And behold! On this day, in the twilight days of the year of our Lord 2015, the NYT dared print something truthful about education!

Once per month the NYT dares to print something insightful about education, something that doesn't flatter centrist sensibilities.  This month the NYT dares to notice that producing more high school graduates is not the same thing as producing more college-ready graduates.  One might dare to hope that next month the NYT will notice that simply following "best practices" is insufficient to guarantee that they will succeed in college.

Next Book: Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

My next reading project will be Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.  Although not specifically a book on educational issues, it probes deep into the heart of the American psyche, and is considered relevant even to this day by a great many commentators from a wide range of ideological commitments.

How the sides get flipped

NYU is facing criticism after their MA in Arts Politics program declined to waive a student's application fees, and said in an email that if he can't pay a $65 application fee he probably can't pay $60k in tuition.  Somehow, this incident has been spun as one in which social justice demands that a student from an apparently disadvantaged background be given a chance to borrow $60k for a graduate program with a questionable economic return.

I don't believe that higher education is or ought to be solely a vocational program.  I do believe, however, that there comes a point where you might be wise to take your BA and go explore the workforce, and that graduate education should only be undertaken after a very sober risk-reward calculation.  Go ahead and include non-economic returns on the reward side of the calculation, but don't ignore economics either.

To the extent that I want to sympathize with the academic left, I wish they'd rediscover economic concerns.  If the social justice crowd won't ask serious questions about whether the disadvantaged should be encouraged to borrow $60k for an MA then I see little hope for any sort of morally respectable or intellectually coherent leftist politics from the academy.

Trump Card

I am usually uninterested in using this blog to discuss the politics of the  non-academic world, but I will make an exception because I had an insight into an analogy between academic politics and national politics.

Everyone who reads this blog (I am generously assuming that I have multiple readers...) knows that I am mystified by academics who respond so well to thoroughly establishment figures when they talk about transformation and radical change.  How will the Director of a government-funded and foundation-funded STEM Education Initiative, a person with countless establishment awards, saying all of the buzzwords that establishment figures cherish, actually shake anything up?

Well, consider the Trump campaign.  Marvel at all of the social conservatives who are flocking to the campaign of a casino owner who is on his third marriage.  Look upon the cultural conservatives who rail against east coast elitists as they cheer for a Manhattan billionaire.  Look at the people who consider this billionaire the voice of the common man.

Now do you get it?

Erika Christakis, the Yale faculty member who attracted massive protests for a very nuanced email on hard questions of speech and offense, has decided to leave the classroom.  Do read her email; it would be hard for any reasonable reader to find anything "unsafe" in what she wrote.  A reasonable person might take issue with some of her conclusions or prescriptions, or even her equivocations, but there is absolutely nothing threatening about what she wrote.  It is deeply ironic that the protesters who claimed to feel so unsafe decided to confront Dr. Christakis' husband (also a Yale faculty member and also a faculty Master in the same residential college as her) instead of her.  They may claim to be modern and progressive and egalitarian, but when a woman spoke out of line they demanded that her husband correct her.

I'm old enough to remember a time when it was the conservatives who were demanding that kids shut up and stop saying offensive things. Well, the kids made one big mistake: They actually listened to their elders. And in the process they became their elders. So now we have the lefty kids running around saying that they feel unsafe when somebody says something about being cautious about going after people for their costumes.

The only good news is that the lefty kids are still offending their conservative elders. Personally, I'd prefer that they did it with rap music and heavy metal and graphic music videos, but I'm to the right of the median academic, so I guess that offending me with this babyish "safe space" talk is half of the point. I do find it strange, though, that the stances that put me to the right of the median academic are also the stances that are most in line with the ACLU. I'm also old enough to remember when "card-carrying member of the ACLU" was a slur used by none other than a member of the Bush dynasty.

Institutionalizing anti-institutional ideology

I'm going to tread somewhat lightly on some of the issues around student protests, not so much to avoid offense as to focus on bigger-picture ideas that I think many people should be able to agree on despite disagreements over some of the particulars.

The recent wave of student protests largely focuses on matters of race and institutional culture.  To the extent that students are demanding that their needs be better served by institutions, I think that the classic institutional response of "We are hiring a new Diversity Coordinator and increasing the staffing of student affairs professionals to serve the needs of under-represented students" is a plausible one.  Obviously a lot hinges on the particulars, but it's at least plausible that hiring people to work with people is a good way forward when the problem was that people's needs weren't being met.

However, to the extent that the protesters' rhetoric critiques institutional racism (a useful conceptual lens for understanding a real thing) and institutional culture, and to the extent that they want accountability from administrators, Freddie deBoer makes the point that hiring an additional diversity administrator just adds one more administrator to a group that will work to protect the institution.  Protecting the institution is hardly a bad thing, but it is not the only thing, and it is certainly not the thing that the students are demanding.  It is, however, something that will probably appease them.

My goal here is certainly not to critique exactly what an administrator ought or ought do, nor is it my goal to suggest that there is something uniquely naive in students being appeased by the appointment of a new institutional figure.  To the contrary, I find a striking parallel between students who are appeased by an institutional response to anti-institutional rhetoric and faculty who sit in workshops and nod excitedly as a person with countless establishment tokens talks about fundamental transformation and reform.  Faculty eat that shit up like pita chips and humus from Trader Joe's.  They'll sit in a hotel conference room whose AC is set to "liquid nitrogen" and get creepy grins on their faces as a Director of a (government-funded) Center for STEM Learning Initiatives talks about how their latest research project resulted in a new app for online quizzes, and how this completely changes the paradigm for education from a sage on a stage to something something.  Ironically, the Director of STEM Learning Initiatives is standing on a stage, persuading his listeners that he has something sagacious to say, and they are, to all appearances, acting out the role of Good Acolyte.  It's creepy.  Do they not realize that just yesterday that same suite was being used for a presentation by the National Association of Vacuum Cleaner Marketers?

Of course, one important theme of this blog is that All Of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again.  Hofstadter recounted how Dewey's excited disciples earnestly set about the Sisyphusean task of institutionalizing anti-institutional educational methods.  Today the newspapers tell the tale of institutions hiring new administrators to end institutional racism.  And in the not-too-distant future that hotel suite will be used by defense contractors holding a workshop on exciting new battle drones that implement Conditional Yardsticks for Longitudinal Operational Navigation (C.Y.L.O.N.).

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality

One point I'm coming to realize is that many of the things that drive me crazy in higher ed come, in part, from a type of restlessness.  This restlessness isn't entirely bad--we are supposed to be people seeking new knowledge, which inherently requires a certain restlessness.  Additionally, education involves hard problems, and we have an obligation to try.  Consequently, we sometimes have to act in defiance of some hard realities.  Being defiant and iconoclastic, I'm not a priori averse to defying hard realities.  To the extent that denying reality keeps you pushing forward, I think it's noble.  When it gets you chasing in a circle, it's a problem.  And when denying reality gets you rushing to embrace conventional wisdom, it's time for me to go see my headache specialist.