Douglas Dowland
Associate Professor and Program Lead of English
d-dowland@onu.edu
It’s the sort of thing that even professors don’t like to do. It’s called a “program review.” Every five years, the program collectively reviews acres of data—twenty-four spreadsheets ranging from admissions statistics to career placement data, from course effectiveness to local and national trends. And the data isn’t self-explanatory: those tables, plus our interpretations (and in English programs, there are always multiple interpretations) go into a massive report, to be studied by those above us. It’s difficult work: side effects include headache, muscle spasms, and waking up in a cold sweat at two in the morning because you’ve had yet another nightmare that table 16 in appendix 6 will expose your program’s hamartia, or fatal flaw, that will sink your academic ship.
Yet our ship has not sunk…yet. In fact, the program review revealed why English has not only survived but thrived at Ohio Northern despite a bleak national discourse which suggests that an English major now equates to an unprofitable future later. Our program review data challenges the assumptions of that discourse—evidence not only of the superb teaching and mentoring efforts of my colleagues, but of the grit and stamina of students who prove during their time here and long after that they are not the lily-livered misanthropes that popular stereotypes make them out to be.
Here are a few take-aways from our program review that might surprise you—and might even persuade you to add English to your plate.
English majors get good-paying jobs in popular, creative fields. English majors learn how to be creative within prescribed confines: a poetic form, a client’s requests, a community charge. Recent ONU English graduates run social media for corporations, write marketing materials for important industries, serve as editors and work in the publishing industry—all for-profit, well-paying fields. And quite likely well-paying for some time to come, as O*Net, a tool developed by the US Department of Labor, indicates that English-related industry jobs will increase nationally by 11.32% on average over the next decade.
English majors enter careers that serve the public good. One might first think that an English degree leads to a life of teaching—and that’s true for those who pursue teaching as a career. Teaching is hard and noble work, and while demand is growing a tad more slowly than in industry, O*Net shows that national demand for English teachers will increase by a steady 7.5% over the next decade. But teaching is not the only way that recent ONU English graduates serve the public good: they become ministers, lawyers, social workers, librarians, translators and journalists—fields that require a sense of calling, a willingness to practice servant leadership, and a desire to help others.
English majors are resoundingly well-employed. Setting aside students who pursue graduate study and those who did not provide employment data, almost all of our students are employed in a field where a bachelor’s degree is considered the minimum for employment. And pay, on average, is well-within what most researchers say is the happy spot between a good income and personal satisfaction: about $75,000. I would never promise a prospective student that they will become a millionaire. But what English offers is a life where one not only makes money, but a happy life while one makes it.
It’s part of the pleasure of teaching at Ohio Northern that, as I reviewed the data, I could match a number to a face, and ultimately, to a person. Each student in our major comes with a story to tell: not just to an audience at a reading or to the faculty during capstone, but to a potential employer; a story that faculty actively help shape and refine. We are tremendously proud of every student’s successes—you’ll see them displayed throughout the first floor of Dukes—and we remain proud decades after students have graced our halls.
All this put together made me reflect more positively on the program review process. But the value of English shouldn’t remain hidden in soon-to-be-dusty program review reports. It’s something we hope you’ll see every day and in every class, from Writing Seminar to our many intriguing courses that satisfy general education outcomes. You’ll see even more of it should you opt to minor—an easy and great way to diversify yourself from the crowd—and it will become a way of life if you become a major.