Re: [xmca] Student Debt

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

On 21 April 2012 21:54, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com> wrote:

> Some articles I read in the NY Review of Books a while ago were reporting
> that the commercialization of British (English particularly) higher
> education exceeded the U.S.
>

One of a few articles, IIRC:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/08/britain-the-disgrace-of-the-universities/


>
> The shift from education towards vocational training seems to continue.
> This doesn't seem to be that new, however, Bourdeiu wrote of higher
> education as a kind of front-loading whereby graduates acquire the
> knowledge attributed to their qualifications after they've graduated in
> 1979.
>
> Huw
>
>
> On 21 April 2012 01:55, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>> Seems good that this issue is being foregrounded. I think that it's a
>> rather peculiarly US phenomenon. The rest of the world seems to regard
>> higher education as an arena in which society invests in students for the
>> good of all. In the US, higher education is some sort of consumer good for
>> which you have to pay through the nose because it benefits you, rather than
>> a common good which benefits society.
>>
>> If you can't pay, society sees enough residual benefit to itself to at
>> least offer you below-market rate loans to encourage you to both educate
>> yourself and dig yourself deeper into debt. Americans are also, I think,
>> more so than people elsewhere in the world, acculturated to the notion that
>> debt is the normal way to participate in the consumer economy.
>>
>> Another peculiar feature of higher education in the US is that most of
>> the best universities are private. I'm pretty sure that's not true anywhere
>> else. While student debt is piling up for those at public universities,
>> too, the cost of private universities in the US is scandalous.
>>
>> A modest proposal: Nationalize the top 20 public research universities in
>> the US, fund their budgets completely from the federal treasury, move them
>> to competitive admission and zero tuition and fees, and expect them to
>> serve only as many students as their tenure-line faculty can teach at a
>> 20:1 student-faculty ratio in all classes. For more on this and links to a
>> fuller argument, see my blog at: www.jaylemke.com .
>>
>> JAY.
>>
>>
>> Jay Lemke
>> Senior Research Scientist
>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
>> Adjunct Full Professor, Department of Communication
>> University of California - San Diego
>> 9500 Gilman Drive
>> La Jolla, California 92093-0506
>>
>> New Website: www.jaylemke.com
>>
>> Professor (Adjunct status 2011-2012)
>> School of Education
>> University of Michigan
>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>
>> Professor Emeritus
>> City University of New York
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 18, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Greg Thompson wrote:
>>
>> > Just passing along this post about an event (at the University of
>> Chicago)
>> > that considers the problem of student debt. Although I doubt anyone can
>> > make it to the event, it is interesting for the way in which it points
>> to a
>> > huge problem that many of us in academia probably don't talk too much
>> > about, and it does so in a very "playful" space called "Debtopia".
>> >
>> > -greg
>> >
>> > This National Day of Action celebrates the One Trillion Dollar mark on
>> > student debt (that's $1,000,000,000,000,000). Student debt is personal
>> > and national and all around in the structure of higher education. Both
>> > graduates and undergraduates, our parents and our children, the
>> > education we enjoy and the jobs anticipate -- debt weighs on it all.
>> >
>> > Welcome to "Debtopia Carnival," a day on the Quad to open questions
>> > and imagine alternatives.
>> >
>> > "Debtopia" is a land where students are weighed down by the pressure
>> > of debt and the privatization of their futures, where students are
>> > lost in bureaucracy, buying time to escape the barren job market and
>> > making life decisions based on immediate market value. The
>> > administrators cheerfully refer to the place as "Loantopia," advising
>> > students on how to invest in their own future, while our collective
>> > future withers away even in our imaginations.
>> >
>> > The booths at the Carnival will be designed both to make visible how
>> > student debt touches different aspects of higher education (from
>> > financial aid to career choices to graduate labor), but also will
>> > offer creative ways to assert how we value our education differently.
>> > The day will not only be meant for education and awareness-building,
>> > but also as a provocation to spark conversations on campus.
>> >
>> > https://www.facebook.com/events/344892505569276/
>> >
>> > --
>> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>> > Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
>> > Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
>> > Department of Communication
>> > University of California, San Diego
>> > http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>> > __________________________________________
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>
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