Meanwhile, in terms of the educational experience, much has been made of the presence of Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Stephen Pinker, etc etc on the “professoriate” and indeed a lot of the press commentary appears to have inadvertently implied that these academic megastars will be doing the teaching. But, sharp cookies will have noted, none of them appear to have resigned from their existing posts or given any notice that they intend to do so, despite the fact that NCH is planning on getting the first bums on seats in Autumn 2012. In fact, close perusal of the fine print reveals that what the “Professoriate” are going to be providing is lecture courses, and the actual syllabus delivery will come from a staff “to be recruited”; given that the “Subject Convenors” seem to me to be fairly normal middle-ranking UK profs, I would guess that the teaching will also come from the middle ranks of the British academic proleteriat.posted by Anything at 12:37 PM on June 6, 2011
And when I say “liberal arts college education”, the phrase “liberal arts college” is meant to convey the impression “eyeball-searingly overpriced”. Brian Weatherson pointed out to me on Twitter that Oberlin College in America has a schedule of fees that can rack up $200k (ie, the cost of slightly less than three world-class MBA courses) for an undergraduate tuition. This thing, if it has any chance of paying a return on the money invested, is going to be targeted at the seriously rich – probably the international rich – and it is not going to be made appreciably more egalitarian by the proposed scholarship grants.It's in the service of an otherwise excellent discussion, but this totally misunderstands the meaning of tuition in the context of US private colleges. (The same distortion also appeared in Howard Hotson's "Don't Look to the Ivy League" a few weeks ago, a great piece about egalitarianism and higher education in the UK which so badly mangled its discussion of US higher education that it ended up needing very obvious corrections in multiple letters to the editor.) US private colleges have ramped up the sticker price of full tuition on the grounds that (ideally) only families who can truly afford it pay that price; the combination of entirely or mostly need-blind admission and significant financial aid are meant to place the cost of higher education on a progressive sliding scale in order better to serve poor students. While this rationale is obviously not executed perfectly by every institution in every case — far from it! — an annoyingly small number of UK commentators appear even to comprehend it in the first place. And of course only the rich institutions and hence the creamed-off best academic performers from poor families end up benefitting from this arrangement, which provides a far more sensible ground on which to critique it.
By contrast, what if there was a logical explanation? What if, hypothetically, free higher education had existed in 1980 — thereby both lowering the average price of tuition at four year colleges and serving as a brake on prices at competing private schools — and what if we have watched for a generation as that public option was destroyed by right-wing antipathy for any kind of public service provided by government? What if, in short, prices are rising across the board because the free public option in education has been eliminated?This zunguzungu post helps provide some context as to why both this development and RogerB's assertion as to the function of staggering tuitions are problematic at best.
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posted by RogerB at 12:22 PM on June 6, 2011 [5 favorites]