Should higher education be thought of as a public infrastructure?

While in many European countries, higher education was often treated as a public good, a market ideology is increasingly being allowed to allocate access to it. The rationale is that higher education is well-suited to market mechanisms. It’s scarce, not everyone wants it, and is often available at a price. Recent trends towards market capitalism and neoliberal economics have globally hastened the transition towards a market-based view of education. Is this a good thing? Are there market failures?

First, there are political pressures in many countries to reduce public expenditures in higher education. Exploring configurations of public-private funding makes sense. In terms of market failures, or potential failures, one big issue with respect to higher education is the uncertainty of outputs. Higher education offers no express guarantees or warranties. One of its characteristics is that it has “credence qualities”, i.e., those which are hard to gauge even after purchase. Many services have credence qualities, such as consulting or legal or medical advice.

While assessment tries to address this quality issue, Mark Granovetter’s work on embeddedness shows that auditing functions are often subject to social and political forces. In a sense, assessment is really only as good as the localized culture.

Impacting the quality issue are market forces. Higher education institutions compete for students and there is a upward limit on price. The “business” of higher education tries to increase efficiencies to lower costs, by increasing “productivity” {e.g., larger class sizes} or utilizing part-time labour, graduate students, or lower-wage online instructors. The Nordic experience is one where national quality assurance agencies allow universities to develop their own quality initiatives, factoring in the multidimensional nature of quality and institutional contexts. The result is a diversity of approaches that allows flexibility, but also has sanctions for non-compliance.

I think one of the worst places for higher education to be is having an identity crisis with factions supporting radically different views. Teaching versus research can be a dichotomy, but I’ve also seen institutions struggle over going from having regional status versus national status, i.e., “we want to be great.”

Twitterversion:: Higher education & regulation.Does market ideology & the “business model” clash w/quality & accountability?#ThickCulture http://url.ie/5o75 @Prof_K

Song:: Bishop Allen-‘Charm School’

The Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, is currently under fire from some by renewing a tradition ignored by his Democrat predecessors by declaring April as Confederate History Month. Ah, perhaps someone will take a droll jab with a T.S. Eliot reference to April being the cruelest month .

My take is on this is what’s the Governor’s approach to recognizing Confederate history? It is a celebration or a sober reflection? If one thinks about it, the month could be coöpted by those with a less celebratory take on that era.

It was about a year ago, I was working on a project and in the background, this “odd” documentary came on IFC. Odd, in that I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It happened to be the 2004 “mocumentary”, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America. It was a tongue-in-cheek early 2000s look at what if the South won the Civil War, told from an outside British perspective. The idea is that the film was so controversial, it was banned. Now {in 2004}, the ban was lifted and can be shown on network television, with more Confederacy satire. Not surprisingly, the Weinstein Company had a hand in this Kevin Wilmott film {part 1 of 9}::

Parts 2-9 are on YouTube and the DVD is available at Amazon.

Not to get all postmodern, but this is an example of how the metanarrative is dead. While there may be power in the term of “Confederacy” and its iconography, ultimately that meaning is up for grabs and can be contested and subverted. Although, it also matters in how symbols are used, e.g., to intimidate or alienate, which is a whole different Oprah.

Twitterversion:: VA Governor declares Apr. as Confederate History Month—controversy ensues.Is this a matter of perspective? #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Luda-‘Welcome to Atlanta’ {I still think Jermaine Dupri sounds like a bit like Urkel}

Should higher education be regulated?

If someone were to ask me this question in 1990, I would have said, “absolutely not.” I was an undergraduate in business and economics and self-regulation as a preventative measure to regulation was the code of the day. Regulation creeps in when there are market failures.

Fast forward fifteen years and I had a dean who was making a big deal out of regional accreditation, stating that without it, the Federal government might step in to regulate the higher education industry. This was in an era between Enron and the subprime mortgage meltdown and I wasn’t so sure about self-regulation in higher education. Why? Over the past few years, I’ve thought about higher education as an institution with multiple stakeholders. The university not just a place to get a degree or obtain pre-professional skills, but a site of lifelong learning that’s integrated into a larger local and regional community. In light of this, I’ve thought about how distance learning factors in the mix and have seen these and “industrial park” programmes pass for higher education that are suspect at best. I began to wonder if the higher-education model may be broken? I’m not sure I’ll go that far, but I have concerns about the value-added and the shift of higher education towards being a business. Given this, I’ve been wondering if there should be some standards in place and who should develop them?

I’m not interested in a standardization of education or a regulatory body making curricular decisions, but one of the things that can make a university a unique place for developing and disseminating ideas is a sense of community that’s embedded within an organizational culture. I get a sense that many institutions of higher education are struggling with how to remain relevant and viable, in light of looming global and domestic competition for students. Perhaps a good first step is to develop guidelines with respect to channel {mode of instruction}, structure {organizational}, and governance {decision-making} in light of all of the stakeholders. The question remains is who should develop this? Accrediting bodies, which are comprised of member universities, or the government?

When I was at the University of Oregon, the doctoral students gathered around regularly, shared a beer, and discussed what they were working on or challenges in the classroom {we taught independent preps of undergraduate courses}. I now realize that that type of “community” is quite rare and The Chronicle of Higher Education has hundreds of articles on the solitary toil of the academic. Is community the answer and can community help to restructure or regulate higher education?

Twitterversion:: Should higher ed. be regulated in light of distance learning & industrial park programmes? Does academic community matter? @Prof_K

Song:: Steely Dan-‘My Old School’

In an interesting turn of events, Comcast won a court battle to thwart regulation that’s paving the way for the FCC to respond in a way to increase regulation. This all stems from a court case where in 2007, Comcast “throttled” its users by blocking access to filesharing service BitTorrent. Net neutrality, which is supported by companies who rely on the Internet for business, such as Google and Amazon, is the absence of such throttling. Wearetheweb is an activist group fighting for net neutrality. The FCC stepped in, using the doctrine of “common carriers”, i.e., networks used for the public good. The broadband providers argue that they’re the ones spending billions on the infrastructure and therefore should be able to manage their systems in a manner they see fit. Comcast argued that the FCC rules had no teeth and are not the same as law, therefore the FCC order to stop throttling was illegal. The FCC has two courses of action at its disposal::

1. Request Congress to give it explicit authority to regulate broadband.
2. Appeal today’s decision.

Ben Scott, policy director for the public interest group, Free Press, noted::

“Comcast swung an ax at the FCC to protest the BitTorrent order…And they sliced right through the FCC’s arm and plunged the ax into their own back.”

Companies and industries tend to bend over backwards to regulate themselves to some extent or another, in order to thwart regulation. I find Comcast’s war with the FCC to be poor strategy and adding fuel to the fire of consumer dissatisfaction with telcos and broadband providers. This court case paves the way for the FCC to up the ante and given the FCC and the Obama administration support net neutrality.

As for Derveaux, here’s more on her story.

Twitterversion:: FCC loses case on net neutrality against Comcast, but will this just cause them to reclassify broadband? Possible strategic Comcast #fail. @Prof_K

Song:: Manish-‘Series of Tubes {Net Neutrality Dance Mix}

I read several articles about a Tory surge in the polls in the UK, but this Guardian article says it might be overplayed. Brown dissolved Parliament and an election has been set for 6 May, a mercifully short election season, when compared to the US. Labour, in power since 1997, back in the heady days when Tony Blair was the face of a new Labour party, ending the 18-year run of the Conservatives. I’ve read that after 18 years in power, the tories were in disarray and parallels have been drawn between the Thatcher-Major era and W’s 2000-2008 presidencies.

Labour is saddled with a sagging UK economy and the public is tired of politicians and being perceived as an outsider will be beneficial. The economy is the major issue, although immigration, unemployment, and the deficit are also issues voters care about. The overall voting intent paints a grim picture, but the election will hinge upon what happens in the ridings and which party gets a majority of seats::

If no party gets a majority, the result will be a hung parliament and parties working in coalitions, which some say makes investors uneasy and can make enacting economy-fixing policy difficult. This article echoes these sentiments and interprets the polls as pointing to a hung Parliament.

The expectation is the election to be hotly contested and there will be American-style televised debates for the first time. There will be three themed debates in different parts of the country. Frontrunners typically eschew elections. Since Labour is behind in the polls, allowing debates may allow Labour to redefine itself and come across as “outsiders” out to reform government. The scuttlebutt says that Conservative Leader, David Cameron, has a winsome manner in the spirit of Blair, with a message of compassionate conservatism. {The Conservatives have tried to shed the reputation of being “nasty” and have embraced gays, women, and ethnic minoriries, at least at the surface.} Brown has the reputation of being scholarly and a tad dry. This may remind Canadians of Stéphane Dion, the immediate-past Liberal Leader.

Without digging deep into the poll numbers, my 40,000′ take is the winner will be the party who appears most credible with the economy. The financial crisis stung the UK and rank-and-file workers are still fuming about “fat cats”. Given this, a Keynesian approach {addressing unemployment} in concert with finance reform should give Labour quite a bit of mileage. Both the Labour and Conservative parties supports involvement in Afghanistan, which may be increasingly tough sells, given domestic spending and deficit concerns.

Update {6 April 2010, 6:10PM EDT}:: My blog post on rhizomicon has video clips of PMQs, where Cameron and Brown are going toe-to-toe in a Q&A.

Twitterversion:: @gordonbrown’s Labour {UK}, in for a fight with upcoming elections against David Cameron’s @conservatives. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: George Michael-‘Shoot the Dog’ {2002}, backstory here.

Video:: Biden to Obama, “This is a big f*cking deal”

The signing of the healthcare bill last week was significant in more ways than one. I feel it galvanized the Democrats and I also feel it was critical for Obama to make the healthcare bill “personal” and get fellow Democrats to be rowing in the same direction. I think this was quite a challenge, as the liberal factions of the party are ideologically distinct from the more conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

In the wake of the signing, the Democrats got good news in the form of a public opinion poll reporting 49% saying the bill was a good thing, compared to 40% saying it was bad. There was also a spike in donations, with $1M pouring in last Tuesday without a direct ask.

There has been a backlash and alleged incidents of offices being vandalized. The Republicans needed to respond to thwart any momentum, but I’m not convinced their strategy is sound. Sarah Palin started a bit of controversy with her reload and targeting comments in a speech in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, NV::

The media tried to whip Sarah Palin’s “targeting” and “reload” comments into pageview fodder, but I think the big issue for Republicans is a lack of a message that resonates with a country in the economic doldrums. John McCain claims that Palin’s words are just political rhetoric::

While this all makes for good drama, I’m not sure how effective this type of press coverage is in building support. I can’t help but think of the utter carnage of the 1994 midterm elections. Bill Clinton was weakened by a lack of support in Congress from his own party as a Washington outsider and…Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. This C-SPAN footage is a bit dry, but it shows a systematic delineation of undermining public support of Democrats and was more successful than many anticipated. The Democrats would go on to lose 8 seats in the Senate and 54 in the House, earning a majority in both.

I think there was and perhaps still is an opportunity for the Republicans to pick up quite a few seats, but there needs to be rhetoric that moderates can sink their teeth into. Without a more substantial agenda resonating, I predict low turnout, as voters sit the midterms out.

Twitterversion:: Post healthcare, Dems get bump in polls & donations last wk. Rep. backlash ensues. Doubtful if 2010 will be another 1994 @Prof_K

Song:: Okkervil River-‘Our Life Is Not a Movie’

Iceland has recently passed a law banning profit from the nudity of its employees, which may spell the end of the sex industry. The relatively small country is home to 320,000 people, where 100 immigrant women have come to work in strip clubs.  The legislation is based on feminist not religious reasons and it is argued that the rise in the number of female parliamentarians (almost 50%) and a strong womens’ movement that is united against the sex industry. Additionally, Iceland has a female prime minister who is openly lesbian, who has been a strong feminist presence in the parliament, the Alþingi {Althingi}. In the US and the UK, feminism is divided, as the sex industry is debated as being degrading or empowering.

What’s interesting is the interaction of culture and feminism in Iceland. The Nordic countries have increasingly negative attitudes towards prostitution and it appears that the feminism is Iceland is less fragmented in its values. I’m curious what the attitudes towards sex are in Iceland and the degree of openness there is towards it, which may explain how feminism is socially constructed in Iceland. I get a sense that places where sex is more taboo and a cultural hot-button topic, the more fragmented feminism will be. I’m not using fragmented pejorativelyJust a thought.

Well, as the strip clubs in Iceland fade away, perhaps they can sell the brass poles on eBay. This NYTimes article from a few years back reports that the owners of the strip club used as a location shoot for The Sopranos auctioned off the stripper poles due to an impending remodel.

Twitterversion:: Iceland banning strip clubs for feminist, not religious reasons. Intersection of culture, sex work, & feminism. #ThickCulture

Song:: Bjork-‘The Hunter’ & ‘Human Behaviour’

There are two relatively recent articles on US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner. One is in The Atlantic, which is more critical, while the one in the New Yorker is more sanguine. The above video is from The Atlantic talking about Geithner’s svengali appeal and Jedi-mind-trick abilities—except with Wall Street and those in the public who know him and what he does. Inside the beltway, it sounds like he’s a veritable David Watts in many circles. This is pure Erving Goffman à la The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life.

Ironically, he’s become a target of both conservatives who think he’s been too tough on the banking sector and the left who think he should have moved towards nationalizing the banks. He allegedly got the Treasury secretary job because of a good interview with Barack, despite being in the running with his old boss, Lawrence Summers, and the stalwart Paul Volcker, a Carter appointee who helped get the economy under control under Ronald Reagan’s watch.

The biggest problem I have with Geithner’s approach is that he’s operating under the assumption that there is nothing unsound about the capital markets and is seemingly ignoring the fact that there are structural issues with the US economy that can keep the nation in recession for years. Geithner is reluctant to do anything drastic, such as nationalizing the banks {a last-resort strategy}, because he’s afraid that this will effect a policy change that will have enduring consequences. So, while he’s content with a supply-side bailout with a jobless recovery—employers are working their employees harder, there’s a reluctance to get to the heart of the matter. The oligarchies of the banking sector ran aground with their policies and this needs to be addressed. The banks and the politicians have been systematically allowing for the concentration of power, which was accelerated in Clinton’s second term and continued W. MIT professor Simon Johnson, an IMF chief economist with experience with emerging market crises echoes the sentiment that the banking sector needs to be scrutinized to say the least. Geithner’s response is that the US economy is not an emerging one, but I say that all bets are off given the structural changes going on with permanent middle-class job losses and the productivity wave being over. His remarks may go down in history as the heights of arrogance, particularly if the US economy languished like Japan’s since 1990. There are parallels between Japan then and the US now, which should be examined.

A year ago, apparently Obama himself was playing pollyanna with Geithner in hoping the US would grow itself out of the recession. The economic sturm & drang and bailout drama played out over the course of the year and Obama has stood behind Tim, through thick and thin. A cautious, measured approach has been the code of the day with the aim of patching together the economy and nor falling prey to populist temptations to mete out justice, mediæval-style à la Marsellus Wallace.

While much of the framing of managing the economy has been couched in terms like vengeance against the greedy Wall Street robber barons and how that affords political capital, the reality is that he’s a centrist. Barack’s faith in Tim Geithner is somewhat telling. More telling is how the Obama administration has done so little to frame the Geithner agenda and to “sell” the policy and from a marketing and PR perspective, change this ain’t. More problematic is the fact that I don’t think these policies are going to help the US economy recover. Sure, the Geithner plan stemmed the hemorrhaging of public funds and served up a cosmetic recovery on the cheap, but is this so much window-dressing on an economy that still geared towards concentrating power and wealth AND subject to similar meltdowns without increased regulatory oversight? I feel there are structural issued that need to address failpoints in how financial intermediaries are managed, which need to be addressed in order to prevent future meltdowns and fully restore the faith in US capital markets.

Twitterversion:: No love for Treasury secretary Tim Geithner? PR #fail, but are policies fiddling while Rome burns? #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: The Jam-‘David Watts’

Recently, in the Chronicle of Higher Education {I sometimes refer to it as the “chronic of high ed” on Twitter, cue rimshot  }, there have been articles on the dearth of jobs for academics in the humanities. “Thomas Benton’s” “The Big Lie “ was countered with James Mullholland’s “Neither a Trap nor a Lie“.

I won’t weigh in on the discussion about the state of academic careers in the humanities, as the above articles and comments have done that for me. My focus is on the structural issues of this situation. Moreover, I think many should heed what is going on here, as it’s a case of too many applicants searching for too-few jobs. Unless the job losses from the Big Recession are replaced, I’m afraid many middle-class wage earners will be facing the same situation, resulting in employees being at a disadvantage in the power dynamics of the labour market.

The humanities offer a rich corpus of knowledge that can be used to address issues of the day. I recall heading to lectures by Jacques Derrida on forgiveness at the UC-Irvine Critical Theory Institute, as well as talks by scholars such as W. J. T. Mitchell on images and Anne Friedberg on the metaphor of the window. Universities see value in offering courses in the humanities, but in the business of higher education, the model results in an oversupply of labour. In a gross simplification, humanities {and social science} graduate students are taken on to teach discussion sections as cheap labour that results in more doctorate degree holders than the market will bear. Even if graduate students are warned of the job market, nobody expect’s the Spanish inquisition. Universities seeking to maximize efficiencies not only draw upon graduate students, but also well-qualified adjuncts at discounted wages. The humanities, in my opinion, often suffer from a public relations problem. In a sense, they can be the ivoriest of the ivory tower, often communicating in a dense linguistic code that causes lay audiences to scratch their heads. Phallogocentrism? Huh? While I’m not advocating that the humanities need to be applied in nature, I feel there is a need for their staking of a claim for relevance.

Is there a need for a rethinking and a restructuring of academe? Are departments creating silos of knowledge based on fields? Should curricula be reconceptualized?

I’m sure these questions will resonate with many and strike fear into the hearts of others. Hence, these questions are ones that can be readily addressed by organizational sociology. Academe is one of the last feudal systems. This doesn’t mean that all universities are terrible places, but that context is everything, as they are structures with power relations and resource allocations that are highly idiosyncratic. Moreover, they are businesses with cost and profit centres. While Bourdieuean {huh? what?} analysis that incorporates::

1. Field. Social space where individuals and groups vie for dominance
2. Habitus. The social norms and rules affecting behaviours
3. Capital. Economic, symbolic, knowledge, and relational resources used by individuals and groups.

could illuminate institutional dynamics, I’m afraid it will also illuminate how difficult change will be without a radical discontinuity, e.g., financial exigency. There also is the question of values, as well as what is valued.

I’m actually in favour of a life of the mind and I see the value in humanistic inquiry to society and in an everyday sense. I feel how the humanities are currently situated within universities is often problematic, in that there’s a social reproduction of humanistic fields that, in my opinion, limit how the humanities can impact society. I hope for more cross-disciplinary modes of inquiry that span how fields are currently defined. While some may balk at this, I’m also for the humanities {and social sciences} as being more popularized, but which institutions would take this on.

Twitterversion:: Thoughts on the life of the mind & the role of the humanities. #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Ministry-“So What”

Fuck Theory: Adventures in Pedagogy-Judy Edition

Twitterversion:: via Fuck Theory::”I’m not sure that being pleasing to the other is the task of pedagogy…”-Judith Butler @Prof_K

Song:: The Veronicas-“Popular”