Dreams, Luck and Too Many Cooks: American Higher Education

edited 3/28/19

Vivat academia
Vivant professores
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivat membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.

Long live the academy!
Long live the teachers!
Long live each male student!
Long live each female student!
May they always flourish!

-- Gaudeamus Igitur (vers. C. W. Kindeleben 1781)

Is Facebook a tool, or a distraction? Millions of people would disagree with me on this, because I would vote, “It is a distraction - generally a waste of time.” My productivity is cut into by every minute I spend examining my Wall.

But what is productivity? Which activities are worthwhile? Which are a waste of time and money? If you check to see how people vote with their time and money, you can only come to one conclusion: there is no universal agreement on this issue. What productivity is depends on the kind of life you aim at having. Excepting those who are pathologically envious, people tend to dismiss as “wrong,” or more accommodatingly, “not right for them,” the competing alternatives others have chosen.

What about organizations? Which is more productive? One that focuses only on making PCV sewer pipes, or a typical college or university? There is no easy, if any, answer to this question. The university, unlike the PCV pipe producer is multifunction. There is no one basis of evaluation for it.

Much more important, since the PCV factory is focused on one narrow outcome, it is easier for its management to prioritize activities and respond to market pressures than it would be at a college or university. Colleges and universities, due to accidents of history, contain within themselves a pluralism of competing goals and missions. Power is seldom held by one faction, not even by the trustees.

In colleges or universities near desperation in seeking applicants, market fluctuations provoke not only much face-saving ceremony, but a variety of myths and behavior that strive to maintain internal harmony. Just listen to faculty members chortle, chuckle or giggle at a president’s or trustee’s very lame jokes as they consume a tuition’s worth of food and drink at an annual welcome-to-new-staff party.

Just trying, no doubt, to help out American higher education, ACTA has jumped on the bandwagon of worrying about undergraduates who take longer than four years to complete their degree. But, why should anyone want to rush through college if they can afford to take a longer, more leisurely time to do it? And if they can’t afford it, why isn’t that the issue?

To examine these and other strongly related issues further, see Productivity, Politics and Hypocrisy in American Public Education: 
school organization as instrument and expression



Cordially
--- EGR

Education without Indoctrination: is it possible?

Training. Schooling. Education. Indoctrination. All related, but not the same. Does it matter? Only if you care about getting what you want, knowing what you have, and who pays for it.

I regularly read the ACTA updates and often sympathize with their policy positions. ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, is hardly a rabidly liberal organization. Their slogan is “Promoting Academic Excellence and Accountability.”

Yet in their Update January 6th 2011 they reveal one of their resolutions for American education:

Bringing a robust exchange of ideas in the classroom. Schooling should be for education, not indoctrination.

I suggest that some careful thought shows their resolution to have some problems.

Let’s consider a contrary idea: Education is Schooling together with Indoctrination. However, indoctrination is not one simple kind of thing.

What is Indoctrination? Indoctrination is:

any attempt to teach (or anything taught)

a. without justification, or

b. without justification understood (or accepted) by its recipients as having a reasonable basis.

There are two kinds of indoctrination schools might engage in:

a. that which supports organization functioning, e.g. study your lessons, pay your tuition, come to class on time, do what your professor assigns you, and the like.

b. doctrines and practices relating to school function externalities, eg. religious, political or social doctrines.

It is practically often difficult to keep these things separate. If you can identify an ideology, that makes it easier. But what about beliefs in the desirability of higher education? Or in the desirability of certain curriculum? Or that certain achievements, e.g. degrees and publications, are worthy of recognition? Or that degreed people are worthy of respect merely because of that degree?

Such beliefs are generally taken for granted, institutionalized in the structure of the school. But the fact that they are disputable is indicated by the existence of course electives, for one example; or by any variation from a lock-step curriculum.

A professor may invite challenge and debate on the desirability of various economic systems. He is unlikely to invite challenge or debate when it comes to the syllabus content, or classroom or grading procedure.

To examine some importantly related issues further, see Trading-Off "Sacred" Values: 
Why Public Schools Should Not Try to "Educate"

Cordially
--- EGR