Should you major in a field you consider evil? Slate advice

[polly_mer]

As someone who works in the defense industry, I'm hugely amused by the idea that advertising is evil enough that no one should major in it, but apparently courses were OK while majoring in a 'research field'.  https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/09/dear-prudence-advertising-college-major-career-advice-ethics-advice.html?via=Dear_Prudence

[Hegemony]

The advice was not that no one should major in it, but that someone who believes it to be unethical and contrary to his values should not major in it. That advice seems pretty self-evident to me.

[polly_mer]

The advice was not that no one should major in it, but that someone who believes it to be unethical and contrary to his values should not major in it. That advice seems pretty self-evident to me.

Why was the question even asked?

Why is advertising so evil that the student can't do it, but enjoyed the courses?

How does one come to take courses in that 'evil' advertising as someone majoring in something unrelated?  If advertising is evil, then how is majoring in business, the only logical major in which one might be required to take advertising courses, itself not evil?

What's up with considering advertising evil, but immediately ruling out working with non-profits?

The advice was better than usual, but the question being asked amuses me because it is a logical fail.

[downer]

You will need to sign up for a course in business ethics to get the full discussion of reasons for why working in the advertising industry is morally compromising.

I doubt that at entry level you get to have much choice about what products you get to work on. So you end up promoting crap that is bad for people or that they will just be wasting their money on. Like ads for "super dinky" colleges.

[marshwiggle]

The advice was not that no one should major in it, but that someone who believes it to be unethical and contrary to his values should not major in it. That advice seems pretty self-evident to me.

What's kind of sad is the implicit fantasy that there are fields out there which will never present serious ethical dilemmas and/or never require uncomfortable compromises. Advertising may make these more obvious than some others, but life is messy and any path in life (career, marriage, family, etc.) is going to involve difficult decisions where no course of action feels entirely satisfactory.

[Caracal]

The advice was not that no one should major in it, but that someone who believes it to be unethical and contrary to his values should not major in it. That advice seems pretty self-evident to me.

Yeah, I think Poly has misunderstood the advice. Lavery isn't taking a position on whether advertising is or isn't evil. He is just saying that if this student thinks it makes the world a worse place, then maybe majoring in it isn't a good idea. I'm assuming that the final project in advertising courses is not to persuade an old person to pay 100 dollars for something they don't need and can't afford, so there's obviously nothing "bad" about taking courses in it.

I suspect that the student is thinking too narrowly about the relationship between major and career. Perhaps someone who actually knows something about advertising majors could weigh in, but I suspect you could major in advertising and use those skills to move into other related fields Right now they seem to be thinking of the possible choices for an advertising major as either working for a non-profit or making a living by selling Doritos to diabetic children. Probably there are some options in the middle.

[Caracal]

The advice was not that no one should major in it, but that someone who believes it to be unethical and contrary to his values should not major in it. That advice seems pretty self-evident to me.

What's kind of sad is the implicit fantasy that there are fields out there which will never present serious ethical dilemmas and/or never require uncomfortable compromises. Advertising may make these more obvious than some others, but life is messy and any path in life (career, marriage, family, etc.) is going to involve difficult decisions where no course of action feels entirely satisfactory.

Sure, but you probably don't want to start off by just deciding to go into a career that you think is bad for the world. That seems like a way to end up burnt out and unhappy with your job at 32.

[downer]

I'm curious: how many businesses how their own "in house" advertising department, and how many will go to an agency when they need to do advertising? My vision of the advertising world is largely shaped by Madmen.

[marshwiggle]

The advice was not that no one should major in it, but that someone who believes it to be unethical and contrary to his values should not major in it. That advice seems pretty self-evident to me.

What's kind of sad is the implicit fantasy that there are fields out there which will never present serious ethical dilemmas and/or never require uncomfortable compromises. Advertising may make these more obvious than some others, but life is messy and any path in life (career, marriage, family, etc.) is going to involve difficult decisions where no course of action feels entirely satisfactory.

Sure, but you probably don't want to start off by just deciding to go into a career that you think is bad for the world. That seems like a way to end up burnt out and unhappy with your job at 32.

Yeah, but it needs to be pointed out to the student that anything they choose, even if it involves fewer moral dilemmas than advertising, won't avoid them entirely. (The characterization of advertising as "evil" implies that other choices are "*not evil", or maybe even "good", but thats very wrong-headed.)

*Remember when one tech company had the motto of "Don't be evil"? How'd that turn out?

[ciao_yall]

A few years ago I taught Advertising. One of my students was taking, that same semester, an English class whose theme was "The Evils of Consumerism."

He told me he had an interesting semester!

[apl68]

A few years ago I taught Advertising. One of my students was taking, that same semester, an English class whose theme was "The Evils of Consumerism."

He told me he had an interesting semester!

Well, higher education is supposed to expose students to a variety of perspectives, right?  Sounds like that student's semester was a success!

Looks like the questioner in the "Slate" column was attracted to advertising because it is a creative field in which one could build a career without being a starving artist.  At the same time, the student seems convinced of the "evils of consumerism," and is therefore convinced that a career in advertising, however personally fulfilling, would be bad for society.  The columnist's advice was sound in pointing out that one isn't truly likely to enjoy a career whose fundamental goals one disagrees with.

[ciao_yall]

A few years ago I taught Advertising. One of my students was taking, that same semester, an English class whose theme was "The Evils of Consumerism."

He told me he had an interesting semester!

Well, higher education is supposed to expose students to a variety of perspectives, right?  Sounds like that student's semester was a success!

Looks like the questioner in the "Slate" column was attracted to advertising because it is a creative field in which one could build a career without being a starving artist.  At the same time, the student seems convinced of the "evils of consumerism," and is therefore convinced that a career in advertising, however personally fulfilling, would be bad for society.  The columnist's advice was sound in pointing out that one isn't truly likely to enjoy a career whose fundamental goals one disagrees with.

I didn't read the article.

One can have a career in Advertising while choosing clients one believes in, or focusing on causes that one believes in. For everyone who decides to sell cigarettes, there is another who works for anti-smoking PSA campaigns. If people are going to buy toilet paper or toothpaste anyway, may as well work for brands who are environmentally friendly, give to causes, and so on.

[writingprof]

Does one get an advertising career by majoring in advertising at some random college?  That sounds too good to be true.

[Parasaurolophus]

I think the advice to avoid participating in things you think are morally reprehensible is sound. And it's clearly contingent on your own beliefs and commitments, and how you imagine your role in that participation.

I also think that the choice to walk away from practices or situations which one thinks are unethical is a legitimate response, and generally praiseworthy. This is especially true for practices and situations where a lot of people go in thinking they can help to effect positive change, only to find themselves changed for the worse by the practices they facilitate. I'm not sure I'd quite class advertising among those practices, but I'm not the one wondering about whether I should walk away from it, either.

In each case, one has to weigh one's moral commitments against the expected harm one will perpetuate, and perform a realistic assessment of the good one could expect to effect by staying in that profession/position/etc. I also think that we're probably not usually very clear on the first without some kind of education in ethics, we probably tend to underestimate when it comes to the second, and we probably all tend to be overly optimistic in that last assessment.

[polly_mer]

Does one get an advertising career by majoring in advertising at some random college?  That sounds too good to be true.

It is.  This is another case where starry eyed, recent graduates from the cornfields move to the big city sure they will win big and get crushed by the realities.

This is definitely a situation where the students are best served by having a lot of their undergrad education be internships and coops to have direct experience while building professional networks.  The degree alone isn't really a job credential.