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April 7, 2008
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Quote for the day
From Victor Davis Hanson:
One can collate all the various reasons that have embarrassed the current university--the politically correct curriculum, the relaxation of standards, the political imbalance, the intolerance for diversity of thought, etc. But the one charge that proves the most lethal is this same charge of hypocrisy, or the notion that well-paid tenured professors, with life-time assurances of employment of being on the job only 30 weeks a year, and usually accountable for only 6-12 hours of teaching a week on campus, harangue cash-strapped, working students with sizable loans, about the unfairness of society.I have never quite encountered an intrinsically less fair institution than the university, at least in liberal terms of egalitarianism and respect for the underclass. A full professor may damn Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart would never get away with the two-tier system that the university in built upon: the PhD part-timer has no job security, sometimes no benefits, no privileges, and earns usually about 25% of the compensation that is paid to the full professor to teach the identical class.
When one factors in the use of graduate assistants not merely to TA courses, but to teach them in their entirety, then you can appreciate the level of exploitation that the university is built on. And add to the notion that tuition has climbed higher than the annual rate of inflation, and the picture is complete of an institution that is entirely immune from public scrutiny.
I have a modest prediction--just as the bloggers, talk-radio, and cable news began to make irrelevant the grandees at the New York Times and the likes of Dan Rather at CBS, so too online colleges, web-based data archives, and junior colleges are starting to question the notion that one pays $40-50 thousand a year for university training--and often gets biased professors, part-timers and TAs, and a curriculum imbued with popular culture and politically-driven therapeutic courses. Learning and the university are not any longer synonymous, and the divide is ever widening.
The arguments are familiar. But what I want to note here is the combination of arguments about the university that are typically--and unhelpfully--divided up and classified as either "liberal" or "conservative." It's a good "liberal" argument to lament the exploitative employment structure or the excessive tuition rates common to higher ed. It's a standard "conservative" argument to lament the decay of the curriculum. But the classification of such points as either liberal or conservative is dismissive and destructive--partly because they are all part of the same problem (broadly characterizable as lack of accountability), and partly because they polarize people who care about higher education, and who should be making common cause. I look forward to the day when the irrelevant and divisive labeling that is so common to discussions about academe (and which so often amounts to little more than name-calling) can be recognized for the status quo-preserving red herring that it is.
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Comments:
I used to respect Victor Hanson, but isn't he another guy who was glad to have his tenured job until retiring at 50 -- under the generous California pension system -- to go off to a couple of days a week at Hoover? How much teaching is he doing these days?
I have to laugh at these guys who discover how corrupt academia is the day after they pension off to greener pastures, and then spend the rest of their lives whining about how inhospitable academia is to persons of a conservative inclination.
Mike, you seem to be suggesting that he ripped the system off and is something of a hypocrite, as opposed to leaving because he became disappointed, came to feel overly constrained or bored with it, or simply wanted to follow other passions.
As criticisms go, it just seems odd to accuse someone of exploiting academia by abandoning its cushyness 15 years or so before retirement (!) for an untenured, true "publish or perish" existence, especially since that someone continues to be more prolific than most academicians — not only in his area of academic expertise (the classics), but also as a public intellectual.
Or did I misunderstand the thrust of your comment?
Also, Mike, an ad hominem attack is not an adequate substitute for a reasoned argument.
Though I do not, I easily could agree with every nasty, snarky characterization of VDH that Mike can conjure up.
But so what?
None of VDH's personal shortcomings, real or imagined, would have anything whatsoever to do with the accuracy of his observations or the adequacy of his arguments.
Killing the messenger doesn't invalidate the message.
minerva -- Am I kind of snarky about VDH? Well, he is a wee bit snarky too about the teaching duties of professors, and other matters as well.
I will skip what I could say about what I've learned from private conversations with a few of these guys who've left the world of academia for the hard life of conservative "think tanks". I'll just repeat: people who leave behind teaching duties for no teaching duties are in a little bit of a weak position when they criticize the easy life they've left behind.
As for the content of VDH's post, let me consider just a small portion:
"online colleges, web-based data archives, and junior colleges are starting to question the notion that one pays $40-50 thousand a year for university training"
Maybe VDH has been hanging around Stanford too long -- has he forgotten that tuition and fees at the Cal State campus he left are about $3300 per year? (Oh, there's room and board and books, too. Oddly enough, thise are not free.)
And are the $40,000-$50,000 places really starting to feel the heat? Not to judge by their most recent acceptance rates. I doubt that many Harvard or Stanford or Penn students are going to be turning down their acceptance offers for junior colleges or online colleges.
People who shoot messengers are short-sighted. But when messengers choose to deliver a flip message should be prepared for backlash and shrapnel.
Tenured track professors are the few who are not constrained by the quip: "There's no such things as unrealistic goals, only unrealisitc timelines."
Having unrushed time to think, sort, write, think some more, write the revision, and then teach what knowledge has been created is a rare luxury that this modern world cannot afford to squelch.
Not all professors rail against the cruel world, but challenge thinking for thinking's sake. A University education should not be a trade school for corporate worlds to plunder and exploit. It is a chance to absorb the world and question current practices and then ponder avenues for improved solutions. And to further question why we do certain things or think certain ways in the first place. (In fact, why ARE we here?! I slept through that class.)
If we did away with tenured professors and went to a Wal-Mart style of learn-n-earn at the lowest priced tuition school, we would soon be clamoring for unencumbered minds to gather and think and share their knowledge with society. And crucify them for hoarding it.
In fact, we clamor for such impartiliaty every football season when the ref makes a bad call and we discuss whether or not more money should be given so they can focus on reffing duties full-time. And that's for a GAME played by REALLY over-paid folks who do a lot of wrong but also do a helluva lotta community service (insert joke here on: preparation for future jail term)
I conclude that yes it's easy to take shots at those in positons of privelege, but I optimistically believe that once you earn a privelge you feel an internal drive to keep earning it. Unless you're Bush & Cheney...
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