It’s hard to get nostalgic about a time when Jim Crow was still in force, abortion was illegal, and the Vietnam war seemed to be spawning mini-civil wars all over the West. And whatever was best about the 1960s was as much hype as reality; working people and the poor were certainly no better off. But I am almost nostalgic when I read a piece like, “Why Do Students Drop Out? Because They Must Work at Jobs Too.” Is it possible to be nostalgic for an idea that never really became real?

It was a privilege of a small group of the middle to upper middle class, mostly white, but for a moment in the U.S. we seemed to have created the seed of a very good way of life. (Maybe it was or wasn’t environmentally sustainable, but it was a start.) You could raise a family on the salary of a single person. (Usually the man, but in theory it could have been anyone). And when your kids got old enough you sent them to a school (usually a state school) and they spent four years, perhaps more, at college.

None of it was in any way perfect; not even close. But it was a good idea and as long as wages were high enough and education cheap enough (or subsidized enough) it was workable. More and more, though, the idea seems utterly lost. We all assume that it takes the income of at least two people to support a family; the cost of education has become a burden that many of us carry, via loans, through much of our adult life. Few seem even aware of this idea, or seed of an idea anymore…

In distance education this long decline has created an opportunity that is as much potential as dilemma. There are lots of people who still have that dream of education, but who gave up the dream of taking four years off (or five) to pursue it long ago. (Maybe they never thought such a thing was possible.) I can provide classes for them. But, as the study suggests, taking these classes, and working, and all the rest of it, makes it more likely that they won’t finish their degrees.

The goal of capitalist economics is finding ways to increase the profitability of capital. A socialist or humanist economics, in contrast, has improving the quality of human life as it’s main goal. Similarly, a capitalist sociology is focused on research that facilitates capital accumulation and profits. There’s a lot to recomend in James Manyika, Kara Sprague and Lareina Yee’s recent piece, “Using technology to improve workforce collaboration,” but in the end, it’s limited by it’s capitalist focus.

Even in the most superficial sense, for example, the writer’s class biases are obvious. Their definition of a ‘knowledge worker’ for example, seems very focused on the middle to upper professional classes, rather than on, say, nurse, police officers or firefighters (to cite the most obvious examples) less often associated with intellectual work, collaboration, and writing. Similarly, the goal of the research is explicitly oriented towards increasing productivity and so profits.

Perhaps less obviously, the lack of collaboration noted by the researchers might simply be another example of the low-grade resistance to exploitation that you might expect to find in any workplace. In that sense, it’s more related to workers taking long lunches and leaving early on Friday. Given the insecurities of professionals, and the internecine competition if not warfare encouraged in a market economy, we shouldn’t be surprised to find collaboration stunted, at the very least.

In the end, too, we have to ask for whose benefit are we improving collaboration? “Imagine the economic benefits for organizations,” he author’s write, “able to double the number of inspired employees or triple the volume of new product releases.” Imagine the social benefits, we might counter, of a workplace where people do work that matters to themselves and their community. Imagines workers who decide that another consumer project is a waste of time and energy.

Even as the recession technically ends, U.S. universities, a lumbering battleship that’s almost impossible to turn, show signs of some slow changes, perhaps for the better, that might help to make education more accessible. We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, though. On the one hand we can make education more accessible via new communication technologies. On the other hand, distance education risks denaturing learning, further alienating students who mistrust schools.

“Reform has more do with rethinking the way we design and deliver learning opportunities… ” J. David Armstrong, Jr. president of Broward College writes, “and understanding the nature of today’s learner, who wants to be engaged, yet needs convenient access.” And increasing access increasingly means reaching non-traditional students: “Reform must include new strategies to support students completing their degrees, and attracting adults back into our educational system to complete their education” (“Online learning opens doors wider for students in tough economy”).

Armstrong’s argument sounds fancy but it’s really simple. U.S. education can use their existing facilities more effectively and so lower the costs of education by using distance education. Your physical plant stays the same (offices and classrooms basically) but the number of students increases exponentially. The key term is “engaged.” That is, how can you make online education feel as personal, as involved, as the traditional classroom? Here’s where the rock meets the hard place of making education cheaper.

Even after decades of replacing full time faculty with adjuncts, and splitting U.S. higher education into a shrinking pool of tenured haves and non-tenured have not’s, administrators are not done cutting costs. Enter Twitter and Facebook. “95 percent of students ages 18 to 24 use social-networking tools,” according to a recent study, “including instant messages and texting, 64 percent multiple times a day. Yet just 18 percent do so for schoolwork, and 27 percent never do. Just 5 percent never use social networks (“Social networks not just for chatting anymore“).

There are lots of ways that schools can make learning more engaging. Pay teachers well, and keep their workload low; keep classes small; eliminate students loans and fund education through generous grants. All of these things would create the impression that school is a welcoming place, a time to reflect and rethink and then go back to your life with a new perspective and some new skills. But administrators see those numbers that show so many people using social networking and they think: Twitter costs almost nothing …