The Assault on Student Affairs

Student affairs professionals, take note: higher education reformers have set their sights on your offices, programs, and services. I first sensed that a target was now on student affairs at an event earlier this summer on "hacking" the university. The introductory speaker at the event claimed that there is no evidence demonstrating that being on campus or interacting with faculty benefits students. I wrote in response to this event that the speaker was apparently unfamiliar with the vast body of scholarship conducted by and on behalf of student affairs. A series of articles released yesterday by The Chronicle of Higher Education reflected a similar lack of knowledge. Increasingly, ignorance of student affairs is rampant. The present narrative is dangerous and threatens to undermine precisely the learning and development higher education reformers demand.

Let's take a closer look at the contours of this narrative. The first article, titled "The Comfortable Kid," was featured on The Chronicle's homepage. The underlying message of the article is that, through various recent developments, colleges are coddling students. The source of this obsession with comfort is a student-as-consumer ethos in which decisions are made according to what makes students happy. The article acknowledges that this ethos is connected to a necessary desire to care for students in ways that help them learn and develop. What's interesting is that, amidst this discussion of the tension between coddling and care, the article quickly pivots to the history of student affairs. In other words, if students are being coddled or turned into "marshmallows," in the words of the article's author, student affairs is responsible. It is student affairs professionals who have encouraged the individualization, customization, and personalization that characterizes today's college experience. Interestingly enough, many of the examples cited in the article of protecting students from discomfort that causes them to intellectually grow come from academic affairs. Nevertheless, the narrative remains one in which the comfortable kid inhabits a bubble constructed by student affairs.

The case can be made that student affairs sometimes goes overboard in its desire to make the college experience inclusive and sensitive to multiple identities. But student affairs is also responsible for challenging students in crucial ways. It pushes them to dialogue with one another to recognize and appreciate differences. It asks them to try new experiences that make comfort zones far more porous. It develops opportunities for students to hold one another accountable and assume leadership positions. And it connects curricula with local communities. I would argue, in fact, that student affairs does a better job than academic courses of forcing students to contend with cognitive dissonance. Such experiences outside or alongside the classroom sometimes require that student affairs provide layers of support to allow students to reflect and take measured risks. To some, this support resembles coddling, leading to a misinformed narrative in which student affairs is preoccupied with comfort. A deeper understanding of student affairs reveals that support is a simply a means to incrementally challenge students.

Linked within this article is one on student services spending. The article's title suggests that spending on student services is rising because colleges are competing through amenities. It notes, but largely dismisses, other explanations, such as meeting the needs of non-traditional students, increasing resources related to enrollment, and fulfilling regulatory burdens. We cannot deny that spending on student services has increased at most colleges and universities, and the trend is problematic. However, as the article correctly shows, a portion of this spending has gone to vital services like counseling students coping with mental illness and developing programs to prevent sexual assault. The article then rather mysteriously shifts to a discussion of student services throughout history, including a few quotes from noted higher education historian John Thelin. Thelin traces the rise of student services to the 1980s and, for some odd reason, bashes student affairs. Talking about his former students who have gone into student affairs, Thelin recalls: "They started describing student services not as extracurricular but co-curricular," he says. "I think the idea was to legitimize and ensure the survival of some of the things they were offering." This quote showcases another dimension of the narrative against student affairs.

Student affairs becomes merely an expenditure category whose evolution over time is a factor of colleges competing through amenities. The tone of the article makes clear that this spending is considered wasteful and detracts from the teaching mission of colleges. Missing in the narrative is any recognition that student affairs is instrumental in promoting learning on campuses across the country. An investment in student services isn't just an attempt to attract applicants with pretty buildings. Surveys tell us time and time again that significant learning happens through experiences outside of the classroom--experiences that are designed, implemented, and assessed by student affairs professionals. Although the amenities arms race in higher education warrants close scrutiny, we should not in the process denigrate student affairs as extracurricular activities masquerading as legitimate learning opportunities. We risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as student affairs often makes learning truly come alive in college, regardless of whether or not it is in a fancy, new building.

There is an assault on student affairs that is gaining momentum. The narrative that constitutes this assault is one that equates student affairs with wasteful spending and turning colleges into a country club. As someone who researches the neoliberal university, I am certainly sympathetic to any discussion of consumerism in the context of higher education. But I believe the assault on student affairs undermines significant efforts to help students learn and develop as critical thinkers and citizens. Student affairs professionals would be wise to follow this narrative and pay heed to some of the very reasonable critique. However, they should also push back and fight false claims that student affairs is unrelated to spending on those activities that promote active learning. They should challenge false claims that student affairs is all about comfort.

Taking Action for Adjuncts

After being surrounded by a sea of boxes for the past few days, I have some time to step away from unpacking and relax. I'll have more on this process of moving for a new academic position and my efforts to integrate in the community soon. In the meantime, I'm responding to a provocative article in Chronicle's Vitae. In "Blaming the Victim: Ladder Faculty and the Lack of Adjunct Activism," Lori Harrison-Kahan highlights the silence of tenure-track faculty with respect to the inequities of adjunct/contingent/tenure-ineligible faculty. At the conclusion of the article, Harrison-Kahan writes:

Through the labor movement taking place in Boston and across the country, contingent professors are using their newfound voices to begin formulating answers. But it is also the responsibility of ladder faculty to take action, to openly acknowledge how exploitative labor and hiring practices have affected the lives and work of those unprotected by tenure. 

I quite agree. Yet I wondered aloud what, precisely, would taking action for adjuncts entail? Initially, I had difficulty coming up with ways that tenure-track faculty can address inequities adjuncts experience. Chalk this up to my naiveté or lack of experience. However, I realized that my previous employer, the Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Maryland, provides a few examples. Here are the steps this forward-looking office initiated or implemented over the course of the past two years. These steps illuminate several courses of action for tenure-track faculty at other institutions to demonstrate activism for adjuncts.

1. Get a sense of numbers and issues - Many institutions do not meaningfully keep track of the number of adjuncts they employ. Although all of this information should be available through the human resources record system, it is often the case that no one is tasked with collecting it or presenting it to show trends. This was the case at the University of Maryland. When you don't know how many adjuncts are employed at the institution over time, it is difficult to realize how the academic labor force is changing. A task force was convened by the Senate to study adjuncts, and it became patently clear that, over the preceding decades, the university's reliance upon adjuncts had exploded. Tenure-track faculty numbers remained constant, while adjunct numbers ticked upwards. As a result, the university's academic labor force now includes more than 60% adjuncts. In addition to understanding the proportion of adjuncts employed at the university, the task force conducted a survey of adjunct working conditions. The findings were revealing: no recognition, exclusion from governance, lack of promotion, outright abuse, and so on. So, one early step that tenure-track faculty can take: request that a study of adjuncts be conducted and periodically updated. Encourage other tenure-track faculty to support the initiative and even participate in the committee or task force. When the report is finished, disseminate it widely in your department.

2. Create opportunities for more inclusive governance - Raising awareness is important, but it fails to change material conditions. One of the findings of the task force at the University of Maryland was that, despite the fact that adjunct numbers where steadily rising, the seats in the Senate allotted to adjuncts remained constant. Additionally, it was often the case that adjuncts had no voice in departmental decision-making. This means that adjuncts are becoming more and more vital to the operations of the university, yet excluded from the formal structures of enacting change within the institution. Such exclusion makes it possible for inequities to continue, as adjuncts have few opportunities to express their opinions or share their experiences. Tenure-track faculty can help to re-calibrate this power differential. A second step is to fight to have adjuncts included in departmental decision-making. Don't simply rely upon adjuncts to implement the curriculum you create--partner with them and draw upon their knowledge. Furthermore, propose that systems of institutional shared governance reflect the realities of the academic labor force and that the composition of seats are periodically reviewed. 

3. Include adjuncts in departmental and campus recognition opportunities - One of my responsibilities was to determine which departments across campus include adjuncts in their annual rewards. The answer: hardly any. All departments and colleges honored outstanding tenure-track faculty. And the institution had a number of prestigious awards for the very best faculty. However, only a few departments and colleges made adjuncts eligible for awards or created a separate award for adjuncts. Indeed, there were more awards for graduate students than adjuncts. A third, relatively straightforward step is to rewrite the eligibility rules for faculty awards to include adjuncts. It makes sense that adjuncts, by virtue of their specific responsibilities, may not be eligible for all awards. Nevertheless, it strikes me as unreasonable and cruel to have, for example, an outstanding teaching award that is not open to a long-term adjunct who teaches multiple sections of an important course with great student reviews. If departmental politics get in the way of including adjuncts, at least propose to create a separate award. The important thing is to start thinking about how adjuncts can and should be recognized for their good work. 

4. Ensure that professional development is open to all faculty - Hosting a conference on engaged scholarship? Invite adjuncts. Organizing an orientation for new faculty? Invite adjuncts. Creating a series of luncheons to promote cross-disciplinary research? Invite adjuncts. Step four basically means re-imagining the concept of faculty. Any opportunities for tenure-track faculty to do their work better should be made available to adjuncts. Because they are also faculty. Tenure-track faculty should ask when opportunities are announced, when they register, and/or when they arrive if adjuncts can also attend. 

5. Question contracts and ladders - A major finding of the task force at the University of Maryland was that contracts made a mockery of job security. Fear of losing their job was motivating adjuncts, not the possibility of promotion based on strong work. This creates two points of action for tenure-track faculty. For those in positions of power to hire adjuncts, work with human resources to figure out how to offer multi-term contracts for adjuncts that have strong performance records. Some adjuncts must live semester to semester, without knowing whether or not they will have a job from fall to spring. Such uncertainty is not only emotionally damaging, it disrupts the continuity that allows instructors to develop relationships, improve courses, and become stable enough to give back to the university in other ways. Another point of action for tenure-track faculty is to request that adjuncts have clear job descriptions and a ladder for promotion. Just as tenure-track faculty know what they must do to move from assistant to associate, adjuncts should know what to do to move from lecturer to senior lecturer. Each title should have clear guidelines and include an opportunity to renegotiate payment. 

In summary, tenure-track faculty should not be silent. They should acknowledge that they are complicit in the plight of adjuncts and realize that the destinies of all academics, regardless of rank, are intertwined in the neoliberal university. Tenure-track faculty should locate or create opportunities to get a sense of the numbers and issues, make governance more inclusive, include adjuncts in recognition processes, open professional development to all faculty, and question contract systems and ladders. 

I'm sure that I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg and, given that my time as a lecturer was short-lived, I can't speak on behalf of adjuncts. I can only work to follow these steps as an assistant professor at my new institution, if they haven't been initiated yet. I would love to hear from others with a stake in this conversation: in what ways can tenure-track faculty take action for adjuncts?

The Relationship Between Colleges and Corrections--And Why You Should Care

A recent story in The Chronicle of Higher Education caught my eye. It described several programs in which college professors teach courses to prison inmates. Hello, publicly engaged scholars! Apparently, exposing the millions of incarcerated Americans to new ideas can be politically charged if the program receives state funding. In the article, Ted O'Brien, a state senator in New York, opposed a proposal to provide public money to teach college courses in ten prisons. He explained: "However well-intentioned, I cannot support a policy that would divert resources away from helping students in good standing and their families afford a quality education." Interestingly, states have routinely directed money from higher education institutions to prisons. It is one of many ways that colleges and corrections are related and one of many reasons anyone with a stake in higher education should care about our increasingly imprisoned nation.

One way of thinking about state higher education funding is through Hovey's (1999) concept of the "balance wheel." Effectively, in good economic times, higher education is generously funded. However, in poor economic times, higher education is one of the first areas to receive cuts. Hovey usefully suggested a few possible explanations for this. First, legislators argue that colleges and universities have their own reserves and can better absorb financial instability. Second, higher education institutions are believed to be better equipped to translate cuts into changes in employee pay than other state agencies, where there may be pre-established payscales and multi-year contracts subject to collective bargaining agreements. Third, legislators think colleges and universities can easily adjust spending by reducing seats or courses. Lastly, higher education institutions can pass more fees onto students, unless they are bound to maintain tuition and fees by state law. The general idea is that, in a difficult economic climate, other areas of state funding get their pieces of the taxpayer pie first. Higher education gets the chunks of crust stuck to the edge of the pie tin.

Prisons certainly work according to a different set of realities than universities. Laying off prison staff can have dire consequences, and we can't ask prisoners to pay for their own incarceration (though it should be noted that inmates are frequently expected to pay out-of-pocket for a range of basic necessities). As America continues to incarcerate more of its population, the tab picked up by state governments continues to escalate. There are now some 2.4 million people locked up in the United States. The state and federal government spends over $700 billion annually on corrections. In several states, spending on prisons now exceeds expenditures on higher education, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and California. A report by California Common Sense found that, between 1980 and 2011, state spending on higher education decreased by 13 percent in inflation adjusted dollars. Over the same period, spending on corrections jumped by 436 percent. The state forked over $8,667 per college student in 2011, compared to $50,000 per inmate. Every single state in the country spent more money per inmate than it did per primary or secondary student, according to CNN Money. Beyond a shadow of doubt, states are prioritizing spending on corrections.

In other words, policy decisions are surely diverting resources away from helping "students in good standing and their families" access a high-quality, affordable college education. When states wage a failed war on drugs, impose mandatory minimum sentences, and sign contracts with corporations obligating them to fill private prisons, more taxpayer dollars go to keeping people behind bars than behind desks. The reality is that spending public money on higher education, both within prisons walls and on ivied campuses, is a policy win-win. It makes higher education accessible and affordable, while also lowering crime and incarceration rates. Research shows that the recidivism rate of prisoners who even minimally participate in college courses is much lower than average. In addition to potentially creating a pathway for inmates to acquire skills and earn degrees, a lower recidivism rate means few people are incarcerated, potentially increasing the crumbs appropriated to higher education. Additionally, studies indicate that one of the positive externalities of higher education is lower crime and incarceration rates. Thus, if we want fewer people to return to jail, spending a small amount on the provision of college courses in prisons is smart. If we want fewer people in jail to begin with, and less money directed to corrections, we should stop thinking of higher education as the "balance wheel."

Once we realize that money once used to build a vigorous public higher education system is now being used to build prisons in small towns across America, we can see that the destinies of professors and prisoners are intricately bound. It is one thing to bemoan state budget cuts--it is quite another to follow the money trail and ask difficult questions. I urge everyone working in higher education to ask those difficult questions. Indeed, to advocate for prison reform and demand that "corrections" lives up to its name is to champion adequate funding for higher education.

On Empirical Superiority and What Truly Counts in Higher Education

I recently attended a higher education reform event that, putting it lightly, induced both thought and reflection. I wrote a response to some of the claims made during the event and shared it with a few of the organizers. In particular, I took issue with a comment surrounding the value of on-campus experiences and in-person interactions with faculty. I supported my argument by vaguely referencing the massive body of literature that analyzes the effects of college on students. I failed to cite specific sources, mainly because we’re talking about thousands of empirical studies over many decades—studies on how students learn, transition, and succeed in college, otherwise known as the foundation of higher education and student affairs scholarship.

After I shared my piece, one of the organizers asked that I name specific studies and findings. It initially struck me as odd that I bear the burden of citing sources for my arguments, while he can make any claim he likes without reference to empirical research. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that he was giving a speech and I was writing an essay, and platforms carry different expectations. I also set aside the obvious challenges of talking about research through Twitter (as it turns out, 140 characters ain't going to cut it when it comes to citing research). In the end, I provided a few examples, all of which are fantastically commonplace in higher education research (e.g., How College Affects Students by Pascarella and Terenzini).

I have come to realize that this Twitter debate was probably a waste of my energy, as it is unlikely to change anyone’s thinking. Although I would like to think that my writing provoked careful consideration of the relationship between campus-based experiences and student learning, I recognize that its reach is limited to the few dozen people who follow me. I don’t expect to read any of the examples I provided in the organizer’s forthcoming book, nor do I anticipate him acting upon my suggestion to host a more balanced reform event by including higher education scholars. In my mind, if you want an event to truly evaluate the future of higher education, don’t stock the panels with edtech evangelists. But before I can shrug off this incident and move on with my life, I want to address the epistemological dimensions of the experience.

More specifically, I want to talk about the nature of knowledge and empirical superiority. One of the rhetorical devises employed at events like this is to make sweeping claims, then throw “data,” “evidence,” and/or “research” in the faces of the audience. This effectively inoculates the speaker against criticism and turns an assertion into irrefutable fact. Before you know it, we “know” the “truth,” leaving little room for alternatives. The problem is that anyone with a modicum of training in research understands that what we “know” can be rather circumstantial and fragile. You cite a few studies that say x, then I counter with a few studies that say y, and soon enough we’re embroiled in an empirical pissing match. This happens to be a favorite pastime of academics. I don’t want to downplay the importance of dialogue and disagreement when it comes to the evolution of knowledge. Rather, the idea here is that what we “know” when it comes to higher education is far muddier than many people in the “disruptive innovation” movement like to believe.

Let’s take an example from the event I attended. The most frequent claim made during the event was that there is little to no learning that actually happens at colleges and universities. There is reason to buy into this claim. We have empirical findings that certainly raise questions about what students are learning, and some even indicate that students aren’t cognitively changing much from start to finish. Yet we also have studies that either challenge the validity of the aforementioned findings or show the opposite—that many experiences (inside the classroom and outside the classroom) lead to positive outcomes like the development of leadership skills, enhancement of critical thinking, and capacity for self-advocacy and political engagement. As it turns out, our knowledge of learning in higher education is highly dependent upon what type of learning is valued and how it is measured. In other words, findings differ according to context, data, and methodology. I don’t refute the possibility that there is limited learning on campus. Nor do I completely the reject the possibility that online media provide equally credibly means of promoting learning. I simply recognize that saying there is no evidence that campus-based experiences or interaction with faculty are beneficial to students is an audacious proposition, one that borders on the ridiculous.

When I objected to a panel’s interpretation of learning and suggested that there are many social benefits to investment in higher education, I met another rhetorical device that seems particularly popular among economists. The response I received was: “I’m not convinced by that evidence.” I don’t deny him the right to evaluate research and use whatever he deems most compelling, but what happens is that the knowledge produced by disciplines given most respect in policy circles rises above the others. Even though higher education researchers understand the issues and realities of colleges and universities better than anyone, we are placed low on the totem pole of knowledge producers. In these circles, it doesn’t matter that my evidence casts a shadow of doubt on your claims because you can enforce empirical superiority and trump my evidence.

I want to end by emphasizing something missing in all of the discussions during the event I attended. It is something that I wish I had noted in my Twitter debate about evidence, but failed to bring up because it is an undervalued form of knowledge. That is, I know that students learn and benefit as a result of on-campus experiences and interactions with faculty because they tell me that they do. It struck me that some of the experts speaking about higher education reform have hardly worked on a college campus. They haven’t supervised resident assistants and watched them grow to become leaders. They haven’t advised a sorority and helped women take action against rising incidents of sexual assault. They haven’t received letters from students years after they had them in class—letters just saying hello or thanking them for revealing new insights. They haven’t run into former students who ascribe their professional success to a really great mentor or professor. In truth, they hardly know anything about students or have much experience working with them.

The notion that we have no evidence that being on campus and interacting with faculty is beneficial is laughable because it runs contrary to what students, staff, and faculty experience on a regular basis. This is the knowledge that keeps me in higher education, and it is the evidence that truly matters. 

My Morning with Higher Education "Hackers"

These [traditional colleges and universities] are organizations that were essentially designed in the 19^th 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.

Walking away from the event, I felt helpless and defeated. There is a war raging in the world of higher education policy over the future of colleges and universities. My aim was to fight the good fight, but I learned a valuable lesson: choose your battles wisely. Engagement comes in many shapes and sizes, and my greatest contributions to challenging the faulty claims I heard is likely not through raising my hand or allowing every talking head to infuriate me. It is instead through careful thought, provocative writing, empirical research, and good teaching. If I can do that, I wish the machines the best of luck in replacing me.