Teaser subject lines (was: request for information)

MODERATOR'S NOTE: Leo makes a valid point about the subject header, but it's something I, as a moderator, should have dealt with before posting. Ideally we like to avoid making any changes to a post -- at least not without consulting with the author -- but, indeed, such a change would have been more helpful for everyone. My apologies for the oversight.

From: Leo Enticknap <[email protected]>

Could I please make a request for people to refrain from using
'teaser' subject lines? The result of them is that people who might have
something useful to contribute will delete the message unread if they're
in a hurry and/or suspect the message to be spam, while those who don't
might waste their time reading a message that is of no relevance to
them.

Furthermore, such generic subject lines (e.g. 'Help!', 'request
for information' etc.) are often used by malware to distribute malicious
attachments, and for that reason can be automatically deleted by
antivirus software and spam filters and never even make it to the
recipient. If this message hadn't come from what I know to be a
moderated list, I would have deleted it unread. Something like
'Information requested - graduate recruitment from UK HEIs' would have
been more useful.

Erica Sheen writes:

"I'm trying to help colleagues
at another university compile statistics at very short notice to support
the argument that a slump in graduate recruitment figures has been a
national trend over the last two years."

What do you mean by graduate
recruitment - the recruitment of graduates by universities (i.e.
admissions to postgraduate programmes) or the employment of first degree
graduates to graduate-level jobs?

If the latter, I'd have thought that
it would be very difficult to compile statistics in our subject area,
because such a large proportion of graduates end up self-employed. On
the degree I teach in (Cinema and Photography at Leeds), probably at
least half our alumni form their own start-ups or work as freelance
filmmakers and photographers immediately after graduating. The bean
counters would probably class them as unemployed (cue Daily Mail
articles about mickey mouse media studies...), even though many of them
are highly successful and go on to employ graduates from subsequent
cohorts.

Leo

---
Leo Enticknap
Institute of Communications
Studies
2.35, Clothworkers' Building North
University of Leeds
LS2
9JT
United Kingdom
My personal website [1]
My page on the University of
Leeds's website [2]
My page on academia.edu [3] 

Links:
------
[1]
http://www.enticknap.net
[2] http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/staff/leo
[3]
http://leeds.academia.edu/enticknap