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

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

A Tepid Democracy

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Academics are notoriously hateful about university committees; that bad attitude might be one of the best explanations for the ongoing destruction of full time employment and tenure. In essence, the powerful (and increasingly rarefied) tenured full professors are can pursue their individual interests and let the least experienced try to run the university. It’s a great way to make sure that the administration is always better prepared to deal with problems.

I enjoyed Sufka’s call for attention to service, although I think that his rhetoric is interestingly tepid, as if he were afraid to stir up the ant pile (“Serving the University: Better Mentors for Young Professors Would Help“). He ignores a more profound problem, too. I keep wondering at what point will these governing structures will begin to loose legitimacy.Will legislative bodies and standing committees have to adapt by allowing part-time and non-tenure track faculty?

In one university where I worked, the vast majority of the faculty in the composition program had almost no say at all in university governance at either the departmental or the university level. Department by-laws didn’t even permit them to vote at departmental meetings; they could not run for the senate; they had no incentive to be on any standing committees. The democracy Sufka describes isn’t quite the university that actually exists.

Posted in: Writing