Category Archives: Autobiographical

I have said more than once that the higher education distance system is a mix of fast private enterprise rabbits, where I work, and slow public tortoises, where I would like to work one day. I love my job but I miss the job security, among other things. Especially here in Illinois, for example, the public retirement system, in which I am already invested, is much stronger, recalling the good old pre-Reagan days when pension funds meant something. The Illinois constitution has a section that prevents the state from touching already existing pension plans. I doubt that any private school is going to protect my retirement so well.

I love my matching-funds IRA plan becuase it forces me to save, but it can’t match a guaranteed benefits plan that’s constitutionally protected (see section 5). So it’s great to see the ACTA, nemesis of most things humane and reasonable, supporting the California commission’s idea that distance education programs, becuase they don’t need buildings and parking lots and so on, could be a way to increase access and decrease costs. What tends to hold back progress, though, is a rigid free market notion that these programs have to be either budget neutral (possible but not likely) or profitable (not in a million years).

No one asks the interstate highway system to make a profit, but for some reason we expect the postal infrastructure, just as much a public service, to make a profit. In fact, the argument over the profitability of public services, including education, has only served to facilitate privatization. The profit motive, as the modern mercenary-based military shows, is no guarantee of efficiency or effectiveness. The public tortoise won’t have a chance if we force college level distance education into the same private box. We just have to figure out how to stop them from using this to make us work more…

When I was a kid, the weeks before the start of the school year were a joy. I loved rulers, and paper, and protractors, and compasses and binders. I still love the technology of my childhood. I also know that this impulse needs to be held in check less my house become an office supply store. That’s consumerism. We can’t really blame school for it, but schooling can’t escape it, and too often encourages it. As technology develops, consumerism develops right along with it, creating as many new problems as opportunities.

Now we hear that smart phones are a “must-have” for students (Tech gadgets are must-have school supplies). There’s nothing surprising in that– the commodification of life is ever renewed– but I think that there’s an element in this dynamic that’s worthy of extra caution. When we were kids we got the usual existential pitch: buy this product and you will be the cool kid. The commodity would solve that persistent pesky alienation. There’s a kind of magical thinking that goes along with shopping, appropriate perhaps only for children.

Now, however, it’s not just the commodity that’s supposed to salve the alienation, its the information and knowledge it provides. If you don’t have full access to information, the logic goes, whenever and wherever you are, you are not really fully alive. The economic threat is very explicit too. Students need to be able to work all of the time or they won’t get the grades that will allow them to succeed, perhaps especially in what might be a permanently contracting job market. It take the pleasure right out of the tech.