Schooling Proprietary Education

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I continue to watch the ongoing news about my industry– proprietary education, this week via the New America Foundation’s education bolg– and I continue to be alarmed, not because the proposed reforms are so untenable– the reforms are probably weaker than they need to be– but because the industry continues to undermine its own credibility by being so alarmist (“Taking a Page from the Tea Party‘). There’s nothing specific about the for-profit sector’s resistance to stricter regulation; it seems to be a common theme in every area of the U.S. economy.

Perhaps I can be accused of wishful thinking, but it seems to me that the era of wildly unregulated capitalism is coming to a loud, complaining, reckless stop. What’s so odd is that the relatively mildly regulated capitalism being proposed (in finances, the auto industry, medicine, housing, and education, so far) is likely to have so little impact on long term profits. (“Obama’s Bid to Change the Incentives that Drive For-Profit Higher Ed”). That gives the debate a sharply ideological edge, as if money was besides the point. It’s not.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Professional, Writing

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

Clearing the Mist

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I just saw the movie The Mist (actually, one of those really good B horror movies that hasn’t gotten enough notice) so maybe that metaphor is just on my mind. But that’s the metaphor that popped into my head when I read about the new regulations for the for-profit education sector (where I teach). I am mostly talking about the ‘truth in advertising’ requirements that would force schools to put all sorts of information in a prominent place on their websites (“Splitting the Difference on Gainful Employment“).

It’s a good idea but I wonder too if it’s naive, in the short run. After all, despite the nearly half-century of dire warnings (more dire than debt) on cigarettes, there are still smokers. How many Sham-Wow’s were sold, or Pocket Fisherman? Still, if we are going to market education as primarily a pragmatic economic strategy, then I think it’s only fair that students be allowed to make a informed decision. What will be interesting is to see how the not-for profit-sector responds, particular in the liberal arts.

The for-profits need to be tightly regulated (and the financial industry and the medical sector and…). Some things are just too important to be left to the vicissitudes of the market and greed. We can fill a niche, and as Kevin Carey suggests (“Why Do You Think They’re Called For-Profit Colleges?”), we can be an important spur in the side of the public universities. Public universities can either try to compete directly with the for-profits, or they can make the case for something else. If the public schools don’t take the lead, the for-profits will…

Posted in: Professional, Writing

Thinking Small

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The entire modern history of higher education in the U.S. is littered with various people– inevitably but not always crediting themselves with liberal intentions– wringing their hands over the difficulties of class mobility. No matter the context, the basic idea is always the same: not everyone wants to go to college, so why should we make them? It’s an appeal to our sacred values of individuality. We are all unique, we should all be the masters of our own destiny.

Chris Meyer’s recent piece in Education Week (The Inadvertent Bigotry of Inappropriate Expectations) has all of the right elements: the liberal credentialing (“As someone who founded and ran a college-prep enrichment program for at-risk secondary school students…”) and the appeal to individuality (…”our schools should … build on students’ interests and help them develop real-world skills that will give them an economic foothold after graduation.”).

Meyers offers a story about a student telling a professor that she would like to be a nurse. “How about a doctor?” the professor asks. Meyers describes the answer as “the haughty disdain with which many educators and policymakers view careers that do not require a bachelor’s or advanced degree.” I am not persuaded. Meyers is coy about the student’s ethnicity and age, to start, but he hints that the student is black: “I will call her Shanika.”

We might imagine other stories. The student might be a young African American women who doesn’t think people as poor as her family can ever become doctors. As any teacher knows, these brief moments of encouragement are often very important moments in a student’s life, even if she doesn’t go on to be a doctor. That’s not what really bothers me about his story. What bothers me is that I wanted the professor to answer in a completely different way.

I think that the story illustrates our lack of courage and imagination. Why can’t a nurse begin her education with an undergraduate degree in music, or philosophy, history, literature, or political science? The liberal arts were designed to be existentially and socially transformative. In theory, once you got your undergraduate degree you could go on to any form of employment– carpenter to professor– and society would reap the benefits. Why think so small?

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing