The Loss Leader Generation

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A helpful juxtaposition… First, a story shared by a  colleague in a training course I am taking:

Faculty members are far less excited by, and more fearful of, the recent growth of online education than are academic technology administrators, according to a new study by Inside Higher Ed and the Babson Survey Research Group.

“Conflicted: Faculty and Online Education, 2012,” Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed

And then the  Net Gen Skeptic, a blog another colleague pointed me to, which documents research that’s often skeptical about the use of new technologies:

The purpose of this blog is to provide a balanced exploration of research and commentary on the impact of digital technologies on higher education.This blog … aims to develop a deeper understanding of the role of digital technology in higher education, how learners use technology for academic, social and other purposes and how those uses are related.

About, Net Gen Skeptic

I am not sure how helpful the IHE / Babson study really is in the long run, since enthusiasm or excitement is hardly a good measure of the pedagogical or social validity of online education but the framework of the study does suggest that technology administrators are one of the driving forces behind the growth of digital technology in higher education. That sounds like putting the wagon ahead of the horse.

The Net Gen Skeptic blog, however points to a growing catalog of evidence that our ideas about online education are saddled with misconceptions and myths, particularly when it comes to the dramatic claim that people born after a certain moment– to paraphrase my colleague, “into a world that has always had the internet and smart phones”– have been so transformed that they can no longer be taught in the traditional classroom.

It’s an idea more connected to advertising hyperbole than to pedagogy.  A student who gets his or her first Iphone at age 10 is no more or less likely to learn the sorts of critical thinking skills needed to do good research and writing than any one else.  The idea of the “Digital Native”  has one advantage: it’s a great way to convince an administration to buy more stuff. In the current academic climate that’s more attractive than investing in people.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

Reality-Based Administration

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This Inside Higher Education story, “Has Faculty’s Role Eroded?” is about a current case at the National Labor Relations Board that could determine if faculty at private universities can unionize.  Why can’t they? The 1980 Supreme Court ruling  (NLRB v. Yeshiva University) said they could not because faculty, under the traditions of shared governance, are in effect managers and so can’t be represented by a collective bargaining agreement. Right.

The faculty at Park Point University want to unionize and so filed a petition with the NLRB arguing that since shared governance is no longer practiced faculty are no longer managers and should be able to organize. “There have been no significant developments,” the American Council on Education‘s brief argues opposing unionization, “in private universities’ decision-making models since Yeshiva.” That’s nonsense of a very high order.

Shared governance was never that much more than an administrative slogan– after all, the administration always controlled the purse strings– but it did make a certain amount of sense as long as the tenure system was intact.  That’s no longer true, especially at universities that rely heavily on part-time adjuncts with no benefits much less academic freedom of speech protections or job security or control over the curriculum or classes.

Administrations (and others) have argued for decades that universities must emulate the market and the corporate practices that arise from it.  The old system, we were told,  of secure full-time jobs and professors creating their own courses and curriculum was archaic.  They destroyed it–and shared governance–in the name of a free-market future that was supposed to be modern, cheaper, more efficient, better.

This ought to be very clear by now:  the so-called free market does not do everything well and if there are no democratic checks on it– via regulations and unions, at the very least– it will inevitably run itself right into the ground, like a car without a driver. That’s the lesson of the recession here and around the world, and in every sector, from education to medicine to housing to finance. The private sector needs unions to stay healthy.

Posted in: Writing

Patriotism

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Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, “Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you.”

Emma Goldman, “What Is Patriotism?” (1909)

A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.

Bill Vaughan. “Brainy Quotes“

Patriotism is a tricky subject for the left in our age of far-right nuttiness.  I don’t think any of us would deny that we find patriotism– or perhaps we mean nationalism–a horrific and far too often rigid and violent set of notions and beliefs.  Yet criticism of patriotism can easily fall into Tea Party clichés about the evils of the Federal Government. We want to sound like Emma Goldman but we end up echoing Timothy McVeigh. That’s why I like the Bill Vaughan quote.

I lived overseas  long enough to feel the pull of being an expatriate but I came back to the United States because I love my culture and language and family. I might have felt differently if I had been better at learning another language and at internalizing another culture.  I do feel a certain love of country, though, with all of its contradictions, but its borders are ill-defined and porous. My country blurs into Canada and Mexico and across oceans.

The U.S. isn’t the best country in the world. I doubt we ever were. It’s getting worse, too, as we grow more sharply divided between rich and poor and as we continue to neglect the institutions and values– especially higher education and a national health care system– that would make us more developed as a people and more just.  We have a tendency to listen to charlatans, from Pet Rock salespeople to Sarah Palin.  That patriotism should be ignored.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Professional, Writing