The Start of the End of the Textbook

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I was happy to see my old school Temple (I did a post-doc there) has followed the University of Massachusetts to create digital online (and free) textbooks. It’s a little baby step but I think that these sorts of projects are going to eventually– against the gravitation pull of textbook publishers–end the reign of the textbook gougers.  We need to start being more ambitious about making textbooks free for students.

What we need, if I can dream a little, is a chain of websites/textbooks in all sorts of subjects, starting with general education, open to the public, and maintained by professors as well as students. The technology isn’t complicated– they could be based in wiki software– and students could, if they wanted, download and use whatever sections they wish onto any number of devices, from the Kindle to Android phones.

I can imagine these wikis working something like online peer-reviewed journals run by editorial boards and funded by institutional subscription; they’d great places for graduate students, for example, to get their first publication credits.  It need not be particularly rigid, either, since the textbooks could be written in components and sections and professors could build up their own versions out of the approved modules.

 

Posted in: Professional, Writing

Honest and Empty

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“There will always be some leaders who choose to manage for the short term … particularly when they hold the highly liquid equity stakes that the leadership of private-sector institutions sometimes receive as part of their compensation. This isn’t a theoretical issue; it has happened.”

Andrew Rossen, quoted in ‘Change.edu’ and the Problem With For-Profits by Robert M. Shireman

I work in the proprietary sector, and I think that Rossen is correct. You cannot offer huge salaries and bonuses for short=term profitability and expect executives and managers to think long-term. In such a situation, as Shireman rightly points out, “The temptations to do ill are unrelenting.” Interestingly, Shireman calls Rosen’s ideas both “refreshingly honest” and “empty.” It’s hard to disagree.

What I don’t like about Shireman, though,  and other critics of the for-profit sector, is that they do not go far enough. This is a systemic problem of neoliberalism’s relentless market religion. It’s certainly true that our sector of the education system needs strong regulation.  At this point in history, though, it should be obvious that the entire system, profit or not, needs similar reforms.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

“Our working conditions are student’s learning conditions”

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I often fell like a curmudgeon, trolling around and finding stories about things like the crazy Hench-woman, Lisa Troyer, who resigned after it was suspect– and then more or less demonstrated– that she had sent anonymous email in an attempt to manipulate the faculty governing process.  A recent UI Faculty Senate resolution called Troyer’s actions part of  ‘”a broad pattern of surveillance and intrusion into legitimate faculty governance deliberations” (“UI senate unanimous in criticism of Hogan“).

That’s bourgeois professor speak for “systemic corruption.”  As an anecdote for cynicism, then, I try to do some reading about positive things, trends that seem to be moving education in a good direction.  I liked “The Time is Now: Report from the New Faculty Majority Summit” for its wonderfully strident call for action. I wish the author would focus more or organizing and less on lobbying and accreditation but I cannot disagree with Bessette‘s call to begin to make university labor exploitation more publicly visible.

Also reassuring is that certain segments of the university system– the small liberal arts colleges–seem to be reinventing “an institutional history of activism” for social justice (“Social Justice Revival“).  There’s no  doubt that this trend has a lot to do with the fierce competition for students, a competition sharpened by recession, but it’s still a welcome trend.  What we need, of course, is a movement that would put these pieces together. A just labor policy ought to be the start of any social justice program at any university.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Professional, Writing

Another Credential in the Wall

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Elite colleges all allege to be global institutions, and many are known around the world. But it is simply untenable to claim global leadership in educating a planet of seven billion people when you hoard your educational offerings for a few thousand fortunates living together on a small patch of land.

“MIT Mints a Valuable New Form of Academic Currency”  Kevin Carey

It’s one more step in the evolution of the new decentralized education system: inexpensive credentials for MIT’s open courses. This is going to spread from school to school, in a kind of vanguard fashion, I imagine, until at some point someone will call for some sort of systemic standards. Once those standards are in place,  people  will be able to gather collections of these credentials as the  ad hoc equivalent of a college education.

At some point, someone will define how a particular collection of credentials makes up a college degree… We’ll have to figure out if a set of credentials collected online is in every case equal to, less than, or greater than, a  credential or set earned in a traditional classroom… Will a set of credentials gathered at several different places be seen as inherently more valuable than a set gathered at one place?

Posted in: Writing