These [traditional
colleges and universities] are organizations that were essentially designed in
the 19th century under conditions of resource scarcity that simply
do not exist today. And they are in a profound state of denial about all of
this. To start, they grossly underestimate how much of the education they
currently provide is already wholly replaceable by a simple broadcast model.
Every aspect of the standard lower division lecture course…can now be perfectly
replicated online today and distributed at no marginal cost.
[…]
Now, if you can get colleges to admit this,
which is hard, they will then sort of fall back on assertions that are rooted
in the intangible, the ineffable, the unprovable, and the ‘you just kind of
have to be here to understand.’ …whatever the benefits of things like being on
the campus and interpersonal interactions with professors may be—and to be
clear, those are real benefits that people have—colleges have absolutely no evidence
that would meet their own standards of scholarship credibly estimating or
quantifying the size of those benefits. None. If you don’t believe me, try
asking them sometime.
-Kevin Carey, Director of the Education Policy Program, New
America Foundation
As I listened to these claims, I cocked my head to the side
and furrowed my eye brows. No evidence whatsoever that being on campus and
interacting with professors is measurably beneficial, you say? My heart began
to race and my palms became sweaty. I wanted to immediately raise my hand and
politely yet firmly declare: “Excuse me?” Saying nothing, I waited until a more
appropriate moment to challenge the speaker—a moment that never arrived. As a
higher education scholar, I knew that there is a massive body of literature
demonstrating the various positive effects of the residential college on
student learning. In fact, there is an entire field of study predicated upon
the analysis of the relationship between various experiences in college and
student development. My sense of outrage was boiling, and it was just 9:30 in
the morning. This was just the beginning of a planned three-hour event titled “Hacking the University: Will Tech Fix Higher Education?” co-sponsored by Slate and
Arizona State University. It was going to be a long three hours.
The event was structured like many others that regularly
take place in our nation’s capital. For those of you who are unfamiliar with
the think tank and policy center circus, let me provide a brief overview of how
these events work. Typically, you arrive to a nondescript office building on a
lettered street and enter the lobby. You are asked by a security officer to
sign in and present identification, after which you proceed to whichever floor
the organization occupies. There is usually a room is set up to film the event
and, like the much maligned lecture, broadcast it over the web at no marginal
cost. In the front of the room is frequently—and ironically—a podium and stage
on which the sages sit, usually in front of a screen or wallpaper with the organization’s
name plastered all over it. We should wonder why these organizations are so wild about MOOCs. They've been doing this for years. You enter the room, perhaps partake in the free
refreshments and take note of the largely white audience starring at their cell
phones and iPads. You get the sense very quickly that this is not a space
designed for dialogue, and you wonder whether you have any right to be there.
After the first speaker, whose job was to explain why higher
education is broken, Robert Wright, a Princeton professor and Future Tense
Fellow at the New America Foundation described his experience teaching a MOOC
for the first time. He then moderated a panel on technological advances related
to the delivery of higher education. One of the panelists, Jeff Selingo, author
of College (Un)bound and frequent
speaker at events like this, argued that higher education is a
one-size-fits-all system trying to accommodate an ever more diverse population
of students. There was the standard debate about MOOCs and the obligatory nod
to Clayton Christensen. After all, you can’t have a legitimate higher education
reform panel without at least one reference to “disruptive innovation.” Perhaps
the most intriguing comments came from Robin Goldberg, Chief Marketing Officer
for the Minerva Project. Although the Minerva Project seems to be designed to
educate a cohort of elite, global cosmopolitans and not affordably educate
millions of Americans, I wanted to hear more about the institution’s heavy
investment in faculty and curricula development. At this point in the day,
nearing 10:30AM, my heart had returned to resting pace. My sense of indignation
slowly dissolved. It was like hearing a story told by your grandfather for the
umpteenth time. We get it, pop. Technology will rescue us from this apocalypse.
In the short time between the panel and the next speaker, I moseyed
to the refreshments. Since I’m still an underpaid graduate student for a few
months, I had a larger than average share of free coffee, leaving me
dangerously caffeinated when the next speaker walked to the podium. Bryan
Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, was tasked with
presenting the first “hack.” Even as a young person, the notion of “hack” was somewhat
unfamiliar. I associated it with breaking into a secure database or doing
something that would result in permanent exile to Russia. Sheepishly, I did
quick Wikipedia search, just to make sure I was on the same page as the
speaker. I was disappointed to learn that “hack” did not, in fact, refer to a method of training young falcons. Instead, it seemingly means solving a
problem. Thus, we begin with the assumption that higher education is a terribly
expensive and ineffective monstrosity that, despite educating nearly everyone
in the room, needs to be altered so that future generations can’t participate
in the wasteful, non-vocational experiences that the rest of us did. And how does
Dr. Caplan believe higher education should be fixed? Naturally, cut government
funding and make it more expensive to
attend. Recommence indignation.
Dr. Caplan’s contention is that we need to scrutinize the
true function of higher education. Doing so reveals that higher education is
basically a signaling mechanism. Echoing a theme that repeated throughout the
event, there is no actual learning that takes place in colleges and
universities. People simply attend to signal social normalness and a baseline
level of intelligence to get a job. Because more people are attending college,
the credentials needed to secure employment are escalating, such that we are
obtaining degrees for jobs whose responsibilities do not truly require
additional education. His proposal was that, due to the fact that higher
education is socially wasteful, the government should stop funding it. This is
perhaps unsurprising since Caplan is affiliated with the Mercatus Center, which
labels itself “the world’s premier university source for market-oriented ideas.”
It’s unclear where this center would be housed if, as Caplan argues, the
government stopped funding public universities like George Mason. Once again,
my experience as a higher education scholar made Caplan’s argument difficult to
stomach. There is a large quantity of scholarship showing the positive
externalities of a college-educated citizenry. In other words, we have quite a lot of empirical findings to support the idea that higher education is not socially wasteful. Heck, there is even good evidence of the economic returns to
government investment in higher education. I’m not even talking about
individual returns on investment. Communities prosper economically when there
is a thriving anchor institution like an accessible public university nearby. This is an idea that sparks debate, but it clearly has disastrous public policy ramifications. So much so that we should wonder why this "hack" is considered at all.
At this point in the morning, I was angry. I couldn't wait
to roast Dr. Caplan and drop knowledge bombs. I started formulating questions
and comments in my mind. I started to get nervous because I wanted so badly to
persuade the audience that what they were hearing was one-sided hogwash. Alas,
the feelings were left to fester, as there would be no time for questions until
after the next “hack” was presented. Amy Laitinen, Deputy Director of the
Education Policy Program, offered reasons why the credit hour was a poor
measure of student learning. I actually found this “hack” compelling and
learned interesting facts about the historical origins of the credit hour.
Apparently, it was devised as a way to delimit faculty workloads and was never
designed to serve as a proxy for student learning. By this point, however, I
was heavily distracted by my burning need to say something. My chance came
after a short panel discussion that effectively made the point that a degree is
increasingly irrelevant in the “tech economy.” The main proponent of this view
was Michael Gibson, Vice President for Grants at the Thiel Foundation. This is
the foundation, you might recall, that gives money to high school students if they forego college and work on projects or startups instead. I set aside my
complaints that the “tech economy” is a poor reflection of the true economy
and, in any case, may be more discourse than structural reality. Finally, the
floor was opened to questions and my hand shot up.
My question and subsequent comment fell out, uncontrollably,
like groceries through a wet paper bag. My voice shook ever so slightly. I felt
so convinced of what I was saying, but its ineloquence left me rattled. Did I
just blow my opportunity? My question and comment were partially answered, then
the panelists pivoted to other topics. And that was it; the world kept turning.
I spaced out during the remainder of the event. There was another “hack”
related to math education, and a halfhearted effort to reconcile the continued conflicts
between technology and educational disparities.
I was principally consumed by a single question. Why did I
care so much? Why was asserting my rightness and their wrongness such an
enveloping priority? I began to reflect upon what brought me to this event in
the first place and what role I should play as an academic. For the most part,
I came to sate my curiosity and begin tracing the ideas circulating within
higher education’s reform-industrial complex. However, I also wanted to engage
in the conversation, publicly, and to affirm that higher education scholars
have a place at the table. That our knowledge is valuable and should be informing the conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment