The Future of Hyperbole

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I had a professor once who, in criticizing the manuscript that eventually became my book, commented that historians of universities always see a crisis somewhere. I think that’s true, and I think that writers always have to be aware that in their pursuit for persuasion they don’t fall into an unnecessary hyperbole. The “crisis” trope might get you attention, but it also can distort.

I also think that the last three decades have witnessed profound changes in employment practices and funding that warrant the notion of crisis. So I left the trope in my book. On the other hand, I think that it is true that the emergence of new communications technologies has far too often pushed or pulled writers into unnecessary hyperbole. The solutions are not easily found.

One (subtle) example is, “Florida Virtual School: Is This What the School of the Future Will Look Like?” on Read/Write Web. The trope in question is, “the future of.” I can’t help but wonder if that phrase encourages less technologically enthusiastic readers to worry about the loss of the physical classroom. In fact, the Florida system maximizes flexibility without weakening traditional methods.

“The future of..” has an Orwellian ring, as if the future described was not about using technology to maximize potential but that Orwellian boot smashing individuality. I’ve heard more than one professor suggest something similar about new communication technologies. So I say we just drop that trope, “the future of,” altogether and try to create something more widely appealing.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Language, Professional, Writing

Simple Truisms

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Along with this reminder, the struggles of the Progressive Era offer several lessons for today: First, the conditions academic workers enjoyed at mid-century did not emerge organically as the American university developed; they had to be fought for and won, and they require continuous defense. Rather than describing tenure as an “eroding” institution, for instance, we should see it as being dismantled. We need to locate and hold accountable the people and policies responsible for today’s retrenchment.

Second, professionalism cuts both ways. While organizing as professionals (as did the early AAUP) can provide and protect some autonomy and power, it can also promote the sense that professionals are above the rank of ordinary workers, thereby discouraging participation in labor-related struggles and encouraging a steep hierarchy within the work force.

“Intellectual Proletarians in the 20th Century,” Heather Steffen, Chronicle of Higher Education

I admit it. It’s the holidays and between the work that I didn’t get done over Thanksgiving and the shopping trip with The Child this afternoon, I am pressed for time. So I am going to cheat a little bit and simply point to a very helpful article by Heather Steffen that’s full of some very basic truths that I think we cannot be reminded of too often.

I was particularly happy to see her emphasis on struggle (over so-called organic development) and on holding ourselves and our administrators responsible for the choices that got us into this mess. Ms. Steffen implies something very hopeful: if we are in fact in more or less the same position that academics were a century or so ago, perhaps we are also on the cusp of a new progressive era.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Professional

Silos

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There was a point– I think in the late 1070s– when I realized that events and ideas and concerns seem to come in waves. If I remember correctly, I was struck then by a wave of explosions in grain silos. There seemed to be a period, perhaps over a year or more, when the things exploded one after the other. More recently, I’ve been struck by a what looks like an endless string of mining disasters. My students might call this sort of thing ironic, but it’s really happenstance.

Happenstance isn’t meaningless. So when I start seeing patterns, I pay attention. Most recently, as the last few posts would suggest, there’s been a suite of stories discussing the market, and the market’s relationship to education. Obviously, as a teacher in propitiatory education, this is a subject that I find relevant. Educators tend to see themselves as existing in a space or even a world separate from commerce, of course, even though the separation is apparent rather than real.

Still, education is supposed to give a student some distance from commerce, a perspective that puts the profit motive, with its short term thinking and often brutal self-interest, into a larger perspective. A market ideology would like us to believe, at some level, that the market epitomizes human nature and, as such, should be an object of veneration if not worship. It doesn’t, of course, any more than, say, a game of football sums up human nature.

Still, as Marx noted, exchange or trade is too deeply rooted in human culture to disappear anytime soon. Educators may not want to be business people, and we may believe that the market risks corruption, but we can’t ignore it. That’s why I like this piece on the University College London’s so-called technology transfer program. I think it shows that, with careful thought, the profit and not-for-profit motives can peacefully co-exist. It’s difficult but it’s possible.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional

Pyrrhic Victory

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It might be surprising, at least to some, to find that as someone who teaches in the proprietary education system, I am generally in favor of more regulations. And while it’s theoretically possible to imagine regulations that go too far and kill the goose that laid the golden egg, that seems unlikely in the extreme in the current political climate. It looks like a loose-loose situation.

In fact, the recent election debacle suggests that the already weak regulations may be weakened even further. I don’t think this is a victory for anyone. On the other hand, I think writers like Allen Singer go too far when they try to paint the for-profit sector with the charter school brush. He also seems to ignore the abuses in the so-called not for profit sector, further undermining his case.

It seems bizarre, for example, to complain about the student debt problem without also mentioning that student debt is a chronic, deeply destructive problem in all of higher education. Clearly the rules about recruitment need to be tightened so that students are not fooled about what they are getting into when they try to get a degree from a proprietary school.

Just as clearly the so-called non profits’ marketing programs deserve further scrutiny. The large football and basketball programs are essentially multti-million dollar corporations run in part on public money. Why should any school that gets federal money– for profit or otherwise– be allowed to waste millions of dollars in administrative salaries, either for coaches or for presidents?

The proposed regulations leave out a wide variety of other issues that need attention in every sector of the higher education system. What about the ratio of full-time to part-time professors and academic freedom of speech? None of these things are mentioned either in Singer’s piece or in the proposed regulations. Neither political party seems willing to add real teeth to the rules.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing