deeply understanding Chinese or Argentinian consumers of cars, soap or computers. They are hard skills of understanding other people, their practices and context. The market is naturally on to this: In a recent study, Debra Humphreys from the Association of American College & Universities concludes that 95 percent of employers say that “a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than their undergraduate major.” These all are skills taught at the highest level in the humanities. Companies — with the most sophisticated ones such as Intel, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson leading the charge — are starting to launch major initiatives with names such as “customer-centric marketing” and “deep customer understanding.” The goal of these programs is to help companies better understand the people they’re selling to. The issue is that engineers and most designers, by and large, create products for people whose tastes resemble their own. They simply don’t have the skill set of a humanities major — one that allows a researcher or executive to deeply understand what it is like to be an Indonesian teenager living in Jakarta and getting a new phone, or what kind of infused beverages a Brazilian 25-year-old likes and needs. The humanities are not in crisis. We need humanities majors more now than before to strengthen competitiveness and improve products and services. We have a veritable goldmine on our hands. But, in order for that to happen, we need the two cultures of business and the humanities to meet. The best place to start is collaboration between companies and universities on a research level — something that ought to be at the top of the minds of both research institutions and R&D departments in the coming decade.
This journal entry asks you to reflect on Analytical Comparison Essay and your writing process. Use the below questions as a starting point for your entry.answer these questions based on the whole essay