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

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

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I have some colleagues– all in the non-profit education business– who feel a little too smug about the for profit industry. It’s naive, of course, to think that the for-profit industry schools are, by and large, less ethical than the traditional universities, with their multimillion dollar athletic programs (essentially an advertising and recruitment expense as extravagant as any drug company) and two-tier employment system of a few tenured professors supported by the many non-tenured, par time teachers and graduate students. No sector can afford to throw stones in these glass houses.

The for profits, for example, are no more likely to put students into debt, according to Neal McCluskey (Politicians Are The Problem For Higher Ed). What’s unique about the for-profits is that they arose during the worse excesses of laissez-faire Regan style capitalism. If the traditional universities need reform and a tightening of regulations, particularly when it comes to labor policy, the for profits suggest an entirely new kind of consumer protection regulation. I think the for-profits, for example, should not be able to make extravagant claims for the employment prospects of graduates. Neither should the traditional universities.

McCluskey is correct about the high cost of tuition but I think he’s wrong to suggest that the problem is that education is oversold. Similarly, he sounds vague and unpersuasive when he blames “the politicians”– although I am certain our representatives have their share of the blame. The problem is that no one seems to be able to articulate a rationale for mass education in a post industrial economy. In fact, the more the middle class shrinks, and the poor, working class, and working poor expands, the harder it is to justify educational accessibility. Educational capital only has real revolutionary potential if it is widely available.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Union

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