Once they have graduated, whither students? Or is it wither students? This is the question that continues to preoccupy my thoughts on our program. As we have said, most are first-generation college students: neither they nor their parents know what a college education is or what one does with it. Many others have teachers as parents. College-educated, yes, but no real sense of the professional world beyond the classroom.

Again, as we have said, when they graduate they are faced with the choice of A) leaving family, friends, and the known world for a career or B) returning to Podunk, NY and likely abandoning the notion of a professional career—or at least severely limiting their options. Only our students from the NYC metro area are not faced with this choice. As an example, I searched hotjobs for entry level writer positions. There were 88 listed nationally. There were 2 in NY state, both in NYC.

So the first question is, Are we preparing students to enter a particular set of careers as “writers/editors?” If so, do our students want these jobs? If we think about our program in these terms, then I guess that we are suggesting our curriculum might give our students a competitive advantage over other state school graduates with traditional English degrees. If this is the case, then that advantage would come from two primary avenues: internship experience and specific knowledge of computer applications (especially for Tech Writing). In this situation the courses best suited for our students are Cyberspace I and II, Tech Writing, Business Writing, Revising and Editing, and perhaps Rhetoric, depending on how it is taught. Our students need to learn to write informative reports, accessible documentation, persuasive copy, and professional memos. They need to write across media, work in groups, and give presentations. If this is the case, I need to reduce the theory aspect of my courses; it is unnecessary, and there’s too much other work that needs to be done. We also need to limit our offering of creative writing. We can’t have our students taking 12 or more credits of CW if we are trying to prepare them for the market.

But that’s a market-driven model. The second approach is looking at the other end of the market, the consumer/student (which is what the College focuses on). We can create a curriculum that appeals to students. As we know our students are not particularly career-oriented. I don’t think that will change too much, unless the overall demographic of the College shifts. Our students simply don’t know what a career is, so they can’t be oriented toward one. The main challenge/task of the first approach would be cajoling them into such an orientation. Here though we essentially give them what they want. This is not to say that we have to be “easy” or simplistic or appeal to the lowest common denominator. This means we let them take a lot of creative writing courses. I make Cyberspace into a lighter “how to” kind of course. And we give them a taste of tech writing and professional experience and leave it at that. We would project this sense of PWR as a “fun” degree where you write stories and poems, play around with new media, and learn a few professional communication skills along the way. We would emphasize the community aspect: workshops, literary magazines, readings, retreats, etc.

I do see one final model: a discipline-driven one. We can articulate our program as an education in rhetoric and poetics. This would not be a career-prep degree as it would not focus on the specific needs of industry; it would be a more humanistic, liberal arts type curriculum. Nor would it be a consumer-driven approach, as it would be founded on the requirements of a discipline unfamiliar to the students. This would require us to ask ourselves what we think should comprise a degree in rhetoric and poetics.

The primary differences between these models are ones of emphasis and presentation to students. Obviously we need to think about all three (market, student, discipline). However, the focus we select will change our courses. Should Cyberspace be a class where we really focus on learning applications, with a secondary emphasis on electronic communication? Or should it be a course where we experiment with software, write hyperfiction, and talk about online publication? Or should it be a course that examines the effects of new media on rhetoric and poetics that uses an engagement with software as one mode of this examination?

I must admit that the first model does not interest me much. For instance, if Cyber I were to become a course primarily about learning web design, I would go slowly insane. I am not a Computer Applications teacher, nor do I desire to become one. I also do not believe our students would buy into such a degree. At certain schools, schools that have tech comm programs or big business schools, this approach might have worked, but I don’t think so here.

The second approach is likely the easiest to teach, the most likely to attract and retain students, and will probably generate good CTE and assessment scores. Students may not be as well-prepared for the job market or as knowledgeable about the discipline, but maybe that’s not the point. Maybe we should take as our goal the goal I’d identified for composition: to graduate students who see themselves as writers. They will not be “professionalized” in the sense that they will show up to a writing job and know how to do it, but they will at least know how it feels to spend a lot of time writing and perhaps they will have written something that will help them to understand the demands of their specific writing job. They won’t have a strong philosophical understanding of rhetoric or poetics but it’s likely they’ll never realize the difference.

Despite my sense that the second model is the best choice, I cannot help but prefer the third. This is what I believe a writing degree “should” be, a degree in philosophy that uses writing in a variety of genres as a tool for studying rhetoric and poetics. This is the writing degree for students headed to graduate school or law school or aspire for high career goals. Its the degree, like philosophy, that teaches you “how to think” and “how to communicate.” It provides you with that broad base of knowledge necessary for going out and learning all the little things you’ll need to know in life. It’s the rhetoric degree you would offer at an elite private liberal arts college. I would not deny our students this education. I don’t want to say that they can’t handle it, b/c I know that at least some of them can. However, I am afraid that such a degree would scare our students away.