RECOMMENDED READING I just came across a passionate blog post from a site called "The Homeless Adjunct" that I want to share. Entitled "How the American University Was Killed, in Five Easy Steps" it looks at deep negative trends threatening higher education in the USA, including:
1. The defunding of public higher education.
2. The deprofessionalization and impoverishment of professors
3. The takeover of university governance by a managerial/administrative class
4. The influx of corporate culture and corporate money
5. The destruction of students
After discussing in detail each one of these points, the author asks Now what?
"So now what?
This ruination has taken about a generation. Will we be able to undo this damage? Can we force refunding of our public educational system? Can we professionalize faculty, drive out the administrative glut and corporate hijackers? Can we provide free or low-cost tuition and high-quality education to our students in a way that does NOT focus only on job training, but on high-level personal and intellectual development?..."
These are good questions.
Surely we cannot think that saddling young people with $1 trillion in student debt for a mediocre education is justifiable - or sustainable (it won't be paid back, you know). Or that university administrative costs that rise threefold faster than teaching costs make sense? Or that taxpayers should underwrite the profits of "highered" for profit corporations by financing "student loans" that go straight to the bottom line (while increasing the debt load on students)?
How to reinvent the American University? Can there be any question that this is necessary?
