“JP Morgan, your actions violate our motto”
Dan Mangan – Road Regrets
Pots and Kettles
As someone who works in the for-profit higher education, I am often dismayed at what happens in my little corner of the economy. I think our industry emerged in an economic culture that was far too unregulated and far too greedy. I think we need more regulation and I think that our industry doesn’t need to be so narrowly focused on short-term profits. We share all the problems of modern U.S. capitalism, in other words.
I am also often dismayed at the way problems in the for-profit sector seem to be used as cover for the more profound problems in the public sector. These problems are dwarfed by the exploitation of adjunct labor, bloated administrative salaries, the weakening of tenure, the corruptions of big college sports, and the rise of student debt, to name only a few, that have characterized the public sector for the last three or four decades.
These problems in the public sector are more profound because they set the standard for the culture at large. For-profit schools will come and go– that’s the nature of a market– but without a democratic, service oriented public university system we might not have a democracy or a functioning economy at all. I think, too, that the for-profit sector will not flourish without profound reform in the public sector.
Higher Education at Ben Tre
Another end of the year piece– this time in the Washington Post (“Guest post: Eight thoughts on higher education in 2012,” Daniel de Vise)–decrying the state of Higher Education in the U.S. and calling for reform, if in a very vague fashion. The main point seems to be that “we” (meaning the administrators in control of universities) need to think differently. I don’t know how these guys avoiding saying “outside the box.”
In this piece– written from deep within the reality distortion field–everyone is doing their best, gosh darn, except that there are these “conditions” that seem to be causing so much trouble. We (those administrators again) can only raise tuition so far, for example, because, well, there’s a “practical ceiling”– e.g. people run out of money, especially when the few is growing so rich at the expense of the many.
In the optimistic view of Masters Clark and Eyring the university is experiencing the “short-term disruptions” of innovation. All will be well if we (administrators) embrace the “profitable opportunities” of online education. In other words, business focused models have nearly destroyed the traditional university so only business focused models can fix it. You have to burn the village to save it.