By Professor Doom
LinkedIn is a
network for professionals to communicate and, well, link up with each other.
It’s harmless and free, and often has articles and columns worth reading.
One recent
article does a phenomenal job of highlighting the source of the disaster of
most higher education in America today, although the authors don’t even realize
what they’ve done:
The article begins
by discussing how they came up with these great ideas for fixing higher
education:
“Over eight
months, fellows in the program—who include vice presidents,
deans, and associate provosts from major public universities as well as private
colleges”
Hey, what’s
missing from the incredible group of leaders mentioned there?
The educators.
This is such a
great indicator of the real problem in higher education: the educators have
absolutely no influence over education now. Instead of talking to the people
who see firsthand what’s going on, the “leaders” who never set foot in a
classroom are going to come up with ideas for fixing higher education. How
could this go right?
Our “leaders” in
education are so stratospherically out of touch that, over the course of eight months of thinking about how to improve
education, it still didn’t occur to any of them to even include educators on
this conversation, much less consider any ideas that might come from educators.
It’s hard to come up with a metaphor that
sufficiently captures the extraordinary arrogance, the colossal incompetence of
what passes for leadership in higher education. The best I can come up with for
comparison is trying to figure out how to build a great house in a lot near
many great houses, and never asking anyone who’s actually built a house.
Naturally, the
ideas here are extreme idiocy at best, but I’ll highlight a few.
First, admit this is a new era for higher education.
Until recently, colleges and universities had enjoyed the benefits of two lengthy and successive expansion periods in the history of higher education. The first, which lasted from 1968 to 1990, witnessed the Cold War and Baby Boomers usher in unprecedented growth in spending and enrollments. The second era, from 1991 to 2010, saw technology transform teaching, learning, and research as well as increased demand for a degree from students of all ages.
Hey, absolutely
the internet has completely changed the distribution of knowledge, and there
have been many amazing changes to human civilization in the last 50 years…but
there is more to education than access to knowledge. Seriously, libraries, very
substantial libraries, have been commonly around several centuries now. These
guys don’t have a clue. We’ve had access to huge amounts of knowledge for a
long time, all that’s changed is the access is now nearly instantaneous.
Truth be told,
since around 1800, every 50 year period has seen revolutionary changes.
1800-1850 saw steam engines revolutionize industry—long distance overland
travel became safe and reliable with goods being moved many tons at a time. The
telegraph meant you could exchange communication across the country in a day
(!) instead of months, revolutionizing knowledge transfer. 1850-1900 saw
improvements to infrastructure and the telephone, re-revolutionizing
communication. 1900-1950 saw the internal combustion engine; cars and
airplanes, inconceivable 50 years earlier, became commonplace. Television/radio
re-re-revolutionized communication and knowledge transfer. 1950-2000 saw
computers and the beginnings of the internet, re-re-re-revolutionizing
communication and knowledge transfer yet again.
But our leaders
in education have such a minimal education they know nothing of history. So as
far as they’re concerned, history began when they were born (most Poo Bahs are
around age 60)…they can’t conceive of a time before their existence.
It’s a new era
for knowledge…but not a new era for education, which was around before the rise
of the Poo Bahs. As a people, we’ve lost track of teaching our children, and
thus have mostly forgotten how humans learn. I can only consider how we teach our children from
birth to 4 years old…before public government school takes it over.
Keys to learning
are repetition and emulation. Every day you talk to your infant/toddler, you
repeat over and over the words he should know. You educate your small child
primarily through repetition, not just in knowledge, but also in behavior.
While this ideal education is greatly disrupted by the public school system,
the fact still remains: education isn’t about access to knowledge at all, it’s
about learning how to use knowledge. Every word you use on your child is
available somewhere on the internet, I promise you, as is every behavior…but
this is irrelevant to teaching your child.
Demonstrating to
your child how to act with integrity, how to speak with clarity, will do far
more to educate the child than “look it up on Google.”
But, after 8
months of deliberations, our leadership, rather than consider what education actually
is and how to improve it, figure it’s time to admit technology has improved.
The average Poo Bah makes a half million bucks a year…and this is the wisdom your
tax dollars are buying.
Higher
education is now firmly situated in a third era. It is marked by diminished
state and federal spending…
Again, these guys
are clueless, thinking education is actually about spending money. And, of
course, they are wrong. Federal spending on education has increased, as I’ve
documented many times in this blog, and happily do
so again, or even better, the reader
should consider this chart of money flowing into higher education. It took
me all of 30 seconds to find yet another link on this…these guys have been
crying about “no money” for so long they just don’t know any other tune, so
they keep crying about lack of money even as they’re drowning in it.
What other
revelations did 8 months of thinking by these yahoos reveal?
Higher education needs a North Star and leaders to take them there.
--let that
sink in a bit how these guys want the leaders to become followers, and not in
an ironic way.
This is just
pathetic. These guys honestly think “leadership” is the whole point of higher
education. This is actually understandable, because the rulers of higher
education actually take (bogus) graduate courses in “Leadership.” Because
educators are shut out of influencing education, we’re stuck with these
clowns who literally don’t have a clue, and I’ve quoted many of them
embarrassing themselves grunting about how leadership is the point of higher
education. Higher
education’s purpose has nothing to do with leadership, I promise
you.
Any other
brilliant ideas? Sure:
A new financial model is necessary.
The whole problem
with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend. Our
campuses have been turned into socialist utopias: the leaders at the top get
fabulous wealth and power, while everyone else starves. Our students
are starving. Our faculty are
starving. Our leaders in higher education get personal
high end restaurants to support their culinary needs.
Our leaders have
bloated out the administration caste to ridiculous levels, with commensurately ridiculous
pay, transferring huge amounts of student loan money into their own pockets.
Trouble is, with these numbers and at this pay level, there isn’t enough money
coming in.
The brilliant
plan of the Ph.Ds after 8 months of deliberation? “We need to find someone
else’s money to spend.”
Real leaders with
integrity would have long since realized that ripping off kids for personal
profit is not an honorable way to live. Our leaders have decided they need to
figure out how to rip off more people for larger amounts. Where do they find people like this?
Anyway, the
reader can quickly get an idea how terrible these guys are, but what’s
interesting is the comments section, hundreds of comments, primarily blasting
how this article is pure nonsense, and providing simple, straightforward ideas
on how to make our higher education system great again.
The best ideas,
of course, come from educators. I know, I sound a little self-serving in saying
this, but honestly the people that do
the work really do know the work
better than people that know nothing, and repeatedly demonstrate they know
nothing.
A few highlights
from educators’ comments:
,
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