How easily & cavalierly the works of decades & centuries are demolished
April 18, 2024 12:35 AM Subscribe
It seems there is only one model for today’s ‘man of action’, and that is Shock and Awe. Overwhelming force deployed suddenly and overwhelmingly. A theatrical performance with no audience as such, only a houseful of victims. The lions eat the circus and then tweet about it. Ask no questions, tell only lies, and double down, triple down, quadruple down. The ineffably stupid ‘move fast and break things’ that has so much to answer for in our time. Our new ‘Innovation Hub’ has an asinine three-word slogan: ‘Grow Ignite Disrupt’. It would make just as much sense to have ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ for a motto. And rather more to have ‘Smash Grab Run’. from In Florida by Michael Hofmann [London Review of Books] [CW: DeSantis]
The rapture isn't coming for the fash because they managed to get their people jobs. If you're not of that persuasion and under the age of 65 and you attempt to teach the vaunted Latin, you'll never have had job prospects at all. The commenter bitching has a point, not many will mourn what they never had.
posted by kingdead at 2:03 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 2:03 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
The bigger CW should be the mention of McKinsey.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:56 AM on April 18 [11 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:56 AM on April 18 [11 favorites]
The bigger CW should be the mention of McKinsey.
When I was in grad school, I knew a group of people who were all competing for jobs at the top management consulting companies. They weren't bad people on a personal basis, and they certainly weren't stupid, but they also were uniformly the kind of rule-followers who would have no trouble writing a report that said to fire half the faculty, or whatever else they were directed to write.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:22 AM on April 18 [8 favorites]
When I was in grad school, I knew a group of people who were all competing for jobs at the top management consulting companies. They weren't bad people on a personal basis, and they certainly weren't stupid, but they also were uniformly the kind of rule-followers who would have no trouble writing a report that said to fire half the faculty, or whatever else they were directed to write.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:22 AM on April 18 [8 favorites]
I knew pretty much everything that Hofmann brings up in his essay, but to have it all gathered in one place and put into context was really depressing. For all their reputations as bastions of left-wing thought, how on earth do institutions like Harvard and Yale keep turning out such virulently destructive anti-intellectuals as DeSantis and Sasse?
posted by TedW at 6:14 AM on April 18 [14 favorites]
posted by TedW at 6:14 AM on April 18 [14 favorites]
"Grow Ignite Disrupt" sounds more like a slogan for a malignant cancerous tumor...
posted by fikri at 6:31 AM on April 18 [13 favorites]
posted by fikri at 6:31 AM on April 18 [13 favorites]
And to sort of answer my own question, Stephen Marche of The Atlantic tackles the phenomenon of destructive Ivy-Leaguers: How Ivy League Elites Turned Against Democracy (archive). Although I am not sure he explains his thesis so much as documents it.
posted by TedW at 6:33 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
posted by TedW at 6:33 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
I knew pretty much everything that Hofmann brings up in his essay, but to have it all gathered in one place and put into context was really depressing. For all their reputations as bastions of left-wing thought, how on earth do institutions like Harvard and Yale keep turning out such virulently destructive anti-intellectuals as DeSantis and Sasse?
Because their "reputation for left wing thought" comes from center-right media and fascists. Also because in the United States, any field whose premise isn't "the misery and death of the poor is good because it enriches the rich and strengthens the Race" is coded as left-wing, so philosophy, social sciences, etc are considered "left" when they're not. Also because very occasionally they'll hire a leftist philosopher (provided he's not the kind who advocates, you know, doing anything - to amuse the youth.
Center-liberal professors leavened with the occasional leftist only seem "left wing" in the United States because we're so far right.
posted by Frowner at 6:55 AM on April 18 [46 favorites]
I always have mixed feelings about these threads, because yes, liberal arts education is a good thing in and of itself. What's not good and not acceptable is programs like this functioning as gatekeepers for white collar jobs, and young people putting their lives in hock to enroll to that end.
The reckoning for academia has been long overdue, even if the people imposing it are people who belong on the B-Ark.
posted by ocschwar at 7:11 AM on April 18 [6 favorites]
The reckoning for academia has been long overdue, even if the people imposing it are people who belong on the B-Ark.
posted by ocschwar at 7:11 AM on April 18 [6 favorites]
But making higher ed affordable - not a pipe dream, most OECD countries manage it - isn't the solution they're proposing. Neither is investing more in public education for younger students such that more people graduate high school able to work white collar jobs; or getting employers to bring back actual job training; or ensuring that internships are paid; or coming up with other programs to help those jobs be more accessible.
None of that is the reckoning they're interested in, and helping people get jobs or not be in debt is not what they're accomplishing.
posted by trig at 7:42 AM on April 18 [10 favorites]
None of that is the reckoning they're interested in, and helping people get jobs or not be in debt is not what they're accomplishing.
posted by trig at 7:42 AM on April 18 [10 favorites]
But making higher ed affordable - not a pipe dream, most OECD countries manage it
What portion of each French lycée graduate class enroll full time in a 4 year program every year?
What portion of the English?
It's a lot smaller than the 50% of the US.
The difference is that in other countries you don't need a BA to get decent dental care.
posted by ocschwar at 7:46 AM on April 18 [9 favorites]
...Also not something these guys are trying to reckon with.
(I've never lived in France or the UK, but where I live university isn't the sort of universal rite-of-passage-slash-social-extravaganza that it is in the US. People do it when they're ready and know what they want to major in (generally you don't get to study various things and then pick a major after a year or two; you have to specialize right from the start, which is also why programs are generally 3 years.) So a much smaller portion of any high school graduate class is going to go to university at their first opportunity, but most do eventually, often so they can start a career. I think that's common in many countries, but can't attest to it from personal experience.)
posted by trig at 7:52 AM on April 18 [6 favorites]
(I've never lived in France or the UK, but where I live university isn't the sort of universal rite-of-passage-slash-social-extravaganza that it is in the US. People do it when they're ready and know what they want to major in (generally you don't get to study various things and then pick a major after a year or two; you have to specialize right from the start, which is also why programs are generally 3 years.) So a much smaller portion of any high school graduate class is going to go to university at their first opportunity, but most do eventually, often so they can start a career. I think that's common in many countries, but can't attest to it from personal experience.)
posted by trig at 7:52 AM on April 18 [6 favorites]
We think Harvard did it? I have news for you; I taught the children of the well-to-do and some of them were that way already in middle school; they went to college to have their assumptions (and their parents' assumptions) confirmed and weaponized. There was nothing I could have said or done (and believe me, I said and did a lot) to counteract the affirmation of society for their terrible decisions.
posted by Peach at 8:00 AM on April 18 [13 favorites]
posted by Peach at 8:00 AM on April 18 [13 favorites]
What portion of the English?
UK wise it was just over 35% of 18 year olds in 2023, just over 38% in 2022, which was an all time high. England figures were ~37% in 2023, ~39% in 2022.
Average debt for a UK grad is about £45k.
posted by biffa at 8:06 AM on April 18 [5 favorites]
UK wise it was just over 35% of 18 year olds in 2023, just over 38% in 2022, which was an all time high. England figures were ~37% in 2023, ~39% in 2022.
Average debt for a UK grad is about £45k.
posted by biffa at 8:06 AM on April 18 [5 favorites]
Our laborious and trivial autonomy became merely burdensome, a foolish pretence, a charade. Think of replacing the threads in a mobile with metal coat-hangers. There is no give, no movement, no flexibility, no sway, no grace; only a tautening; a jerky, creaky, clanking, humourless expression of will over long distances, with little to choose between push and pull.
What a beautifully evocative passage. The rigidity and inhumanity in our systems. Seeing this in so many institutions, not just education.
posted by hovey at 8:14 AM on April 18 [7 favorites]
What a beautifully evocative passage. The rigidity and inhumanity in our systems. Seeing this in so many institutions, not just education.
posted by hovey at 8:14 AM on April 18 [7 favorites]
For a little context, Hofmann is the translator most responsible for hauling Joseph Roth's works back into the light in the U.S. Which means he's gotten to spend a good amount of time contemplating the atmosphere of cultures falling to fascism.
posted by praemunire at 8:59 AM on April 18 [10 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 8:59 AM on April 18 [10 favorites]
It would make just as much sense to have ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ for a motto.
Now I want to start a company specifically in order to have that motto.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:11 AM on April 18 [3 favorites]
Now I want to start a company specifically in order to have that motto.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:11 AM on April 18 [3 favorites]
Rondi is moving fast and breaking not just UF but the town that nurtures it and the blueish parts of the county, for good measure. I'd hoped he'd lose focus on us with his bullshit presidential campaign or maybe he'd get distracted trying to establish the idea of order at Key West, but naw. He's being a real pit-bull-with-a-baby about poor Gainesville.
He yanked the power plant out of local control and instead appointed a board of clueless businessfucks over overwhelming objection from the townsfolk.
He routinely fires people we elect to the school board and appoints new ones he likes better.
Last month, no doubt at Rondi's behest, UF floated a plan to gut local transit. We have one of those town-and-gown agreements where the student fees pay for bus routes and the kids ride for free; it's completely insane to suggest the university stop paying for them to ride the bus because the university has quit building dorms and most of them live off campus in their high-priced hives--and farther from campus than they should have to because the erstwhile student ghetto has been Grow Ignite Disrupted upon. They can't drive in because there is nowhere to park on campus because of the need to Grow Ignite Disrupt the shit out of every scrap of land that doesn't have a lake on it. The buses are therefore popular with students and well-used.
We have a K-12 "laboratory school" affiliated with the university. It's supposed to be a demographic match for the state, but last year good ol' Ben Sasse made a new position, "vice president of pre-K through 12 and pre-bachelor's programs" who has now decided to make admission to the laboratory school selective. Heartbreak ensued.
There are probably forty more I've forgotten about. He's obviously trying to turn the blue dot red by giving sane and sentient voters learned helplessness and catatonic depression.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:34 AM on April 18 [16 favorites]
He yanked the power plant out of local control and instead appointed a board of clueless businessfucks over overwhelming objection from the townsfolk.
He routinely fires people we elect to the school board and appoints new ones he likes better.
Last month, no doubt at Rondi's behest, UF floated a plan to gut local transit. We have one of those town-and-gown agreements where the student fees pay for bus routes and the kids ride for free; it's completely insane to suggest the university stop paying for them to ride the bus because the university has quit building dorms and most of them live off campus in their high-priced hives--and farther from campus than they should have to because the erstwhile student ghetto has been Grow Ignite Disrupted upon. They can't drive in because there is nowhere to park on campus because of the need to Grow Ignite Disrupt the shit out of every scrap of land that doesn't have a lake on it. The buses are therefore popular with students and well-used.
We have a K-12 "laboratory school" affiliated with the university. It's supposed to be a demographic match for the state, but last year good ol' Ben Sasse made a new position, "vice president of pre-K through 12 and pre-bachelor's programs" who has now decided to make admission to the laboratory school selective. Heartbreak ensued.
There are probably forty more I've forgotten about. He's obviously trying to turn the blue dot red by giving sane and sentient voters learned helplessness and catatonic depression.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:34 AM on April 18 [16 favorites]
What portion of each French lycée graduate class enroll full time in a 4 year program every year?
The figures here date from 2013, but make for interesting reading.
posted by BWA at 9:45 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
The figures here date from 2013, but make for interesting reading.
posted by BWA at 9:45 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
Capitalism requires a base of people to do the labor until at such point they can be replaced by machines, or by some population elsewhere that can do the labor for less cost until the machines arrive. But this exploitation requires a population that has the minimal knowledge required to do the labor and not the intellectual skills to see what is really going on. But who builds the machines? For that you just need a much smaller group of people with the technical skills required to design said equipment but again without the knowledge and skills to see what is really going on. Education is being tailored to provide those populations. Not to think, just to do what is told. Feudalism never went away, it just got packaged and renamed. Medieval times weren’t dark. But our times are certainly headed into the darkness.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:57 AM on April 18 [5 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 9:57 AM on April 18 [5 favorites]
> Center-liberal professors leavened with the occasional leftist only seem "left wing" in the United States because we're so far right.
A friend of mine was a writer for a hit network TV show for a few years, and for two of them he lived and worked in L.A.. He's Canadian, and up here he's (in his own words) just sort of vaguely left-of-centre, but even in a Hollywood writer's room that made him a crazy fucking hippie compared to the rest of his coworkers.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:59 AM on April 18 [13 favorites]
A friend of mine was a writer for a hit network TV show for a few years, and for two of them he lived and worked in L.A.. He's Canadian, and up here he's (in his own words) just sort of vaguely left-of-centre, but even in a Hollywood writer's room that made him a crazy fucking hippie compared to the rest of his coworkers.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:59 AM on April 18 [13 favorites]
since we're comparing countries, i'll recommend stefan collini's book and andrew mcgettigan's for uk-specific discussion of basically the same issues.
i have a lot of time for the view expressed in this thread that a big part of the problem with higher ed (in countries where i have some firsthand idea about how it works, i.e. mainly the uk and the us) is that there's way too much of an economic advantage/necessity attached to a university degree (interesting take derived from that here, which i'd have posted to the blue except it's a friends-link: the cheating essay).
higher ed has to be free, it has to employ some sort of proper affirmative action, it has to be adequately funded, and we have to be collectively clear on what it's for and what it isn't for (like, we have to treat that like an actual live question and fight for some actual say in answering it). all that requires an enormous amount of collective thought and collective action and despite how strongly i always nod along with articles like this one and feel the need to Do Something, it's painfully clear that academics mostly aren't up to the job. way too individualistic and too generally infected with a weird mixture of overconfidence and insecurity that makes us prone to sell out for very weird rewards and extremely easy to divide and conquer.
uniformly the kind of rule-followers who would have no trouble writing a report that said to fire half the faculty, or whatever else they were directed to write.
a big proportion of people i knew in graduate school or on the postdoc circuit ended up in management consulting or worse (worse = crypto-bro startups, the NSA, etc.).
(there's also this thing where people who stay in academia and even get to what have become relatively rarefied heights, like getting some sort of tenure, then get bored with their teaching and research, become deans and pro-vice-chancellors and whatever, and start making decisions that seem best understood as being motivated by resentment for their colleagues who are still able to be interested in stuff. academia hath no fury like a mediocre professor promoted to upper administration, i think. this sounds like an incredibly snobbish take but it's not: the people who are non-mediocre by the standard i'm talking about are not just writing highly-cited technicalities or whatever; i also mean people who are patiently and creatively and supportively teaching the same undergrad class year after year or doing service work that actually keeps the lights on, as opposed to dreaming up Initiatives, etc.)
it's increasingly hard to get a tenure-track or equivalent job, so doing a phd is less and less plausibly advertisable as vocational training for an academic career. but it's not like universities aren't trying desperately to increase enrolment; they just want to decrease the proportion of the massive teaching task that's done by people on secure contracts with relatively high salaries, decent pensions, etc. so they do want to continue training lots of phds (to hire on shitty contracts later, or to have them teach while in graduate school). at least in my experience, there is some honest effort to tell the phd students that they probably aren't getting permanent academic jobs and that there are plenty of other options. however, anecdotally, approximately zero students start phds actually aspiring to anything other than an academic job, and the news doesn't get broken until they're already a couple years in.
it's absolutely not a failure to exit that track at some point (and most people i know who did it are happy with that, whether they chose to "leave" or did so involuntarily). indeed most do, since trying to get a permanent job involves jumping through a bunch of hoops that are actually pretty unreasonable to ask of people. otoh, there's a disturbing push to deal with the mismatch by trying to reformulate postgraduate study as some sort of vocational training for, basically, going to the Dark Side (e.g. in my field, maths, there's suddenly a bunch of fintech oligarch money going directly to departments, with strings attached in terms of really sketchy external funders wanting to meddle in admissions and stuff).
the point is that it's disturbing but true that (at least in scientific fields), we've got all these incredibly highly-trained people who have wildly good employment prospects by most standards, but whose options are (1) academia, (2) doing some highly-paid evil shit (arguably this includes (1), but even working for the modern neoliberal university is probably less evil than working for mckinsey or bae systems or whatever), (3) some intersection of those, and (4) more or less complete career change.
it is not great. it's maybe academics' fault for neglecting to make the case for basic research and stuff except in very lazy, dishonest terms (one actually sees shit along the lines of "alan turing was just doing pure logic and it ultimately led to iphones, just goes to show..." in grant proposals). and academics being a bunch of ignorant snobbish dinguses is probably a big source of that failure.
so i always fall hard for pieces like TFA but it's also important to bear in mind that academia has sort of dug its own grave by being so high on its own gatekeeper bullshit supply.
posted by busted_crayons at 10:13 AM on April 18 [9 favorites]
i have a lot of time for the view expressed in this thread that a big part of the problem with higher ed (in countries where i have some firsthand idea about how it works, i.e. mainly the uk and the us) is that there's way too much of an economic advantage/necessity attached to a university degree (interesting take derived from that here, which i'd have posted to the blue except it's a friends-link: the cheating essay).
higher ed has to be free, it has to employ some sort of proper affirmative action, it has to be adequately funded, and we have to be collectively clear on what it's for and what it isn't for (like, we have to treat that like an actual live question and fight for some actual say in answering it). all that requires an enormous amount of collective thought and collective action and despite how strongly i always nod along with articles like this one and feel the need to Do Something, it's painfully clear that academics mostly aren't up to the job. way too individualistic and too generally infected with a weird mixture of overconfidence and insecurity that makes us prone to sell out for very weird rewards and extremely easy to divide and conquer.
uniformly the kind of rule-followers who would have no trouble writing a report that said to fire half the faculty, or whatever else they were directed to write.
a big proportion of people i knew in graduate school or on the postdoc circuit ended up in management consulting or worse (worse = crypto-bro startups, the NSA, etc.).
(there's also this thing where people who stay in academia and even get to what have become relatively rarefied heights, like getting some sort of tenure, then get bored with their teaching and research, become deans and pro-vice-chancellors and whatever, and start making decisions that seem best understood as being motivated by resentment for their colleagues who are still able to be interested in stuff. academia hath no fury like a mediocre professor promoted to upper administration, i think. this sounds like an incredibly snobbish take but it's not: the people who are non-mediocre by the standard i'm talking about are not just writing highly-cited technicalities or whatever; i also mean people who are patiently and creatively and supportively teaching the same undergrad class year after year or doing service work that actually keeps the lights on, as opposed to dreaming up Initiatives, etc.)
it's increasingly hard to get a tenure-track or equivalent job, so doing a phd is less and less plausibly advertisable as vocational training for an academic career. but it's not like universities aren't trying desperately to increase enrolment; they just want to decrease the proportion of the massive teaching task that's done by people on secure contracts with relatively high salaries, decent pensions, etc. so they do want to continue training lots of phds (to hire on shitty contracts later, or to have them teach while in graduate school). at least in my experience, there is some honest effort to tell the phd students that they probably aren't getting permanent academic jobs and that there are plenty of other options. however, anecdotally, approximately zero students start phds actually aspiring to anything other than an academic job, and the news doesn't get broken until they're already a couple years in.
it's absolutely not a failure to exit that track at some point (and most people i know who did it are happy with that, whether they chose to "leave" or did so involuntarily). indeed most do, since trying to get a permanent job involves jumping through a bunch of hoops that are actually pretty unreasonable to ask of people. otoh, there's a disturbing push to deal with the mismatch by trying to reformulate postgraduate study as some sort of vocational training for, basically, going to the Dark Side (e.g. in my field, maths, there's suddenly a bunch of fintech oligarch money going directly to departments, with strings attached in terms of really sketchy external funders wanting to meddle in admissions and stuff).
the point is that it's disturbing but true that (at least in scientific fields), we've got all these incredibly highly-trained people who have wildly good employment prospects by most standards, but whose options are (1) academia, (2) doing some highly-paid evil shit (arguably this includes (1), but even working for the modern neoliberal university is probably less evil than working for mckinsey or bae systems or whatever), (3) some intersection of those, and (4) more or less complete career change.
it is not great. it's maybe academics' fault for neglecting to make the case for basic research and stuff except in very lazy, dishonest terms (one actually sees shit along the lines of "alan turing was just doing pure logic and it ultimately led to iphones, just goes to show..." in grant proposals). and academics being a bunch of ignorant snobbish dinguses is probably a big source of that failure.
so i always fall hard for pieces like TFA but it's also important to bear in mind that academia has sort of dug its own grave by being so high on its own gatekeeper bullshit supply.
posted by busted_crayons at 10:13 AM on April 18 [9 favorites]
What portion of each French lycée graduate class enroll full time in a 4 year program every year? ...
It's a lot smaller than the 50% of the US.
posted by ocschwar at 9:46 AM on April 18
Here's enrollment (scroll to figure 4) - % of 19-year-olds in post-secondary degree-granting institutions is the gray bars. The US is at 53% and France 57%.
According to this, "the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student (for post-secondary education), which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars)." It's so strange we spend so much more but tuitions aren't reflecting that - I assume that we pay for things other countries don't (I dunno, sports programs?) and maybe other countries pay for some things out of other buckets of money (like, say, infrastructure/new buildings), but I am just spitballing.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:17 AM on April 18 [3 favorites]
It's a lot smaller than the 50% of the US.
posted by ocschwar at 9:46 AM on April 18
Here's enrollment (scroll to figure 4) - % of 19-year-olds in post-secondary degree-granting institutions is the gray bars. The US is at 53% and France 57%.
According to this, "the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student (for post-secondary education), which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars)." It's so strange we spend so much more but tuitions aren't reflecting that - I assume that we pay for things other countries don't (I dunno, sports programs?) and maybe other countries pay for some things out of other buckets of money (like, say, infrastructure/new buildings), but I am just spitballing.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:17 AM on April 18 [3 favorites]
Part of the same project that drove attendance down by 30% at the New College of Florida - really a concerted effort to drive everyone who won't vote R in the next election out of the state of Florida. None of these guys care about running a school they all only care about amassing power and enriching themselves and their cronies. They know that if Florida stops being a swing state they'll win every national election.
posted by subdee at 10:34 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
posted by subdee at 10:34 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
maybe he'd get distracted trying to establish the idea of order at Key West
Don Pepino, you win my Internet for the day!
posted by chavenet at 11:05 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
Don Pepino, you win my Internet for the day!
posted by chavenet at 11:05 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
What's not good and not acceptable is programs like this functioning as gatekeepers for white collar jobs
Agreed, but this has always been their function, from their origins as indoctrinnaires of aristocrats in the Eton-to-Cambridge pipeline to the prestige degrees awarded to legacies at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The original nepo-babies, supplemented by the occasional infusion of fresh blood from bright muggles who could be taught to reproduce the status quo values of their classmates. Pressure from increasing need for trained workers led to the US's land-grant college system, but it was never really meant to expand access to status, generational wealth, or to, as Frowner notes, democratizing ideas.
Even so, a fair number did develop ideas about diversity, equity, and inclusion which they iteratively passed on to students. At the same time, insulated and comfortable in their "little idyll," many humanities departments have consistently stood in the way of implementing those ideas into forms of substantive change that might have, now, kept the "lions" from nibbling even the heels of someone who does Shakespeare.
posted by radiogreentea at 11:27 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
Agreed, but this has always been their function, from their origins as indoctrinnaires of aristocrats in the Eton-to-Cambridge pipeline to the prestige degrees awarded to legacies at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The original nepo-babies, supplemented by the occasional infusion of fresh blood from bright muggles who could be taught to reproduce the status quo values of their classmates. Pressure from increasing need for trained workers led to the US's land-grant college system, but it was never really meant to expand access to status, generational wealth, or to, as Frowner notes, democratizing ideas.
Even so, a fair number did develop ideas about diversity, equity, and inclusion which they iteratively passed on to students. At the same time, insulated and comfortable in their "little idyll," many humanities departments have consistently stood in the way of implementing those ideas into forms of substantive change that might have, now, kept the "lions" from nibbling even the heels of someone who does Shakespeare.
posted by radiogreentea at 11:27 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
Agreed, but this has always been their function,
Then the writing has always been on the wall. I don't begrudge these people their idyll, but if it only exists because of young people who must come and pay homage so they can live in the 55th income percentile, then it was bound to end, and everyone involved should have seen it coming and prepared for it.
I also don't begrudge the people who spent their 4 years living the life of mind in this program. I went to a polytechnic because my own background meant there was no way I could spend my college years getting an education-for-its-own-sake. If you were born to better circumstances and could do it, good for you. If you can give that privilege to your own child, please do. But like the majority of people with bachelor's degrees, I had to make mine pencil out financially, and pretending otherwise means prolonging a higher ed bubble that was always going to pop.
De Santis is a clown with a flamethrower. (A clown with an Ivy League degree who really should know better than to pander to the anti-intellectualism, but so it goes.) But he's not the reason there's so much fuel for the fire he's starting.
posted by ocschwar at 12:23 PM on April 18 [5 favorites]
Then the writing has always been on the wall. I don't begrudge these people their idyll, but if it only exists because of young people who must come and pay homage so they can live in the 55th income percentile, then it was bound to end, and everyone involved should have seen it coming and prepared for it.
I also don't begrudge the people who spent their 4 years living the life of mind in this program. I went to a polytechnic because my own background meant there was no way I could spend my college years getting an education-for-its-own-sake. If you were born to better circumstances and could do it, good for you. If you can give that privilege to your own child, please do. But like the majority of people with bachelor's degrees, I had to make mine pencil out financially, and pretending otherwise means prolonging a higher ed bubble that was always going to pop.
De Santis is a clown with a flamethrower. (A clown with an Ivy League degree who really should know better than to pander to the anti-intellectualism, but so it goes.) But he's not the reason there's so much fuel for the fire he's starting.
posted by ocschwar at 12:23 PM on April 18 [5 favorites]
Here's enrollment (scroll to figure 4) - % of 19-year-olds in post-secondary degree-granting institutions is the gray bars. The US is at 53% and France 57%.
Huh. I'm surprised and I stand corrected. Maybe I should not be surprised when it's France that invented the Polytechnic.
posted by ocschwar at 12:25 PM on April 18 [3 favorites]
Huh. I'm surprised and I stand corrected. Maybe I should not be surprised when it's France that invented the Polytechnic.
posted by ocschwar at 12:25 PM on April 18 [3 favorites]
The reckoning for academia has been long overdue
what sort of overdue reckoning did you have in mind?
posted by elkevelvet at 12:29 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
what sort of overdue reckoning did you have in mind?
posted by elkevelvet at 12:29 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
According to this, "the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student (for post-secondary education), which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars)." It's so strange we spend so much more but tuitions aren't reflecting that - I assume that we pay for things other countries don't (I dunno, sports programs?)
School as a one stop shop for everything in your phase of life is very much an American thing. And one that needs to die in a fire. Boston should operate like Paris: every dorm should be allowed to house students from any Boston area college. College sports should not be a thing. Amateur sports should be handled the same way they are in European countries: completely independently of which school you're in, if any. It would save a lot of money and address the cynical use of college education as a caste credential lying thing.
posted by ocschwar at 12:30 PM on April 18 [12 favorites]
School as a one stop shop for everything in your phase of life is very much an American thing. And one that needs to die in a fire. Boston should operate like Paris: every dorm should be allowed to house students from any Boston area college. College sports should not be a thing. Amateur sports should be handled the same way they are in European countries: completely independently of which school you're in, if any. It would save a lot of money and address the cynical use of college education as a caste credential lying thing.
posted by ocschwar at 12:30 PM on April 18 [12 favorites]
The reckoning for academia has been long overdue
what sort of overdue reckoning did you have in mind?
A whole lot of professors being effectively demoted by making them accept that they will only be teaching undergraduates. And those who do still get grad student retinues being required to make those grad students aware that statistically speaking only one of a professor's entire career long retinue can expect to make it to full professor.
posted by ocschwar at 12:33 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
what sort of overdue reckoning did you have in mind?
A whole lot of professors being effectively demoted by making them accept that they will only be teaching undergraduates. And those who do still get grad student retinues being required to make those grad students aware that statistically speaking only one of a professor's entire career long retinue can expect to make it to full professor.
posted by ocschwar at 12:33 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
I also don't begrudge the people who spent their 4 years living the life of mind in this program. I went to a polytechnic because my own background meant there was no way I could spend my college years getting an education-for-its-own-sake. If you were born to better circumstances and could do it, good for you. If you can give that privilege to your own child, please do. But like the majority of people with bachelor's degrees, I had to make mine pencil out financially, and pretending otherwise means prolonging a higher ed bubble that was always going to pop.
With a math and science background, I'm surprised to hear you uncritically reproducing the rhetoric that people with liberal arts degrees are doomed to be impoverished or that science/tech degrees are the only way to be confident you can earn a living. The stats so far don't really bear that out.
I was not "born to better circumstances." I have a history degree from an expensive school (from which I graduated with 1/10 the debt a sibling graduated from an in-state public university with ten years later, btw). And now I have a job that pays perfectly respectably--if I chosen to stay in private practice, I would most likely be outearning my relatives in consulting and UX. Plenty of people like me out there. Meanwhile, I see people getting chewed up financially by the coding academies constantly.
Your resentment is putting you on the side of people who don't even want you to know how to read.
posted by praemunire at 2:09 PM on April 18 [7 favorites]
With a math and science background, I'm surprised to hear you uncritically reproducing the rhetoric that people with liberal arts degrees are doomed to be impoverished or that science/tech degrees are the only way to be confident you can earn a living. The stats so far don't really bear that out.
I was not "born to better circumstances." I have a history degree from an expensive school (from which I graduated with 1/10 the debt a sibling graduated from an in-state public university with ten years later, btw). And now I have a job that pays perfectly respectably--if I chosen to stay in private practice, I would most likely be outearning my relatives in consulting and UX. Plenty of people like me out there. Meanwhile, I see people getting chewed up financially by the coding academies constantly.
Your resentment is putting you on the side of people who don't even want you to know how to read.
posted by praemunire at 2:09 PM on April 18 [7 favorites]
With a math and science background, I'm surprised to hear you uncritically reproducing the rhetoric that people with liberal arts degrees
That is not what I said. I said the author of the article is part of a program that effectively serves as gatekeeper between young people and their ambitions. It's not what he wants to do, nor does it detract from the value of the work he does, but the gatekeeping function is what keeps students coming. So he was obliged to be prepared for the day that function goes away.
If anything, I have more respect for the humanities than people who think it should be used in this way. And no, I have nothing but contempt for coding academies.
posted by ocschwar at 2:34 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
That is not what I said. I said the author of the article is part of a program that effectively serves as gatekeeper between young people and their ambitions. It's not what he wants to do, nor does it detract from the value of the work he does, but the gatekeeping function is what keeps students coming. So he was obliged to be prepared for the day that function goes away.
If anything, I have more respect for the humanities than people who think it should be used in this way. And no, I have nothing but contempt for coding academies.
posted by ocschwar at 2:34 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
"I went to a polytechnic because my own background meant there was no way I could spend my college years getting an education-for-its-own-sake....like the majority of people with bachelor's degrees, I had to make mine pencil out financially, and pretending otherwise means prolonging a higher ed bubble that was always going to pop."
What is this supposed to mean, besides "I went to a tech school because I had to make a sufficient living to pay off the costs of attending school and the liberal arts weren't going to do that for me?"
posted by praemunire at 3:04 PM on April 18 [1 favorite]
What is this supposed to mean, besides "I went to a tech school because I had to make a sufficient living to pay off the costs of attending school and the liberal arts weren't going to do that for me?"
posted by praemunire at 3:04 PM on April 18 [1 favorite]
It means "spending four years getting an education for its own sake or spending a career providing it, is not something that can just happen, and you need to be cognizant of that. And if the reason you can do that is a convergence of outside circumstances, you better watch out for those circumstances to diverge and take that away from you."
posted by ocschwar at 3:13 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
posted by ocschwar at 3:13 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
> What is this supposed to mean, besides "I went to a tech school because I had to make a sufficient living to pay off the costs of attending school and the liberal arts weren't going to do that for me?"
yes except it says significantly more than that through how it describes the things you mention.
for my part i hold that education for its own sake is one of the two or three things that humans do that are worth doing and it is a fuckin’ crime that people don’t have access to it, as much of it as they want, everyone literally everyone deserves and needs to drink their fill and they deserve stipends so that need to work doesn’t get in the way, because anything that gets in the way of people having howeversomuch education for its own sake they want whenever they want it is an act of violence against the best parts of ourselves and we should never let ourselves shrink down enough to tolerate that. it is a true sin.
and moreover anything, anything at all, any rule, custom, practice, norm, institution or technology that doesn’t directly or indirectly serve the boundless human potential for and desire for education for its own sake (or serve the doing of the one or two other things worth doing for their own sake) is a waste of time and human effort.
oh hell, is this an arby’s? am i at an arby’s again?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:25 PM on April 18 [15 favorites]
yes except it says significantly more than that through how it describes the things you mention.
for my part i hold that education for its own sake is one of the two or three things that humans do that are worth doing and it is a fuckin’ crime that people don’t have access to it, as much of it as they want, everyone literally everyone deserves and needs to drink their fill and they deserve stipends so that need to work doesn’t get in the way, because anything that gets in the way of people having howeversomuch education for its own sake they want whenever they want it is an act of violence against the best parts of ourselves and we should never let ourselves shrink down enough to tolerate that. it is a true sin.
and moreover anything, anything at all, any rule, custom, practice, norm, institution or technology that doesn’t directly or indirectly serve the boundless human potential for and desire for education for its own sake (or serve the doing of the one or two other things worth doing for their own sake) is a waste of time and human effort.
oh hell, is this an arby’s? am i at an arby’s again?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:25 PM on April 18 [15 favorites]
the author of the article is part of a program that effectively serves as gatekeeper between young people and their ambitions.
It's an MFA program. The young people aren't young; they're all post-whatever real degree they got and spending a couple of years relaxing before they bust off and become a tax lawyer or a pediatrician or something. Either that or they're scholarship upstarts. Their MFA-related ambitions are unachievable with or without gatekeepers because there's no publishing industry. Anyway, there are two kinds of these programs (or "programmes"): okay ones that fund the students, and demonic ones that don't. UF, as Hofman takes pains to point out, is, at least for now, the former kind.
The ones that fund you are either beneficial or neutral. You frolic for two or three years and attend one another's parties and when you're done, you have a master's degree. As a bonus, if you did anything at all but drink and sleep for the whole time, you'll also have a nice, near-book-length manuscript you can then try to do something with. Or just have in a drawer, all written, while you go be a tax lawyer for the rest of your life.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:03 PM on April 18 [6 favorites]
It's an MFA program. The young people aren't young; they're all post-whatever real degree they got and spending a couple of years relaxing before they bust off and become a tax lawyer or a pediatrician or something. Either that or they're scholarship upstarts. Their MFA-related ambitions are unachievable with or without gatekeepers because there's no publishing industry. Anyway, there are two kinds of these programs (or "programmes"): okay ones that fund the students, and demonic ones that don't. UF, as Hofman takes pains to point out, is, at least for now, the former kind.
The ones that fund you are either beneficial or neutral. You frolic for two or three years and attend one another's parties and when you're done, you have a master's degree. As a bonus, if you did anything at all but drink and sleep for the whole time, you'll also have a nice, near-book-length manuscript you can then try to do something with. Or just have in a drawer, all written, while you go be a tax lawyer for the rest of your life.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:03 PM on April 18 [6 favorites]
oh hell, is this an arby’s? am i at an arby’s again?
this is. you are. i am here to relieve you, this is the shift change where you go do blackboard stuff and i feed people and we are both pleased about it because getting the congealed meat slurry out of the grease traps actually needs to happen and i would therefore much rather do that than anything at the university other than actual blackboard stuff; fortunately all the Initiatives have been cancelled and the Stakeholders and Senior Managers are in that labour camp over there doing emails and the rest of us just do 30% teaching, 30% learning and 40% useful shit a child could identify as necessary, like nature intended when they gave us weird fussy brains.
posted by busted_crayons at 5:11 PM on April 18 [5 favorites]
this is. you are. i am here to relieve you, this is the shift change where you go do blackboard stuff and i feed people and we are both pleased about it because getting the congealed meat slurry out of the grease traps actually needs to happen and i would therefore much rather do that than anything at the university other than actual blackboard stuff; fortunately all the Initiatives have been cancelled and the Stakeholders and Senior Managers are in that labour camp over there doing emails and the rest of us just do 30% teaching, 30% learning and 40% useful shit a child could identify as necessary, like nature intended when they gave us weird fussy brains.
posted by busted_crayons at 5:11 PM on April 18 [5 favorites]
blackboard the chonky flat stone of unlimited possibilities, i hasten to clarify, not Blackboard the Online Learning Environment, which was banned, and its Maintainers exiled, following the Great Matriculation, founder pass us.
posted by busted_crayons at 5:22 PM on April 18 [5 favorites]
posted by busted_crayons at 5:22 PM on April 18 [5 favorites]
for real though fuck every "learning management system" everywhere always forever, they're a pile of dark patterns that encourage-slash-force instructors to teach bad.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:32 PM on April 18 [3 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:32 PM on April 18 [3 favorites]
Anyway, there are two kinds of these programs (or "programmes"): okay ones that fund the students, and demonic ones that don't. UF, as Hofman takes pains to point out, is, at least for now, the former kind.
Cool. Which means his program is funded by the UF general budget. So he's not personally involved in the cynical gatekeeping function that UF performs. He's just funded by it. Look, there are many bad ways to fund academia.
Boston University: enroll many talentless children of the rich in the Cardboard, Glue and Scissors program. Charge full tuition.
Harvard: enroll the occasional talentless child of the super-rich, extract a massive donation.
MIT: get thoroughly enmeshed in the Military Industrial Complex.
Stanford: get thoroughly enmeshed in surveillance capitalism.
UF: enroll the future middle managers of every car dealership in the South. Maintain a vigorous Greek system.
I worked as a sysadmin at one of these. None of us are without sin.
posted by ocschwar at 8:59 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
Cool. Which means his program is funded by the UF general budget. So he's not personally involved in the cynical gatekeeping function that UF performs. He's just funded by it. Look, there are many bad ways to fund academia.
Boston University: enroll many talentless children of the rich in the Cardboard, Glue and Scissors program. Charge full tuition.
Harvard: enroll the occasional talentless child of the super-rich, extract a massive donation.
MIT: get thoroughly enmeshed in the Military Industrial Complex.
Stanford: get thoroughly enmeshed in surveillance capitalism.
UF: enroll the future middle managers of every car dealership in the South. Maintain a vigorous Greek system.
I worked as a sysadmin at one of these. None of us are without sin.
posted by ocschwar at 8:59 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
It means "spending four years getting an education for its own sake or spending a career providing it, is not something that can just happen, and you need to be cognizant of that. And if the reason you can do that is a convergence of outside circumstances, you better watch out for those circumstances to diverge and take that away from you."
I mean, okay, but you're reciting a narrative that is, at best, partial and was literally composed by the enemies of all education, everywhere, that doesn't feed people into the meat-grinder of disruption, and it doesn't exactly strengthen your position that you seem to be unable to recognize that, or even admit that that's what you were saying. Whoever told you thirty or forty years ago you had to go to a polytechnic to make a living gave you some bad information, which is not your fault nor probably even theirs, but if you're going to go around co-signing DeSantis and Rufo, you need to stop kidding yourself you care about education. That's about as delusional as signing up with Stefanik because you want to oppose anti-Semitism. The reckoning you think is due higher education in the U.S. is not the reckoning these people want to deliver, and it's willfully obtuse to think otherwise.
posted by praemunire at 9:20 PM on April 18 [7 favorites]
I mean, okay, but you're reciting a narrative that is, at best, partial and was literally composed by the enemies of all education, everywhere, that doesn't feed people into the meat-grinder of disruption, and it doesn't exactly strengthen your position that you seem to be unable to recognize that, or even admit that that's what you were saying. Whoever told you thirty or forty years ago you had to go to a polytechnic to make a living gave you some bad information, which is not your fault nor probably even theirs, but if you're going to go around co-signing DeSantis and Rufo, you need to stop kidding yourself you care about education. That's about as delusional as signing up with Stefanik because you want to oppose anti-Semitism. The reckoning you think is due higher education in the U.S. is not the reckoning these people want to deliver, and it's willfully obtuse to think otherwise.
posted by praemunire at 9:20 PM on April 18 [7 favorites]
yeah i agree with praemunire, here. on one hand, i am very happy to hear about the maybe-irredeemable fuckery of higher ed and would be very open to some sort of reckoning but i'd rather the reckoning look like this or this and not like the "widening participation" effort underway where i teach (which is actually just orwellian cover for marketisation with the goal of eventually stripping the system for parts) or the desantis-type vandalism. an analogy might be: the numerous valid criticisms of the european union from labour leaders and leftish politicians in the uk were broadly good criticisms but it was still dumb for some of them to get on board with brexit, because it was by no means an effort to address those criticisms, and barely even looked superficially like one.
this is the source of my frustration with academics, especially the ones with job security and stuff: we have to fix our shit and expunge all the elitism in a real way, or we're just making ourselves an extremely convenient target for fake plastic anti-elitism that actually just wants to take education away from all but a very privileged few, without anyone noticing or caring. the way you do that is to continue herding everyone into educational institutions, but preventing any education from happening there. (there are also less sophisticated ways to systematically deny the people education and culture but these things exist on a common spectrum.)
this being said, this taxonomy is absolutely on point, i hope we can all agree.
posted by busted_crayons at 2:10 AM on April 19 [3 favorites]
this is the source of my frustration with academics, especially the ones with job security and stuff: we have to fix our shit and expunge all the elitism in a real way, or we're just making ourselves an extremely convenient target for fake plastic anti-elitism that actually just wants to take education away from all but a very privileged few, without anyone noticing or caring. the way you do that is to continue herding everyone into educational institutions, but preventing any education from happening there. (there are also less sophisticated ways to systematically deny the people education and culture but these things exist on a common spectrum.)
this being said, this taxonomy is absolutely on point, i hope we can all agree.
posted by busted_crayons at 2:10 AM on April 19 [3 favorites]
>>It means "spending four years getting an education for its own sake or spending a career providing it, is not something that can just happen, and you need to be cognizant of that. And if the reason you can do that is a convergence of outside circumstances, you better watch out for those circumstances to diverge and take that away from you."
>I mean, okay, but you're reciting a narrative that is, at best, partial and was literally composed by the enemies of all education, everywhere, that doesn't feed people into the meat-grinder of disruption, and it doesn't exactly strengthen your position that you seem to be unable to recognize that, or even admit that that's what you were saying. Whoever told you thirty or forty years ago you had to go to a polytechnic to make a living gave you some bad information...
As someone with a supposedly useless BA who is actually earning a fine salary in a totally different field, I'm with you on the economic value of "less practical" degrees from fancy schools. But there's more to that decision; going to a polytech or a regional directional state university for an extremely practical degree is, among other things like being accessible to most people, a risk-reduction measure. if you go to the polytech and get a practical degree in a department that feeds its graduates directly into the local labor market, you are unlikely to go on to a top-ten law school and earn a Big Law salary, but you are also unlikely to end up as a permanent adjunct who qualifies for food stamps. It (on average) reduces the amplitude of the outcomes, which for a person with less of a personal safety net can be an extremely smart decision.
Years ago I was on the "industry advisory committee" for a program at a public college that offered both associates and bachelors degrees. They were extremely rigorous in working closely with local employers to ensure that their curriculum was laser-focused on producing graduates who could walk in the door the day after graduation with a job offer. (Actually, most had job offers well before graduation.) That's night and day different from the places I went to school, which were more like the pinnacle of the ivory tower, but it did a massive service to their graduates who were all working adults, usually with a family to support, who simply couldn't afford to take risks in the way that I could.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:58 AM on April 19 [3 favorites]
>I mean, okay, but you're reciting a narrative that is, at best, partial and was literally composed by the enemies of all education, everywhere, that doesn't feed people into the meat-grinder of disruption, and it doesn't exactly strengthen your position that you seem to be unable to recognize that, or even admit that that's what you were saying. Whoever told you thirty or forty years ago you had to go to a polytechnic to make a living gave you some bad information...
As someone with a supposedly useless BA who is actually earning a fine salary in a totally different field, I'm with you on the economic value of "less practical" degrees from fancy schools. But there's more to that decision; going to a polytech or a regional directional state university for an extremely practical degree is, among other things like being accessible to most people, a risk-reduction measure. if you go to the polytech and get a practical degree in a department that feeds its graduates directly into the local labor market, you are unlikely to go on to a top-ten law school and earn a Big Law salary, but you are also unlikely to end up as a permanent adjunct who qualifies for food stamps. It (on average) reduces the amplitude of the outcomes, which for a person with less of a personal safety net can be an extremely smart decision.
Years ago I was on the "industry advisory committee" for a program at a public college that offered both associates and bachelors degrees. They were extremely rigorous in working closely with local employers to ensure that their curriculum was laser-focused on producing graduates who could walk in the door the day after graduation with a job offer. (Actually, most had job offers well before graduation.) That's night and day different from the places I went to school, which were more like the pinnacle of the ivory tower, but it did a massive service to their graduates who were all working adults, usually with a family to support, who simply couldn't afford to take risks in the way that I could.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:58 AM on April 19 [3 favorites]
> this is the source of my frustration with academics, especially the ones with job security and stuff: we have to fix our shit and expunge all the elitism in a real way, or we're just making ourselves an extremely convenient target for fake plastic anti-elitism that actually just wants to take education away from all but a very privileged few, without anyone noticing or caring.
yes and also it must always be remembered that the élite universities many people think of when they think of university names are a vanishingly small and not actually educationally significant corner of the higher education system, and should be aggressively ignored. also folks should actually, like, notice the open-admissions universities and colleges that are the ones that actually matter.
give 👏 stanford 👏 the 👏 cut 👏 direct
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:13 AM on April 19 [4 favorites]
yes and also it must always be remembered that the élite universities many people think of when they think of university names are a vanishingly small and not actually educationally significant corner of the higher education system, and should be aggressively ignored. also folks should actually, like, notice the open-admissions universities and colleges that are the ones that actually matter.
give 👏 stanford 👏 the 👏 cut 👏 direct
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:13 AM on April 19 [4 favorites]
the open-admissions universities and colleges that are the ones that actually matter
let's not kid ourselves. any good idea--and open universities are an excellent idea--does not exist in a vacuum. Any 'reckoning' that impacts higher education as a sector will only result from a 'reckoning' of rapacious late stage capitalism. a preview of at least a third of the posts in MeFi over the past week or so: all symptoms of bad things getting worse.
we can't tweak our way out of it, we can no longer regulate things into a semblance of fairness and equity, so again: what does a reckoning look like? I guess I'm stuck on that comment, because in my heart I am singing along with your chorus but my eyes and brain aren't along for the ride.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:34 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
let's not kid ourselves. any good idea--and open universities are an excellent idea--does not exist in a vacuum. Any 'reckoning' that impacts higher education as a sector will only result from a 'reckoning' of rapacious late stage capitalism. a preview of at least a third of the posts in MeFi over the past week or so: all symptoms of bad things getting worse.
we can't tweak our way out of it, we can no longer regulate things into a semblance of fairness and equity, so again: what does a reckoning look like? I guess I'm stuck on that comment, because in my heart I am singing along with your chorus but my eyes and brain aren't along for the ride.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:34 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
elkevelvet, a reckoning probably looks like university students and staff seizing university buildings and establishing educational institutions therein.
the problem is that politically active students are actually often extremely amazing at organising but organising a proper reckoning takes years and on that sort of timescale, students graduate and become way less intensely interested in fomenting an educational reckoning because they are off working in some other sector that probably also needs a reckoning. meanwhile academic staff are either too precarious or too comfortable to really feel motivated, except a few of the comfortable ones are motivated on a moral or ideological level, and a few of the precarious ones are both motivated and brave people, but that together doesn't get long-haul-motivated people in sufficient numbers for a proper reckoning. so we just make snarky comments in class and engage in low-level work-to-rule sabotage when doing certain shit that's mandatory but that nobody actually cares about anyway.
and the next cohort of students will enter having already been trained to be, like, "oh, will the reckoning be on the exam, tho?" and hope will be completely lost.
posted by busted_crayons at 7:50 AM on April 19
the problem is that politically active students are actually often extremely amazing at organising but organising a proper reckoning takes years and on that sort of timescale, students graduate and become way less intensely interested in fomenting an educational reckoning because they are off working in some other sector that probably also needs a reckoning. meanwhile academic staff are either too precarious or too comfortable to really feel motivated, except a few of the comfortable ones are motivated on a moral or ideological level, and a few of the precarious ones are both motivated and brave people, but that together doesn't get long-haul-motivated people in sufficient numbers for a proper reckoning. so we just make snarky comments in class and engage in low-level work-to-rule sabotage when doing certain shit that's mandatory but that nobody actually cares about anyway.
and the next cohort of students will enter having already been trained to be, like, "oh, will the reckoning be on the exam, tho?" and hope will be completely lost.
posted by busted_crayons at 7:50 AM on April 19
a reckoning probably looks like university students and staff seizing university buildings and establishing educational institutions therein
wasn't Ilhan Omar's daughter among those expelled for their involvement with campus pro-Palestinian demonstrations? I take your point, but I don't see a real reckoning where the sentence "the next cohort of students (etc)" --i.e. backsliding to a status quo-- can happen. Looking back at the events that culminated in the Kent State killings: what must that have felt like, to students? The period of protests, the conviction to do something. We can see these as incremental moments that budged a needle, but the power of the state (representing a system) prevailed rather swiftly, and the trajectory of what that power represents accelerated.
I reject the notion of a reckoning as though it's a thing that is possible, in isolation of all the shit. I suppose I'm still responding to ocshwar, iow
posted by elkevelvet at 8:06 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
wasn't Ilhan Omar's daughter among those expelled for their involvement with campus pro-Palestinian demonstrations? I take your point, but I don't see a real reckoning where the sentence "the next cohort of students (etc)" --i.e. backsliding to a status quo-- can happen. Looking back at the events that culminated in the Kent State killings: what must that have felt like, to students? The period of protests, the conviction to do something. We can see these as incremental moments that budged a needle, but the power of the state (representing a system) prevailed rather swiftly, and the trajectory of what that power represents accelerated.
I reject the notion of a reckoning as though it's a thing that is possible, in isolation of all the shit. I suppose I'm still responding to ocshwar, iow
posted by elkevelvet at 8:06 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
oh, i was a little unclear, i guess. my point was that i agree that the thing that qualifies as a reckoning is impossible except in the context of some much larger phenomenon that doesn't really show any signs of materialising soon, and even the forces within higher ed that might contribute to some such reckoning/adjustment/whatever are pretty weak and cowed and getting seemingly weaker. i didn't mean to refer to some post-reckoning cohort of students backsliding. i meant that a lot of the pressures students feel individually seem to militate against them getting very politicised, and that seems to be increasing. although, it's true, the campus palestine solidarity stuff seemingly everywhere is an important exception, and, like, students where i work won a rent strike against the university during covid, etc., so perhaps i am being unfair to the students. i don't think i'm being unfair to the faculty, though.
posted by busted_crayons at 8:19 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
posted by busted_crayons at 8:19 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
faculty who identify with the administration rather than the students and who act in favor of the administration rather than being extremely unreasonable conduits for student demands are dead weight.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:31 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:31 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
There is nothing like the experience of working for people who hate you – or maybe they don’t hate you, they just have a funny way of showing their appreciation. Or perhaps their unawareness that you exist.
Hello from the state just north of Florida that is working to demolish its own university system nearly as quickly
posted by hydropsyche at 5:49 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
Hello from the state just north of Florida that is working to demolish its own university system nearly as quickly
posted by hydropsyche at 5:49 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
my point was that i agree that the thing that qualifies as a reckoning is impossible except in the context of some much larger phenomenon that doesn't really show any signs of materialising soon, and even the forces within higher ed that might contribute to some such reckoning/adjustment/whatever are pretty weak and cowed and getting seemingly weaker.
comrades please contribute to my gofundme, i am trying to buy my own ill-considered words so as to eat them while they are still fresh. or just support the reckoning.
posted by busted_crayons at 6:05 PM on April 26
comrades please contribute to my gofundme, i am trying to buy my own ill-considered words so as to eat them while they are still fresh. or just support the reckoning.
posted by busted_crayons at 6:05 PM on April 26
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why can't the rapture just come for the fash already? win-win!
posted by lalochezia at 1:27 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]