Reform or Revolution

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I keep reading more and more bad news about the proprietary education sector– where I work– and feeling worse and worse about what I do every day or, at least, my working conditions. So far my school has not been singled out, but much of the problems that arise come from the commercial pressures of our current capitalist (“greed is good”) epoch. Real estate, banks, education, medicine: the market’s made a mess of it all.

So I don’t think that any of the for profits are going to escape untouched. This week, it’s a piece describing the unscrupulous use of incentives to drive admissions. Ironically, this has the public universities a little worried too, because it could put limits on their athletic programs (“Government Scrutinizes Incentive Payments for College Recruiters“). I have to remind myself, once again, that the public sector is equally in need of reform.

That’s one of the points made by David Hiscoe (“An Academic Rip Van Winkle“), who recently returned to academia after 20 years of working for a corporation. The common thread is short term thinking. The interesting question is whether or not the culture wars will continue to stymie the democratic impulse to creating a more humane economy. How do you create a capitalist who thinks beyond the next quarter? That’s a reform bordering on revolution.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Professional, Union

The Persistence of Idiocy

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I just drove from Louisiana to my home in Illinois; it took about 14 hours, divided over two days. It’s not too bad of a drive but it’s all on the Interstate system– it saves a lot of time– and so it’s exhausting, but not just physically. I find long drives on the Interstate, especially that stretch on I 10 between Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, emotionally trying if not spiritually depleting.

Stupidity– sheer, crude idiocy– is so common on the highway that it eats away at my faith in the human race and in the future. I can’ t figure what it is they need to learn. Hour after hour I watch people pull up to within inches of each other and happily drive along at 75 or 80 miles an hour. If one would suddenly have to stop, as sometimes happens, several cars would crash.

Is it that they don’t understand inertia? It’s common to use tailgating as a kind of communication: if you want to go faster than the speed limit, or even faster than the traffic or weather would permit with any safety, you simply pull up to within a foot or so of the car ahead of you and stay there until they move. Imagine if someone did that, say, in a line at the movies.

People race you to the end of the entrance to the freeway. Or there’s the guys in the old top heavy SUV’s careering from lane to lane, almost on two wheels. Or the truck drivers who believe ‘might makes right’ and suddenly decide to change lanes right on top of you. You can’t slow down too fast, of course, because there’s another car two feet behind you.

It’s not just driving. The University of Illinois hired a new president at a salary that’s more than $150,000 than his predecessor, despite the state budget crisis. They only get “embarrassed” when it’s revealed that they are spending $100,000 on a sculpture to honor a former president. And, of course, while the Gulf goes down the tubes, Tony Hayward cheers on his yacht.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional

Imperial Nostalgia

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Right about the same time that the genocide of Native American people and culture was complete, say, the turn of the 19th century, Americans began to embrace the Boy Scouts’ simulacra of Native American and Western lore. (By the time I was a Boy Scout, more than 60 years later, this had evolved into all sorts of secret “Indian” societies and rituals. I still have my “Red Arrow” sash.) That’s a good example of imperial nostalgia. Right at the moment when utter defeat is imminent, the defeated become objects of admiration.

The term is most often used to describe a certain tendency in British culture. I think, though, that we are starting to see a touch of imperial nostalgia in academia, now that the old tenure system is just about completely destroyed. I liked Peter D.G. Brown’s ‘s recent Inside Higher Ed piece (“Confessions of a Tenured Professor), and I joined the New Faculty Majority, but I have to say that the admiration the writer feels for those of us who don’t have tenure or a full time job makes me a little uncomfortable.

Brown has his facts right, and the case for the urgency and the severity of the problem is persuasive. It’s also old news. I summarize the same basic set of facts in my book; many others have too. What bothers me is that as one tenured professor trying to speak to other tenured professors Brown seems to feel the need to plead and, again, perhaps over-sentimentalize the lives of adjuncts. (At least in spirit; again, he gets his facts straight). At some point, of course, the shrinking minority of tenured will simply become irrelevant. Is it time to acknowledge that fact?

Posted in: Autobiographical, Professional