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The Fading Dream of Higher Education in the US
Once an engine of social mobility, higher education in the US now signifies debt and lack of opportunity.
It seems fitting that some of the activity inaugurated by the Occupy Wall Street movement migrated from city squares to college campuses, where students, from Berkeley to the City University of New York (CUNY), are protesting against the rising cost of their educations. Undeterred by pepper spray or police batons, they struggle to preserve the evanescent American dream of a top-flight affordable college education available to all. But, unless there are major transformations within academe and the rest of society, they may be fighting a losing battle.
The Occupy movement gained much support from students on campuses across the US (Gallo/Getty)
Just as the frontier once allowed an enterprising individual to get ahead (or so the story went), by the middle of the 20th century, higher education had become the main engine of social mobility in the United States. A college degree, it was believed, would boost its holders into the middle class and then keep them and their children there. Recently, however, as the US economy turned sour, that promise no longer holds. Not only have rising tuitions and unmanageable student debt threatened to put a first-rate higher education out of reach for many of the 99 per cent, but it has also become harder for graduates to enter the well-paying careers they went to college for.
The economic insecurities that have blasted so many students' hopes did not originate on campus. They stem in large part from the ascendance of a neoliberal polity that worships the corporate sector and seeks to shrink the state. Businesses pursue the bottom line by shedding jobs, while demanding lower taxes and fewer regulations. The very concept of a common good, of a system that nurtures citizenship and offers all in the US the benefits the market does not provide, has lost its meaning.
In response, higher education has also abandoned the common good. Most in the US now view it solely from a narrowly economic perspective. Vocational training has replaced the liberal arts, while administrators strive to make their campuses engines of economic growth, rather than sites for intellectual experimentation and meaningful cultural encounters. Of course, graduates need to earn a living, but they also need to have a life worth living. And adapting colleges and universities to today's profit-driven environment imposes financial and educational costs that may simply be too high - for students, for the academy and for that elusive common good.
The current fiscal crisis only exacerbates a bad situation. Public institutions of higher learning, which educate 80 per cent of the nation's graduate and undergraduate students, have been in trouble for years. State legislatures that once proudly funded their local colleges and universities now have cut way back. Even well-endowed private schools are feeling the pinch. As a result, the academy scrambles for every penny it can get. Administrators adopt corporate practices - patenting faculty research, licensing the logos of winning teams, building office parks on university property and, of course, raising tuitions and fees.
Higher costs, lower quality
Where one could once get a BA for free at the New York City municipal colleges, it will soon cost nearly US $7,000 a year. Nor is CUNY unique. Almost every college and university has imposed similarly steep increases in its tuition and fees. Not only that, but because they rely so heavily on student dollars, those institutions are engaged in a brutal competition for warm tuition-paying bodies.
Much of that competition consists of what one observer has called an "amenities arms race". Schools now build elaborate fitness centres, gourmet dining halls and state-of-the-art computer facilities. Others invest in faculty stars and applicants with high SAT scores to gain an edge in the all-important US News and World Report rankings. They also tailor their curricula to the demand for vocational programmes that may or may not prepare graduates for the careers that will let them repay their student loans.
Worse yet, the long-term impact of the academy's financial crisis has not only made higher education increasingly unaffordable, but has also impaired its quality. Students and their families now pay more for an inferior product. No wonder graduation rates are low.
That situation - higher costs, lower quality - has created a weird love-hate relationship between the US public and the academy. More than ever, higher education is perceived as crucial for both national and individual success, yet its apparent inability to deliver the goods occasions considerable hand wringing, as well as demands for accountability. Most of the time, however, those who deplore the decline of the university pick the wrong targets. Instead of recognising that the same political and ideological configuration that defunded the public sector and forced schools to raise tuitions also undermines the educational experience, critics of the university blame the faculty for everything that's wrong on the nation's campuses.
Admittedly, professors are not angels, but they are hardly the demonised individuals the current scenario depicts. For several decades now, a concerted campaign by conservative pundits and politicians has managed to convince the public that US academics are tenured radicals who indoctrinate their students, conduct arcane research and only work 12 hours a week. Of course, the nation's faculties do contain a few deadbeats, ideologues and careerists who brush off their classes, but most college and university teachers are responsible professionals who strive to provide the best possible education for their students - if only they had the resources to do so.
But they don't - at least most of them don't.
Stressed public sector
The great economic divide that has pushed so many ordinary citizens to the margins exists within the academic world as well. The top-tier public and private research universities and liberal arts colleges still provide financial security and satisfying work to their faculties, while offering their students a potentially rich educational experience - as well as entree into elite careers. That they also occasionally provide social mobility - as the ascent of the current US president via Hawaii's best prep school, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School indicates - is the window-dressing that legitimises the myth of educational opportunity. The reality is quite different; higher education has become a highly stratified system that rewards those individuals and institutions with the resources to game it.
Within the increasingly stressed public sector, flagship universities can still replace the loss of state funding with research grants, private gifts and higher out-of-state tuitions. The less prestigious second- and third-tier public institutions and community colleges that harbour most of the nation's undergraduates have fewer options and so are forced to perform major surgery on their core academic functions - while also raising tuitions. There is a similar polarisation within the private sector, not to mention the for-profit institutions that all too often train their students for non-existent jobs while leaving them with unpayable debts.
But elite or proletarian, all schools are cutting costs and doing so in ways that affect educational quality and create obstacles to the kind of personal attention that encourages intellectual growth - and keeps students from dropping out. Programmes are eliminated and classes are enlarged, that is, if they are not cancelled, a practice that makes it hard for students to fulfill their graduation requirements.
The most serious problem, however, is the hollowing out of the faculty through the substitution of part-time and temporary instructors for full-time tenured and tenure-track ones. At the moment, more than 70 per cent of all faculty members in US institutions of higher learning hold contingent appointments that are off the tenure track.
The stereotypical professor with a lifetime sinecure is a dying breed on all but the nation's most affluent campuses (and, even at those schools, graduate students or temporary instructors do much of the teaching). While they are often as gifted and well-qualified as their tenured and tenure-track colleagues, the men and (mostly) women with part-time and short-term appointments work under such unfavourable conditions that they cannot always offer a comparable education.
To begin with, they have no job security or academic freedom. They are often hired at the last minute and can be let go at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. In addition, they are so poorly paid - sometimes less than $2,000 a course - that they must often teach at several institutions simply to pay the rent. Moreover, unless they are represented by a union, they rarely have benefits, let alone the professional support that enables them to conduct research or publish it. Often they lack offices and must meet their students - if they have the time between commutes - in cafeterias or their own parked cars.
Faculty members not invested
Their students suffer, especially in classes such as freshman composition or remedial math where individual attention can be crucial. The lack of continuity is another drawback, one that affects students who need recommendations and discover that their favourite teachers are no longer around. And, because hiring decisions are often based on student evaluations, adjuncts and temporary instructors are under pressure not to upset their students with controversial material or give them bad grades. Such problems are especially rife at schools where administrators seek to improve graduation rates by easing up on the rigour of their programmes.
As the percentage of non-tenure-track instructors increases, traditional faculty members find themselves increasingly burdened by the administrative chores that people with contingent appointments do not handle. In many cases, those chores end up in the hands of administrators whose ranks have increased so rapidly that there are now more administrative staff members than instructional ones. That's right, more administrators than faculty members.
And unlike earlier generations of administrators who rose from and returned to the faculty's ranks, today's do not necessarily have an academic background. All too often, they operate in a universe where corporate-style decision-making short-changes educational priorities. Faculty members who, after all, have made a lifetime commitment to higher education are shunted aside - especially if their fields have little connection to the market - while their business-oriented superiors follow the latest fads by adding or eliminating programs that, they hope, will save money or promote the growth of their institutions.
Such practices can lead to disaster, as the following example from a California State University campus illustrates. Several years ago, the administration decided to replace the classroom-based freshman remedial mathematics course with a computerised online programme. It dismissed the temporary instructors who had been handling the 40-person sections and put the entire course of 400 undergraduates in the hands of a single non-tenure-track faculty member. The outcome could have been predicted: whereas about 70 per cent of the students had previously passed the course, only about 45 per cent made it through the online version.
Perhaps the time has come to rethink the basic function of higher education. Vocationalising it may not work, especially in an economy where most people will change their careers several times during their lifetimes. Perhaps, we need to jettison the short-term business model and concentrate, instead, on the long haul and on restoring a commitment to the common good that will help students understand themselves and the ever-changing world they live in. Such a reform will require reinvesting in the academy's core educational functions, but it may also be the only way to create the educated and competent citizens upon whom our faltering democratic polity depends.
28 Comments so far
Show AllThank you Dr. Schrecker for drawing attention to many of the serious problems facing higher education today. I found most of your comments to be right on the money.
Jim Shea (a 35-year veteran of academe)
This section: "While they are often as gifted and well-qualified as their tenured and tenure-track colleagues, the men and (mostly) women with part-time and short-term appointments work under such unfavourable conditions that they cannot always offer a comparable education.
"To begin with, they have no job security or academic freedom. They are often hired at the last minute and can be let go at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. In addition, they are so poorly paid - sometimes less than $2,000 a course - that they must often teach at several institutions simply to pay the rent. "Moreover, unless they are represented by a union, they rarely have benefits, let alone the professional support that enables them to conduct research or publish it. Often they lack offices and must meet their students - if they have the time between commutes - in cafeterias or their own parked cars.
"Faculty members not invested
"Their students suffer, especially in classes such as freshman composition or remedial math where individual attention can be crucial. The lack of continuity is another drawback, one that affects students who need recommendations and discover that their favourite teachers are no longer around. And, because hiring decisions are often based on student evaluations, adjuncts and temporary instructors are under pressure not to upset their students with controversial material or give them bad grades. Such problems are especially rife at schools where administrators seek to improve graduation rates by easing up on the rigour of their programmes." seems true for Monroe College in the Bronx, at which tutors, hard-pressed to help 20-somethings and older write essays that are passable, often are called-upon to sub for a professor at the very last minute before 9 am classes. For those tutors and subs who don't "get it," and take teaching seriously, any mention of enforcing discipline or "kicking a student out" of a class for watching movies on his computer is met immediately by termination from a job that was kept--in the first place--to under 30 hours a week so no benefits had to be paid to the desperate tutor/substitute teacher. Every chair had to be filled by a FAFSA-funded student, even if their essays would embarrass your fifth-grader.
The increased use of part-time faculty is not because the full-time people do more administrative work, it is because the full-time people are under increased pressure to write grant proposals to bring in outside funding, which pays for part of their salaries, and which usually includes overhead money (called indirect cost recovery) which the administration can use for whatever purposes it chooses.
. Those who bring in overhead funds are golden. They are going to get tenure and be promoted to full professor. Those who think their job is to teach either do not get tenure, or if they already have it, get miniscule raises, or are fired (tenure or not) because the fact that they are not getting grants means that they are incompetent.
I took early retirement ten years ago and have never regretted it.
Geez, another intellectual dimwit. She says "Perhaps the time has come to rethink the basic function of higher education." Conservatives (Obama included) been there, done that. Why do you think the system is the way it is? It's not that the PTB are doing a bad job, it's that they're doing a great job of achieving the opposite of what most of us would think of as the goal.
It's rude, boring, and dim-witted to critique this author's well laid out arguments on what's wrong with "Higher" education in Amerika, today. And it's not suprising to find such honest (even scathing) material published outside of the U.S.
This well-argued narrative exposes the points that Chris Hedges might have taken into account before so glibly blaming universities for the "Death of the Liberal Class."
One must recognize that the artificially inflated increases in rents and properties over the past 40 years made it incumbent upon learning institutions to raise greater funds. That, of course, is only one aspect of how Capital has come to rule just about everything in our nation from its control of what we eat through its factory farms, to its control of what we take in as "food for thought," via a near absolute control of media. And it's also tapped mightily into the education pools.
I cut and pasted several of the author's key points to use later when the resident right wing-disguised-as-Progressives show up to blame teachers or "elite" professors, for all that's gone wrong with education.
It's becoming a full time job to counter the memes of the plants in this forum. Thankfully, recognized as such or otherwise, other intelligent posters devote their precious time to lifting The Narrative, as well.
You miss my point then. My point is how many times do we, anyone, have to hear wonderful arguments proving X is wrong. And then hear how we should work to make sure not X occurs. Yes it's nice to see this info getting out beyond the US, but so what? Like another post I made today, authors like this seem to think the problem is that "we're doing it wrong". All we need to do is convince whomever to do it "our way". The PTB know our way, and they know our goal. They don't care. They're moving things towards their goal, which is the opposite of ours.
I agree, Kane, most wholeheartedly.
A generational difference in education can produce one classist too many. The PTBs are counting their blessings on even well educated people to go classist and sow dissent. Great posts by the way.
Most education is in actuality training for the job market so when there are no jobs why have any education at all.
:wink:
"The Narrative," Siouxrose? You're lifting what you consider the truth into capital, deistic letters? Get some ECT, fast.
No one in academia will talk about the giant elephant in the room that uses it trunk to suction out all the money from our pockets and transfer it to the richest among us -- the military industrial complex and America's perpetual wars.
Americans under the age of 71 have never seen a day of peace in their entire lives. Yes, since the start of WWII in 1941, the USA has never seen even one day when we didn't have soldiers fighting a war somewhere in the world.
We spend way over $1 trillion a year on the MIC. We spend way over $100 billion a year on fuel for our military vehicles and facilities, but we have allotted $48.8 billion for the Department of Education in 2012. The US spends over $20 billion a year on air conditioning alone in Iraq and Afghanistan. Air conditioning. We have articles every year about kids suffering in sweltering heat in schools or bitter cold because their heating and air conditioning doesn't work. Today in the Denver Post we had an article about a school in a poverty stricken area where kids can't go to school when winds exceed 25 miles an hour because their school might blow down because of shoddy construction.
Academics have no one but themselves to blame. They have accepted their corporate slave masters forever without a peep, and now they have the corporate universities they deserve. At the University of Colorado, the deafening silence of the professors who refused to stand up for Ward Churchill condemns them as the sheeple they have become. And of course we had the professors like Mimi Wesson, darling of the NPR set, who actively worked to fire Churchill.
I'm with you till the last paragraph, Tom. Because by your logic, all of the following deserve equal condemnation:
1. All judges & lawyers that stood silent while Bush defecated on The Constitution
2. All judges, lawyers & law professors who stood silent while torture became the norm of the land
3. All judges, lawyers, & law professors who stood silent while the NDAA made it into passage
4. All the media personnel & journalists who sponsored the lies that led to war
5. All the media personnel & journalists who reinforce right-wing memes and narratives, particularly those which fail to disclose the truth about tax disparities, pork barrel spending, no-bid contracts, et al
6. All the medical personnel and med school professors who did not stand up for single payer, and instead allow the big insurance companies to effectively call the shots as to who gets what treatment and when
7. All the economists and economics/history professors who did nothing to blow the whistle on the bail-out designed for the same bankers who caused the collapse of much of the global economy
8. All the imbeciles in the upper ranks of the MIC who pretend that these wars mean something, that they can be won, that there is not going to be serious blowback, that casualties are far less than what they admit, ad nauseum.
9 All of the EPA employees who fail to report what's going on with pollution and the poisoning of our air, soil, food, and waterways.
And this is, of course, a partial list.
When the media doesn't do its job, when the daily rigors of rigged economics force people to struggle, when the leaders lie, and when the forces of fascism slowly take shape... less and less people have the wit, courage, time, or understanding to fight the creeping inverted totalitarian agencies before they assume full control.
Items like:
The McCarthy phase, black-listing, "With us or against us," "9ll changed everything," the deaths of Martin, Bobby & John... and later Wellstone... these things sit inside the collective unconscious and slowly ferment there. Perhaps they make many numb.
Yes, yes, Siouxrose this is what we need to understand:
"When the media doesn't do its job, when the daily rigors of rigged economics force people to struggle, when the leaders lie, and when the forces of fascism slowly take shape... less and less people have the wit, courage, time, or understanding to fight the creeping inverted totalitarian agencies before they assume full control."
Free will isn't free: it is intimately shaped by conditions and causes that are myriad and beginningless. We are as much products of our culture as we are free to transcend our culture--but transcendence is not our usual custom, and so it can be very hard to do. In Buddhism, we are products of not just our culture but of the beginningless self-created karma of our actions and thoughts. And yet, all this can be transcended, for it is fundamentally not closed but open.
With everything connected, we can only change our own and our collective situation by changing... everything! Yet changing even one thing also changes everything. We must go beyond thinking about this stuff to do it, but the point I want to make here is that when we look at blame--the topic on this little stack--its endless, so why not start with ourselves, where we have the greatest immediate control. Blame the system and we'd be correct; blame individuals, right again. We must change the whole system (create the Blessed Society, as MLK put it) or none of us--who are each connected to everything and everyone else--will be free. This is not just morality, it's reality.
I agree with most of what you've related, "Question." And I, too, subscribe to the idea that where we are at now (and that means each of us, both as an individual, and also as a collective) is the PRODUCT of where previous lifetimes (composed of beliefs, acts, choices, and conditions inherited from the larger society) have taken us. And yes, karma has MUCH to do with that.
To break out of pattern, so long as it's not directly injurious to others, is a means of altering karma. To the vast majority, still conditioned by and to our Mars ruled culture, to defund the military = injury to others. In their view that might take shape as a loss of jobs, although I'd argue that all that manpower is NEEDED to rebuild the nation's infrastructure; so it would be less the matter of outright job loss, and more the matter of a wise redirecting of mass muscle.
There is a liability when we attach too much to this 'just work on yourself" idea. And that's because what is needed is BOTH: working on personal consciousness by aligning acts with beliefs, and using self-discipline to lessen one's ecological footprint on this Beloved Earth; but also the reciprocal need to work for a more just and humane society. This should never be conceptualized as an either-or proposition.
Saturday's article relating developments in Ecuador is not only hopeful, it also suggests a living model that honors (and returns to) the Balance indicated in Riane Eisler's portrait of The Partnership Society.
We must not forget the hundreds of thousands of people who because of the system have bought the idea that service to their country and access to education was through the military face precisely the same twist. To discount these people is a dreadful mistake. Please take this to heart given the reports of violence and suicide coming home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh6bx6aPVS0&feature=related
but it may also be the only way to create the educated and competent citizens upon whom our faltering democratic polity depends
I honsestly do not believe that the 'democratic polity' really appreciates educated citizens. A well rounded 'liberal education' is frowned on and the ability to question critically think and test assumptions, let alone differentiate between fact and opinon run counter to what the political class demand. Get in line, obey without question and just say yes! Thats REALLY what our politicians require...but not only them most corporations while giving lip serivce to 'creativity and team work' will only those who, with them, admire the Emperor's new clothes.
Exactly! Just watch as the police state starts to clamp down for real how the intellectuals will be amongst the first ones to be rounded up and deal with. Every regime since the beginning of time fears intelligent, educated, free thinkers. It is those individuals that pose a threat to their totalitarian rule. This whatchamacallit thing we've got going here in the US is no different. Take a look at how they've already attacked bi-lingual education in Texas and all the books have been banned. Anyone who's not seeing Fascism springing up in every corner is this country must be certified as legally blind.
Note this video by the Late George Carlin on why Education in the USA Sucks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE
Question Why pay upwards of $25,000 - $40,000/yr & come out $25,000 / $50,000 / $100,000 in debt for a college education & then can't even find a job that pays enough to pay back the student loan that you can't get out from under even if you file for bankruptcy??? Maybe it's time to look for other ways to get a 'higher education' & boycott the University Industrial Complex. That might force them to change current trends.
"A college degree, it was believed, would boost its holders into the middle class and then keep them and their children there."
Middle class prosperity and the college degree are both ideas that have no connection with the people's inner truth. We may substitute for those two ideas universal equity and universal enlightenment, respectively. These are part of the people's agenda: Universal enlightenment, equity, and justice. The people's agenda naturally resonates with the people's inner truth.
Middle class prosperity may resemble universal equity to some. But there is not near enough similarity for it to effectively substitute. This is a revelation that people are beginning to see, explaining why for instance, Occupy Wall-Struck broke away from conventional ideals. The Middle Class is a child of the idea of classism, thus it is fundamentally corrupt, and doomed, as an idea.
Similarly, the college degree may resemble universal enlightenment to some. But there is not near enough similarity for it to effectively substitute. The reason is the idea assumes too much, assuming the cost and the curriculum are kosher, etc. While any idea may be corrupted, the more abstract idea is less corruptible, because it prevents us from mistaking the means with the end. The college degree is the means, and when it fails to serve the end, we replace the means, preserving the end. Remaining in the public debate, always, is how to best achieve the end. Start with a solid end that resonates with your inner truth.
This is an excellent article! And thanks, CDers, for the always appreciated, thoughtful and informative comments.
It has seemed fairly clear to me for years that the last thing the ruling class wants is an educated, healthy, confident population of critical thinkers....and I'm neither teacher nor student (other than of life).
Clear also that they have been doing their darnedest for decades to reshape this country's (and probably the rest of the world's) human infrastructure into a completely pliable and compliant tool/soldier/plaything of the sociopathic elites....and it's likely, if Empire continues to rule the day, not everyone will survive the transformation to physically-alive-but-mentally-dead servitude intended for pretty much anybody deemed unworthy of membership in the club.
Hmmm, low survival numbers = intentional bonus? Perhaps, as it seems power-mad elitists have historically favored 'proper' thinning of the population.
The insane agendas and actions of these worst-of-the-worst terrorists posing as US senators, representatives, presidents, CEOs, etc....apparently even school superintendents and heads of universities...need to be exposed for the danger to life and planet that they are....and stopped.
It seems to me that each student used to be a human individual who has a future and a hope. So the teachers treated us as such. They spoke into our lives and told us stuff that would help us live our lives in a useful and meaningful way. I remember those teachers.
Don't know about now; it's hard to get a snapshot of what's happening. But clearly, the PTB view each student as a commodity--something to be bought or sold or used up for profit. So each will come out on the conveyor belt with a label of prisoner, or soldier, or sweat-shop worker, or prison guard, or maybe just consumer. How about "cancer patient"--that would be pretty profitable! Whatever, each unit has a function to further the profit-motive of our overlords. Now they are not as shy about labeling them and putting them on the correct conveyor belt, or "track" once they finish high school, or more likely, drop out. GOP candidates seem to be proud of their plans to turn young people into commodities and assets. Shameful.
It's interesting to see the machinations of the elites and how, throughout history, they adjust to the social trends and the times in order to profit. Once upon a time, the masses were kept illiterate and in the dark so they were easy to manipulate. The world evolved, the Catholic Church no longer ruled the world, there was a period of enlightenment. Fast forward to the 1960s-1990s when it becomes fashionable for the offspring of the serfs to get an education. Quickly, the elites design for-profit education and capitalize on the servitude of the young ones through debt. As they themselves crash the economy and it becomes apparent that the particular student-loan cash cow has dried up, they quickly revert to keeping the masses stupid so they can be easily controlled and in servitude as in the old days. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I agree with commentator Kane Jeeves: Ms Schrecker is a dimwit.
Ms S. wrote: "Once an engine of social mobility, higher education"
Response: Incorrect. The engine of Social Mobility was Commerce, even back 3000-4000 years ago when Kings and Emperors have to beg on bended knee for gold from Merchants to wage War. Who has higher social stature: a merchant who can bring you wine, fine clothes and who has a rough elocution? Or the beggar on the street who can prove he is the grandson of some Duke? A former slave in the 1880's owned a railroad company and said: "It is better to say 'I is rich' than 'I am poor'".
Ms S. wrote: "American dream of a top-flight affordable college education available to all"
Response: Empty phrase. Americans dream to marry Miss World (men's dream) or Brad Pitt (women's dream). To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, if you think college education is expensive, wait until it becomes free.
Ms S. wrote: "... become harder for graduates to enter the well-paying careers they went to college for."
Response: Empty phrase. Anyone with a degree in Medieval Transgender Feminist studies should not expect a well-paying career. Ms S. should thank her nine Gods she's got a job at Yeshiva U. (a private university)
Ms S. wrote: "A college degree, it was believed, would boost its holders into the middle class and then keep them and their children there."
Response: Incorrect. The believe was that a career with a multinational corporation was the ticket to the good life. Many CEO's started in the mailroom with a GED.
Ms S. wrote: ".. rather than sites for intellectual experimentation and meaningful cultural encounters."
Response: Universities are not needed for "intellectual experimentation" or for "meaningful cultural encounters". There are many cab-drivers, longshoremen, farmers with more philosophical muscle than the likes of Ms. S.
Ms S. wrote: 'Much of that competition consists of what one observer has called an "amenities arms race"'.
Response: Why go to University when you can go to 24-hr Fitness or the Hilton for the same amenities?
Ms S. wrote: "Worse yet, the long-term impact of the academy's financial crisis has not only made higher education increasingly unaffordable, but has also impaired its quality"
Response: Incorrect. That Ms S. actually wrote this essay is a poor reflection on Yeshiva U. The main reason for the ever decreasing quality of faculty is Government subsidies either directly to the Universities or to students via guaranteed loans. Such subsidies brought about a proliferation of Universities and the bloat of existing Universities. What is needed is University birth-control and pruning. A pruned tree will produce more robust fruit than the nonpruned one. Yeshiva U needs some pruning.
Ms S. wrote: "Admittedly, professors are not angels, but they are hardly the demonised individuals the current scenario depicts."
Response: No one is pure devil. No one is pure angel. Professors are all more devil than angel.
Ms S. wrote: "convince the public that US academics are tenured radicals who indoctrinate their students, conduct arcane research and only work 12 hours a week.
Response: David Horowitz is correct. Correction: many tenured faculty revolt if they have to put in more than 4 hrs a week.
Ms S. wrote: "- if only they had the resources to do so."
Response: In other words, full-time faculty need MORE MOOOOOLAHHH!!!! Seriously, the salaries of all liberal arts professors need to be cut in half. And then they are still overpaid.
Ms S. wrote: "The stereotypical professor with a lifetime sinecure is a dying breed on all but the nation's most affluent campuses"
Response: And that is what is supposed to happen.
Ms S. wrote: "Stressed public sector ... Hawaii's best prep school, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School indicates -
Response: A contradiction by Ms. S.: talking about PUBLIC sector but then references to PRIVATE institutions: Columbia U, Harvard, Hawaii prep school. Ms. S. is a dimwit.
Ms S. wrote: "The most serious problem, however, is the hollowing out of the faculty through the substitution of part-time and temporary instructors for full-time tenured and tenure-track ones."
Response: A problem. May not be the MOST serious. Cut the full-timers' salary in half and redistribute the "wealth" to the part-timers. Fulltimers are the 1%: tax them till it hurts!!!
Ms S. wrote: "Such problems are especially rife at schools where administrators seek to improve graduation rates by easing up on the rigour of their programmes."
Response: Well, the Universities are bloated and more numerous and the applicant pool is more or less static. Solution: shut down some Universities.
Ms S. wrote: "classroom-based freshman remedial mathematics course"
Response: College is not the place for primary and secondary schooling. Middle School and High School is where reading and writing should be taught.
Ms S. wrote: "on the long haul and on restoring a commitment to the common good that will help students understand themselves and the ever-changing world they live in."
Response: No need for a University to understand oneself. A steady supply of ganja and liquor should do.
Ms S. is seeing the writing on the wall: brick-and-mortar Universities are becoming increasingly irrelevant. More and more low-income families are using the Internet for education. In Germany, vocational training is as highly regarded as university training. There are more Americans of German heritage than African-Americans and one has to be grateful for the German legacy. South America (Roman Catholic) was colonized 100 years before North America (Protestant) and yet North American became more prosperous very quickly. And Protestantism started in Germany.
Very cogent article, good comments, brilliant dissection by friedfish...
Born 1943, both my parents taught at a college in a small college town in the Midwest. I became politically conscious in the early Fifties, during the height of McCarthyism. My daddy was a radical biologist. His FOIA-requested FBI file was about an inch thick, heavily redacted. He was accused of reading The Nation and The New Republic. (He also subscribed to The Progressive...)
My father was a strict Disciplinarian, a Depression-era kid raised up on an Iowa farm. He was something of an Intellectual Perfectionist. Only in his most reflective times, which were rare, could he be an Empath. His accuser was a disgruntled female student. He must be a Commie!
After many,, many months of investigation, involving personal interviews with the parents of maybe half the kids I later went to high school with, the FBI decided that my daddy weren't a Commie. But did they go back to those they had interviewed to tell them that my daddy was NOT a Commie? Of course not.
In high school I always felt like a "misfit." There must be something wrong with me! In retrospect, I see that I was shunned, not for who I was, but because my daddy was a Commie, even if he was not.
It was absolutely expected that I would attend college. I was a National Merit Finalist. I was "gifted."
I didn't feel that way. I was enrolled in the high school program that put me in university classes in my senior year. Someone gave me a copy of On the Road. Someone gave me a copy of A. Ginsberg's "Howl." I would shortly grab anything written by Bertrand Russell or Sam Clemons---the only girl I ever took to a prom: her daddy was a Mark Twain scholar in the English Department! Can you imagine that today?
Something exploded in my head. I dropped out of high school intending to join the army, despite my having been raised by my mother (and Bertrand Russell) as a Pacifist. I ended up avoiding military service. I attended three major universities in the Sixties. Again and again. I always dropped out. I am a slow reader, but I also relentless. During those college years I paid rent as an offset printer and darkroom tech. Apprenticed.
Two academic revolutions. The post WWII G.I. Bill. The view that everyone is entitled to a college degree. When I was an academic kid, it was understood that most Americans would not attend college. The courses I took were NOT easy. Explain the Idea of the Null. Explain the Idea of the Singularity. Explain the Idea of the ONE!
Instead of addressing such philosophical issues, my local "small college town" has become a University City! The new university buildings are MASSIVE, and red brick ornate, near perfect examples of the "conspicuous consumption" of Name That Eco-Philosopher...
On the other hand, they employed hundreds of highly-skilled craftsmen who know how to make red brick grow vertical for about four storeys.
Prior to WWII, the University System was the Secular Alternative to The Church. It is a product of The Enlightenment. DURING WWII, Academia became part of the military system, esp. with Oppenheimer in Santa Fe.
I know a professor who is gifted in obtaining "Education Grants". One day I said to him, referencing the old adage, "war is a racket": "Higher Education is a racket."
Yup, he replied.
My small college town has become a Big University City! What was once a conveyor of art and music and architecture and the general Arts & Sciences, anchored in the English Department, has become a glitzy Business School, underwritten by millionaire doners.
What had once been the conveyor of the Secular Western Tradition, including actual science!, had been subsumed.
MOST of what universities do today can be obtained free on the Internet. OTOH, there are "hands-on" realms where there is no substitute for experience and no substitute for the Elders. I have always held "higher education" in very high esteem. I've just never figured out what it is! College didn't teach me to fix my old cars. College didn't teach me plumbing! Hands on. Can you name yore local water pressure?
College didn't teach me carpentry, while I can now repair guitars.
What college taught was the overview. What would my highly-skilled hand-eye coordination mean without some over-arching way of seeing? As a user of tools that rend wood, will I attain to sculpting?
I don't think college today is college. I suspect that I learned more in high school than most now learn today in college.
The Internet is a direct threat to the University System. This is not news. The real question is how universities are dealing with it. The University retains a unique post-high-school opportunity for personal contact. It need not be a source of alienation.
-30-
Ellen, I feel somewhat indifferent to your article. Had you chosen an alternate title other than “The Fading Dream of Higher Education in the US” I would have most likely applauded your assessment of the state of affairs and leave it at that.
However, being in the teaching Profession, I wished you had made the article more personal by using your experience to define what you mean by “higher education” rather than leave it floating in the realm of the abstract.
The same goes for the following quotations:
[Perhaps the time has come to rethink the basic function of higher education.
The reality is quite different; higher education has become a highly stratified system that rewards those individuals and institutions with the resources to game it.
Worse yet, the long-term impact of the academy's financial crisis has not only made higher education increasingly unaffordable
More than ever, higher education is perceived as crucial for both national and individual success,
But elite or proletarian, all schools are cutting costs and doing so in ways that affect educational quality
Worse yet, the long-term impact of the academy's financial crisis has not only made higher education increasingly unaffordable, but has also impaired its quality.
most of the nation's undergraduates have fewer options and so are forced to perform major surgery on their core academic functions
The most serious problem, however, is the hollowing out of the faculty through the substitution of part-time and temporary instructors for full-time tenured and tenure-track ones.
flagship universities]
…. There are a lot of ambiguities in these comments. All leave the reader with perceived ideas but never a precise meaning as if “major surgery” is to aid or hinder “quality” education, thus layering abstract upon abstract. An educator should do better than that.
You see Ellen, I log on to CD when I’m able to because it offers an alternative voice to the current state of affairs. Empire has developed its own lexicon of words to promote its own agenda for the New World Order; this is a sad commentary for its citizens. So I’m somewhat disappointed when a narrative is structured on the clone of its protégé. By the end of your article I get the feeling that education is similar to US’s foreign policy, that a large infusion of funds are needed to guarantee a “quality” product (think name brands). For example, let’s say one was studying Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky or A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, maybe you could explain how a “flagship” University would handle the material differently from a non flagship University? (Are we not duplicating the hierarchy of “race” and “the other” in our learning halls?) Remember what Mark Twain said about his schooling not interfering with his education? Isn’t that really the problem afflicting us today, but you fail to make any comments on this. And what of the History that is unfolding before us, are you able to teach this to your students in any way? Or do you specialize in that period when the lights were out so there are no witnesses on the expertise?
Last time I checked with my local bookstores a person’s Degree could be condensed in an Anthology edition totaling $49.95 with text that has truth looking into the mirror. The book is sold without branding irons of any kind but the juices in the volume are overflowing – and a section is apportioned to natives and alternative voices.
And what’s to be made of the learning outside of the patriarchal self? There is no way of quantifying the added value that this may have on society yet it is a realm well worth reaching if we are ever to achieve equilibrium with nature. You mention “restoring commitment to the common good” but you failed to elaborate. I’m hoping you meant education moving away from the narrow bandwidth of employment opportunities; otherwise it will remain a tool for corporations.
By the end of your article it becomes clear that you favor private education as a means to an end (you use the term too many times) as there is always something broken or missing in the public model. This scenario scares me because the learning that should be imparted to the students will now be relegated to the model that is the brochure. And when two cans on the grocery shelf contain the same item inside but are labeled differently, we all know which will sell first. Besides, Orwell has been right too many times so we need to stop padding his rear end with a model that looks like more of the same.
Project much?
Another interesting spectrum of postings. I think the diversity of personal experiences is a real asset to CD in these comment sections. I hope everyone watched the George Carlin youtube clip someone else posted earlier about education. It is so true. The Wicked One Percent don't want anyone to have any quality education whatsoever.
Education, whether just Vocational or a Good Liberal Education as Thomas Jefferson desired all to have, is what you make of it. Now it's true: Not all are afforded the same quality of Teaching. Not all are afforded the same opportunity to focus purely on emerging oneself in subjects one loves. Many have to work their way through school which hampers thier ability to excel in any real way. But without the discipline of a course syllabus and a quality professor, and the interaction of other students and TA's, labs, etc, you won't get a real education.
On-line education is a joke. You can't ask the screen for clarification. But if you were a young dumb A-hole like I was, sitting in college thinking the world owed me an existence, when I wasn't "getting it", and detected that none of us were getting it, I would interupt the class and say "Come on here, none of us for weeks has been given any of this material ahead of time" and we would mutiny against the shabby instructor. Sometimes it turned out, that the lesson plan was defective, or the information woefully wrong or the instructor terribly incompetent, whereby everyone would gradually drop out of the class. But it could be straightened out. Not so On-Line.
Airlines went to the same disastrous Computer "Cartoon Network" training we called it, since it saved them money, and it produced pilots and mechanics who had absolutely no idea how to operate safely. Experience Captains and Lead line Mechanics would have to retrain them, OTJ training, all over again, at the peril of the public, in the sky, and make them unlearn the un-updated, incorrect on-line crap they had muddled through in place of experienced ground school instructors who ate lunch everyday with line people and knew what was B.S. in that government approved crap, and were your friends and would stomp the floor and say: here how it really works, Several guys have had engines flame out even though the fuel system is supposed to suction feed to 18,000 feet, even with the crossfeed closed and the fuel pumps off. Don't believe the Aerospace company's BS! If you isolate that engine at low altitude at high gross weight, you're not going to be long for this world you runnynoses!
So nothing is fair in this life. Schools are iffy now. Just like our nuclear industry, when quality science has to take a back seat to Wall Street profits via shortcuts in safety, a meltdown is certain. And a meltdown in education has obviously happened in America. When Wall Street can dictate to teachers which $200 dollar books teachers must buy, you know that Monopoly Capitalism has failed the Citizen yet again.
I notice, with sadness, those posts who think a good liberal education is of no value. And they are always the people who dropped out, or didn't want to be in school in the first place, and seem always to be the guys with the most to say about it.
A well-rounded education is a supreme gift. It may not get you a job anymore, but it separates you from the mindless masses glued to the boob tube with no hope of ever understanding anything. Once you obtain the skills of critical thinking and of the communication skills of essay and composition your life will never be the same again. You will become like George Carlin or SR or many of the regulars here, and be able to see through Wall Street's bullchit, that everybody else swallows hook, line, and sinker.
I watch the blank faces of these poor, uneducated souls as they wonder why they got robbed by the bailouts, why their children don't have any legs after the Iraq war, why the general fund is broke and why they now have to work till they die, with no medical coverage or days off anymore, and I think to myself: What a never ending tragedy is living in a fake democracy with no middle class and no affordable higher education.
Had they taken Literature and history and read Stienbeck's Cannery Row, or Les Miserables or The Pearl, or read Catch-22, or George Orwell's 1984, or Shooting an Elephant, they would have the wisdom of those before them who faced the same situations. Sorry, Dancing with the Stars won't give that. Neither will the MSM. Once you have developed those analytical and articulation skills you are ready to engage the legendary power of the pen; and ferment some kind of Union; which has fallen Kings and changed the fates of countries. e.g., Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" which made the case for separation from Briton, and Frances Encyclopédie, which was a big cause of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
Non profit, higher education for all is the only chance this species has for survival at this critical junction in the world's failing ecosystem, imho.
Goodnight All,
TJ
TJ---
You've done it again.
I just want to put in a plug for Apprenticeship. E.G., it is one thing to learn that in offset presses there is required a certain balance between water and ink. It is quite another thing to actually run the presses.
Theory is great. Practice is verification. Mostly! Every once in a while an Anomaly appears.
My opinion is that the University System fails because it promotes Elitism: I am better than you because I have a Degree! A MASSIVE social system "privilege."
"Honestly, Yore Honor, I have an advanced degree in urban planning, but I've never laid a brick or tile, never replaced a plumbing washer, or sawed wood. But I'm ready to learn, Sir."
"Son, do you recognize this tool? it is called a screwdriver."
....Thanks, TJ.
....... -30-