The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here

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I heard a story about the Internet Center for Corruption Research this morning (on NPR, I think) and I am starting to think that corruption really should be some sort of subcategory in the academic study of contemporary U.S. universities. On Monday, I listed recent examples from Illinois, but today I find even more stories from elsewhere; these involve institutionalized form of corruption but perhaps individual corruption as well.

Administrators at Harvard managed to report both a budget shortfall requiring program and a million or so in bonuses for the “two Cadillacs” crowd. (“Bonuses and Furloughs“).  Other reports note the ongoing move to shift the cost of college to the individual (“Colleges Increasingly Dependent on Tuition, U.S. Study Shows“) and, on the for profit side, another lawsuit joined by the Justice Department (“For-Profits and the False Claims Act“).

 

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Professional

The Market Religion in Academia

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Over the last three or four decades the growing influence of neoliberalism– in brief, the irrational worship of markets– has steadily shifted the costs of education away from the collective– in the U.S., federal or state governments– and towards students and families in the form of student loans. As that loan burden nears a trillion dollars, you’d think that we’d hear increasing calls to shift the costs of college back where it belongs, with the collective.

Despite some calls for a mass forgiveness of student debt, this hasn’t happened. Instead, the current status quo has become so naturalized that even the most “enlightened” seeming propositions are too often nothing more than repetitions of the economic orthodoxy’s insistence that “full market transparency” will make sure that the greater good is served.  That’s what seems to be happening in Jeff Selingo’s “Taking Some of the Guesswork Out of the Value-of-College Question.”

Selingo rightfully asserts that a college degree should have both a humanist or existential dimension– cultivating democratic citizenry capable of critical thinking and decision making– as well as  a vocational element. Education should be linked in some fashion to the world outside the university.  Even if we knew exactly who got jobs after graduation, and why, though , we’d still have the question of how to fund higher education; information can’t solve that problem.

Posted in: Online Places, Professional

Juxtaposition and Critical Thinking

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Continental European capitalism, which combines generous health and social benefits with reasonable working hours, long vacation periods, early retirement, and relatively equal income distributions, would seem to have everything to recommend it – except sustainability.

“Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable“– Kenneth Rogoff

Mike Konczal assembles some striking quotes from Federal Reserve transcripts showing how obsessed the monetary overlords are with keeping wages down. I won’t recycle any of the quotes—check out his post for the full flavor.

“The Fed and the Class Struggle” — Doug Henwood

Here’s an juxtaposition that might be used to teach critical thinking. The contrast between these two ways of seeing the economy isn’t simply a matter of right and wrong, yes and no, or even “subject positions,” although that certainly has a role.  Rogoff is an academic at Harvard and a former IMF economist.  It’s in his self-interest to support capitalism, of course, since he has so much riding on it.  He’s no apologist though and he’s in a bleak mood. Henwood’s successful too, but far outside the academic charmed circle.

What’s interesting is that Rogoff seems at a loss for words when it comes to the crisis undergoing capitalism. The most generous forms, he says, without any explanation, are “unsustainable.” Reading Henwood next to Rogoff gives us a sense of the reality behind the assertion.  No market is going to create what Rogoff calls “a better balance between equality and efficiency.”  Once we pull back the curtain, it’s the political struggle over resources–aka the class struggle– that lies at the hear our current problems and our hope of any solution.

Posted in: Composition, Economics, Language, Online Places

How Corrupt is Corrupt

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There you have it. A concise summary of what’s wrong with present corporately driven education change: Decisions are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.

Those decisions are shaped not by knowledge or understanding of educating, but by ideology, politics, hubris, greed, ignorance, the conventional wisdom, and various combinations thereof. And then they’re sold to the public by the rich and powerful ( Marion Brady, “When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids“).

The economist Doug Henwood has long contended that the problem with the U.S. economy now isn’t just the ordinary cyclical ills of capitalism but a deeper malaise rooted in a decadent ruling class. It’s decadent in the specific sense that it no longer understands what it needs to do to keep capitalism running beyond the next quarter’s profits. Short term thinking has become paradigmatic and self-defeating.

It sounds like that might be good news. If the  current ruling class collapses, then maybe some other sector of capital, more amenable to reason, might fill the power vacuum. We all hope that we are reaching the end of another gilded age, and that as Obama would seem to suggest, witnessing the birth of a new progressive politics that will re-boot the thinking of our rulers and allow us to get at least some of our money back.

No one’s talking revolution; it’s all about undoing the worst damages of the Regan era market religion so that capitalism can resume its formerly dynamic march towards the future. I don’t mean to be cynical but this sort of hope only goes so far. Still, I think the hope is real, particularly when mainstream educators like Brady are using this sort of language.  She sounds like Henwood. The emperor looks more naked all the time.

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Writing