I have a seemingly endless collection of thoughts about all of this, but too many to sort out at this moment. Since so many of you reading this blog are my cc colleagues, I'm wondering what you think, particularly in terms of our continual budget cuts. Some specific questions I'd love to hear your thoughts about:
- How do we encourage continuation of the social contract that allows open access to education?
- Assuming the continued reality of budget cuts, do we strive for open enrollment with perhaps lesser (cheaper) forms of instructional delivery or do we impose caps to preserve quality of education?
- What do you think about the basic questions--do too many students go to college?
9 comments:
A couple quick thoughts.
Yes, too many students go to college. I find Charles Murray infuriating in so many ways, but I think he's basically right about the credential creep in America. You have students getting BAs who really don't need them, who really don't want to be in college but they recognize that they need a degree if they want a decent chance at living wage work.
Short answer to your second question. If it's a choice between access and quality, I choose quality. We've already gone too far down the road of degrading the quality in pursuit of access.
Glad you posted this.
With the "Pima Model" looming ominously on the horizon, I can vote only one way: Caps! Caps! Caps!
I'm glad you posted this, too, but I lean the exact opposite way: When someone says this:
>>It has been empirically demonstrated that doing well (B average or better) in a traditional college major in the arts and sciences requires levels of linguistic and logical/mathematical ability that only 10 to 15 percent of the nation's youth possess.
I say bullshit.
Empirically demonstrated? By you?
What I think is that we need to undo the equivalency of 18 years old = college. I bet that, at some point in most people's lives, they may develop linguistic, logical/mathematical ability, and more importantly, the personal motivation and grit, to make excellent use of college.
What we need is a wider variety of options for people that aren't a form of suicide (military service in time of war) or another form of suicide (difficult, dangerous physical work), so that young people aren't crowded into an institution before they're ready.
Choice between access and quality: I refuse this binary. The only reason it even seems rational to talk about this binary is that we have, as a society, decided to systematically de-fund higher education for many, many years.
I thought one commenter had it right: "Wow. Look at how the ruling class thinks."
I believe that anyone who wants to go to college should have the chance, and I believe also that they should have more than one chance in a lifetime.
I concur with Lisa more or less. For the sake of argument, lets even assume that the 10-15% figure is in the ballpark. For the bottom end, the benefit of college is that it gives hope. Even if you fail, you get to try. Implicit in trying, the person is assuming that they can actually be a contributing member of society. By providing open access you cultivate a culture of participation. By closing all the doors, that culture dies, the cost of which is enormous. Watered-down education standards is cheap comparatively. Those people are left to stew in their own discontent. Car jacking and molotov cocktails are your options. You've seen the news clips on the international news. That could be us...
I agree with much of what you say Lisa. And, again, I find Murray irritating. But I want to focus on your closing sentence: "I believe that anyone who wants to go to college should have a chance." I agree, but many of my students clearly don't want to be in college; rather, they want living wage work. The only reason they're in college is because they understand that they now need the BA to get that work.
Umm, I'm sort of waiting for the answer lis. Do we have too much higher education? I need to know.
mb, I'm glad you've made me the authority on this. I will be posting again soon with my definitive answer.
I'd avoided this post for several days, knowing it would be complex. And wow is it ever.
My knee-jerk reaction is we must maintain quality.
My pragmatic reaction: even with the well-articulated concerns Lisa and Will raise, we must strategically work for quality because it's the only option to fight against Pima and the likes.
Yet in high-theory fashion, I too, as Lisa, want to reject these binaries of quality/quantity, access/quality.
Yet, as MB says, I too believe many students are not in college because they want to be; they are there because it seems imperative--the credential creep.
So, I'm all mixed up. Pragmatically might argue for caps in particular contexts, especially if pitted against Pimaesque models of education; ideologically I will keep arguing for open-access, hoping even those going for the "wrong" reasons will come out better people, people less likely to join a fundamentalist group of crazies.
Will have to wait for the definitive answer from CCN
I'm having my cultural studies students talk about this issue this week. I'm interested to see what they say.
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