In response to the Crisis in Higher Education via Ben Bunting

Well, that was an interesting take on things Ben. (If you're viewing this for some reason and are curious, see the original article and Ben Bunting's response.)

First, I'm sorry to hear you all are experiencing the pinch, Ben. It's going around these days and it's only going to get worse. I'm glad to see you're aware of that and are willing to accept the conditions you find.

I don't think I really have too many other comments on Ben's response, other than to be appreciative of his pragmatic view. I will say this about the way American culture throws its money away: it's not usually in the direction of more work. Color me unsurprised that Americans are unwilling to spend money on writing long papers on subjects that bore them and have no immediately important feedback on their lives. Color me unsurprised that the majority of people who do spend money writing long papers do so on subjects that don't bore them and do have some immediately important feedback on their lives.

This ties in really well with how young Americans view college economically. They don't see themselves as spending money on something that is going to require more work. No wonder the majority of students bring so little to and get so little from a collegiate curriculum!

I think this is a big part of the current crisis in higher education and education in general. It is a crisis of identity and social philosophy. We as a culture understand that life is hard. We as a culture have tried and continue to try to deny that a "good" life requires work and work does not guarantee a "good" life. "Good" being loosely defined around economic prosperity and social peace.

This has lead, in an odd way, to our current situation. Prior to World War II, the economic situation in this country was such that it was apparently obvious to the vast majority of the people that work was required in order to survive, even more to have a "good" life. After World War II, we were left in a situation where we had an economic advantage and a bunch of people who understood that work was required. So we worked. And we prospered because of the combination of our economic advantages and our work. Each of the succeeding generations built upon that prosperity but each put less work in because it became increasingly less obvious that work was required in order to have a "good" life. This is a well recognized tendency in the children of the rich, enough to have become cliche. As a society, we fail to recognize that we have become those children (a recognition that is not unnoticed by other societies, who are not rich children, incidentally). So now we have a situation where everyone in the society has expectations of prosperity but only a very few recognize what it will take to continue that prosperity. The way in which we gained that prosperity (working hard upon an economic advantage, one that often included utilizing the hard work of others lower down the ladder) has not helped clarify for us what the next steps need to be.

In our past, it was obvious in a way it is not now, that the future required investment in all manner of skills reaching broadly across the arts, humanities, and sciences. Our current state makes it less obvious that all manner of skills are necessary. We have achieved an incredible measure of the "good" life (and its society) that we desired in the days after WWII. We no longer obviously need to move forward and we assume that we need no maintenance.

Now the days will come when we see that maintenance is needed. It will be painful.

This crisis is aided by the achievement of our social philosophy. I'm having a hard time explaining this, but simply put, I think the academic world has been dragged down from its lofty heights to serve the middle working class, in no small part because we as a society felt it important to ensure that more people had economic opportunity. The social structure of our nation used to be ruled over by the economic elite. Because education is expensive, they were also the only ones who had any significant education, so they ruled over that as well. The social revolution of the middle 20th century changed that order. The social structure of the society is now run by the middle class as is the education sector. (It may well be that academia is one part of society for which there truly is a trickle-down effect. The few pursue the esoteric which eventually drips down through the layers of society to become the pragmatic.) Having the vision for our future decided enmasse will almost inevitably involve the kind of swooping back and forth wave-like patterns exhibited by schools of fish or flocks of birds. This is the problem of self-regulation: it is always reactive. We have twice seen this problem in our finance sectors, with the Great Depression and the Great Recession. One of the advantages of having a small ruling body is that it can help guide the group in such a manner as to avoid these great swings. Currently, our mob-led education sector is swinging toward what is considered pragmatic right now. Later, the mob will swing things back the other way. For those who think that a small group of business people are running higher education, the question must be who is running those business people? The answer is the those who buy the products. This is our capitalist system. We have asked for cheap economic and social prosperity. Since that doesn't exist, but we lack a ruling body that will tell us so (since the real leaders are the middle class mob and our designated leaders were put in place by that mob), those who can do so have sold us what they could: Cheap for now, the bill will come later.

I'm sure I sound like a jerk, but as crude as it may sound, I mean no judgment. Large groups act like mobs, even if they don't have the vehemence or attitude we associate with mobs.

I am in no way suggesting we go back to a system where there is such clear class disparity. Not at all. I and all I know have benefited tremendously from the current social structure. There has been an attempt, however poor, to do justly by all members of society, a goal that is absolutely right, a goal truly worth pursuing.

I do suggest that we as a society recognize that having small ruling bodies is advantageous to the present and future maintenance of our society. Let the days of "me, me, me" that have morphed into "us, us, us" now morph into "them, we, I, I, we, them".

Somehow I keep coming back to the same thing over and over: We are not a democracy. It was a wise set of decisions that ensured that. We really need to maintain the representative structure but we keep trying to undermine it and make it as much like a democracy as we can. The distinct operation of our various sectors should remain distinct. But I'm digressing...