Jacob Coatney

Jacob Coatney

CO150.801

Kathryn Hulings

June 29, 2014

P#1: The Rhetorical Analysis

In today’s world it seems commonplace to point out a problem but not offer a possible solution to such a problem. It can be quite effortless to superficially note or even complain about such issues and not take the effort to find the root of the matter, let alone propose an answer. Despite this trend, Marc Bousquet, a tenured professor at Santa Clara University, attempts to do the opposite in his article, “Students are Already Workers” (133). In the article, which can be found in the reader Ethics in Higher Education, edited by Nancy Henke et al but was originally published in How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation in 2008, Bousquet looks to reveal what measures students will take to cover the cost of paying for higher education, according to Ethics in Higher Education (133).

Bousquet opens the article with a brief narrative of Professor Susan Erdmann and her interaction with her Jefferson Community College students, who are employed at UPS through a special program (134-136). Through this story, Bousquet claims that “higher education is much less of a good deal as it used to be” (141). However, rather than simply support this notion, he offers a cause for this problem: inequality and whatever fuels it (142). Bousquet subsequently notes that the low wages working students accept in order to pay their way through college are “a gift to the employer,” who gains from cheap labor (142). He further explains that higher education also fuels inequality by training professional workers that come to view other workers as unequal (143). Although Bousquet masterfully pulls his audience in with an emotion-grabbing introduction, his diction and questionable claims hinder his audience appeal, detracting from the effectiveness of his article.

Bousquet employs pathos, or emotional appeal, to the audience very effectively in the opening pages of his article. By opening with such an emotion-filled account of the students’ plight, Bousquet wins over the hearts of his readers. The story begins with Pprofessor Erdmann’s testimony to the awfulness of working at “the hub” (135). She illustrates the plight of the sudentsstudents by saying “I would lose students midterm, or they would never complete final assignments” (136). With descriptions of the working conditions in the hub like “hell” and “horrible” it is easy to sympathize with the students, and thus readers would subsequently agree with Bousquet’s views (135). Bousquet’s description of employment that causes “excessive fatigue” and absenteeism make it hard to discard his claim that “UPS presents a triple threat to students’ prospects for academic persistence: sleep deprivation…; ultralow compensation…; and a high injury rate” (138). With the audience now on his side because he appears to care for the students, or victims, Bousquet can introduce his logic and reasoning with confidence.

Despite having set a good tone for the rest of his article, Bousquet uses vocabulary and rhetoric that is hard to follow. While in some ways it is impressive and builds a sense of authority, it becomes distracting from his purpose. For example, he writes “but the systematically fascinating, and from the perspective of social justice far more significant, difference is that the U.S. worker with only a high school education or ‘some college’ is paid astonishingly less than they were in 1970, when the ‘college bonus’ was only 30 to 40 percent of the average high-school-educated worker’s salary” (141). Then he says “So when we ask, ‘Why has higher education gotten more expensive?’ we need to bypass the technocratic and ‘neessitarian’ account of events, in which all answers at least implicitly bring the concept of necessity beyond human agency to bear” (142). These statements and others with similar diction unnecessarily convolute Bousquet’s points. Although it might seem impressive, by overcomplicating his writing he risks losing the attention of his audience, which in turn decreases the effectiveness of the article.

Bousquet’s credibility is questionable as well, further making his article less effective in conveying his point. Although his ethos appeal might gain something from his impressive yet confusing writing vocabulary and style, the statistics and claims Bousquet makes without citing sources calls into question how truly accurate his claims are. While Bousquet clearly cites a statistic about wages and tuition, he fails to do so for other data he references (136). He says “most UPS part-timers earn little more than $6,000 a year” and “the price of student and faculty labor has been driven downward massively at exactly the same time that costs have soared” without reference to where he gathered that information (138, 140). These and other statistics not supported by references only eat away at his credibility, contributing to the ineffectiveness of this article.

Although Bousquet’s article “Students are Already Workers” uses an effective emotional appeal towards the audience, it lacks effectiveness in convincing readers of Bousquet’s argument. Bousquet uses sentence structure and diction that are not reader-friendly for the majority of his audience. In addition, he lacks credibility due to his use of statistics and numbers without proper reference, further undermining his argument.

Works Cited

Bousquet, Marc. “Students are Already Workers.” Ethics in Higher Education. Nancy Henke et al. Southlake, Texas: Fountain Press, 2013. 133-144. Print.