RAB Source Entry 2 – Mohammad A

Question: Is college needed for a successful future?

Source entry #2 

Part 1:  Citation: Zara, Christopher. “Opinion | You Learn the Value of a College Degree When You Live without One.” The New York Times, 26 Apr. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/opinion/value-college-degree-higher-education.html

Part 2: Summary

In this article piece, Christopher Zara goes back on the challenges he faced in the workforce without a college degree himself. In the article he shares personal experiences that he went through himself during his job searches and going through interviews in the journalism industry. Zara talks about a gap in education in America, also noting that the education credentials mostly decide what type of opportunities someone could get or achieve. He also shared details on how jobs have algorithms that automatically filter out people who don’t have a college degree listed on their resume. The person could be very talented or skilled but since they lack a college degree they would never get past the algorithm. It is also noted that recently some companies started shifting to skill-based hiring, where they tend to focus more on people’s abilities or skills instead of focusing on whether they have a degree or not. Zara acknowledges that higher education has a lot of benefits, he questions whether it should be the only path to a successful career. 

Part 3: Rhetorical Analysis: This article is an opinion piece. Published in The New York Times. Zara, a senior editor at Fast Company, shares his personal experiences of working in journalism without a college degree. Fast company has been recognized with the National Magazine Award for general excellence, which is one of the highest honors or a magazine publishing. Which makes him a credible writer. His tone is thoughtful and critical. He is seen using ethos when he uses his own story to connect with the readers, while also using legos when he uses facts about hiring and pay gaps to make his point. The article is mostly for high schoolers or anyone that is questioning a college degree. This article is pretty current with current and up to date information. It was published on April 23, 2023. The date does matter a little bit because the job market is always changing. 

Part 4: Notable quotables:

“I’ve never forgotten this dynamic: being in a managerial role in the New York City media industry — top of my game, as they say — and somehow still worrying that a job candidate might look up my educational background and wonder what right I had to be where I am” (Zara page 1).

“Recently updated data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicated that the median annual wage for younger workers with a bachelor’s degree was $52,000 in 2022, compared to $34,320 for high school graduates in the same age group” (zara page 4).

“ I quickly learned during my discouraging job search that summer how easy it is to get ensnared by an applicant tracking system when your schooling stops at a G.E.D., or when you have gaps in your job history because of struggles with addiction, or when you’d spent your 20s working in retail” (Zara page 3).