Category Archives: Writing

Most important, the system promotes driven and talented students who might otherwise be denied access to higher education: a kid in Afghanistan, a young mother in Scotland, an ignored pupil in Detroit. From Mr. Thrun’s class (translated into 44 languages) Udacity chose 200 students based purely on performance and, a few weeks ago, forwarded their resumes to companies including Amazon, Bank of America and BMW.

There are glitches, of course, including a high online dropout rate, complaints about speed, questions on accreditation and the predictable whining from old-school alumni who have gotten too cozy in their club chairs.

“Watching the Ivory Tower Topple“

Technological change in a capitalist economy often has a lot of hidden and important costs hidden by the marketing campaigns– formal and otherwise–that go with them. There’s always a downside. We’ve been on a long arc of speed-up and casualization of labor in academia ever since the personal computer replaced the secretary pool. Capital– if you will excuse my personification–always seeks to cut costs and the highest costs are always labor costs.

This new “revolution” in education– the latest in a series, many of which never happened, at least in any authentically revolutionary sense– has a lot of benefits.  It also has some real risks. It’s a boon for any autodidact and or interested armatures.  It may help a certain group of students, starting with those who are already materially privileged, get ahead. A smaller group might be able to use the ‘educational web’ in a savvy way to cut costs.

We need a culture focused on education as a life-long endeavor to fully take advantage of these new courses, but only a culture fully focused on learning as a life-long endeavor will be much interested in these courses.  Only time will tell.  Our real concern, I think, should be with the continued ill-health of the teaching profession at all levels. The Oxford model included “tutors” who were well paid and respected professionals. We need that too.

I’ve lost jobs immediately after receiving excellent assessments from both colleagues and students. In one case, one or two teachers were able to manipulate the system for their own obscure purposes. That sort of petty, narcissistic power is probably always obscure if not inexplicable. In the second case, it was administrative power run amok. That too was obscure, but my guess is that they went for whoever talked the most.

I didn’t have the power– I should say “we” didn’t have the organizational power, that is, the faculty involved didn’t have the power–to fight either case but in each case my treatment was rewarded with severance pay.  There’s no real justice, this seemed to be saying, but at least you can leave with a little money. Academia isn’t a meritocracy any more than any other job. Merit is just the pretty paint job covering up the nastiness lying just beneath the surface.

There’s no surprise in the news that the University of Illinois President Michael Hogan would be paid off with a nice stipend. The difference, of course, is that he is leaving after completely messing up his job, and he was given a year off, and full pay for the next several months, and nearly a $300,000 tenured faculty position too. One month of his current salary is greater than a year’s median salary in the U.S. Things are different up in the 1%.

Hogan will no doubt spend the next year considering head-hunter offers or book deals and then quietly move on.  We still have questions that need answers. Did Hogan use spoofed email to try to influence a faculty debate? Did he use his henchwoman, Lisa Troyer, to spoof the email? Why would a university administrator know how to spoof email? Was she paid off with a tenured position too? Is this sort of deceit common practice?