I promised to publish more comments from my class of budding business writers and their preparation for same in higher ed. Here is another insightful commentary:
Question: Please discuss the changing nature of writing and how higher education should therefore prepare its students.
I think that the nature of writing has changed greatly in the past few years as the use of the internet has changed everything. Information can be found so easily, and people have attention issues because we are an age of immiediate satisfaction. This makes writing difficult because we, as students, do not want to sit and read through books for research, nor do we thoroughly search through all of the internet. We take what we need to support what we are saying. High education right now gives an assignment as followes. ” X thesis statement - 15-20 pages in length.” When in reality, our world is heading toward an age when length is not necessary because we will not be taking the time to read it. We will be taking the important facts from skimming, and moving on.
Therefore, higher education needs to prepare its students in brevity. The world is constantly changing, faster every year, we need to be able to keep up. But that also means to know basics of many more subjects. The fewer words you can get your point across strongly and successfully, the even stronger you will make your argument.