A good piece from the MLA meeting by Tiffany Kraft:
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2 thoughts on “The Soul of Higher Education Under Corporatization”
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The essay is brilliant and the Wilde quotes on target. The major issue at hand is what would happen if “we won”? In other words, if the traditional monetary rewards, rank, tenure and complements were obtained and even upgraded, what are the faculty offering? Globally, post secondary education as an institution is changing, the students entering, their needs/wants and those of the society into which they will graduate are changing.
In all the rhetoric there is not one clear idea of what post secondary academics should be, how it should/could be delivered and where that individual and society will be once they step out of the “ivy covered” walls or the tower, like the starry-eyed “Straw Man from Baum’s Oz ” clutching his “degree” and into a global society.
The article rails against “corporate institutions”. Yet, the question not asked is have these wall street wizards out foxed themselves and bought and are selling an obsolete product? Are all sides trying to breathe life into an historic model that is perhaps, aging as fast as their ubiquitous cell phones.
Thank you for the comment. tabeles. I am working on a larger piece that I hope will ask (and attempt to answer) the tough questions that this post doesn’t. Of course, Ellen Schrecker’s _The Lost Soul of Higher Education_ shows the “structural changes that have transformed the very nature of American higher education” (3).
Kind regards,
Tiffany