Molnar 1

Jim Molnar
Ashley Humphries
ENC 1101
2/11/15
Education: A Secondary Word for Debt
Education is essential to acquiring a sound job that will produce stable income for you
and your family, though nowadays debt is now a part of that list of essentials. According to Catey
Hill in her article titled Masters degree debt jumped 70% since 2004 of the website Market
Watch she states a report by Edvisors found that nearly two-thirds of people with a masters
degree graduated with debt Two-thirds of graduates with a masters degree are chained to the
arm of a lender that requires you pay a debt much grater than that of an undergrad. The average
debt of masters level graduates is $38,579 which is also found in Catey Hills analysis.
Graduating from a masters program, like anything, should carry pride, joy, and confidence in
your endeavors of the job market, instead, graduation translates into getting a really good job so
you can pay off the education youve accumulated over the past years studying for your masters.
Overall, this political cartoon represents many, many things, but when only looking at the black
and white of this representation (no pun intended) its clear that as soon as a masters student is
handed their diploma, the lender pulls the chain attached to the graduate, and he/she is left to
realize that graduation is just a fancy word for saying debt. We will soon learn that the less detail
a political cartoon achieves, the boldness of its message increases whch in turn influences the
clarity of its meaning. If you would like to refer back to the image while reading, you may find it
on page seven of this paper.

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To understand this picture we must be fluent in all aspects of its image, layout,
color, design, and lighting. Firstly, lets examine its color, which in this case is black and white.
Another way you can look at this image is the absence of color. Taking away the color from
anything can take away all distraction so that the viewer is focused solely on the message of the
photo. In this case, there is no sugar coating this political cartoon, you borrowed money, you
graduated, and now your lender whats his money back at a fast rate. Taking away all aspects of
color makes us realize this harsh truth is not going away. Secondly, we have the concept of
design. This design, or the intention behind this photo is, I believe, to inform prospective masters
students, or others that may want to pursue a masters degree, that it is expensive, and that even
know you are free from your college classes, you are not free from your college debt. The
lighting of this visual ties in to the black and white aspects of the photo, but also highlights
words like debt and lender by locating them on the white, more noticeable portions of the
photo. Next we have the layout of the cartoon, which in this case is very simplistic. For a
moment, lets pretend as if all the text on the photo was absent, what could we analyze from just
the photo? Well, we are left with a man, looking as if he just graduated from something, attached
to a chain held be a giant hand. So something is holding him back, it is also not evident what his
diploma reads. It is simple to infer that the layout is suggesting that something is keeping him
from pursuing something, which is absolutely true. Lastly, we must dissect the image in its
entirety. This picture is representing the struggle that the majority of masters graduates receive,
which is an outstanding debt.
So why get a masters if youre going to accumulate a large, seemingly bottomless debt?
Jobs. Achieving a masters degree in anything opens up a wide array of possibilities in the job
market. Possibilities, not to be mistaken with guarantees. In an article titled Spiraling graduate

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student debt raises alarms Jon Marcus interviews Army veteran, Anthony Manfre and his
experiences with college debt. Thats because Manfre went on to graduate school, picking up a
masters degree before setting off on the long road to a doctorate in marriage and family therapy
while borrowing to also pay his living expenses. And now hes $200,000 in debt. It later states
in the article that Manfre does in fact have a well-paying job, $61,500 a year, but he does not
think that will be enough to pay off his debt for a very, very long time. So by attaining a masters
degree, you have the opportunity to get a better job than you would if you just had your
undergrad, but it is not a guarantee, what is mostly guaranteed is debt.
Now that we have analyzed the visual elements of the text, we must now consider the
qualities of the written text such as voice, tone, audience, and style. The creator of this cartoon
uses a very blunt voice in conjunction with this picture. The entire picture only encompasses four
words, half of them being Masters Degree and the other half being lender, debt So it is very
easy to hear what the author is trying to say because he bluntly comes out and says it. The tone,
which is the general characteristic of attitude, of this picture can be determined as frightened. By
judging the text alone, you will notice that it is bold with no acts of communication, only general
statements, but if you look at this picture itself for a moment, you can only judge the expressions
of the graduate since you cannot see the face or body of the man holding the chain. The
graduates body is slumped and his facial features read I cannot believe I have all this debt!
What was I thinking? How will I pay this? What do I do? Next we visit what I believe to be the
most important facet of this textual analysis, the audience. If you do not know who your
audience is than that leaves the table open to misunderstanding. I believe the audience of this
political debt cartoon is those who plan to take masters level courses and those who are in
masters level courses. This photo gives them a chance to rethink what they want to do. Ask

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themselves questions like is the job I MIGHT get after this worth the debt? Should I drop out?
Should I completely change my life plan because the debt is too dangerous The importance of
anything is who you put it in front of, current or prospective masters students will find this photo
much more helpful than the likes of, lets say, janitors. Lastly, we have to dissect the style of the
text. This aspect is easiest because, well, there is no style to the picture, only the text and general
words. If you were to take out the picture completely and you were left with the four
aforementioned words, (masters degree, lender, debt) I still believe the average reader would
find it pretty easy to tell that the picture was about the debt that master degree students
accumulate in their academic endeavors.
I would like to revisit a question that I brought up in the paragraph prior to this, the
question being Is it worth it? to answer this question we need to observe a couple of variables.
One of these variables we have already noted, which is the fact that the average debt of masters
students is $38,579. The second piece of information is how much, on average, a masters level
student makes. These numbers can differ depending on your major as well as how the job market
is residing at the moment of graduation. Having to pay such a high debt means that after your
grace period, your monthly payments are going to be much more expensive than they would be if
you only got your undergrad. Can you afford that chance? Can you afford taking the risk being
unemployed with a larger debt? If you can, power to you, but I believe the majority of people
cannot financially take that dive, and that is the sole reason for this political cartoon.
Now that we have discussed, in detail, the visual and textual elements of the graphic, we
are now going to put it all together and notice the major comparisons between the two, and how
they complement eachother. When examining the color of the political cartoon, we concluded
that due to the fact that the picture is in black and white, this makes the message it is implying

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more bold and direct, and if we also look back at the tone that the text was giving us, we can
further conclude that the author of this picture wanted it to come off as blunt and forward. No
distractions, no complications, masters level graduates are shackled to the debt that they
borrowed to achieve there degree, plain and simple. This can also be reprsented by the fact that
there is no style in this picture, which also compliments the blunt story that this image is
portraying. Secondly, we discussed the importance of knowing your audience so that you may
firmly and accurately relay the information of the image to them so that they will understand the
graphic without confusion. Though I only mentioned this in the textual analysis, it is equally
important to know who your audience is while designing the art of the graphic. Yes, if I were to
only give you the four words stated in this cartoon, you would probably be able to put two and
two together and realize that it is about the debt of masters students, but we do not want
probably we want definite with no confusion. By adding the cartoon to the text, we now know
for sure after critically analyzing it, that it is about the debt that masters graduates accumulate.
There is now no gray area. Both the text and the visuals contribute to this and there would be
ambiguity if one or the other was not present. When representing a statement through text, it is
absolutely essential to combine image and text to your art if you want your message to have
absolute clarity. Add clarity to a blunt picture like the one seen below and you have a factual
statement that is just as meaningful if you were to write the whole picture in a paragraph.
To quote another piece by Jon Marcus in his article The real student debt problem no
one is talking about he states Graduate students make up just 14% of university enrollment, but
account for nearly 40% of student debt That is a powerful statement, to think that nearly half of
the student debt is comprised of less than one-fifth of university enrolment. Debt seems to be a
plague among masters students according to these reports. To back up these reports we are left

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with a bold image that states what we all already know, a masters degree opens the door of
opportunity, but opens a much wider gate to debt, and when you weigh the two together, to no
ones surprise, the debt outweighs the potential for high income jobs. Which all ties together
with a question listed prior in this essay, is graduating with your masters worth the debt
obligation that you will have to take head on? That is a question everyone will have a personal
opinion of, but due to the outcome of these facts, its safe to say that the average person cannot
take that plunge. This essay supports statistics, facts, and honest information about the debt crisis
that our masters students are facing, but I did not have to tell you any of that for you to know
that debt exists. All you need is a simple graphic with the text to back it up. This picture supports
the blunt, hard to swallow, black and white version of the truth which is supported by such
visuals as the color, lighting, and design as well as the textual examples such as voice, tone, and
style, but that is not all that makes this comic direct. Needless to say that nothing is worth
anything is no one looks at, which means who you present it to means a great deal as well. Your
audience needs to understand what its looking at so that they may translate it in their minds, and
for them to get a clear cut translation they must understand what they are looking at which is
why we not only incorporate text, but we also include the visual aspects of the cartoon so that the
audience can take what they see and apply it to their own understanding of how they view the
debt crisis of rising masters graduates. In the end, a picture is nothing without words to describe,
both go hand in hand, and there is no better way to say something, than just coming out and

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saying it, no color, just keep it black and white

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Work Cited:

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Hill, Catey. "Master's Degree Debt Jumped 70% since 2004." MarketWatch. Market
Watch, 26 Mar. 2014. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.
Marcus, Jon. "Spiraling Graduate Student Debt Raises Alarms." The Hechinger Report.
Time, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.
Marcus, Jon. "The Real Student Debt Problem." Time. Time, 9 Nov. 2014. Web. 08 Feb.
2015.
Zyglis, Adam. "Student Loan Debt." Cagle Post RSS. Cagle Cartoons, 30 Apr. 2012.
Web. 27 Feb. 2015.