Evolution or Revolution

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In 25 or 50 years, when someone or other, most likely a graduate student, writes a history of U.S. Higher Education in our time, the New Faculty Majority “Program for Change: 2010-2030” will have to play a key role. I don’t think it matters if the particulars of the program are achieved or not; its historical importance is its attempt to imagine a new employment system in U.S. higher education using a model developed largely in California and Canada. I think that it’s broad enough to be useful to almost anyone interested in reforming higher education. It’s our, “What is to be Done.”

OK, maybe it’s only our “Port Huron Statement.” Hopefully, in articulating this vision, the NFM has signaled the nadir of the current system. I think the proposed system makes a lot of sense; it touches on all of the key problems. I also think that the comments are as interesting as the document itself, particularly in the way they reflect the left’s current impasse over pragmatism. Obama is the example: is he doing what he can, given current politics, or he is too cowardly or inept to challenge the far right? I think it would be a mistake to let this document fall down that rabbit hole, as many of the comments seem to do.

I don’t have much faith in gradualist reform myself’; if you give administrations enough rope, they will hang you. It’s hard to imagine change without a union movement. Once change is achieved, we need unions to protect it. Still, if there were a union movement then I think this document could easily become a blueprint for contracts that address current inequities. All contract are local, of course, so details would differ. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to stop traditional faculty organizations– Senates, or other associations– from attempting to institutionalize these principals in their own reformish ways.

Posted in: Composition, Economics, Union

Education’s Surveillance Arms Race

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Paternalism is a hardy perennial in higher education. Perhaps for obvious reasons, once we begin thinking about our students as our children, or, better, as our customers, we stop thinking of them as adult learners. As children, we need a lot of guidance; as adults, we have to learn to set our own agendas and then follow it over an extended period of time. It’s a difficult process and it’s probably always to some extent a matter of trial and error. At key moments, then, we, as teachers, have to just stand back and watch.

That’s why, as the cliche goes, failure is so important. Adult learners need to be independent learners, and independent learning is, well, learned. Some teachers and administrators are as uncomfortable with this idea as any student. If my children fail, I fail; if my customer’s are unhappy, my shareholders are unhappy. So, as a recent article on NPR suggests (University Attendance Scanners Make Some Uneasy), the paternal temptation is to find a technological fix that would save our customers, uh, students, from themselves.

What’s great about young adult learners– and exasperating– is that they follow their creativity down whatever lines seem interesting. So if the universities install scanners that will track attendance for large lectures, we can be sure that students will respond with a hack that allows you to check in from the comfort of your dorm room. As usual, these technological fixes are designed to address problems created by an alienated and alienating form of education. Scale down those lectures and I bet attendance would go up.

Posted in: Composition, Professional

Learning Consumerism

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When I was a kid, the weeks before the start of the school year were a joy. I loved rulers, and paper, and protractors, and compasses and binders. I still love the technology of my childhood. I also know that this impulse needs to be held in check less my house become an office supply store. That’s consumerism. We can’t really blame school for it, but schooling can’t escape it, and too often encourages it. As technology develops, consumerism develops right along with it, creating as many new problems as opportunities.

Now we hear that smart phones are a “must-have” for students (Tech gadgets are must-have school supplies). There’s nothing surprising in that– the commodification of life is ever renewed– but I think that there’s an element in this dynamic that’s worthy of extra caution. When we were kids we got the usual existential pitch: buy this product and you will be the cool kid. The commodity would solve that persistent pesky alienation. There’s a kind of magical thinking that goes along with shopping, appropriate perhaps only for children.

Now, however, it’s not just the commodity that’s supposed to salve the alienation, its the information and knowledge it provides. If you don’t have full access to information, the logic goes, whenever and wherever you are, you are not really fully alive. The economic threat is very explicit too. Students need to be able to work all of the time or they won’t get the grades that will allow them to succeed, perhaps especially in what might be a permanently contracting job market. It take the pleasure right out of the tech.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional