Higher ed watch
Do your best to analyze this piece from Higher Ed Watch. What is the exigence/issue that prompted this story? What types of information does the story include? Is this story a profile, report or proposal? Where do you think the writer got the information from? In your opinion, is this a good example of writing as rhetoric or not?
The exigence in this story is the very high default rates at career colleges. This story includes an abundance of statistics and some quotes that support the issue at hand. This story is definitely a report, it is a blog story from Higher Ed Watch, and it is clear the author has done a lot of research and used a lot of support in his story. The author most likely got his information and statistics from some sort of lender analyzer or student loan archives or something along those lines. I feel that in general, this story uses poor rhetoric, it lacks a voice and as I was reading it I felt as though I was reading a robot’s writing. However, for the purpose of the article, it uses effective rhetoric. It addresses what it needs to address in order to form a report that shows the audience the “sky-high default rates at career colleges.” In summation, the blandness of the story isn’t that big of a deal because it doesn’t need flare in order to convey the purpose.
ReplyDeleteThe exigence of this story is the increase on default rates in colleges. Stephen Burd's story is based on statistics on default rate numbers. These statistics are from Student Lending Analytics and other default rate documents. This story is a report because it is based off of statistics and factual information. I think that this story uses rhetoric but overall, it is not good rhetoric. The writing has a purpose but it is not clearly understood. I think that the statistics are very overwhelming and it over powers the main purpose of the story. I agree with Justin in that the writing is very robotic and dull. I think the writer could have used less statistics in which all could tie to the point that there are very high default rates at career colleges.
ReplyDeleteThe exigence for this piece is the high default rate among student who attend for-profit colleges such as Kaplan or Corinthian College. Stephen Burd chooses to use a report format to report his findings. Most of the info that Stephan obtained are default rate statistics that he uses quite effectively in drawing you into the large bold numbers to help get his point across. Towards the end he does get a little input from Harris Miller the president of the Career College Association. Most of the information is gathered from the stated sources such as Student Lending Analytics, US Department of Education, the Chronicle of Higher Education, but also he seems to have some additional information on Career Education Corporation that would imply some additional research into stock market or economy related news sources. I think that this is an effective use of rhetoric especially with the countries economy in such bad shape and a lot of the future work force already being crippled before they even have a chance.
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