Earlier this month, DeVry University announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Faculdade Boa Vigem. DeVry expects to complete the transaction by the end of next month.
I, for one, find it just a little creepy when an educational institution says it's "acquiring" another. I think of all of those corporate takeovers, and how badly some of them ended.
FBV is located in the northeatern Brazilian city of Belem. Enrolled in it are 5800 students in undergraduate and graduate programs in many of the same areas (e.g., business, communication, technology and hospitality) as the ones offered at DeVry's North American campuses.
DeVry officers talk about "diversifying our offerings" and "expanding our profile in Brazil" when they discuss the move to acquire FBV. Maybe I'm getting old, but I don't remember educators using that sort of language when I was an undergraduate, or even a graduate student. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
Anyway, I don't mean to single out DeVry in this post, though I believe they deserve much of the scorn that has been heaped on them. However, as one of the largest for-profit "higher" education institutions (and the one, along with the University of Phoenix, that people are most likely to have heard of), their practices bear watching because they are emblematic of what is happening in much of higher education.
It's not only the for-profits that are expanding into countries like Brazil. Some say that Brazil and India, among others, are "emerging" countries that need the expertise that these schools can provide, particularly in the so-called Global Economy. That is the rationale for, among other things, opening an ABA-accredited law school in China.
However, I think that there are three other reasons why schools like DeVry want to expand into "emerging" markets, and why there is a rush to open schools with American accreditation in those countries.
The first, and most obvious reason, is the outsourcing of much of the work that has been done by graduates of American for-profit, law, technical and business schools. The officers of for-profit schools like DeVry and Phoenix are business people, first and foremost, and often have direct or indirect ties to financial, technological and other kinds of firms. They want to hire people for as little money as possible; if they themselves are not in a position to hire, the companies that hire their graduates are happy to have credentialed professionals in their industries who make less than the burger-flippers at Mickey D's and BK.
The second reason is that in countries like Brazil, India, Russia and China, there is much less oversight of post-secondary education, and even less of for-profit institutions. Some argue that there is even less business regulation generally in those countries than there is in the US. (Isn't it ironic that such would be the case in China, which is still--at least nominally--a Communist country?) And, whatever regulations exist are not enforced to the same degree that they are in the so-called developed countries. It's common knowledge that in India, for example, one can buy one's way out of sanctions or even prison time, mainly because law enforcement and other public officials are poorly-paid and because when large numbers of people are in poverty, corruption among politicians and billionaires is seen as a high-class worry.
So, schools like the ones I've mentioned can get away with their deceptive business practices more easily than they would in their home countries. (How long before one of those schools incorporates itself in the Cayman Islands?) Furthermore, the would-be students of those countries are easier to victimize through misleading employment and salary statistics because many of them still don't have access to the Internet and other sources of information Americans, Europeans and Japanese take for granted. Also, the grinding poverty of many of those would-be students, particularly in Brazil and India, make them easier marks: When people are desperate, they are more willing to hope for miracles. To see what I mean, take a look at who buys lottery tickets: They're usually not members of the "one percent."
Finally, the third reason I can discern for American schools expanding into developing countries is that executives (Let's call them what they are; they're not educators!) of those schools can read the writing on the wall. They know that their gravy train has been financed, in large part, by the availability of loans for American students. That is perhaps the main reason why tuitions have increased so much faster than the cost of living generally (or even medical costs!) over the past three decades: Those executives are simply doing what their counterparts in other industries do, which is to charge whatever the market will bear. And, to appropriate the words of the immortal Nando, if their IQs are above room temperature, they must know that sooner or later, the market will no longer bear it. The loan money won't be there and, as large numbers of families fall from the middle class, they won't be able to afford to send their kids to those schools.
But, knowing enough to parrot the politically-correct line, they are expanding into "emerging" markets in the name of "diversity". Yes, they are indeed diversifying--their income streams.
26 February 2012
25 February 2012
A Department Meeting In Which I Actually Learned Something
One aspect of his or her job that nearly everyone dreads is meetings. That is one thing I don't miss about the full-time faculty position I had.
Department and committee meetings in just about any kind of business are tedious and boring, and seem to accomplish little. But academic department and committee meetings are a particular kind of purgatory for the sheer pettiness and egotism displayed in them.
However, things are revealed, if unintentionally, when the door closes. I recall one meeting in particular, in the midst of all of the tooth-gnashing about revising the college's core curriculum as well as some of its majors.
At schools like York College, the majority of the English majors plan to teach at some level or another. However, nearly everything about the major and department, including the advisement we were supposed to give, were oriented toward getting students to go to graduate school in English or some related subject.
Some professors--usually, interestingly enough, the younger ones--think they are "rescuing" students from careers in business or government, or from law school, when they encourage them to take up "the life of the mind." I can honestly say that even at my most idealistic (in terms of the academic world, anyway), I never bought into that idea. I have always been happy to see students pursue what would make them happy, and I am glad that some recognize the value of reading great books in helping them achieve their goals. Or, they want one career or another and simply love to read and write. Actually, I have always been happier to see such students than the ones who want to perpetuate their schooling.
Anyway, one of the profs who was always steering students into graduate school--and who was a coordinator--said something that I would have found simply candid coming from someone else. However, when he said it, he revealed his mendacity. I suppose I should be grateful for that.
One of the reasons, he said, for convincing students to go to graduate schools if they want to teach is that "the education program is worthless" at the college. He wasn't being hyperbolic: The department didn't have all of the courses students needed in order to be certified as high school teachers in New York City.
However, he said, the college ought to offer the necessary courses because "teaching is one of the few actual jobs you can get with an English major." If the college didn't revamp its education curriculum, he said, students would change majors--or change schools.
The meeting was typical in just about every other way. However, at this particular meeting, I actually learned something. To be more precise, it confirmed a couple of things I'd always suspected--about the curriculum as well as at least one faculty member. I suppose I should be grateful for that.
Department and committee meetings in just about any kind of business are tedious and boring, and seem to accomplish little. But academic department and committee meetings are a particular kind of purgatory for the sheer pettiness and egotism displayed in them.
However, things are revealed, if unintentionally, when the door closes. I recall one meeting in particular, in the midst of all of the tooth-gnashing about revising the college's core curriculum as well as some of its majors.
At schools like York College, the majority of the English majors plan to teach at some level or another. However, nearly everything about the major and department, including the advisement we were supposed to give, were oriented toward getting students to go to graduate school in English or some related subject.
Some professors--usually, interestingly enough, the younger ones--think they are "rescuing" students from careers in business or government, or from law school, when they encourage them to take up "the life of the mind." I can honestly say that even at my most idealistic (in terms of the academic world, anyway), I never bought into that idea. I have always been happy to see students pursue what would make them happy, and I am glad that some recognize the value of reading great books in helping them achieve their goals. Or, they want one career or another and simply love to read and write. Actually, I have always been happier to see such students than the ones who want to perpetuate their schooling.
Anyway, one of the profs who was always steering students into graduate school--and who was a coordinator--said something that I would have found simply candid coming from someone else. However, when he said it, he revealed his mendacity. I suppose I should be grateful for that.
One of the reasons, he said, for convincing students to go to graduate schools if they want to teach is that "the education program is worthless" at the college. He wasn't being hyperbolic: The department didn't have all of the courses students needed in order to be certified as high school teachers in New York City.
However, he said, the college ought to offer the necessary courses because "teaching is one of the few actual jobs you can get with an English major." If the college didn't revamp its education curriculum, he said, students would change majors--or change schools.
The meeting was typical in just about every other way. However, at this particular meeting, I actually learned something. To be more precise, it confirmed a couple of things I'd always suspected--about the curriculum as well as at least one faculty member. I suppose I should be grateful for that.
24 February 2012
The Student Loan Debacle
The authors All Education Matters, Third Tier Reality, JD Painterguy and a number of other blogs have done much to vivify the reality too many of today's college, graduate school and law school graduates face: debt slavery.
They also, to a lesser degree, show the effects of those graduates' situations on the economy and society, and what the future might hold for them, and us.
Today, a friend passed this short, but rather interesting, post on the topic. It's on the site The Economic Depression, which has something of a Libertarian slant. That last fact makes the post all the more intriguing, as its author compares the advantages and disadvantages of reducing vs. forgiving balances on student loans. The author doesn't say, as many of his/her political persuasion would, that the graduates knew the risks and should therefore be on the hook for every penny--or that if they can't get jobs that pay well enough to pay the loans, it's their own damned fault.
That the author posits a choice between reduction and forgiveness is itself a testament to how dire the situation is. Ultimately, the writer comes out on the side of reduction, in the (probably correct) belief that forgiveness would cost money that simply isn't available. Reduction, at least, would give many graduates relief and would allow some to take lower-paying jobs (such as those in non-profit organizations) or to take risks like starting a business. Or, they may simply have more disposable income for cars and other items.
Whatever is (or isn't) done to help graduates, measures must also be taken to ensure that current and future students don't take on so much debt. Of course, the most popular (and morally defensible) thing to do would be to reduce tuition. I think now of a recent post on College Misery in which a student wonders aloud "where the money goes," with the implication that it's going to the instructor, who's probably an adjunct making less than the student. Of course, the most obvious way to cut the operating costs of colleges is to cut the administrative bloat that plagues nearly all post-secondary institutions. That, in turn, would probably lead to a halt in the construction of unnecessary facilities and spending on a multitude of other "pet projects."
Now, the cynic in me (and many of you) says that colleges aren't going to do that. They won't--as long as students keep on paying. But what if the student loan money were to dry up--or students found viable alternatives to prepare themselves for the job market, and life? What would replace those income streams?
It goes without saying that the current situation is unsustainable. The choice, it seems, is between change and collapse. Which will our policy-makers choose?
They also, to a lesser degree, show the effects of those graduates' situations on the economy and society, and what the future might hold for them, and us.
Today, a friend passed this short, but rather interesting, post on the topic. It's on the site The Economic Depression, which has something of a Libertarian slant. That last fact makes the post all the more intriguing, as its author compares the advantages and disadvantages of reducing vs. forgiving balances on student loans. The author doesn't say, as many of his/her political persuasion would, that the graduates knew the risks and should therefore be on the hook for every penny--or that if they can't get jobs that pay well enough to pay the loans, it's their own damned fault.
That the author posits a choice between reduction and forgiveness is itself a testament to how dire the situation is. Ultimately, the writer comes out on the side of reduction, in the (probably correct) belief that forgiveness would cost money that simply isn't available. Reduction, at least, would give many graduates relief and would allow some to take lower-paying jobs (such as those in non-profit organizations) or to take risks like starting a business. Or, they may simply have more disposable income for cars and other items.
Whatever is (or isn't) done to help graduates, measures must also be taken to ensure that current and future students don't take on so much debt. Of course, the most popular (and morally defensible) thing to do would be to reduce tuition. I think now of a recent post on College Misery in which a student wonders aloud "where the money goes," with the implication that it's going to the instructor, who's probably an adjunct making less than the student. Of course, the most obvious way to cut the operating costs of colleges is to cut the administrative bloat that plagues nearly all post-secondary institutions. That, in turn, would probably lead to a halt in the construction of unnecessary facilities and spending on a multitude of other "pet projects."
Now, the cynic in me (and many of you) says that colleges aren't going to do that. They won't--as long as students keep on paying. But what if the student loan money were to dry up--or students found viable alternatives to prepare themselves for the job market, and life? What would replace those income streams?
It goes without saying that the current situation is unsustainable. The choice, it seems, is between change and collapse. Which will our policy-makers choose?
23 February 2012
Blinded With Their Blind Selves
I'm still thinking about the time a grad student in psychology was telling me about my "blind self." She insisted that I am truly, passionately interested in things that I don't care, or have never heard, about. She also had the audacity to declare what my hobbies, interests and sexuality "should" be.
Actually, listening to her really wasn't so different from reading some of the scholarly articles and books I've read by various social scientists and professors in the "studies"--or horoscopes. They all presume to know other people in ways they don't know themselves and posit what such people "should" do.
To me, their declarations are really just a lot of authoritarian nonsense--not so different, really, from EST (remember it?) or any number of movements with megalomaniac leaders. It's unfortunate when people don't know themselves, or are in denial of who they are. But, really, can other people know for sure what those people "really are" or "should be"?
I mean, I've been told that because of my racial and ethnic heritage, there are kinds of music and other entertainments I'm supposed to like, and that I'm not typical (as if there's any virtue in being typical) of someone of my background. They've told me, at various times in my life, that I'm not supposed to be literate enough to undertake the reading and studies I've done or to write so much as this blog. I've even had some of those people what my sexual orientation "should" be, based on some factor or another they could see, but I couldn't.
I grant that other people see us differently from how we see ourselves, and that other people can sometimes see things we can't. But I don't think anyone has the right or authority to make some of the smug pronouncement I've heard from psychology, sociology and gender studies profs--or, worse, those who are studying under them. But no matter what we can see in other people's appearance or "read into" what thet sat, we can't ever know them as well as they know themselves--even if they don't know themselves very well.
Of course, it goes without saying that those who arrogate unto themselves the authority to decide what's best for others usually don't know themselves very well, either. Perhaps that's the reason why they think they know other people better than they know themselves.
Such people think their educations qualify them to make choices about other people's lives. The funny thing is that they aren't educated in any real sense: They've merely spent lots of time in school and, in some cases, gotten advanced degrees. As often as not, they are the sorts of people who see others (especially members of "minority" groups) as subjects for their study, props for the stage of their theories or simply pawns in their game.
They may see others as having "blind self." But the blindness is theirs, if they actually believe they can know another person better than he or she knows him or her self.
Actually, listening to her really wasn't so different from reading some of the scholarly articles and books I've read by various social scientists and professors in the "studies"--or horoscopes. They all presume to know other people in ways they don't know themselves and posit what such people "should" do.
To me, their declarations are really just a lot of authoritarian nonsense--not so different, really, from EST (remember it?) or any number of movements with megalomaniac leaders. It's unfortunate when people don't know themselves, or are in denial of who they are. But, really, can other people know for sure what those people "really are" or "should be"?
I mean, I've been told that because of my racial and ethnic heritage, there are kinds of music and other entertainments I'm supposed to like, and that I'm not typical (as if there's any virtue in being typical) of someone of my background. They've told me, at various times in my life, that I'm not supposed to be literate enough to undertake the reading and studies I've done or to write so much as this blog. I've even had some of those people what my sexual orientation "should" be, based on some factor or another they could see, but I couldn't.
I grant that other people see us differently from how we see ourselves, and that other people can sometimes see things we can't. But I don't think anyone has the right or authority to make some of the smug pronouncement I've heard from psychology, sociology and gender studies profs--or, worse, those who are studying under them. But no matter what we can see in other people's appearance or "read into" what thet sat, we can't ever know them as well as they know themselves--even if they don't know themselves very well.
Of course, it goes without saying that those who arrogate unto themselves the authority to decide what's best for others usually don't know themselves very well, either. Perhaps that's the reason why they think they know other people better than they know themselves.
Such people think their educations qualify them to make choices about other people's lives. The funny thing is that they aren't educated in any real sense: They've merely spent lots of time in school and, in some cases, gotten advanced degrees. As often as not, they are the sorts of people who see others (especially members of "minority" groups) as subjects for their study, props for the stage of their theories or simply pawns in their game.
They may see others as having "blind self." But the blindness is theirs, if they actually believe they can know another person better than he or she knows him or her self.
21 February 2012
Power Without Education
5 February 2003.
It was one of the worst days in American history. Or, at the very least, it was the saddest day in America during my lifetime.
On that day, Colin Powell, then the Secretary of State, argued for the US invasion of Iraq, which began just a few days later. Part of his "case" included his assertion that "there can be no doubt Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to produce more, many more." He also stated there was "no doubt in my mind" that Saddam was working to obtain the key components necessary for producing nuclear weapons.
Those statements directly contradicted what he said in a press statement nearly two years earlier: that sanctions against Iraq had prevented the development of any "weapons of mass destruction" by Saddam Hussein. He made similar remarks on other occasions.
Later, Powell admitted that speech to the UN was a stain on his record. This begs the question of what, exactly, motivated him to lie to the world. Was it pressure from the President, George W. Bush, as many have speculated? Was he somehow influenced by members of the military-corporate complex that would benefit from the invasion? Or was there some other motive?
Whatever his reasons for making that speech, Powell betrayed many, many people who trusted and admired him until that time. He also showed, I believe, that failures of the so-called education system are nothing new.
I'm not saying that he's not an intelligent man, and I'm not questioning his leadership abilities. (How he used those qualities is another story altogether.) I do think, however, that in spite (or maybe because) of all the time he spent in school, he's not an educated man.
What do I mean by that? Educated people become self-aware. They ask questions, with the understanding of who they and we are, and what we've come from. They learn truths and, when necessary, stand against popular opinion and peer pressure, knowing that, as Socrates said, it's better to have the whole world against you than to be divided against yourself. This means that they do not lie to themselves and rarely, if ever, need to lie to anyone else. (The exception might be to save another person's life.) They also know that there is simply no way to morally justify the killing of children and other innocent people, or that such killings are simply a cost of doing business.
What Colin Powell did on that terrible day was the exact opposite of what I've described in my previous paragraph. He's said that he wasn't a particularly good student, but that's not the reason for his mendacity. Rather, he bought into the notion that pleasing those ahead of him in the chain of command was more important than doing what was truly necessary and right. That mentality got him through his undergraduate days at City College of New York and, later, a graduate program at George Washington University, and up through the military ranks.
Things have only gotten worse. At least, in Powell's day, there was the possibility of encountering a teacher or professor who actually challenged him to think critically, as well as various role models who could have helped him to develop an ethical sense. These days, one simply will not find such things in schools hamstrung by the so-called No Child Left Behind Act and a culture,media and corporate structure shaped by the expectation of blind obedience.
Some would argue that it's necessary, in the military, to train people to follow orders. That is true, but if recruits have never been inculcated with a moral sense--whether from their families, communities, houses of worship or simply their own reading and reflection--the expectation that one will unquestioningly follow orders can only lead to disaster. Look at what happened to Colin Powell. And look at the ways corporate oligarchs exploit their workers, and how those workers think there is no other way.
Someone once said that education is our only hope. Getting rid of a system that values blind obedience and rote skills is our only hope of getting, or helping someone to get, an education. Perhaps then we won't have to see another spectacle like the one we saw on 5 February 2003.
It was one of the worst days in American history. Or, at the very least, it was the saddest day in America during my lifetime.
On that day, Colin Powell, then the Secretary of State, argued for the US invasion of Iraq, which began just a few days later. Part of his "case" included his assertion that "there can be no doubt Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to produce more, many more." He also stated there was "no doubt in my mind" that Saddam was working to obtain the key components necessary for producing nuclear weapons.
Those statements directly contradicted what he said in a press statement nearly two years earlier: that sanctions against Iraq had prevented the development of any "weapons of mass destruction" by Saddam Hussein. He made similar remarks on other occasions.
Later, Powell admitted that speech to the UN was a stain on his record. This begs the question of what, exactly, motivated him to lie to the world. Was it pressure from the President, George W. Bush, as many have speculated? Was he somehow influenced by members of the military-corporate complex that would benefit from the invasion? Or was there some other motive?
Whatever his reasons for making that speech, Powell betrayed many, many people who trusted and admired him until that time. He also showed, I believe, that failures of the so-called education system are nothing new.
I'm not saying that he's not an intelligent man, and I'm not questioning his leadership abilities. (How he used those qualities is another story altogether.) I do think, however, that in spite (or maybe because) of all the time he spent in school, he's not an educated man.
What do I mean by that? Educated people become self-aware. They ask questions, with the understanding of who they and we are, and what we've come from. They learn truths and, when necessary, stand against popular opinion and peer pressure, knowing that, as Socrates said, it's better to have the whole world against you than to be divided against yourself. This means that they do not lie to themselves and rarely, if ever, need to lie to anyone else. (The exception might be to save another person's life.) They also know that there is simply no way to morally justify the killing of children and other innocent people, or that such killings are simply a cost of doing business.
What Colin Powell did on that terrible day was the exact opposite of what I've described in my previous paragraph. He's said that he wasn't a particularly good student, but that's not the reason for his mendacity. Rather, he bought into the notion that pleasing those ahead of him in the chain of command was more important than doing what was truly necessary and right. That mentality got him through his undergraduate days at City College of New York and, later, a graduate program at George Washington University, and up through the military ranks.
Things have only gotten worse. At least, in Powell's day, there was the possibility of encountering a teacher or professor who actually challenged him to think critically, as well as various role models who could have helped him to develop an ethical sense. These days, one simply will not find such things in schools hamstrung by the so-called No Child Left Behind Act and a culture,media and corporate structure shaped by the expectation of blind obedience.
Some would argue that it's necessary, in the military, to train people to follow orders. That is true, but if recruits have never been inculcated with a moral sense--whether from their families, communities, houses of worship or simply their own reading and reflection--the expectation that one will unquestioningly follow orders can only lead to disaster. Look at what happened to Colin Powell. And look at the ways corporate oligarchs exploit their workers, and how those workers think there is no other way.
Someone once said that education is our only hope. Getting rid of a system that values blind obedience and rote skills is our only hope of getting, or helping someone to get, an education. Perhaps then we won't have to see another spectacle like the one we saw on 5 February 2003.
20 February 2012
"Curing" Diseases They Created
Serpentine is one of the best true-crime books I've read. It has its flaws, but its author, Thomas Thompson, does a great job of portraying one of the most thoroughly sociopathic people ever to walk the face of the earth: one Charles Sobhraj.
Sobhraj scorched a trail of chicanery, fraud, theft and murder from Paris to Phuket. Often, he would drug his victims or poison their food. Then, when they were weak with, or recovering from, violent illnesses, he would act as if he were helping them. This is how he led otherwise sensible people to their bankruptcies and deaths.
Now, some of you are thinking of all sorts of ways in which Sobhraj relates to the topics of discussion in this blog. Whatever connections you're making are probably spot-on. However, I want to discuss one particular relationship between what he did and what academia has done, specifically in the areas of "inclusion."
As a member of two or three different "minority" groups (depending on who's defining them), I can understand why some students and scholars wanted to start the "studies" programs: black, Afro-American, women's, gender, gay, queer and a multitude of others. At the same time, I can understand much of the criticism against those disciplines: In addition to their impracticality, both in terms of obtaining employment and in applying them to life generally, the quality of scholarship and writing in most of those areas ranges from abominable to simply bad; once in a while, it rises to a kind of jejune mediocrity.
However, now I am thinking about a particular parallel between the existence of the programs I've mentioned, and the methods of Charles Sobhraj. Just as Sobhraj "saved" his victims from problems he caused, and thereby led them to their doom, higher education institutions used the "studies" to "redress" inequities they created and, in the process, have led students and would-be scholars and professors to their financial and emotional ruin.
Most of the "studies" in question were created during the 1960's and 1970's, when women, members of racial and ethnic "minorities", non-heterosexual and non-cisgender people and young people who came from poor and working-class background demanded that their experiences were included as part of the canon or curriculum. Their demands certainly have merit: One result is that today I assign readings (like Charlotte Perkin Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper) my undergraduate professors hadn't even heard of, or at least never mentioned. Also, the new ways of reading have allowed many of my students to appreciate, and even enjoy, works like Othello, The Moor of Venice and Antigone.
Those things being said, it's still instructive to think about the need young scholars felt to create the "studies" and the new ways of reading they helped to inspire. Why did they feel such a need? At the time, significant numbers of women, African-Americans, Hispanics and other previously-excluded people were entering the academy. More students followed in their wake, and schools made efforts to recruit "minority" students and faculty members. (A few institutions, like City University of New York, instituted open-enrollment policies in response to demands for greater inclusion.)
However, what so many people have forgotten--and generations born since then have never realized--is that no one would have felt a need for the changed policies and new academic disciplines--as well as the revision of traditional canons and curricula--if the colleges and universities in question had not been excluding "nontraditional" students from their campuses, and work by "minority" writers, scholars, scientists and artists from established courses and disciplines. There would have been no demands to admit more "minority" students or to make the Ivy League co-ed if the schools in question hadn't had admissions quotas for, or barred outright, African-Americans, Jews, Italian-Americans, Hispanics, women and LGBT people.
Part of the reason for such exclusion is that universities were not created to train large numbers of people for the labor force; they weren't even designed to help people change their socioeconomic status or train them to be "well-informed citizens," as at least one college purports to do. Rather, the first universities were designed to train clergy; within a century or two, they existed mainly to provide a rite of passage for upper-class young men.
Institutions that were performing these functions were the models for the first universities founded in the Americas. And, even when college admissions were "democratized," the mindset of many faculty and administrators hadn't changed much, if at all. That's the reason why, although the vast majority of students attend post-secondary institutions in the hope of having some sort of choice in their employment options, most programs are still geared toward preparing students for graduate school. It's also the reason, I think, why so many professors still think they've succeeded when they've "saved" a student from a career in the corporate world and instead steered him or her to graduate school.
Even if the quotas and bans hadn't existed, such a system would effectively keep many lower-income, "minority" and female students out of the canon and academic life. But, in addition to the written and unwritten policies against including "nontraditional" students, too many professors and administrators (nearly all of whom were, until about 40 years ago, white and male) harbored or practiced various degrees of racism and misogyny. As an example, one professor at my undergraduate college actually said that blacks--whether American, African, Caribbean or any other variety--were incapable of speaking "proper English." For every prof like him, others emodied their prejudices, if unintentionally: In all of my undergraduate studies, I was assigned three female poets and one novel written by an African-American. That, mind you, was in the late 1970's. (All right, now you have an age range for me!)
Within four years before I began my undergraduate studies, my undergraduate school instituted Women's and African-American Studies programs. While I was there, they initiated Latin American and Gay Studies courses; within a few years of my graduation, they had developed into full-fledged curricula. (And, Women's Studies would morph into Gender Studies, and Gay Studies into Queer Studies.) And, the university, like so many others that launched such programs around that time, congratulated themselves for being more "inclusive" of the very people they'd been excluding--in the case of my university, for two hundred years before those programs started!
Note: I use the word "minority" in quotation marks because it's a misnomer. I'm in the biggest "minority" group: women, who are 51 percent of the population. And, outside of Europe and North America, no place in the world has a white majority. In fact, whites make up less than a fifth of the world's population.
Sobhraj scorched a trail of chicanery, fraud, theft and murder from Paris to Phuket. Often, he would drug his victims or poison their food. Then, when they were weak with, or recovering from, violent illnesses, he would act as if he were helping them. This is how he led otherwise sensible people to their bankruptcies and deaths.
Now, some of you are thinking of all sorts of ways in which Sobhraj relates to the topics of discussion in this blog. Whatever connections you're making are probably spot-on. However, I want to discuss one particular relationship between what he did and what academia has done, specifically in the areas of "inclusion."
As a member of two or three different "minority" groups (depending on who's defining them), I can understand why some students and scholars wanted to start the "studies" programs: black, Afro-American, women's, gender, gay, queer and a multitude of others. At the same time, I can understand much of the criticism against those disciplines: In addition to their impracticality, both in terms of obtaining employment and in applying them to life generally, the quality of scholarship and writing in most of those areas ranges from abominable to simply bad; once in a while, it rises to a kind of jejune mediocrity.
However, now I am thinking about a particular parallel between the existence of the programs I've mentioned, and the methods of Charles Sobhraj. Just as Sobhraj "saved" his victims from problems he caused, and thereby led them to their doom, higher education institutions used the "studies" to "redress" inequities they created and, in the process, have led students and would-be scholars and professors to their financial and emotional ruin.
Most of the "studies" in question were created during the 1960's and 1970's, when women, members of racial and ethnic "minorities", non-heterosexual and non-cisgender people and young people who came from poor and working-class background demanded that their experiences were included as part of the canon or curriculum. Their demands certainly have merit: One result is that today I assign readings (like Charlotte Perkin Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper) my undergraduate professors hadn't even heard of, or at least never mentioned. Also, the new ways of reading have allowed many of my students to appreciate, and even enjoy, works like Othello, The Moor of Venice and Antigone.
Those things being said, it's still instructive to think about the need young scholars felt to create the "studies" and the new ways of reading they helped to inspire. Why did they feel such a need? At the time, significant numbers of women, African-Americans, Hispanics and other previously-excluded people were entering the academy. More students followed in their wake, and schools made efforts to recruit "minority" students and faculty members. (A few institutions, like City University of New York, instituted open-enrollment policies in response to demands for greater inclusion.)
However, what so many people have forgotten--and generations born since then have never realized--is that no one would have felt a need for the changed policies and new academic disciplines--as well as the revision of traditional canons and curricula--if the colleges and universities in question had not been excluding "nontraditional" students from their campuses, and work by "minority" writers, scholars, scientists and artists from established courses and disciplines. There would have been no demands to admit more "minority" students or to make the Ivy League co-ed if the schools in question hadn't had admissions quotas for, or barred outright, African-Americans, Jews, Italian-Americans, Hispanics, women and LGBT people.
Part of the reason for such exclusion is that universities were not created to train large numbers of people for the labor force; they weren't even designed to help people change their socioeconomic status or train them to be "well-informed citizens," as at least one college purports to do. Rather, the first universities were designed to train clergy; within a century or two, they existed mainly to provide a rite of passage for upper-class young men.
Institutions that were performing these functions were the models for the first universities founded in the Americas. And, even when college admissions were "democratized," the mindset of many faculty and administrators hadn't changed much, if at all. That's the reason why, although the vast majority of students attend post-secondary institutions in the hope of having some sort of choice in their employment options, most programs are still geared toward preparing students for graduate school. It's also the reason, I think, why so many professors still think they've succeeded when they've "saved" a student from a career in the corporate world and instead steered him or her to graduate school.
Even if the quotas and bans hadn't existed, such a system would effectively keep many lower-income, "minority" and female students out of the canon and academic life. But, in addition to the written and unwritten policies against including "nontraditional" students, too many professors and administrators (nearly all of whom were, until about 40 years ago, white and male) harbored or practiced various degrees of racism and misogyny. As an example, one professor at my undergraduate college actually said that blacks--whether American, African, Caribbean or any other variety--were incapable of speaking "proper English." For every prof like him, others emodied their prejudices, if unintentionally: In all of my undergraduate studies, I was assigned three female poets and one novel written by an African-American. That, mind you, was in the late 1970's. (All right, now you have an age range for me!)
Within four years before I began my undergraduate studies, my undergraduate school instituted Women's and African-American Studies programs. While I was there, they initiated Latin American and Gay Studies courses; within a few years of my graduation, they had developed into full-fledged curricula. (And, Women's Studies would morph into Gender Studies, and Gay Studies into Queer Studies.) And, the university, like so many others that launched such programs around that time, congratulated themselves for being more "inclusive" of the very people they'd been excluding--in the case of my university, for two hundred years before those programs started!
Note: I use the word "minority" in quotation marks because it's a misnomer. I'm in the biggest "minority" group: women, who are 51 percent of the population. And, outside of Europe and North America, no place in the world has a white majority. In fact, whites make up less than a fifth of the world's population.
18 February 2012
NYU: What Happens When Education Becomes A Commodity
The residents of Greenwich Village in New York have been learning where the commodification of education leads.
One of the most famous neighborhoods in the United States, "The Village" is known for narrow, winding streets, Italian- and French-style coffee houses from which Starbuck's could learn a thing or two, and interesting little clothing and book shops, as well as restaurants. And, yes, it's also home to Washington Square Park and the Stonewall Inn.
"The Village" is also home to two well-known institutions of higher learning. One is Cooper Union, a school with one of the most competitive admissions processes in the world, and with good reason: No student pays tuition to go there.
The other is New York University (NYU), long one of the most expensive colleges in the nation. It's probably best-known for its film, law and business schools. Among residents of The Village, and in nearby neighborhoods, it's infamous for its twenty-year building plan.
Essentially, the plan calls for, new "superblocks" of facilities that will extend from Bleecker to Houston Streets--a distance of about a quarter of a mile. Side-streets would be obliterated, not to mention a number of homes and businesses.
University officials say their plan complies with the city's requirement for open or "green" space. However, as more than one resident has pointed out, the university's green space wouldn't be open to the public, as municipal--and even some privately-owned--spaces are.
There has been acrimony between Village residents and the University practically from the moment, about four decades ago, when the University sold its Bronx campus and started to expand its Washington Square campus. Village residents complain--with at least some justification, I believe--that the university has a history of "bulldozing" areas of the neighborhood to build dormitories and other facilities.
In some ways, this conflict can be seen as another manifestation of the classic "town-gown" tension. However, the NYU-Village conflict is even more intense, in some ways, because NYU has become one of the city's largest landlords. Thousands of people live, and scores of businesses operate, in spaces rented from the University. Many residents have no connection at all with the University; almost none of them describe the University as a good landlord. In one recent year, NYU-owned buildings had more violations than those of all but one other landlord in New York City.
Guess which landlord had the most violations. It was none other than Columbia University, located about six miles uptown from NYU. Like NYU, Columbia is landlord to even more tenants that have no other connection to the university than tenants who are students, faculty or staff members.
These days, colleges and universities have all sorts of incentives to build, build, build, and disregard the communities in which they're building. For one thing, most students--particularly in expensive schools like NYU and Columbia--don't live in the neighborhoods in which their schools are located and are, in fact, a transient population on campus. Such students, who come mainly from affluent suburban and urban communities, don't want to give up the amenities they were accustomed to having while growing up. When academics and other factors are equal, students and their parents often pick the campus with the facilities that most closely resemble what they have at home--or what they had in their favorite resort hotel.
Another reason why schools like NYU have such strong incentives to build is that academic administrators are judged on their legacies, and large building projects are increasingly seen as part of it. In fact, it can be argued that NYU is one of the schools that started this trend when it sold its Bronx campus and began to expand its Washington Square campus in the Village. At the time, the university was nearly bankrupt and was seen as a school for kids who couldn't get into City Univerisity of New York. (This was in the days before CUNY instituted open enrollment.) But, with the expansion in the Village, NYU became attractive to many students and faculty members who previously wouldn't have considered it. This, in turn, attracted investment and grants to the University, which no doubt pleased its trustees.
Also pleased are various city officials. Why? Well, large universities like NYU employ thousands of people who pay taxes--as, presumably, the university does. As other industries disappear, municipalities are happy to have any organization that would employ large numbers of people. And those institutions are expected to continue to do so: Said municipalities really don't care much about what else goes on in the University, as long as it doesn't cause the municipality to spend more on policing, firefighting and what other services it provides.
Hence, the university is seen more and more as an economic engine. However, the people who move forward with the engine don't, for the most part, live in the community where the university is located. Therefore, a university's expansion is almost inevitably cannibalistic. And longtime residents are displaced so rich kids can have a home for the four years they're away from home, pursuing degrees that will please everyone back home.
One of the most famous neighborhoods in the United States, "The Village" is known for narrow, winding streets, Italian- and French-style coffee houses from which Starbuck's could learn a thing or two, and interesting little clothing and book shops, as well as restaurants. And, yes, it's also home to Washington Square Park and the Stonewall Inn.
"The Village" is also home to two well-known institutions of higher learning. One is Cooper Union, a school with one of the most competitive admissions processes in the world, and with good reason: No student pays tuition to go there.
The other is New York University (NYU), long one of the most expensive colleges in the nation. It's probably best-known for its film, law and business schools. Among residents of The Village, and in nearby neighborhoods, it's infamous for its twenty-year building plan.
Essentially, the plan calls for, new "superblocks" of facilities that will extend from Bleecker to Houston Streets--a distance of about a quarter of a mile. Side-streets would be obliterated, not to mention a number of homes and businesses.
University officials say their plan complies with the city's requirement for open or "green" space. However, as more than one resident has pointed out, the university's green space wouldn't be open to the public, as municipal--and even some privately-owned--spaces are.
There has been acrimony between Village residents and the University practically from the moment, about four decades ago, when the University sold its Bronx campus and started to expand its Washington Square campus. Village residents complain--with at least some justification, I believe--that the university has a history of "bulldozing" areas of the neighborhood to build dormitories and other facilities.
In some ways, this conflict can be seen as another manifestation of the classic "town-gown" tension. However, the NYU-Village conflict is even more intense, in some ways, because NYU has become one of the city's largest landlords. Thousands of people live, and scores of businesses operate, in spaces rented from the University. Many residents have no connection at all with the University; almost none of them describe the University as a good landlord. In one recent year, NYU-owned buildings had more violations than those of all but one other landlord in New York City.
Guess which landlord had the most violations. It was none other than Columbia University, located about six miles uptown from NYU. Like NYU, Columbia is landlord to even more tenants that have no other connection to the university than tenants who are students, faculty or staff members.
These days, colleges and universities have all sorts of incentives to build, build, build, and disregard the communities in which they're building. For one thing, most students--particularly in expensive schools like NYU and Columbia--don't live in the neighborhoods in which their schools are located and are, in fact, a transient population on campus. Such students, who come mainly from affluent suburban and urban communities, don't want to give up the amenities they were accustomed to having while growing up. When academics and other factors are equal, students and their parents often pick the campus with the facilities that most closely resemble what they have at home--or what they had in their favorite resort hotel.
Another reason why schools like NYU have such strong incentives to build is that academic administrators are judged on their legacies, and large building projects are increasingly seen as part of it. In fact, it can be argued that NYU is one of the schools that started this trend when it sold its Bronx campus and began to expand its Washington Square campus in the Village. At the time, the university was nearly bankrupt and was seen as a school for kids who couldn't get into City Univerisity of New York. (This was in the days before CUNY instituted open enrollment.) But, with the expansion in the Village, NYU became attractive to many students and faculty members who previously wouldn't have considered it. This, in turn, attracted investment and grants to the University, which no doubt pleased its trustees.
Also pleased are various city officials. Why? Well, large universities like NYU employ thousands of people who pay taxes--as, presumably, the university does. As other industries disappear, municipalities are happy to have any organization that would employ large numbers of people. And those institutions are expected to continue to do so: Said municipalities really don't care much about what else goes on in the University, as long as it doesn't cause the municipality to spend more on policing, firefighting and what other services it provides.
Hence, the university is seen more and more as an economic engine. However, the people who move forward with the engine don't, for the most part, live in the community where the university is located. Therefore, a university's expansion is almost inevitably cannibalistic. And longtime residents are displaced so rich kids can have a home for the four years they're away from home, pursuing degrees that will please everyone back home.
17 February 2012
The Most Wasted Three Hours Of My Life
When I was a full-time faculty member at York College (CUNY), I served on the Curriculum Committee of the department in which I taught. When I first joined the Committee, I thought it might be an interesting and educational experience for me, especially given that the department and college were starting to (or, at least making gestures of starting) to revise its General Education curriculum.
Turns out, my hunch was right, though not for any reason I could anticipate.
One of the Committee's tasks was to explore ways of revamping the English courses students were required to take.
York, like most schools, required all students, regardless of major, to take two English courses. And, as in most schools, the first semester course was Composition. They had a fancier name for it, but it was essentially more or less the same as English Composition 101 classes in most American colleges. The difference was that it was a four-credit course, while in most schools it is three credits. If I'm not mistaken, the rationale for it was that most of the students needed the extra work, as they entered the college with weaker reading and writing skills than students in many other four-year colleges.
The second semester of English was something called Intro to Literature, or English 200. It was designated a "writing enhanced" course, as opposed to the "writing intensive" course that English 125, a.k.a. Intro to College Writing (or Composition) was. "Writing enhanced" meant, basically, that we were supposed to assign students to write essays and responses, but not full-blown papers.
One of the complaints about the courses was that when students transferred into York, the advisors and registrar weren't always sure of whether or not the student should receive credit for English 125 and/or 200. And students who transferred out of York complained that they "lost" credits and had to repeat--and pay for--classes that, in essence, they had already done.
The common-sensical--and ethical--thing would have been to structure the courses more like those in other colleges, where students take two semesters of composition (usually called English 101 and 102) and the second semsester, or 102, is usually a kind of "composition with literature" course.
But of course being common-sensical and ethical meant that it wasn't going to happen. Or, if it did, it would be made to appear "unique" in some way--as if a lower-tier four-year college in the CUNY system was doing things that other schools would notice, much less emulate!
So we spent weeks alternating between changing without seeming to, and seeming to change without actually doing so. Every educational and management theory and practice that defied common sense but got somebody a grant and tenure had been bandied about, as well as ideas that had been discredited in every field but English.
The low point came during one meeting that began in the middle of the afternoon and stretched into the night, long after classes had ended and nearly all other faculty members and students had left the campus. After debating what fancy-ass names to give the courses, the august scholars in the room spent the next three hours arguing over what numbers should be assigned to the courses. My suggestion that they should be called 101 and 102 were pooh-poohed; all manner of other combinations of numbers--some not even in sequence--were suggested. Finally, the the committee's chair adjourned the meeting after everyone agreed to narrow the choices down to two sequences and vote on them during the following meeting.
It's three hours of my life that I'll never get back. But, hey, I was doing my part to help improve the education York College students receive. Right?
Turns out, my hunch was right, though not for any reason I could anticipate.
One of the Committee's tasks was to explore ways of revamping the English courses students were required to take.
York, like most schools, required all students, regardless of major, to take two English courses. And, as in most schools, the first semester course was Composition. They had a fancier name for it, but it was essentially more or less the same as English Composition 101 classes in most American colleges. The difference was that it was a four-credit course, while in most schools it is three credits. If I'm not mistaken, the rationale for it was that most of the students needed the extra work, as they entered the college with weaker reading and writing skills than students in many other four-year colleges.
The second semester of English was something called Intro to Literature, or English 200. It was designated a "writing enhanced" course, as opposed to the "writing intensive" course that English 125, a.k.a. Intro to College Writing (or Composition) was. "Writing enhanced" meant, basically, that we were supposed to assign students to write essays and responses, but not full-blown papers.
One of the complaints about the courses was that when students transferred into York, the advisors and registrar weren't always sure of whether or not the student should receive credit for English 125 and/or 200. And students who transferred out of York complained that they "lost" credits and had to repeat--and pay for--classes that, in essence, they had already done.
The common-sensical--and ethical--thing would have been to structure the courses more like those in other colleges, where students take two semesters of composition (usually called English 101 and 102) and the second semsester, or 102, is usually a kind of "composition with literature" course.
But of course being common-sensical and ethical meant that it wasn't going to happen. Or, if it did, it would be made to appear "unique" in some way--as if a lower-tier four-year college in the CUNY system was doing things that other schools would notice, much less emulate!
So we spent weeks alternating between changing without seeming to, and seeming to change without actually doing so. Every educational and management theory and practice that defied common sense but got somebody a grant and tenure had been bandied about, as well as ideas that had been discredited in every field but English.
The low point came during one meeting that began in the middle of the afternoon and stretched into the night, long after classes had ended and nearly all other faculty members and students had left the campus. After debating what fancy-ass names to give the courses, the august scholars in the room spent the next three hours arguing over what numbers should be assigned to the courses. My suggestion that they should be called 101 and 102 were pooh-poohed; all manner of other combinations of numbers--some not even in sequence--were suggested. Finally, the the committee's chair adjourned the meeting after everyone agreed to narrow the choices down to two sequences and vote on them during the following meeting.
It's three hours of my life that I'll never get back. But, hey, I was doing my part to help improve the education York College students receive. Right?
15 February 2012
Nothing For The Best Years Of Your Life
In one of my classes, I have four veterans--that I know of. That's a pretty fair number in a class of twenty-seven students.
Two of them were in the Navy, one in the Army and the other in the Marines. One of the Navy vets is a woman.
Somehow, in the class, the topic of enlisting came up. My personal philosophy goes something like this: I am against war in principle. Outside of a direct attack from another country, I can see no reason to go to war. (I also believe that if Country A cannot prove that Country B was responsible for the attack against it, those countries should not be at war.)
That said, I am a realist. Unless there is a major development in the consciousness of the human race, there will always be one country ready to attack another, and almost every country will have armed forces. And, I would like to see people in those forces who will think before they attack.
Also, there are some people who are seemingly born to be in the military. That's where they belong. And, as I tell my students, one's purpose in joining the military should be to be in the military. If you join for something else--to get school paid for, to learn a trade or just about any other reason--you're not likely to get what you want. All of the veterans in my class said as much; in fact, the Army veteran said that recruiters "will promise you anything to get you to sign on the dotted line." He's not the first person I've heard saying that, and he probably won't be the last.
One of the best points, though, was made by the female veteran. "They don't give you something for nothing," she warned the other students. "If they pay for your education, the time they want you to spend in the military afterward more than pays them back," she explained. But the worst part, she said, is that "If you're going to school while you're in the military, work comes first. They don't care about your school; they'll make you skip classes for your job." She wasn't talking only about combat situations, either: She recalls that she and some of her mates had to skip classes, and fail courses, to help with a building project on a base in this country.
Plus, she said, they are less respectful of people's beliefs than most people realize. She cited her own experience as an example: While in the Navy, she got pregnant. When her commanding officer learned of it, he told her she "had" to get an abortion--or else. No matter how much she explained to him--or anyone else--that abortion goes against her religious beliefs, no one would hear her, and her officer would only reiterate his demand. Finally, after she refused to have her abortion, she was discharged.
Still, plenty of young people--particularly in this climate of high unemployment and college costs--will join the Armed Forces in the belief that they will be "taken care of." But the Army, or any other branch of the Armed Forces, does not give "free" health care, housing or food, any more than the government or any bank provides "free" loans for education
Really, students' joining the Armed Forces in order to pay for college (or grad or trade school) is, in some ways, not so different from taking out six figures in loans. In the latter, graduates become slaves to their loan payments; in the former, enlistees become, in effect, property of the branch of service in which they enlisted. Either way, the student has mortgaged his or her future, and is going to pay back much, much more than he or she received in loans or as benefits from the military.
And, the 18- or 19-year-old who enlists or takes out loans has heard that "you don't get something or nothing," but has never really experienced it in his or her life. So, just as these young people don't realize how much more, in time as well as in other ways, they will pay back for their loans than they took out on them, they also don't understand that the military and government collect "interest" on the benefits, including educational ones, from those whose schooling they pay for. That "interest" includes the time they will have to serve, as well as what economists like to call the "opportunity costs." And those things don't even include what could happen to an enlistee if he or she is sent into battle!
Two of them were in the Navy, one in the Army and the other in the Marines. One of the Navy vets is a woman.
Somehow, in the class, the topic of enlisting came up. My personal philosophy goes something like this: I am against war in principle. Outside of a direct attack from another country, I can see no reason to go to war. (I also believe that if Country A cannot prove that Country B was responsible for the attack against it, those countries should not be at war.)
That said, I am a realist. Unless there is a major development in the consciousness of the human race, there will always be one country ready to attack another, and almost every country will have armed forces. And, I would like to see people in those forces who will think before they attack.
Also, there are some people who are seemingly born to be in the military. That's where they belong. And, as I tell my students, one's purpose in joining the military should be to be in the military. If you join for something else--to get school paid for, to learn a trade or just about any other reason--you're not likely to get what you want. All of the veterans in my class said as much; in fact, the Army veteran said that recruiters "will promise you anything to get you to sign on the dotted line." He's not the first person I've heard saying that, and he probably won't be the last.
One of the best points, though, was made by the female veteran. "They don't give you something for nothing," she warned the other students. "If they pay for your education, the time they want you to spend in the military afterward more than pays them back," she explained. But the worst part, she said, is that "If you're going to school while you're in the military, work comes first. They don't care about your school; they'll make you skip classes for your job." She wasn't talking only about combat situations, either: She recalls that she and some of her mates had to skip classes, and fail courses, to help with a building project on a base in this country.
Plus, she said, they are less respectful of people's beliefs than most people realize. She cited her own experience as an example: While in the Navy, she got pregnant. When her commanding officer learned of it, he told her she "had" to get an abortion--or else. No matter how much she explained to him--or anyone else--that abortion goes against her religious beliefs, no one would hear her, and her officer would only reiterate his demand. Finally, after she refused to have her abortion, she was discharged.
Still, plenty of young people--particularly in this climate of high unemployment and college costs--will join the Armed Forces in the belief that they will be "taken care of." But the Army, or any other branch of the Armed Forces, does not give "free" health care, housing or food, any more than the government or any bank provides "free" loans for education
Really, students' joining the Armed Forces in order to pay for college (or grad or trade school) is, in some ways, not so different from taking out six figures in loans. In the latter, graduates become slaves to their loan payments; in the former, enlistees become, in effect, property of the branch of service in which they enlisted. Either way, the student has mortgaged his or her future, and is going to pay back much, much more than he or she received in loans or as benefits from the military.
And, the 18- or 19-year-old who enlists or takes out loans has heard that "you don't get something or nothing," but has never really experienced it in his or her life. So, just as these young people don't realize how much more, in time as well as in other ways, they will pay back for their loans than they took out on them, they also don't understand that the military and government collect "interest" on the benefits, including educational ones, from those whose schooling they pay for. That "interest" includes the time they will have to serve, as well as what economists like to call the "opportunity costs." And those things don't even include what could happen to an enlistee if he or she is sent into battle!
14 February 2012
How Will They Respond?
Today, on the "community dialoge" of one of the colleges in which I teach, another adjunct circulated Michael Berube's remarks, to which I included a link in yesterday's post.
I also circulated some remarks in response to the article, some of which are included in yesterday's post. Most imporant, I said that Berube's remarks are a tacit admission that colleges and universities are going to depend on adjuncts to teach large parts of their curricula. I also said that as long as there's an oversupply of people with advanced degrees in the humanities, and as long as academic administrations can get away with charging the same tuition for a course taught by an adjunct as they charge for courses taught by tenured professors, the situation Berube describes won't change much, if at all.
No one's responded--at least not yet.
I also circulated some remarks in response to the article, some of which are included in yesterday's post. Most imporant, I said that Berube's remarks are a tacit admission that colleges and universities are going to depend on adjuncts to teach large parts of their curricula. I also said that as long as there's an oversupply of people with advanced degrees in the humanities, and as long as academic administrations can get away with charging the same tuition for a course taught by an adjunct as they charge for courses taught by tenured professors, the situation Berube describes won't change much, if at all.
No one's responded--at least not yet.
13 February 2012
Making Our Status Permanent
You all took English Composition with some horrible, boring professor like me (ha, ha!). And, in that class, you had to write papers in the MLA format, right?
Well, last week, the inevitable happened in one of my Comp classes: A student asked, "What does MLA stand for?"
"The Modern Language Association."
"And what does it do?"
"It holds a convention every year to tell us there aren't any jobs in our field."
Some students laughed. Others squinted; still others looked at me in disbelief. But to many of us who are in MLA fields, that has seemed to be the reality for too long. Plus, too many of the discussions at those conventions, and in MLA publications, were on topics that were of absolutely no relevance to the majority of MLA members, or of higher education faculty members generally.
I am part of that majority. So are two-thirds of all faculty members in the US. We go by a few different labels: adjuncts, contingent faculty, NTT (non-tenure track). But they all the mean the same thing: We're people with advanced degrees who make less money than some people who work in retail sales. And we work more hours than most: For every hour we spend in class, in office hours or attending meetings, seminars or training sessions, we sped at least four or five grading papers or exams, preparing lessons and doing other things needed to enter our classrooms as the professionals we are.
I'll admit that my working conditions are better than those of many other adjuncts. Of course, that's not saying much: In some schools, adjuncts have to meet their students in hallways or outside the school altogether. (This was the case in one school in which I worked as an adjunct for four years.) In some schools, the adjuncts don't even have access copying machines and other amenities full-timers can use.
However, the worst thing about being an adjunct--apart from the low pay and lack of benefits--is the lack of respect, or outright contempt, some of us experience from full-time faculty members as well as administrators. This is not the case in one of the schools in which I work which, again, means that I'm better off than a lot of other adjuncts. On the other hand, when things get tough, I am near the head of the line for the chopping block.
One of my colleagues (another adjunct) has circulated a copy of MLA President Michael Berube's statement on the matter. He acknowledges what I've said so far in this post (and in others on this blog) and says that the conditions I describe have a negative effect, not only on adjuncts' lives, but on their--and full-timers'--ability to not only educate, but to inculcate young people with the notion that education is a worthwhile pursuit. As Berube notes, somewhat acerbically:
[C]olleges promote themselves, especially to first-generation students, as a pathway to the middle class—but, increasingly, colleges do not pay middle-class wages to their own faculty members. The contradiction is deepest at the lowest tiers of the academic hierarchy, where, Rhoades said, underpaid adjunct faculty members are effectively “modeling what is acceptable as an employment practice.” It is no wonder that adjunct faculty members are so politically invisible: apparently no one wants to say to high school graduates, “Go to college, work hard, and someday you can get a job teaching college—at a salary of $20,000.” It casts a pall over the American dream.
I would imagine--or hope, anyway--that if he could understand what he describes in that passage, he could also understand why I--and other profs--advise students against graduate school in the humanities. The colleges in which I teach (and, with one exception, the others in which I've taught) are chock-full of first-generation college students. Most are hoping for a middle-class lives, or at least to not have to struggle the way their parents have struggled. To tell them that such is possible by going to grad school in English, Philosophy or nearly any other humanities discipline is simply dishonest in the current environment.
As far as it goes, Berube's statement is laudable. However, it has one serious problem, in my view. His proposals to increase adjunct pay and offer us some of the protections (a.k.a. academic freedom) full-timers enjoy are commendable; so is the work he's done at Penn State in rewriting by laws to give adjuncts something like due process. However, in total, all of the improvements to the status and liveability of adjunct work he proposes are a tacit admission that adjuncts are a permanent part of higher education, and that we will continue to be, if not the majority we now are, at least a significant portion of the faculty roster and hours.
Such will most likely be the case for one reason I've described in other posts, and others have documented: the vast oversupply of people with PhDs or other "terminal" degrees (e.g., MFAs) in the humanities and arts. (Those degrees are terminal, all right: They end whatever chance you have of furthering your career, or even your schooling!) As long as there is a large supply of people with those degrees and no prospects for employment outside the academy, college and university administrators will be able to get lots and lots of work done for very little money.
I hope that prospective college students and their parents (or whoever is paying for their schooling) are reading this post as well as others on the topic. After all, as one commenter noted, no one would stand for paying top dollar for legal services and being fobbed off on a part-time associate who met with him or her in a hallway or elevator. Yet they pay full tuition for a class, whether it is taught by a tenured prof or an adjunct. Until that situation changes, academic administrators will have no incentive to improve the lot of adjuncts, let alone upgrade their positions to low-level full-time one.
Well, last week, the inevitable happened in one of my Comp classes: A student asked, "What does MLA stand for?"
"The Modern Language Association."
"And what does it do?"
"It holds a convention every year to tell us there aren't any jobs in our field."
Some students laughed. Others squinted; still others looked at me in disbelief. But to many of us who are in MLA fields, that has seemed to be the reality for too long. Plus, too many of the discussions at those conventions, and in MLA publications, were on topics that were of absolutely no relevance to the majority of MLA members, or of higher education faculty members generally.
I am part of that majority. So are two-thirds of all faculty members in the US. We go by a few different labels: adjuncts, contingent faculty, NTT (non-tenure track). But they all the mean the same thing: We're people with advanced degrees who make less money than some people who work in retail sales. And we work more hours than most: For every hour we spend in class, in office hours or attending meetings, seminars or training sessions, we sped at least four or five grading papers or exams, preparing lessons and doing other things needed to enter our classrooms as the professionals we are.
I'll admit that my working conditions are better than those of many other adjuncts. Of course, that's not saying much: In some schools, adjuncts have to meet their students in hallways or outside the school altogether. (This was the case in one school in which I worked as an adjunct for four years.) In some schools, the adjuncts don't even have access copying machines and other amenities full-timers can use.
However, the worst thing about being an adjunct--apart from the low pay and lack of benefits--is the lack of respect, or outright contempt, some of us experience from full-time faculty members as well as administrators. This is not the case in one of the schools in which I work which, again, means that I'm better off than a lot of other adjuncts. On the other hand, when things get tough, I am near the head of the line for the chopping block.
One of my colleagues (another adjunct) has circulated a copy of MLA President Michael Berube's statement on the matter. He acknowledges what I've said so far in this post (and in others on this blog) and says that the conditions I describe have a negative effect, not only on adjuncts' lives, but on their--and full-timers'--ability to not only educate, but to inculcate young people with the notion that education is a worthwhile pursuit. As Berube notes, somewhat acerbically:
[C]olleges promote themselves, especially to first-generation students, as a pathway to the middle class—but, increasingly, colleges do not pay middle-class wages to their own faculty members. The contradiction is deepest at the lowest tiers of the academic hierarchy, where, Rhoades said, underpaid adjunct faculty members are effectively “modeling what is acceptable as an employment practice.” It is no wonder that adjunct faculty members are so politically invisible: apparently no one wants to say to high school graduates, “Go to college, work hard, and someday you can get a job teaching college—at a salary of $20,000.” It casts a pall over the American dream.
I would imagine--or hope, anyway--that if he could understand what he describes in that passage, he could also understand why I--and other profs--advise students against graduate school in the humanities. The colleges in which I teach (and, with one exception, the others in which I've taught) are chock-full of first-generation college students. Most are hoping for a middle-class lives, or at least to not have to struggle the way their parents have struggled. To tell them that such is possible by going to grad school in English, Philosophy or nearly any other humanities discipline is simply dishonest in the current environment.
As far as it goes, Berube's statement is laudable. However, it has one serious problem, in my view. His proposals to increase adjunct pay and offer us some of the protections (a.k.a. academic freedom) full-timers enjoy are commendable; so is the work he's done at Penn State in rewriting by laws to give adjuncts something like due process. However, in total, all of the improvements to the status and liveability of adjunct work he proposes are a tacit admission that adjuncts are a permanent part of higher education, and that we will continue to be, if not the majority we now are, at least a significant portion of the faculty roster and hours.
Such will most likely be the case for one reason I've described in other posts, and others have documented: the vast oversupply of people with PhDs or other "terminal" degrees (e.g., MFAs) in the humanities and arts. (Those degrees are terminal, all right: They end whatever chance you have of furthering your career, or even your schooling!) As long as there is a large supply of people with those degrees and no prospects for employment outside the academy, college and university administrators will be able to get lots and lots of work done for very little money.
I hope that prospective college students and their parents (or whoever is paying for their schooling) are reading this post as well as others on the topic. After all, as one commenter noted, no one would stand for paying top dollar for legal services and being fobbed off on a part-time associate who met with him or her in a hallway or elevator. Yet they pay full tuition for a class, whether it is taught by a tenured prof or an adjunct. Until that situation changes, academic administrators will have no incentive to improve the lot of adjuncts, let alone upgrade their positions to low-level full-time one.
11 February 2012
What She Is, And Has Been, Married To
Having been mind-fucked in the same way as so many other women in the Western world, I envied her thinness. But--and this is not a rationalization in hindsight--she wasn't healthy. I remember thinking that not long after I first met her, and realizing that her body shape wasn't the only manifestation of her disease.
Another sign that something wasn't quite right was the way she tried to befriend--or, more precisely, ingratiate herself to--me that first time we met. I am a member of an "oppressed group": one that experiences discrimination based on nothing more than who and what we are. During that first time we met, she was very quick to let me know that she was a "friend" of my "community."
At the time we met, she was an adjunct instructor, as I was. And there were other parallels between my time at York College and hers. We both would obtain full-time administrative positions and, later, temporary full-time faculty positions. And, while we had those full-time faculty positions, we took PhD level classes in the City University Graduate Center.
However, she has continued her studies. That does not surprise me because she had been was "within a couple of classes" of finishing a coursework for a PhD while she was teaching at a small, church-affiliated liberal arts college in a rural area of "flyover country." However, she had a different specialty then, in an area in which she says she's "lost interest." Plus, since a number of years had elapsed since she did that work, and the difficulties one generally encounters in transferring credits, she figured she "might as well start all over again."
I once asked her what she planned to do when she finishes her PhD. "I'll get a job someplace," she said. When I pointed out to her that she might be doing the same work she's doing now, she said, "Well, you know, we're not going to get permanent full-time jobs without PhDs."
"Yes," I said. "But you know there's this thing called age discrimination..."
She changed the subject of the conversation. I can understand why. She's only a few years younger than I am, and it's difficult to think about what her employment prospects might be when she's my age, or older, in the kind of academic job market that's gone from terrible to awful to dire to merely bad (during the "boom" years of the mid- and late-'90's), then back to terrible and sinking toward dire again.
I once asked her if she'd ever considered doing anything else. I could just as well have asked whether she considered selling her child to pay the rent. She gave me the "How can you ask such a question?" expression professors have when you ask them the very thing no one else has had the audacity to ask them. "It's what's kept me going," she says.
I am not religious, but these days I have an easier time understanding someone who says her faith in God or Allah or whomever has kept her going. I mean, in what other industry does she have to "start at the bottom" because she's changed organizations or geographic location? And she's happy to be in a program that will take at least seven years to complete--if she does indeed complete it--and offers her no more assurance of full-time employment in her field than she has now.
Then again, I can understand, in a way, why the academic world looks so good to her. She came from an unstable background, from what she tells me, and she suffered abuse in both of her marriages. In fact, her second almost killed her. That is the reason why she left the job--and life--she had.
That may account for another difference between us. No matter how much she's put upon, she doesn't complain. And she doesn't see just what an unhealthy state of mind she's in to accept the conditions of her schooling and employment as if no other way were possible.
And, the last time I saw her, she was dating the sort of guy from whom I--and most of my female friends--would run.
Another sign that something wasn't quite right was the way she tried to befriend--or, more precisely, ingratiate herself to--me that first time we met. I am a member of an "oppressed group": one that experiences discrimination based on nothing more than who and what we are. During that first time we met, she was very quick to let me know that she was a "friend" of my "community."
At the time we met, she was an adjunct instructor, as I was. And there were other parallels between my time at York College and hers. We both would obtain full-time administrative positions and, later, temporary full-time faculty positions. And, while we had those full-time faculty positions, we took PhD level classes in the City University Graduate Center.
However, she has continued her studies. That does not surprise me because she had been was "within a couple of classes" of finishing a coursework for a PhD while she was teaching at a small, church-affiliated liberal arts college in a rural area of "flyover country." However, she had a different specialty then, in an area in which she says she's "lost interest." Plus, since a number of years had elapsed since she did that work, and the difficulties one generally encounters in transferring credits, she figured she "might as well start all over again."
I once asked her what she planned to do when she finishes her PhD. "I'll get a job someplace," she said. When I pointed out to her that she might be doing the same work she's doing now, she said, "Well, you know, we're not going to get permanent full-time jobs without PhDs."
"Yes," I said. "But you know there's this thing called age discrimination..."
She changed the subject of the conversation. I can understand why. She's only a few years younger than I am, and it's difficult to think about what her employment prospects might be when she's my age, or older, in the kind of academic job market that's gone from terrible to awful to dire to merely bad (during the "boom" years of the mid- and late-'90's), then back to terrible and sinking toward dire again.
I once asked her if she'd ever considered doing anything else. I could just as well have asked whether she considered selling her child to pay the rent. She gave me the "How can you ask such a question?" expression professors have when you ask them the very thing no one else has had the audacity to ask them. "It's what's kept me going," she says.
I am not religious, but these days I have an easier time understanding someone who says her faith in God or Allah or whomever has kept her going. I mean, in what other industry does she have to "start at the bottom" because she's changed organizations or geographic location? And she's happy to be in a program that will take at least seven years to complete--if she does indeed complete it--and offers her no more assurance of full-time employment in her field than she has now.
Then again, I can understand, in a way, why the academic world looks so good to her. She came from an unstable background, from what she tells me, and she suffered abuse in both of her marriages. In fact, her second almost killed her. That is the reason why she left the job--and life--she had.
That may account for another difference between us. No matter how much she's put upon, she doesn't complain. And she doesn't see just what an unhealthy state of mind she's in to accept the conditions of her schooling and employment as if no other way were possible.
And, the last time I saw her, she was dating the sort of guy from whom I--and most of my female friends--would run.
10 February 2012
From Washington Heights To The Ukraine, And Points In Between
After writing my post yesterday, I decided to type "higher education corruption" and "corruption in education" into a Google search bar. What that search yielded is truly staggering.
Mind you, the fact that there's corruption in education at all levels hasn't been news to me for a very, very long time. However, I wasn't prepared to see just how widespread, and how persistent it is.
Corruption in education can be found pretty much anywhere in the world. It tends to be greatest in countries with large gaps between the rich and poor, and in countries that are playing catch-up in terms of economic development.
Perhaps the most egregious forms corruption in education is found in the Ukraine. If what I'm reading is even remotely true, even for the best students, it's impossible to get a degree there without paying at least one bribe. Nearly half of all students say that a bribe was demanded of them (Isn't demanding a bribe a form of extortion?); many others have paid bribes even when they weren't demanded. Students not only bribe professors for grades; they also bribe university officials for admission and graduation. In fact, students say (as often as not, off-the-record) there's an unspoken expectation that they will bribe officials and professors.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some higher education officials have been found to have fake degrees.
Reports about the corruption usually cite educators' low salaries as a reason for it. That is true--when you're not making much money, the temptation to accept bribes is greater--but it is only a partial explanation.
I think that another reason for corruption--in the Ukraine, in New York City and elsewhere--is the fact that the so-called global economy is increasingly credential-driven. Therefore, the pressure to attend "name" schools and obtain prestigious diplomas with honors intensifies, particularly when the number and types of alternatives to the kinds of jobs for which students are competing is decreasing. In other words, the same scenario we've seen in the US is repeating itself elsewhere: The sorts of jobs for which employers don't demand post-secondary degrees, and pay relatively well, are disappearing. I'm thinking about, among other things, manufacturing jobs.
So, perhaps, we can say that education corruption and socioeconomic inequality are two parts of a vicious cycle. As there are fewer middle-class, or well-paying blue-collar, jobs, the competition for degrees and other credentials intensifies. And those who can't or simply don't attain those credentials can fall further, and land harder, than their parents did if they don't get into those prestigious schools and get the degrees that have the most cachet.
What I've described also puts enormous pressures on families, whatever their makeup. Parents put increasing pressure on their kids to "make it," yet because the parents themselves are struggling (often working multiple jobs), they cannot participate in their kids' education. This can't be good for the kids, or for anybody.
As long as more value is placed on a credential or the name of a school rather than the education one is supposed to represent and the other is supposed to provide, there will be corruption--whether in Washington Heights, the Ukraine or anywhere else.
Mind you, the fact that there's corruption in education at all levels hasn't been news to me for a very, very long time. However, I wasn't prepared to see just how widespread, and how persistent it is.
Corruption in education can be found pretty much anywhere in the world. It tends to be greatest in countries with large gaps between the rich and poor, and in countries that are playing catch-up in terms of economic development.
Perhaps the most egregious forms corruption in education is found in the Ukraine. If what I'm reading is even remotely true, even for the best students, it's impossible to get a degree there without paying at least one bribe. Nearly half of all students say that a bribe was demanded of them (Isn't demanding a bribe a form of extortion?); many others have paid bribes even when they weren't demanded. Students not only bribe professors for grades; they also bribe university officials for admission and graduation. In fact, students say (as often as not, off-the-record) there's an unspoken expectation that they will bribe officials and professors.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some higher education officials have been found to have fake degrees.
Reports about the corruption usually cite educators' low salaries as a reason for it. That is true--when you're not making much money, the temptation to accept bribes is greater--but it is only a partial explanation.
I think that another reason for corruption--in the Ukraine, in New York City and elsewhere--is the fact that the so-called global economy is increasingly credential-driven. Therefore, the pressure to attend "name" schools and obtain prestigious diplomas with honors intensifies, particularly when the number and types of alternatives to the kinds of jobs for which students are competing is decreasing. In other words, the same scenario we've seen in the US is repeating itself elsewhere: The sorts of jobs for which employers don't demand post-secondary degrees, and pay relatively well, are disappearing. I'm thinking about, among other things, manufacturing jobs.
So, perhaps, we can say that education corruption and socioeconomic inequality are two parts of a vicious cycle. As there are fewer middle-class, or well-paying blue-collar, jobs, the competition for degrees and other credentials intensifies. And those who can't or simply don't attain those credentials can fall further, and land harder, than their parents did if they don't get into those prestigious schools and get the degrees that have the most cachet.
What I've described also puts enormous pressures on families, whatever their makeup. Parents put increasing pressure on their kids to "make it," yet because the parents themselves are struggling (often working multiple jobs), they cannot participate in their kids' education. This can't be good for the kids, or for anybody.
As long as more value is placed on a credential or the name of a school rather than the education one is supposed to represent and the other is supposed to provide, there will be corruption--whether in Washington Heights, the Ukraine or anywhere else.
09 February 2012
Decentralized Corruption
Whenever I hear anybody talk about "reforming" the educational system, I think of the ways in which New York--the city in which I live--has tried to do it. And it failed every time.
Perhaps the most egregious failure started in 1968 with the so-called "decentralization" movement.
That year, in response to neighborhood residents' demands for more local control over their schools, the by-then-predominantly African-American neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn was one of the communities given, in essence, its own school district. The teachers--all of whom were white, and most of whom were Jewish (The neighborhood had been mostly Jewish until the 1960's.), saw it as an attempt to break their union.
The teachers' fears had, as it turned out, a rational basis: Soon after the local board started operating, it dismissed seventeen teachers without citing any reasons why. In response, the teachers staged a bitter strike that kept the schools closed until November and which taints Black-Jewish relations in New York until this day.
Those teachers were reinstated, which intensified the demands for local control of schools. In response, the New York City Board of Education (now the NYC Department of Education) divided the city's five boroughs into 32 Community School Districts in 1969. Each had a board that, in essence, had the power to decide who would and wouldn't work in their district, and how money would be spent.
Decentralization might have been a good idea, save for something that its architects neglected or ignored: Many other communities in New York's five boroughs were changing in ways that paralleled those of Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Jewish neighborhoods turned into enclaves of African-Americans; Italians were moving out of communities in which they'd been living for two or more generations and Latinos were moving in. And much of the rest of the City's white working-class population--whose kids comprised the majority of the City's public school enrollments until the mid-1960's--was fleeing or had already fled. Still, most of the city's teachers--and just about all of its education administrators--were white, and most of them were Jewish.
That pattern continued under decentralization, and the local boards themselves followed the trend: Most board members were not only of different racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds from most of the people in their communities; they didn't even live or send their kids to schools in those communities.
So, in essence, decentralization turned out to be a form of colonialism: Local board members who had no other ties to the communities they were supposed to serve did not act in the interests of those communities. They did everything they could to discourage parent participation, except in those communities where they didn't need to: In some districts--most notoriously, #6, which included the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan--the vast majority of the parents were immigrants (some illegal) who didn't speak English and didn't understand how the system operated.
So, with essentially no checks on them, members of those boards could write themselves blank checks. They hired their relatives and friends; sometimes "positions" were made for them. Money was spent to attend conventions and such; there were even board members who, for example, used school district funds to purchase computers, pianos and other items that were delivered to their homes.
In the late 1980's, District 6's board members were dismissed. Officials in other districts were also pressured to resign and those local districts started to lose their power. Finally, in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg dissolved all of the local school districts and the Board of Education, which he re-formed into the Department of Education, operating under his control. That, of course, has had its own problems (see Cathie Black, among others).
What the Mayor did was, in essence, to take over a corrupt system and substitute his own corruption for that of the local districts. Already, some are calling for decentralization, though in what form, they don't or can't say.
The lesson here is that it doesn't really matter whether local communities or centralized bureaucracies run the schools: The result is always waste, fraud, cronyism, nepotism and other kinds of corruption. The only people who can truly have a child's education at heart are his or her parents, whether they're biological or adopted, or simply people who have decided to mentor that child and want nothing in return. After that, it really doesn't matter much whether or how much schools are centralized or decentralized.
Perhaps the most egregious failure started in 1968 with the so-called "decentralization" movement.
That year, in response to neighborhood residents' demands for more local control over their schools, the by-then-predominantly African-American neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn was one of the communities given, in essence, its own school district. The teachers--all of whom were white, and most of whom were Jewish (The neighborhood had been mostly Jewish until the 1960's.), saw it as an attempt to break their union.
The teachers' fears had, as it turned out, a rational basis: Soon after the local board started operating, it dismissed seventeen teachers without citing any reasons why. In response, the teachers staged a bitter strike that kept the schools closed until November and which taints Black-Jewish relations in New York until this day.
Those teachers were reinstated, which intensified the demands for local control of schools. In response, the New York City Board of Education (now the NYC Department of Education) divided the city's five boroughs into 32 Community School Districts in 1969. Each had a board that, in essence, had the power to decide who would and wouldn't work in their district, and how money would be spent.
Decentralization might have been a good idea, save for something that its architects neglected or ignored: Many other communities in New York's five boroughs were changing in ways that paralleled those of Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Jewish neighborhoods turned into enclaves of African-Americans; Italians were moving out of communities in which they'd been living for two or more generations and Latinos were moving in. And much of the rest of the City's white working-class population--whose kids comprised the majority of the City's public school enrollments until the mid-1960's--was fleeing or had already fled. Still, most of the city's teachers--and just about all of its education administrators--were white, and most of them were Jewish.
That pattern continued under decentralization, and the local boards themselves followed the trend: Most board members were not only of different racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds from most of the people in their communities; they didn't even live or send their kids to schools in those communities.
So, in essence, decentralization turned out to be a form of colonialism: Local board members who had no other ties to the communities they were supposed to serve did not act in the interests of those communities. They did everything they could to discourage parent participation, except in those communities where they didn't need to: In some districts--most notoriously, #6, which included the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan--the vast majority of the parents were immigrants (some illegal) who didn't speak English and didn't understand how the system operated.
So, with essentially no checks on them, members of those boards could write themselves blank checks. They hired their relatives and friends; sometimes "positions" were made for them. Money was spent to attend conventions and such; there were even board members who, for example, used school district funds to purchase computers, pianos and other items that were delivered to their homes.
In the late 1980's, District 6's board members were dismissed. Officials in other districts were also pressured to resign and those local districts started to lose their power. Finally, in 2002, Mayor Bloomberg dissolved all of the local school districts and the Board of Education, which he re-formed into the Department of Education, operating under his control. That, of course, has had its own problems (see Cathie Black, among others).
What the Mayor did was, in essence, to take over a corrupt system and substitute his own corruption for that of the local districts. Already, some are calling for decentralization, though in what form, they don't or can't say.
The lesson here is that it doesn't really matter whether local communities or centralized bureaucracies run the schools: The result is always waste, fraud, cronyism, nepotism and other kinds of corruption. The only people who can truly have a child's education at heart are his or her parents, whether they're biological or adopted, or simply people who have decided to mentor that child and want nothing in return. After that, it really doesn't matter much whether or how much schools are centralized or decentralized.
07 February 2012
We're All In This Together, But They Aren't
It looks like the US isn't the only country in which the educational-financial complex enriches useless bureaucrats on students' backs via education loans, a.k.a. student debt.
In the UK, Ed Lester, the head of the Student Loans company, is paid 182,000 pounds (a bit less than 300,000 dollars) annually--more than what the Prime Minister makes--without having any taxes taken from it.
It seems that cushy deal was signed off by Universities Minister David Willets and was passed on to Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander for his approval.
Of this scandal, Left Foot Forward wryly noted, "We're all in this together, but they aren't."
In the UK, Ed Lester, the head of the Student Loans company, is paid 182,000 pounds (a bit less than 300,000 dollars) annually--more than what the Prime Minister makes--without having any taxes taken from it.
It seems that cushy deal was signed off by Universities Minister David Willets and was passed on to Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander for his approval.
Of this scandal, Left Foot Forward wryly noted, "We're all in this together, but they aren't."
06 February 2012
An Unhappy 200th For Dickens
Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth.
Some people say that we're reverting to the sort of conditions he depicted in his novels. Of course, very few places in America, or anywhere else, resemble the London of his time--at least not physically, anyway. However, Dickens' stories, especially "Hard Times" and "A Christmas Carol" aren't about the squalor and poverty we see in them. Rather, those things are manifestations of the spiritual poverty among the plutocracy that leads to misery--emotional squalor, if you will--among the working classes. That is what makes them relevant, if not timeless.
So, even though we don't have toddlers working as chimney sweepers and there are (at least in theory, anyway) some protections for workers, I think Dickens would have plenty of material to work with were he here today.
Of course, the exploiters and the exploited would not be in the same industries as they were in his time. Rather than the owners of factories and mines, the new exploitative class consists of corporate board members, shareholders, officers of the financial industry and various academic administrators. What they do is to keep people in a kind of modern slavery by maintaining a system in which, if one wants a chance to enter, let alone succeed, one must go into debt--unless, of course, one is already wealthy. Then, so enslaved, one has to go to those owners and executive and beg for a job. Of course, if someone's begging for a job, said owners and executives know they can pay very, very little--and they will. They also know they can make desperate people work in horrible conditions: Witness all of the law "sweatshops" that are now found in every major American city.
Thus, Dickens would find many things in today's society and economy that would be more familiar to him than he would like them to be.
Some people say that we're reverting to the sort of conditions he depicted in his novels. Of course, very few places in America, or anywhere else, resemble the London of his time--at least not physically, anyway. However, Dickens' stories, especially "Hard Times" and "A Christmas Carol" aren't about the squalor and poverty we see in them. Rather, those things are manifestations of the spiritual poverty among the plutocracy that leads to misery--emotional squalor, if you will--among the working classes. That is what makes them relevant, if not timeless.
So, even though we don't have toddlers working as chimney sweepers and there are (at least in theory, anyway) some protections for workers, I think Dickens would have plenty of material to work with were he here today.
Of course, the exploiters and the exploited would not be in the same industries as they were in his time. Rather than the owners of factories and mines, the new exploitative class consists of corporate board members, shareholders, officers of the financial industry and various academic administrators. What they do is to keep people in a kind of modern slavery by maintaining a system in which, if one wants a chance to enter, let alone succeed, one must go into debt--unless, of course, one is already wealthy. Then, so enslaved, one has to go to those owners and executive and beg for a job. Of course, if someone's begging for a job, said owners and executives know they can pay very, very little--and they will. They also know they can make desperate people work in horrible conditions: Witness all of the law "sweatshops" that are now found in every major American city.
Thus, Dickens would find many things in today's society and economy that would be more familiar to him than he would like them to be.
05 February 2012
The Bowl Nobody Wins
It's Super Bowl Sunday, and now I'm going to rain on somebody's parade, or ruin somebody's party, or engage in your metaphor-of-choice.
I'm not a big football fan, but I did watch the game, as I do every year. This year's game was exciting and was a kind of fairy tale: a Giants' team that had been left for dead a couple of weeks before the end of the season, beat the New England Patriots in the final minutes of a seesaw game.
Now, I'm going to describe something I found myself thinking about as I watched the game, and as I reflect on it. I felt an unease that turned into anger, which I'd never before felt while watching an athletic contest.
Nearly all National Football League players attend a college or university before playing in the NFL. America's higher education system has become, in effect, the minor league of the NFL--and of the National Basketball Association--as football and basketball teams don't have the networks of minor-league teams that Major League Baseball and National Hockey League teams have.
The problem is that the colleges and universities exploit their athletes in ways that minor leagues don't--and, to be fair, can't.
On the surface, it seems as if a football or basketball players is the quintessential Big Man On Campus. In schools with celebrated programs, nearly everyone on campus would recognize the starting quarterback and linebackers if they'd met. Plus, in the schools with the bigger sports programs, the athletes are subsidized to a degree that even the best students aren't: Not only do they get scholarships that cover tuition, books and other school-related expenses; they often receive "living stipends" and other perks under the table (usually from alumni).
That all sounds good, but in many schools, the football and/or basketball players are there primarily to be athletes, not students. Hardly anyone will admit this, least of all the athletic directors and other administrators. So, large numbers of "student" athletes not only fail to graduate; by the time their elegibility has run out, they're nowhere near having enough credits to finish their degrees during the off-season. Plus, some of the courses they take aren't transferrable, should those "student" athletes finally decide to finish their degrees in different institutions from the ones they graced with their athletic prowess.
What this means is that if they don't make it as professional athletes--and the majority of them, as good as they are, won't--they lack both credentials and skills to do other things. Plus, their ambitions and desires have been directed toward athletic achievement from an early age; it's difficult, to say the least, to re-orient one's self after being focused on something from age four to twenty-three.
However, the colleges and universities in question pay only lip-service to the problem of "student" athletes who, not only don't graduate, but also fail to get much of an education. Those schools are willing to give lucrative scholarships to athletes with so little academic ability because they know that their play, and that of their teammates, will bring far more revenue to the school than whatever it's paying for their scholarships.
For every player you see in the Super Bowl, there are dozens, if not hundreds, who never even made it to the NFL--and who never got degrees. Some not only didn't complete courses and degrees; they didn't learn much of anything besides their sport while they were in school because they came into college without the skills necessary in order to acquire the skills and knowledge the college is capable of providing.
So, whichever team wins whichever bowl, there are many, many "student" athletes who have lost. The only winners are the schools that build ever-larger stadia and other facilities on their backs, and ours.
I'm not a big football fan, but I did watch the game, as I do every year. This year's game was exciting and was a kind of fairy tale: a Giants' team that had been left for dead a couple of weeks before the end of the season, beat the New England Patriots in the final minutes of a seesaw game.
Now, I'm going to describe something I found myself thinking about as I watched the game, and as I reflect on it. I felt an unease that turned into anger, which I'd never before felt while watching an athletic contest.
Nearly all National Football League players attend a college or university before playing in the NFL. America's higher education system has become, in effect, the minor league of the NFL--and of the National Basketball Association--as football and basketball teams don't have the networks of minor-league teams that Major League Baseball and National Hockey League teams have.
The problem is that the colleges and universities exploit their athletes in ways that minor leagues don't--and, to be fair, can't.
On the surface, it seems as if a football or basketball players is the quintessential Big Man On Campus. In schools with celebrated programs, nearly everyone on campus would recognize the starting quarterback and linebackers if they'd met. Plus, in the schools with the bigger sports programs, the athletes are subsidized to a degree that even the best students aren't: Not only do they get scholarships that cover tuition, books and other school-related expenses; they often receive "living stipends" and other perks under the table (usually from alumni).
That all sounds good, but in many schools, the football and/or basketball players are there primarily to be athletes, not students. Hardly anyone will admit this, least of all the athletic directors and other administrators. So, large numbers of "student" athletes not only fail to graduate; by the time their elegibility has run out, they're nowhere near having enough credits to finish their degrees during the off-season. Plus, some of the courses they take aren't transferrable, should those "student" athletes finally decide to finish their degrees in different institutions from the ones they graced with their athletic prowess.
What this means is that if they don't make it as professional athletes--and the majority of them, as good as they are, won't--they lack both credentials and skills to do other things. Plus, their ambitions and desires have been directed toward athletic achievement from an early age; it's difficult, to say the least, to re-orient one's self after being focused on something from age four to twenty-three.
However, the colleges and universities in question pay only lip-service to the problem of "student" athletes who, not only don't graduate, but also fail to get much of an education. Those schools are willing to give lucrative scholarships to athletes with so little academic ability because they know that their play, and that of their teammates, will bring far more revenue to the school than whatever it's paying for their scholarships.
For every player you see in the Super Bowl, there are dozens, if not hundreds, who never even made it to the NFL--and who never got degrees. Some not only didn't complete courses and degrees; they didn't learn much of anything besides their sport while they were in school because they came into college without the skills necessary in order to acquire the skills and knowledge the college is capable of providing.
So, whichever team wins whichever bowl, there are many, many "student" athletes who have lost. The only winners are the schools that build ever-larger stadia and other facilities on their backs, and ours.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)