President Joe Biden, reacting to Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning affirmative action in university admissions, said he strongly disagrees with the decision. The court overturned affirmative action 6-3.
I agree that college should be publicly funded, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Even CA, where college tution-free is in the state constitution, has found ways to get tens of thousand of dollars out of even residents in “fees.”
Because fees aren’t tuition, apparently.
I’ve been involved in higher ed for a long time, and I don’t know anyplace where government funding for college or university is increasing. Even the free CC idea seems to be a non-starter.
I think it’s because there are a couple of problems with higher education.
One, it really doesn’t have any rules or regulations outside of FERPA laws. Everything else is the wild, wild west in terms of how colleges treat students, so that leaves a lot of room for colleges to mistreat or take advantage of students until they’re motivated enough to litigate, if that’s even possible for all but the wealthiest of students.
Two, there’s no standards of higher education. There are standards for primary education, but little checks on the quality of your education beyond that. Only other way to “check if the product is good” is to take personal time showing up to lectures but that’s not really a feasible solution.
Three, all colleges are for profit companies. Public or Private, it doesn’t matter, the only difference is the scale of greed. The real goal here should be to rip the money and profits out of the hands of executives and committee members. Personally, I’m in favor of eminent domaining all colleges.
Four, why is a national good (the education of it’s citizens) being held by individual colleges? Seriously, the Department of Education has about two to three decades worth of work trying to catch up on all this BS.
1, 2, and 4 are mistaken, I’m afraid. I’ve spent a long time in universities. Almost two decades. For points 1 and 2, there’s the accreditation process. Accreditation is a huge deal. It takes a couple years to get accredited, and that accreditation has to be renewed every so often. That means people ARE coming to watch individual classes, inspect outcomes, etc. and so forth. Generally, students have to attend an accredited school in order to get federal funding. It’s those boards that grand accredit schools that set rules and standards. That’s why DeSantis is trying to set up his own accreditation system: he doesn’t want Florida schools to have to meet the nation-wide standards those accreditation boards provide. And we saw some of those for-profit schools that took federal money shut down permanently not too long ago for bad outcomes.
For 4, the LAST FUCKING THING YOU WANT is government dictating what’s taught, especially in higher ed. Can you imagine what would happen if some political party got its claws into whatever federal mechanism set curriculum? You want independent scholars teaching their expertise regardless of the political implications of those teachings. Yes, that scholar needs to be qualified by the opinions of their peers, and no, academic freedom shouldn’t allow a historian to present an exegesis of the Book of Mormon or whatever, unless they are specifically a historian of Mormonism. But consider the current political environment. Do you really want the government to step into a polisci course on civil rights and say there shall be no discussion of race or sexual orientation in these classes? Surely being aware of those movements is fucking key to understanding the Civil Rights movement. Or perhaps it might say an IR class shall only teach Social Darwinism and Manifest Destiny.
I generally think government is worth the cost and the trouble it causes, and is generally better for society than lack of one. But once you let it start telling you what to teach, you’ve stepped into 1984.
I agree that college should be publicly funded, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Even CA, where college tution-free is in the state constitution, has found ways to get tens of thousand of dollars out of even residents in “fees.”
Because fees aren’t tuition, apparently.
I’ve been involved in higher ed for a long time, and I don’t know anyplace where government funding for college or university is increasing. Even the free CC idea seems to be a non-starter.
I think it’s because there are a couple of problems with higher education.
One, it really doesn’t have any rules or regulations outside of FERPA laws. Everything else is the wild, wild west in terms of how colleges treat students, so that leaves a lot of room for colleges to mistreat or take advantage of students until they’re motivated enough to litigate, if that’s even possible for all but the wealthiest of students.
Two, there’s no standards of higher education. There are standards for primary education, but little checks on the quality of your education beyond that. Only other way to “check if the product is good” is to take personal time showing up to lectures but that’s not really a feasible solution.
Three, all colleges are for profit companies. Public or Private, it doesn’t matter, the only difference is the scale of greed. The real goal here should be to rip the money and profits out of the hands of executives and committee members. Personally, I’m in favor of eminent domaining all colleges.
Four, why is a national good (the education of it’s citizens) being held by individual colleges? Seriously, the Department of Education has about two to three decades worth of work trying to catch up on all this BS.
1, 2, and 4 are mistaken, I’m afraid. I’ve spent a long time in universities. Almost two decades. For points 1 and 2, there’s the accreditation process. Accreditation is a huge deal. It takes a couple years to get accredited, and that accreditation has to be renewed every so often. That means people ARE coming to watch individual classes, inspect outcomes, etc. and so forth. Generally, students have to attend an accredited school in order to get federal funding. It’s those boards that grand accredit schools that set rules and standards. That’s why DeSantis is trying to set up his own accreditation system: he doesn’t want Florida schools to have to meet the nation-wide standards those accreditation boards provide. And we saw some of those for-profit schools that took federal money shut down permanently not too long ago for bad outcomes.
For 4, the LAST FUCKING THING YOU WANT is government dictating what’s taught, especially in higher ed. Can you imagine what would happen if some political party got its claws into whatever federal mechanism set curriculum? You want independent scholars teaching their expertise regardless of the political implications of those teachings. Yes, that scholar needs to be qualified by the opinions of their peers, and no, academic freedom shouldn’t allow a historian to present an exegesis of the Book of Mormon or whatever, unless they are specifically a historian of Mormonism. But consider the current political environment. Do you really want the government to step into a polisci course on civil rights and say there shall be no discussion of race or sexual orientation in these classes? Surely being aware of those movements is fucking key to understanding the Civil Rights movement. Or perhaps it might say an IR class shall only teach Social Darwinism and Manifest Destiny.
I generally think government is worth the cost and the trouble it causes, and is generally better for society than lack of one. But once you let it start telling you what to teach, you’ve stepped into 1984.