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

Burning Platforms

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Hyperbole is great fun but it tends to distort our sense of time and scale.  A phrase like “burning platform” is no exception. (Here’s a quick definition of the term; the story sounds apocryphal.)  Higher education, some might say, is (or is on)  a burning platform in the middle of the sea and we– or it– have to decide between the certain death of staying on the platform or risk the only probable death of jumping off the platform into the cold water. It’s a simplistic parable but it has a certain appeal. May you live in interesting times.

In fact, short of the fall of the Soviet Union, change, even life or death change, can be remarkably slow. The Arab Spring is entering its 5th season. Here’s how the ACTA  (American Council of Trustees and Alumni) seeks to slow educational change to a crawl. The AC TA congratulates governor McDonnell for staying out of the controversy over the firing  and then rehiring of Teresa Sullivan, President of the University of Virginia (“Kudos Governor McDonnell“). It doesn’t criticize the Board of Trustees, whose power grab created the problem.

Instead, the ACTA wags its little reactionary finger at those who now seek  “a radical restructuring of the selection process to minimize the role of the governor and to enhance the role of specific groups, such as faculty or alumni.”  Let’s not go overboard; governance is not the problem: “The challenges besetting higher education,” it says, “are considerable: costs, quality and accountability.” That business-minded administrator point of view is hardly a creative leap of faith into the future.

If  Don Tapscott’s (among others) optimistic notion  is correct, the real paradigm shift suggested by the Virginia debacle is a incremental move towards a more transparent system in which no Board of Trustees (or administrator) can make sweeping institutional changes behind closed doors. We’re watching in a new way and it matters. (Tapscott outlines his idea in a TED video, here.)  The ACTA can’t see the toothpaste that Tapscott says cannot be put back into the tube: the slow but steady shift away from rigid, centralized power.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Uncategorized

Bathtub Gin

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Grover Norquist– and the far-right– claims that the point of their politics is not to destroy government but to “shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” It’s one of those  things that politicians say but that no one believes they believe. Yet the idea has staying power and, despite its often very direct and very negative impact on the lives of working people, it’s arguably one of the most successful political slogans in decades.

In the midst of the greatest recession since the great depression Republicans have stuck to their guns, stalling economic growth and making Obama’s reelection difficult if not impossible. Somehow, even lots and lots of people stuck in what seems like permanent unemployed limbo don’t blame the Tea Party or the Republicans, much less Norquist, for the giant mess this obsession with disabling government ( in the name of the market) has created.

Just the opposite. These folks support even more aggressive policies that would make them even poorer: undoing the Affordable Care Act and the (admittedly tepid) financial reforms. (That’s Dodd Frank and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well.)  That’s what is so creepy about this particular election.  It’s as if 1/2 of the public is standing on a trap door, a rope draped around their neck, betting that Romney is to moderate to hang anyone.

We’d all like to think that these ideas are just too nutty to ever be implemented.  Will they really appeal the Affordable Care Act and allow millions to lose their health care? It seems impossible but…  Why destroy the government when you can use it to hide the subsidies that underwrite your profits?  We got the Affordable Care Act, after all, which preserves the private health insurance industry, and not a national health care system.

It’s only parts of Health Care– the parts that cut into profits– that bother the Tea Party puppeteers. Here’s another crazy idea that would also seem insane and politically impossible: sell off the public university system: “How the Public Pays for Privatization: the UCLA Anderson Example” (on Chris Newfield” Remaking the University blog). Even when you squeeze down the government to drowning size there ‘s a lot of money left in the tub.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

Manufacturing Poverty

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Here’s an exercise in connecting the dots.  First, the U.S. government released a report that summarized the impact of the recession: “The financial crisis wiped out 18 years of gains for the median U.S. household net worth, with a 38.8 percent plunge from 2007 to 2010 that was led by the collapse in home prices, a Federal Reserve study showed” ( Jeff Kearns, “Fed Says U.S. Wealth Fell 38.8% In 2007-2010“).

Here’s the second thing: “(Reuters) – Louisiana is embarking on the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children” (Stephanie Simon,”Louisiana’s bold bid to privatize schools”).

First they deregulated the financial sector, and I didn’t speak out because… then they deregulated the pubic schools and…

Simon provides a few descriptions of some of the schools that are getting this money; it turns out that, not surprisingly, the best school have few openings for new students. The schools that will accept students are not so good:

The school willing to accept the most voucher students — 314 — is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground, also has plenty of slots open. It seeks to bring in 214 voucher students, worth up to $1.8 million in state funding.

Over the last 30 years or so– since the election of 1980– the right has used an ideology of the market– a religion, in many ways– to engineer a massive shift of wealth away from middle and working class people and into the hands of the rich. Oddly, the very people being robbed support the robbery. It’s class hidden by geography.

The top 20 poorest states include  just 4 states that reliably vote Republican:  Alaska, Virginia, Utah and Wyoming. Two more, Colorado and Nevada, are toss ups. The bottom 20 has just 4 that reliably vote Democratic: West Virginia, New Mexico, Michigan and Maine.  Ohio and Florida are toss ups. Poverty is partisan.

Posted in: Economics, Professional