Rhetorical Analysis Of Why Colleges Show Their Students With A's By Brent Staples

Brent Staples, the author of Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s, is a contributor to the New York Times Newspaper. The article was made in 1998 in the Times. The thesis is explicit and states that due to competitors, degrees have decreased in value and grade inflation is occurring. He uses an example of a college university to show how it is happening. Staples then goes into more detail about the topic saying that students and parents get their money’s worth when they get good grades. In the article, Brent uses mainly examples to provide more information about the topic, but also emotional words to give the article a bigger impact and establishes credibility by providing other opinions to successfully persuade the hostile audience why grade inflation is an issue.
The article’s use of pathos comes in the form of emotional words to make the article have a bigger impact. Without them the article would just feel informative and may have less of an impact on the audience. To clarify, if the article just said, “Colleges like students who get A’s,” people would not have cared as much. Using the word showers makes it feel like a bigger deal than using the word like. The topic itself could cause emotions. People who are outside the target audience may be angry that the issue is
The length is important because if it was too short, details would be left out and leaves unanswered questions; if it was too long, the article may drag on and start to repeat itself. The author is providing the information because having a college education is important and people could be concerned with sending their students to a university. The information may help college students out to know more details about how colleges run. The issue is relevant and the author could have been interested in the topic and wanted to tell people about the