What Are You Going to Do With That Major_colloquial Speech and the Meanings of Work and...

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Management Communication Quarterly

26(3) 423 –452

© The Author(s) 2012

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DOI: 10.1177/0893318912443776http://mcq.sagepub.com

MCQ

1University of Michigan–Flint, Flint, MI, USA2Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Daniel J. Lair, Department of Communication and Visual Art, University of Michigan-Flint, 303 E

Kearsley St., Flint, MI 48501, USA

Email: [email protected]

“What Are You Going

to Do With That

Major?” Colloquial

Speech and the

Meanings of Work and

Education

Daniel J. Lair 1 and Stacey M. B. Wieland2

Abstract

This article explores the function of the ubiquitous question, “What areyou going to do with that major?,” in advancing particular meanings of work,

higher education, and the work–higher education relationship. Analyzing110 student descriptions of encounters with the question suggests thatthe colloquialism powerfully shapes student interpretations of work andeducation, cementing vocational understandings of higher education andperpetuating a linear view of careers. Such interpretations pressure studentsto make early commitments to particular identities and induce significantanxiety, particularly in those whose majors are not seen as preparing themfor preferred forms of work.

Keywords

colloquialisms, higher education, meaning of work, work

Articles


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424 Management Communication Quarterly 26(3)

Historically, organizational communication has focused on communication

at work rather than communication about work (Cheney, Zorn, Planalp, &

Lair, 2008). For instance, as Zorn and Townsley (2008) observe, the term

“work” is not even indexed in the now decade-old New Handbook of Orga-

nizational Communication (Jablin & Putnam, 2001). While organizational

communication has always concerned itself with how communication

informs—and even performs—work and work environments, only within

the past few years has the discipline begun to devote attention to the role

communication plays in shaping the meaning of work as a social institution

as organizational communication scholars take up Ashcraft’s (2007) call to

turn our attention “back to work.”

Largely outside of the discipline, a parallel set of questions has emergedabout education in general and higher education in particular. Increasingly,

higher education has been subjected to the imperatives of the market, trans-

forming education into a commodity to be consumed (McMillan & Cheney,

1996) and educators into an increasingly contingent and precarious workforce

(Ross, 2009). As Newfield (2008) observes, such changes are not exclusively

economic, but rather a part of a broader cultural and political discussion about

the meaning and purpose of higher education as an institution. Higher educa-

tion’s role as a central front in the “culture wars” (e.g., Horowitz, 2007) isinextricably linked with its marketization, transforming the institution from

one cultivating citizen-subjects into one producing worker-consumers.

Because one result of this contest is the increasing vocationalization of

higher education (Watkins, 2008), contemporary education debates are tied to

the imperative to understand the meaning of work. Surprisingly, however, edu-

cation as a site where the meaning of work is contested has remained largely

absent from the developing agenda for organizational communication scholars.

For example, educational institutions are notably absent from Cheney et al.’s(2008) list of discursive sites central to the growing interest in the meaning of

work. In short, the work–education intersection, we observe, has been remark-

ably absent from the growing body of literature exploring the meaning of work

from a communicative perspective.

This article places the work–education intersection on the organizational

communication agenda by exploring how these domains are connected in

everyday, colloquial speech. As Zorn and Townsley (2008) observe, such

speech exerts a powerful influence on the meanings attributed to work (see also

Cheney, Lair, Ritz, & Kendall, 2010; Clair, 1996). Inspired particularly by

Clair’s analysis of student experiences with the commonplace, “a real job,” we

explore how the meaning of work is shaped in and around higher educational

contexts by examining student encounters with the frequently asked colloquial

question, “What are you going to do with that major?”


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Lair and Wieland 425

The Contemporary

Work–Higher Education Nexus

In turning to higher education as an institutional context in which the meaning

of work is actively contested, we take up Ashcraft’s (2007) call for scholar-

ship that simultaneously “dislocates” the organization as a privileged site of

analysis and “reworks” organization studies by privileging work itself as a

central construct. Such a move, we argue, is particularly timely as the mean-

ing of the work–education intersection is currently an active site of cultural

and political contest, driven by the vocational pressures associated with a

decades-long trend in the commercialization (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2009)

and corporatization (Tuchman, 2009) of higher education institutions. As Bok(2003) points out, students are turning to universities in increasingly voca-

tional terms, dramatically altering social understandings of the meaning and

purpose of higher education (Cox, 2009).

The work–education intersection is particularly salient in the wake of the

ongoing global economic crisis, which has dramatically changed prospects for

the future working lives of young people. Worldwide youth unemployment

rose to a record high in 2010 (Allen, 2010), leading ILO Director-General

Juan Samovia to flag youth unemployment as a “world priority” (“WorldJobless,” 2011, para. 10). Predictably, young workers with only a high school

education (or less) were the hardest hit, but even recent college graduates

received a disproportionate share of the impact, peaking at an unemployment

rate (9.7%) nearly double that of college graduates over the age of 25 (4.5%;

Shierholz & Edwards, 2011).

Even as unemployment rates for recent graduates begin to drop (down

from 8.6% in November 2010 to 6.2% in November 2011; National

Association of Colleges and Employers, 2011), the effects on young work-ers are pervasive and long term, depressing earning power for decades

(Kahn, 2010). As Atlantic Monthly reporter Don Peck (2010) noted, “When

you add up all the earnings losses over the years . . . it’s as if the lucky

graduates had been given a gift of about $100,000, adjusted for inflation,

immediately upon graduation—or, alternatively, as if the unlucky ones had

been saddled with a debt of the same size” (para. 24). That metaphorical

debt does not account for the actual debt that college students have incurred

in an era of rising tuition costs: Average student loan debt is now US$25,000,

and the total student loan debt held by U.S. students now exceeds 1 trillion

dollars (Lewin, 2011). Recent graduates are slower to get a start on inde-

pendent lives, with a 25% increase in the number of young adults moving

back in with their parents over the past 3 years (Thompson, 2011). So even

as the economic conditions for recent graduates begin to show signs of


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improvement, evidence that inexorable damage has already been done has

led many commentators—perhaps most notably in Business Week (Coy,

2009)—to fear a “lost generation” of workers whose economic lives will be

indelibly changed at great individual and social cost.

In response, questions have arisen regarding the value and purpose of

higher education in a manner that brings together longer-standing concerns

over the meanings of work and education. Such questions range from the

“worth” of a college education as an individual investment to whether or

not higher education and the current employment market are complemen-

tary. At the personal level, for instance, a 2011 Pew survey found that 57%

of Americans say that a college education no longer offers a good return on

value (Taylor et al., 2011). Mishel (2011) argues that a narrative of a grow-ing “mismatch” between job seeker qualifications and employer needs has

become an increasingly popular—but economically questionable—explanation

for persistent unemployment even after the recession officially ended. In

other words, education—higher education in particular—has emerged as a

culprit in a growing narrative that casts persistent unemployment, particu-

larly among younger workers, as structural rather than cyclical. Certainly,

the relationship between higher education and work has become an increas-

ingly important site of cultural contestation.This contest also points to a broader range of concerns, from the degree

to which it links the university to trends in the contemporary division of

labor (Bousquet, 2008) to the occlusion of longer-standing university goals

such as the production of a democratic citizenry (Newfield, 2008), making

higher education an important institutional context in which the meaning of

work is actively negotiated. And while education has remained largely

absent from organizational communication scholarship on the meaning of

work, the discipline has long noted the theoretical basis for such exploration.Jablin (1985) laid the groundwork by naming vocational anticipatory social-

ization as a part of the organizational socialization process, and others have

sought to detail the space and time in which such processes were seen as

occurring (Smith & Turner, 1995). Most notably, Clair (1996) called for a

more expansive understanding of the communicative processes shaping

work socialization.

Where organizational communication research has sought to explore

communication about work in “microsystems” (Jablin, 1985) beyond work

organizations, the focus has been primarily on how communication in the

family (e.g., Medved, Brogan, McClanahan, Morris, & Shepherd, 2006) and the

media (e.g., Hylmö, 2006) shapes views of work for children and ado-

lescents. Educational settings in general, and higher education in particular,


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have been largely overlooked. While some recent research has begun to

explore work socialization in education related to careers in science, tech-

nology, engineering, and math (STEM; see, Kisselburg, Berkelaar, &

Buzzanell, 2009; Myers, Jahn, Gaillard, & Stoltzfus, 2011), communication

about the relationship between work and education in broader contexts has

received little attention.

Following Ashcraft and Allen’s (2009) call for a reflexive move on the part

of academics to consider “our own organizational settings as significant cul-

tural sites that organize common notions and configurations of work” (p. 11),

we explore student understandings of the relationship between work and higher

education by considering how the commonplace question, “What are you

going to do with that major?,” operates in and around higher education institu-tions, shaping and organizing student understandings of the meaning of educa-

tion and its relationship to their future work lives. In our analysis, we focus on

how students experience and make sense of their encounters with the question

as well as the meanings of work, higher education, and the work–higher educa-

tion relationship that are (re)produced through such conversations.

Colloquial Expressions andthe Meaning of Work

Organizational communication scholars’ recent interest in the meaning of

work stems from a desire to make sense of work as an institution in trans-

formation, building upon several strands of research that have been devel-

oped over the past decades (Cheney et al., 2008). These lines of research

include explorations of work–life balance (Duckworth & Buzzanell, 2009),

contingent forms of organizing labor (Gossett, 2006), the communicative

constitution of professional (Cheney & Ashcraft, 2007) and occupationalidentities (Ashcraft, 2007; Meisenbach, 2008), identity and organizations

more broadly (Wieland, 2010), gender and difference (Ashcraft, 2007), and

representations of work in popular culture (Dempsey & Sanders, 2010; Lair,

2011). The meaning of work focus that results is thus a new domain of

inquiry grounded in an already substantial body of scholarship.

This domain draws scholars’ attention to communication not as it occurs

in or by particular organizations, but rather as it constructs work across and

beyond organizational contexts. Based on the idea that what counts as “good

work” is socially constructed, scholars have found that work has been inter-

preted as meaningful based on a variety of material and nonmaterial benefits,

including monetary rewards, satisfaction, recognition, stimulation, structure,

and belonging (Cheney et al., 2008). Perhaps most important in the modern


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age, work provides individuals with a sense of self and has become a pri-

mary anchor on which identity is built (Wieland, Bauer, & Deetz, 2009) as

occupational groups and work organizations become primary targets of

identification. Because some organizations and occupations are perceived as

more prestigious than others, individuals working in stigmatized jobs com-

municatively construct positive self-identities (Tracy & Scott, 2006). As

Cheney et al. write, “Communication studies are well situated to theorize

not only meaning construction but the enactment and co-production of

meaningful work” (p. 164). This emerging domain of organizational com-

munication inquiry promises to “contribute to increased awareness and

understanding of why and how we work and to actions that would enhance

the quality of our work experiences and our lives in general” (p. 172).Our analysis here focuses on how everyday colloquial speech shapes

individual understandings of work. While Cheney et al. (2008) identified

everyday expressions as an important site through which the meaning of

work is negotiated, few studies have focused on such speech. Examples

include “it’s not personal, it’s business” and “just a job” (Cheney et al.,

2010), but to date the most prominent examination of a work-related col-

loquialism has been Clair’s (1996) analysis of “a real job.” As Clair

argues, this colloquialism privileges certain qualities of work, particu-larly that taking place in “legitimate” organizations, with regular hours,

and appropriate for the worker’s socioeconomic position. In short, the

colloquialism crystallizes a set of generally accepted assumptions about

appropriate work.

According to Clair (1996), such expressions powerfully present taken-

for-granted knowledge from a position of anonymous ubiquity—with no

direct source, such “wisdom” is tough to question. As Billig and Macmillan

(2005) observe, the transparency of everyday speech obscures its role inframing to frame the world in a subtle, but ideologically powerful, fashion.

Accordingly, as Cheney et al. (2008) observe, these expressions serve dual

purposes—as a cultural repository in which deeply held but often implicit

values, beliefs, and attitudes are sedimented and as topoi drawn upon to

persuade. Recognizing the capacity of such expressions to contain particular

meanings of work and to reinforce those meanings as they are deployed in

the everyday, our investigation of the role played by the question, “What are

you going to do with that major?,” is guided by two central research

questions:

Research Question 1: How does the colloquial question, “What are you

going to do with that major?,” function in students’ everyday con-

versation?


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Research Question 2: What do student responses to the question reveal

about dominant and alternative meanings of the work–education

relationship?

In exploring these research questions, we argue that the question, “What are

you going to do with that major?,” is positioned as a productive site through

which to explore the ways in which the meanings of work and education are

shaped by everyday speech.

Method

To explore these questions, we solicited student narratives of encounters withthe colloquial question by offering extra credit to students enrolled in public

speaking at midsized private university in the Western United States.

Students were asked to respond to the following prompt:

Describe a time when you used or encountered the question, “What

are you going to do with that major?” You may write about a time

when someone asked you this question, when you asked someone

else this question, when you overheard a conversation about thisquestion, or any other circumstances in which you encountered the

question. Please describe your encounter in as much detail as you can

remember. Who was involved in asking/answering the question?

Why was the question asked? How did the participants—including

you—feel about the question? Your essay should be a minimum of

three paragraphs.

Following this prompt, students were asked to provide basic demographicinformation, including major, year in school, gender, and socioeconomic

background. In total, 132 students completed some part of the survey instru-

ment. Twenty two students did not provide narratives of an encounter with

the question, yielding a corpus of 110 narratives. The sample roughly approx-

imated the institution’s distribution of students based on major, age, sex, and

race and ethnicity (see Table 1).

Student responses were coded in two stages. In the first stage, we con-

ducted a content analysis of the narratives in order to provide an overview

of the data. Each author independently read the narratives, paying particu-

lar attention to the characteristics of the narratives to inductively generate a

coding scheme describing the conversational role of the colloquial question.

This stage enabled comparison across the narratives, which varied widely in


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the level of specificity and narrative style. The coding scheme that emerged

from this process was organized around three distinct questions:

1. What is the nature of the narrative? Despite the request for a specific

encounter with the question, many students described their experi-

ences with the question more generally. Accordingly, we coded each

narrative in terms of whether it provided a concrete description of an

encounter with the question or an abstract discussion.2. Who asked the question? Respondents also indicated a wide range

of individuals who asked the question, often noting this variability

within their narratives. Accordingly, each narrative was coded by the

student-identified central party asking the question (see Table 2).

Table 1. Participant Characteristics

Characteristics Percentage of participants

Sex

Female 51.8

Male 48.2

Academic yeara

Freshman 59.1

Sophomore 30.9

Junior 2.7

Senior 7.3

Ethnicity Asian 10.0

Caucasian 79.1

Hispanic 6.4

Other 4.5

Degree program

Arts and humanities 8.18

Business 50.91

International studies 10.00

Math, computer sciences, andnatural sciences

10.00

Social sciences 14.55

Undeclared 6.36

aStudents primarily fell in the 18- to 22-year-old age range, with two respondents fallingoutside of that age range; this distribution conforms to the traditionally aged student body atthe university.


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3. How did the student feel about the question? Our initial read-

ing indicated a range of emotional responses, leading us to code

each narrative as indicating whether the student indicated a posi-

tive, negative, or neutral emotional response (see Table 3).

After developing this scheme, we independently coded each of the 110

narratives. Disagreements in coding were then addressed collaboratively.

Next, we randomly selected 25 narratives (23% of the corpus) to be coded

by two trained, independent coders to assess the reliability of the coding

scheme. A Cohen’s kappa test indicated substantial agreement, both between

Table 2. Who Asked the Question in the Encounter?

Type of individuals who

asked the question Number Percentage

Adult friend 7 6.36

Family member 20 18.18

High school academicauthority

4 3.64

Individuals from multiplecategories

18 16.36

Not specified 22 20.00

Other 0 0Peer 14 12.73

Self 8 7.27

Stranger 6 5.45

University academicauthority

5 4.55

Work contact 6 5.45

Table 3. Students’ Feelings About the Question

Feelings Number Percentage

Positive 18 18.18

Neutral 45 40.91

Negative 45 40.91


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the independent coders (.82, p < .005) and between each coder and the

researchers (.73, p < .005; .74, p < .005), enabling us to characterize the

general nature of the narratives reliably.

We then engaged in a second stage of coding, conducting a thematic

analysis in order to develop more nuanced understandings of the mean-

ings of work and education in students’ responses. This stage enabled us

to develop the inductive analysis that is the focus of this article. Each

author individually engaged in several iterative readings of the corpus

while conducting open coding to begin to “identify, elaborate, and refine

analytic insights” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) from the narratives.

We then discussed the results of this open coding, synthesizing the data

into three meaningful themes: the conversational functions of the ques-tion, assumptions about what constituted an acceptable response, and stu-

dent acceptance/rejection of the fundamental premises of the question.

With these themes established, we returned to the data, individually and

then collaboratively, for another set of readings where we engaged in

focused coding in order to “[connect] data that initially may not have

appeared to go together and . . . [delineate] subthemes and subtopics that

distinguish differences and variations within the broader topic” (Emerson

et al., 1995, p. 160).

Results

In this section, we discuss our analysis of the corpus of student narratives in

light of our central research questions by first explaining the conversational

functions of the colloquial question and then exploring how work, educa-

tion, and their relationship are inflected with dominant and alternative

meanings, depending on how students seek either to answer appropriatelyor resist the question, respectively. Before doing so, however, we highlight

two important characteristics of the corpus informing our analysis: wide-

spread recognition by students of both the ubiquitous and the emotionally

charged nature of the colloquial question.

The question is clearly experienced as ubiquitous. All students were

familiar with the question, and only one student reported not having asked

or been asked, relating instead how her friend—a communication major—

is frequently challenged by the question. In addition, students referred to a

wide variety of relationships between the persons asking and answering the

question (see Table 2). Although the most commonly identified questioners

were family members (18%) and peers (12%), in 17% of the narratives the

student referred to the question being asked by multiple individuals across


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categories despite instructions to narrate one particular encounter with the

question. Similarly, 40% of the students discussed their experience with the

question in more abstract terms rather than describing a particular encoun-

ter. One student, a freshman business major, highlighted the ubiquitous

nature of the question as he resisted our request for a specific narrative: “To

me, the importance and relevance of this question has not been based on

any individual occasion of it being asked, but in the repetition and con-

stancy with which it is asked.” In short, the colloquial question occupies a

pervasive presence in conversations about higher education.

Second, the narratives demonstrate the emotionally charged nature of

the question as well. Many respondents (41%) indicated a negative emo-

tional response to the question, demonstrating the significant anxiety sur-rounding it. As one student explained, “I just don’t know at this point, so

the question makes me very uncomfortable! I like to think I’m a driven

person with goals and drive, but it makes me feel unfocused and unorga-

nized.” Students frequently described their uncertainty as making them

scared; for example, one student reported “having a mini heart attack”

every time she is asked. Only 18% indicated positive responses to the ques-

tion, typified by the math major who wrote, “I personally like being asked

this question because it lets me tell people what I am going to do and I am proud of that.” The remaining students (41%) offered no direct indication

of an emotional response. Significantly, however, many of these students

framed their positive or neutral reactions to the question as “not negative”

rather than positive or neutral in their own right. Several students, for

instance, noted that the question “doesn’t really bother” them, while another

noted, “I was not offended when asked this question.” Such responses indi-

cate that students interpreted our prompt to reflect about how they feel

about the question as anticipating a negative response, suggesting that stu-dents readily recognized the highly charged nature of the question. These

two broad characteristics—the ubiquitous and emotionally charged nature

of the question—serve as an important backdrop against which to under-

stand the following discussion of the question’s conversational functions,

as well as how student attempts either to answer appropriately or resist the

question highlight its implicit meanings about work and education.

Three Functions of the QuestionOur first research question asked how the colloquial question, “What are

you going to do with that major?,” functions in everyday conversation.

Student descriptions demonstrate three main functions of the question. First,


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the question fills out everyday conversation as a form of small talk. Second,

the question serves as an exploration device for students seeking knowledge

about themselves and others. Finally, the question expresses judgment of

choices made about the relationship between work and education. These

functions are distinct but related, and often invocations of the colloquial

question perform the three functions simultaneously.

Conversation. Students reported encountering the colloquial question in a

variety of conversational settings, from formal conversations with academic

professionals in secondary and higher education institutions to informal

conversations at family events, college parties, and workplaces. One stu-

dent reported being asked by her grandparents while sitting on their patio.

Another described how he and a female classmate used the question to flirtat a party. Others reported the colloquialism in social media conversations

with friends or being asked at their workplaces by clients who were strangers.

In short, students encountered the question in a wide range of contexts

where the topic of conversation turned to what course of study they were

pursuing.

A significant number of students—approximately one fifth—described

the question as being used to break the ice or make small talk, in the sense

that Coupland (2003) identified as being understood—often pejoratively— in academic and popular circles alike as “a formulaic and superficial form of

talk” (p. 1). As Coupland (2003) notes, however, such small talk should not

be dismissed as inconsequential banter because it performs important social

functions like relationship building and filling conversational gaps. In other

words, as Coupland (2000) observes, small talk plays an important role in

organizing conversations around “multiple interactional goals that go well

beyond . . . the transmission and reception of factual information” (p. 8).

Student narratives indicate that they view the question as taken-for-grantedconversational commonplace. One student described the colloquialism as a

“common part of college small-talk, especially in the first few weeks of

school or just meeting someone. You ask them their name, where they’re

from, what they’re studying, and then of course—what are you going to do

with that major?” Another described it as “generally one of the first ques-

tions people ask you, when first meeting them.” Underneath such descrip-

tions is an assumption that the question is a natural, even inevitable, part of

conversations about higher education. One student described the question

as “perfectly normal,” perhaps interpreting our request for narratives as

somehow marking it as a questionable practice. Another student captured

the seemingly inevitable conversational logic of the question: “I guess they

asked because that’s usually what people ask after ‘What’s your major?’”


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Each of these instances highlights the largely phatic role of the colloquial-

ism as a conversational device. Students also noted the relationship between

the conversational function and the exploration and judgment functions

described as follows.

Exploration. The question enabled exploration through the students seek-

ing knowledge of themselves and others. First, some students said that the

question provided them with an opportunity for broader self-reflection. A

freshman majoring in finance said that it gave him an opportunity to “assess

my life”; another student described it as helpful for “thinking about your

future.” Several responses in this category referred to college professors

asking the question, causing the student to consider seriously the question

for the first time. While some reported that the question encouraged suchgeneral self-assessments, most students describing the self-exploration

function of the question focused on how it helped them to explore specific

career options. Some saw the question as helping them figure out their own

answer to the question by exploring other students’ plans to use their majors.

A sophomore with a general business major wrote, “I ask people all the time

what they plan on doing with their major, mostly because I am searching for

ideas on what to do with mine.” A freshman double-majoring in political

science and international studies described a helpful encounter at her workplace in which a customer asked her what she wanted to do with her major.

After she answered that she wanted to be an ambassador, the customer

encouraged her to expand her options: “The reason why this is so memorable

to me is because he was trying to explain to me what this major could lead

me to like law school. Now I am thinking about law school.” A freshman

majoring in real estate and construction management expressed his surprise

at being asked the question on his first day of college because he had always

assumed that the answer was self-explanatory. The student discussed how being asked opened his eyes to a variety of options for using his major.

The second way the question enables exploration is by helping students

get to know others. One student explained:

These discussions happened mostly during the first couple of weeks

here as people were getting to know each other and get a better sense

of who people were. . . . In a sense, a major is the focus of a person’s

life and dictates who they are and what path they will follow in the

future. (freshman, business administration)

Many students indicated that the question was helpful in trying to understand

and connect with others, grounded in the assumption that major and career plans


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are central to identity. As one student put it, “A major leads to a profession and

certain professions speak of what a person is about and what their life could look

like in the future.” Another described it as “like putting labels on people.” Here,

the presumption was that major choice and future profession projects a sense of

one’s identity. Thus, the colloquialism constructs one’s future work and one’s

identity as closely tied. Student responses indicate that their encounters with this

question caused them to reflect upon—and in many cases challenged—their

future plans and their sense of self. In this way, the question and responses par-

ticipate in the process of identity construction. As one reviewer of this article

noted, while the students reported that the question functioned to help them

explore their options, the ways they described their encounters indicated that it

more often functioned to build identification with particular options. As we willdiscuss further in the conclusion, the question encouraged identity foreclosure

by pushing students who were unsure of their answer to identify with a particu-

lar answer without fully exploring the options available to them. This tendency

is likely because the exploration function of the question is most often eclipsed

by the judgment function.

Judgment. Many students indicated feeling judged when asked the ques-

tion, often mentioning that the act of asking, in-and-of-itself, conveyed

judgment of major choice. As a senior finance major wrote,

There are certain majors that people feel are less credible for different

reasons. People who have different backgrounds often downplay other

people’s majors. For example a person who is in business may ask that

question to a person who has say a psychology major with a negative

connotation. . . . People can ask that question very respectfully; they

can also insult people. (senior, finance)

In addition to feeling judged by simply being asked the question, students

also felt judged by reactions to their answers. An undeclared freshman

wrote, “I often feel as though I am looked down upon for not knowing what

I am going to do with my life.” A senior majoring in hotel, restaurant, and

tourism management described a moment when one person responded to

him, “You shouldn’t go to an expensive school for hotel, restaurant, and

tourism management like that.” As such responses demonstrate, students

often received unsolicited advice in such conversations.

Students responded negatively to the question primarily because they

believed that both the asking of the question and the reactions their answers

received delegitimized their choices and conveyed judgment. Students

demonstrated that they had a clear sense that beyond simply having an


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answer to the question, their answer should be perceived as acceptable.

Student descriptions of their encounters indicate that some answers were

better than others and that they felt strong pressure to answer in a way that

fit others’ expectations for the appropriate response. Because the colloqui-

alism functioned to express judgment, it accomplished identity regulation,

calling into question students’ identities and prompting them to engage in

identity work (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002).

Students often mentioned feeling judged even when the question was

asked as a part of small talk. Such feelings were particularly tied to encoun-

ters with strangers but were also apparent elsewhere. A finance major

described an interchange with a family friend:

The conversation was awkward, fake, and drawn out. While most of

these people do not really care about what I am going to do with my

life, they still expect a high [school] graduate to know their major and

in some ways know what they are going to do with that particular major.

Despite the claim that the question often occurs during trivial conversa-

tion, the overwhelming conclusion by students who had negative reactions to

the question is that their answers were anything but trivial. That is, studentsreadily recognized their ability to answer the question—even when it func-

tioned as small talk—as high-stakes and anxiety-producing, particularly

given their clear awareness that some answers were seen as more acceptable

than others. Whether the questioner intended judgment is irrelevant; what is

significant is that the students felt that critique was embedded within the

question. Even in small talk, the colloquial question powerfully shaped stu-

dent senses of self and meanings of work and education.

Dominant Interpretations of Work

and Education: The Appropriate Answer

Our second research question asks what student responses to the question

reveal about dominant and alternative meanings of the work–education rela-

tionship. Students fell into two broad categories based on their response to the

question. The first category included students who accepted the question and

the associated dominant interpretations of the work–education relationship;

the second consisted of those who resisted, constructing alternative interpreta-

tions of the meaning of that relationship. The majority of students fell into the

first category, with many describing how they worked hard to provide appro-

priate answers. In this section, we will explore the elements of the appropriate


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answer more closely in order to understand what it tells us about dominant

interpretations of the meanings of work and education.

Many students who indicated anticipating the reactions of others dis-

cussed framing their answers to mitigate negative reactions. An undeclared

potential English major made this clear, noting “I quickly learned to formu-

late what I thought was the ‘proper’ answer.” Students often reported fabri-

cating appropriate plans when they had none—such as a student who

reported coming up with a plan on the spot to impress his girlfriend’s par-

ents. Others sought to obscure their “unacceptable” actual plans, like the

senior international studies major who wanted to work in international

human rights but changed her answer when bartending: “I usually tell cus-

tomers that I want to work for the government or be an ambassador so theywill leave me alone.” Another student described in detail how he would tell

his parents and friends how his psychology degree would benefit his future

career in business because psychology is “the foundation of everything.”

Despite this typical answer, however, the student commented: “Actually, I

want to be a psychologist.” Students who reported engaging in deceit,

regardless of the form, described their actions as motivated by seeking

approval or avoiding reproach. That is, students either actively sought to

impress their questioner or, at least, to avoid being judged by them.Considering what students described as the appropriate answer— demon-

strating that the student had a sensible plan that promised the student’s future

success—provides insight into the dominant meanings of work and educa-

tion associated with the colloquialism.

Appropriate answers demonstrate a sensible plan. Answers were expected to

indicate a sensible plan expressing a direct connection between major con-

tent and long-term (paid) work plans. As one psychology major put it,

I was somewhat interested in philosophy, but my dad said that philoso-

phy majors didn’t have as many job opportunities and that, “You’ll be

asking ‘Do you want fries with that” if I were to choose it. . . . My

parents didn’t like the idea of [psychology] either because it was some-

thing I would have to get a graduate degree in.

Answers not directly related to paid work were deemed unacceptable

(and almost entirely absent), as were answers indicating an indirect work–

major relationship. One student observed that choosing a major first was

“backwards”: “It is important for me to decide what field I want to venture

into in before deciding what major I want. I needed to choose a major that

would taxi me to the career I am looking at.” This response typifies a common


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view of education as tightly coupled with future work opportunities, where

major choice locks students into a particular trajectory. A sophomore

English major said that people find his plans of using his major in the Peace

Corps to be “unfulfilling because I don’t have a larger career goal in mind.”

As one student wrote, “When thinking about what you are going to do with

your major it is important to think about what you are going to do with the

rest of your life.”

A sensible plan must also be perceived as realistic, requiring students to

walk a fine line, articulating specific goals that were not too precise. Too

specific answers were deemed unrealistic. Responses that seemed to fit this

middle ground included working for a pharmaceutical company or going to

medical or law school. To be perceived as realistic, one’s plan should also beambitious yet attainable. As a sophomore business major hoping to start his

own business explained, “Many people think of my goal as ‘too lofty’ and

unattainable, and I am always self-conscious of their judgments.” Similarly,

a creative writing major hoping to write fiction or poetry refused to tell new

acquaintances her plan because of negative responses, due not only to the

ambitious nature of her plans—which made them insensible—but also

because of the perception that writers struggle financially, violating expecta-

tions for student success. This expectation comprises the second criteriondetermining appropriate answers.

Appropriate answers promise future success. Students recognized that as

they answered the question, others were judging them in terms of their

potential to succeed—narrowly interpreted as financial success. One stu-

dent described angst about selecting a major that would “provide me with a

lucrative career,” noting, “Money is a big part of choosing a major.” An

English major remarked that people often incorrectly assumed that she

planned to teach “because they can’t comprehend what else someone coulddo with such a major and actually make any sort of stable money with it.”

Another student described telling her father she would go to law school: “I

answered this way because truly I felt he was really asking me ‘how are you

going to make the most money with this major?’” Demonstrating one’s

potential to succeed by getting a job and making money was key in crafting

an acceptable response. Students primarily understood good work as that

which provided economic rewards.

Student responses indicated that appropriate answers demonstrated that

majors would not provide sufficient but substantial income, though this

threshold was never discussed in concrete detail. This ambiguity led to a

presumption that more was better. In this way, students’ future job plans

were generally not informed by reflection about what constituted a decent


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living, what kind of quality of life students desired, or what “enough” might

be. Instead, appropriate answers describing jobs that might lead to a merely

sufficient income were seen as illegitimate, reducing the range of acceptable

job possibilities to a narrow-yet-unspecified window of careers associated

with “high-paying” future incomes.

This pressure to pursue high-paying careers was evident in student dis-

cussion of the need to be “practical” in their plans, which was often placed

in tension with following their passion. Students wrestled with this ten-

sion in different ways, with most ultimately privileging practicality. One

wrote, “Many students are majoring in areas where there are more realis-

tic job opportunities, not necessarily where their passion lies.” A minority

concluded that they should follow their passion, trusting that things wouldwork out. For example, an undeclared student wrote, “I know that what-

ever I major in, I will still do what I love.” A third way of navigating this

tension was through practical choices affording space for passion. For

example, an art major decided to pursue a career in advertising or design

because they were “real world jobs that could lessen the chance for me to

be a ‘starving artist’.” She described seeking to account for both what she

was capable of and “what the real world wants from me.” But whether

students complied with or rejected the expectation for a practical answer,students readily recognized the overwhelming pressure to be practical in

their choices. This recognition indicates that students understood the

meaning of work—and subsequently, education—first and foremost in

economic terms. To be perceived as acceptable, student answers needed

to demonstrate a sensible plan that promised future success by looking to

the long term, making close major–work connections and appearing real-

istic. These answers demonstrated the dominant interpretation of the

work–education relationship as tightly coupled with major selection,leading individuals directly and more or less permanently into particular

types of work.

Such a connection is not surprising, given the current economic situation,

but it is worth noting that only two students mentioned their education in

relationship to the contemporary economic crisis. One business student

described having been asked the question by a client at his workplace:

It is a very tough question for me to answer because I am unsure about

using my major for anything corporate related because of all the obvi-

ous inner turmoil with corporate business. Also, I have lost very much

faith in the ethics of capitalism in the U.S. Being asked such a question

sometimes makes me uncomfortable because I am not proud of the

social reputation my major of choice has earned.


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An international business major reported being asked the question “some-

what sarcastically” by his uncle. This student dismissed what he perceived as

the implicit challenge in his uncle’s question as stemming from the uncle’s

“misconception that business opportunities no longer exist.” While these stu-

dents offered different takes on the prospects of the business major in the

economic crisis, what is particularly noteworthy is that they were the only

students to acknowledge the influence of the crisis. We suspect that this is

likely because the current economic situation has simply heightened the per-

ceived urgency of the question rather than fundamentally altered dominant

meanings of work and education.

Alternative Interpretations of Work and

Education: Resisting the Question

While the overwhelming majority of students appeared to accept the question

at face value, about 10% described resisting in some form. This relatively

small number speaks volumes about the force the question exerts as taken-for-

granted conversational commonplace. Moments of student resistance also

cast light on possible alternative interpretations of the work–education rela-

tionship. In this section, we describe two forms of student resistance:refusal to engage and rejecting the premise of the question.

Refusing to engage. One way students resisted the question was by refus-

ing to engage the situation. One student, for instance, said that he was will-

ing to discuss the question with peers as a part of information-seeking small

talk, but refused to tell adults his major in order to avoid the conversation.

Several students described having rote answers to the question—ways, as

one student described it, to “just answer the question to answer it” rather

than to engage in meaningful conversation. Others reported leaving situa-tions when they felt judged for their answer, and some admitted to ignoring

the question when asked, such as the English major who reported, “I gener-

ally ignore this when new acquaintances ask me this question because it

annoys me how often I receive an eye roll or a scoff in response.” Student

refusal to engage the question can be understood as similar to the resistance

strategy of organizational exit. As Lutgen-Sandvik (2006) notes, the exit of

the marginalized simply perpetuates the dominant system. While this resis-

tance strategy provided students a way to push back, it does not reflexively

challenge the meanings of work and education embedded in the question.

Rejecting the premise of the question. A second, more powerful strategy for

resisting the question was to reject its fundamental premises and assert alter-

native interpretations of the work–education relationship. While most of the

students implicitly consented to the pressure to map out their career plans


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and connect them closely to their major, several students expressly rejected

this approach to major selection in particular and university education in

general. Students rejected three relatively distinct premises of the dominant

view: that one’s college major and future career are tightly coupled, putting

the future of students without clear career plans in jeopardy; that students

should expect to work in one career during their working lives; and that

higher education should be primarily oriented toward career preparation.

First, students questioned the assumed tight coupling of major and future

career and the requirement of that coupling for future success. One student,

for instance, took issue with the presumed permanence of the education–

work relationship, noting that “there are . . . so many unpredictable factors

that finding the ‘perfect’ major to find ‘perfect’ job placements seems silly atthis point in my life.” Another wrote, “I believe this reflects the societally

accepted notion that all young people must choose a career then work towards

an ultimate goal. It seems as though this is all that many people are concerned

with.” An undeclared freshman rejected the idea that her future career is in

peril because of her uncertainty:

Even though I may not have a major, I do in fact have many interests

and ideas of what I could major in. My interests include studying art,studio art, photography, environmental science/issues, and traveling.

These are my passions. I am not too worried because I know that what-

ever I major in I will still do what I love.

While most students at least tacitly accepted the dominant assumptions

about work and education embedded in the question, this small group of stu-

dents preferred an alternative framing of the work–education relationship.

They rejected the idea that college majors and careers were tightly coupled andthe implication that they should decide now what work they would pursue

throughout their lives. Instead, they saw their education as equipping them for

a variety of careers and believed that decisions about work were not final.

Second, students rejected the question’s assumptions about the job market.

One student wrote, “The work world is changing so we shouldn’t plan on one

job.” Similarly, another wrote, “The business world is much too vast and con-

tinuously expanding for students with business majors to define their plans

based solely on their major.” These students untangle the relationship between

particular majors and jobs, preferring preparation for a wide variety of future

jobs. As one student put it, “We have the chance to live and experience so

much in this world, and go through a variety of work. I don’t want to follow a

certain path of what my major will do for me, and work only in one area or one

company. That is not the purpose of my pursuit in education and skills.” These


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students preferred an interpretation of education as equipping them to follow

a variety of paths throughout their lives.

Finally, some students rejected the premise that higher education is pri-

marily related to paid work, constructing alternative interpretations of higher

education as connected to various aspects of life. One student’s suggestion

to reframe the question as “What are you studying and do you love it?” dem-

onstrates resistance to the dominant view of the relationship between higher

education and work and reframes higher education as creating a variety of

possible directions for students’ futures. These alternative interpretations of

the work–education relationship helped relieve the pressure around major

selection by emphasizing students’ potential to use education creatively to

succeed over their long-term working lives. Such moments of resistance,while rare, demonstrate that students were not simply passively engaging

the colloquialism but rather reflexively questioning its legitimation of par-

ticular meanings of work and education.

Discussion

As the results above demonstrate, the question, “What are you going to do

with that major,” exerts considerable influence over how students (and oth-ers) interpret meanings of work, education, and their intersection. Our

analysis suggests that the colloquialism functions through its ubiquitous

presence in the lives of college students, who expect to encounter the ques-

tion as a part of normal conversation. Students indicate a pervasive sense of

anxiety surrounding the question; even in seemingly casual conversations,

students feel judgment waiting for them if they fail to provide an appropri-

ate answer. While the question certainly has its positive functions—spurring

students to engage in useful reflection about the relationship between theirmajor and their future working lives—our analysis demonstrates that the

question is imbued with assumptions about the relationship between work

and education that are problematic for reasons discussed as follows. Even

when these assumptions are not intentionally invoked or are outright

rejected, their attachment to the question is recognized and understood.

The Colloquial Question and

the Meaning of WorkThe question implicitly invokes particular meanings of work warranting criti-

cal attention. First, the potential for judgment highlights how the question

elevates particular types of work by perpetuating narrow interpretations of

what constitutes good work. High-paying, high-status work is privileged. Not


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surprisingly, students who felt that their major was preparing them for such

work—particularly in business and engineering—were most likely to express

comfort, while the question generated the most anxiety for students (mostly

in the Liberal Arts) less sure of their major’s connection to work. Such views

are predictable responses to the reality of the job market students see waiting

for them upon graduation. For jobs requiring a college degree, graduates in

education (71.1%), engineering (69.4%), and math and computer science

(68.5%) exceeded the average national employment rate of 55.6% (the precise

rate of employment for business graduates), while graduates in communica-

tion (51.1%) and the humanities (45.4%) lagged behind (Rampell, 2011).

Rampell also reports that those majors followed a nearly identical pattern of

distribution around the national median income of US$26,756 for graduatesemployed in jobs requiring a college degree. Responding to these economic

realities, then, the colloquial force of the question functions much like the expres-

sion “a real job” (Clair, 1996), loaded with implicit assumptions about what

kind of work (i.e., requiring an education, offering substantial pay) is most

acceptable for students to pursue.

A second manner in which the question appears to shape the meaning of

work for students is by implicitly perpetuating a view of work grounded in

the linear career model (Buzzanell & Goldzwig, 1991) that does not accu-rately represent the working world students are likely to face. As mentioned,

responses demonstrated that students primarily see major selection as tightly

coupled with future work, indicating anxiety over the perception that deci-

sions made in the present box them in, determining their future careers. In

short, the majority of students indicated a direct and permanent relationship

between college major and postcollege work. However, these assumptions do

not align with the realities of the global economy. As Buzzanell (2000) notes,

the current social contract between employers and employees has shiftedsuch that neither expects the relationship to be long term. Instead, individuals

can expect to work in a variety of companies over the course of their working

lives and, likely, work in a variety of different professions. The permanent

view of career that is perpetuated through the colloquial question, “What are

you going to do with that major?,” conflicts with what students are likely to

experience postcollege, hindering students from approaching higher educa-

tion in a way that will equip them better for the long term.

The Colloquial Question and

the Meaning of Education

Our analysis suggests that the colloquial question, “What are you going to

do with that major?,” plays an important role in cementing vocational


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meanings of higher education. “Doing” appears to be taken as synonymous

with “working,” suggesting that the question enables discursive closure

around the meaning of higher education, squeezing out possibilities for

conceiving of purposes for education beyond the occupational (Deetz,

1992). Significantly, out of the 110 students responding to the survey, only

one reported a nonvocational dimension to her plans, explaining to her boss

how her major will

help me with everyday conversation throughout the rest of my life.

Being an international studies major, I explained that I will develop a

comprehensive knowledge and understanding of global issues. I

explained how, as a result, I would be able to have significant conver-sations about such issues with people throughout my life.

Here, intelligent and informed conversation is framed as something that

this student will be able to “do” with her major that is not directly tied to

work—although the student did first mention how she hoped her major

would position her for a career in the intelligence community. Beyond this

singular example, however, no students expressed a potential for their

major to enable them to “do” anything nonvocational. While equippingstudents to contribute vocationally is an important function of higher edu-

cation, our findings demonstrate how vocational goals have replaced other

goals as the focus of higher education, such as cultivating citizen-subjects

or helping students to wrestle with questions of how to live a meaningful

life (Deetz, 1992; Watkins, 2008). In our study, students viewed education

as an instrumental means without indicating a sense that learning could be

an enriching end in itself or that a college education would enhance other

roles that they might play in society, such as citizen, parent, partner, vol-unteer, or community member.

Furthermore, the question—and surrounding conversations—perpetuates

a very narrow view of vocational preparation. Students saw majors as

providing vocational preparation if they were oriented around clearly

identifiable skills that would directly apply to one’s future job. Majors—

such as those in the liberal arts—providing students with more nebu-

lous skills such as critical thinking and problem solving that could be

applied in a variety of ways to future work were seen as less valid prepa-

ration for work. Students majoring in such subjects were expected to

justify their major choice by connecting the dots for the questioner. The

question, “What are you going to do with that major?,” constructs the

purpose of education very narrowly in terms of directly translatable

occupational skills.


24/30


Conclusion and Implications

The considerable influence of the question reinforces the need for the inter-

section of work and higher education to occupy a prominent place for orga-

nizational communication scholars interested in exploring the meaning of

work. While there has been a long disciplinary history of interest in educa-

tion writ large as a socialization microsystem, this study demonstrates that

colleges and universities serve as a crucial site in which meanings of work

and education are negotiated. As higher education is seen in increasingly

vocational terms, it becomes a progressively more important space where

assumptions about what constitutes good work are being constructed, main-

tained, and, potentially, transformed, with long-ranging implications forstudents’ future lives—at work and beyond.

Our research demonstrates that the colloquial question functions as a

form of identity regulation, calling into question students’ identities and

prompting them to engage in identity work (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002).

We see this specifically in the ways that students perceive the question and

others’ responses to their answers as indicating judgment. In their discus-

sions of what the appropriate response was and how they worked to provide

it, we see that students’ identity work was guided by a particular view of theideal self (Wieland, 2010). Having a response that fit this ideal reassured

students that their identity was socially acceptable; failing to genuinely have

such a response caused them severe anxiety.

This study also indicates that conversations in higher educational con-

texts around major selection encourage students to conceive of their identi-

ties quite narrowly, equating self with work. Given the close connection

between identity and work, it is not surprising that students felt great pres-

sure to have a solid response to the question. The relative permanence sug-gested by the question’s implicit invocation of a linear career model appears

to pressure students to enter what Arnett (2004) has described as identity

foreclosure—a state in which they have not explored, yet have committed

to, an identity. Students’ discussions of their encounters with the question,

“What are you going to do with that major?,” indicate that the question

exerts tremendous force in encouraging commitment to a work identity

without full exploration. This force is especially problematic in an era in

which they are unlikely to have linear careers.

While this study suggests that identity construction processes are stimu-

lated by conversations around major selection, the nature of our data pre-

vents us from fully exploring how students engage in the intricate process

of identity construction. Future research should use in-depth methods such


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as qualitative interviewing to explore how the question prompts identity

construction. Focusing on identity would better equip researchers to con-

sider the intersections between everyday discourse and macro-discursive

trends related to education and work. In-depth interviews would provide a

deeper understanding of how the socioeconomic context shapes students’

identities related to work and education, providing insight, for example,

into the implications of the current economic recession for meanings of

education and work.

The implications of this current research are inevitably constrained by

several key limitations. First, because the study focuses on traditional-age

college students, it overlooks the experience of those returning to higher

education institutions later in life, often to pursue new careers. Futureresearch could productively explore these students’ encounters with the

question in order to gain insight into how they make sense of education and

work while living a nonlinear career model. Second, because the colloquial

question at hand deals with students’ majors, this analysis necessarily sets

aside student perceptions of the meaning and purpose of general education,

suggesting another focus for future research. Third, the type and location of

the institution that participants attended likely influenced the particular

meanings attached to the colloquial question, given its location as a privateinstitution in the U.S. academy, as notions of appropriate work are likely to

be significantly different for students attending institutions serving differ-

ent populations. Finally, a question not addressed by this study is how do

higher education institutions seek more directly to shape students’ under-

standing of the relationship between work and education? Future, related

research could more directly tackle this socialization process as it occurs

through communication with students about the meaning of work and edu-

cation by higher education organizations.Despite these limitations, the current study suggests several important

implications. Taken together, the pressure that students feel from the question

to foreclose prematurely on their work identities (combined with a nagging

sense of permanence attached to such decisions) and the seeming prevalence

of the question outside of educational contexts suggests the importance for

college and university educators to provide meaningful opportunities for stu-

dents to understand, and reflect on, the relationship between their education

and their future work lives. In an era when we repeatedly (and accurately) tell

our students that they can expect to have multiple careers and many more jobs,

it would seem imperative that we help our students think through the role that

their education will play over the course of their professional, personal, and

public lives, particularly in the face of everyday talk that encourages them to


26/30


make early, and seemingly permanent, decisions about what to study and what

to “do with their lives” as a result. As Ashcraft and Allen (2009) argue, orga-

nizational communication scholars are especially equipped to work with stu-

dents “not only to critique and transform educational practices, but also to

discover how the vocabularies they use and the ways they communicate influ-

ence their ability to do so” (p. 25). We suggest it is especially important to

extend critical conversations about the meaning of work and education beyond

the classroom to formal and informal advising and mentoring roles. As our

analysis shows, students would benefit from conversations that help them con-

front sedimented meanings of work and education. Given that work is so cen-

tral to their lives and well-being and that models of work are changing in a

way that our everyday language may not yet reflect, organizational communi-cation scholars have an opportunity to help students imagine alternative ways

of constructing higher education, paid work, and the relationship between

education and work.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Jim Barker, Patricia Sias, and the anonymous review-

ers for their thorough and helpful feedback and advice on earlier versions of this

manuscript. In addition, we are grateful for Arianna Molloy (PhD candidate,University of Denver) and Lakshmi Balaji (MA, Villanova University) for their assis-

tance in the data-gathering phases of this project.

Author’s Note

The alphabetical listing of the authors indicates joint authorship and the equal contri-

bution each author made to this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-

tion of this article.

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BiosDaniel J. Lair (PhD, University of Utah) is a lecturer at the University of Michigan–

Flint, Flint, MI, USA. His main research interests include meaningful work, work

socialization, organizational rhetoric, and the representation of work in institutional

contexts such as higher education and popular culture.

Stacey M. B. Wieland (PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder) is an assistant profes-

sor at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA. Her main interests

include meanings of work, work–life issues, and intersections between identity, cul-ture, and work.

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