Discourse, Power, and Ideology in the Academy

A Re-Reading of Rick Scott's Degrees to Jobs Summit

Abstract

This article examines Governor Rick Scott’s 2016 Degrees to Jobs Summit, treating it as a collection of discourses with significant cultural and political power to shape the way that students, faculty, administrators, and the public all interact with and view the purpose of higher education in Florida. I localize this discourse primarily within the State University System of Florida’s Strategic plan and university performance standards. Principally, I argue that the Degrees to Jobs discourse impacts student agency, self-conception, and choice within the academy, specifically within the humanities disciplines. My analysis deploys critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Huckin et al.) to scrutinize the situational circumstances and “rich features” (Barton) of the discourse as well as post-structuralist notions of power and knowledge, as framed in the work of Foucault and Bourdieu. This essay also examines the special challenges presented by this discourse for English and Rhetoric & Composition classrooms in Florida, as well professors, administrators, and students within those spaces.