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> splitting hairs No we’re not! The framing of higher education as a career enabler with positive ROI is the #1 bit of propaganda that has justified and refram
by alanh 11y ago
> splitting hairs
No we’re not! The framing of higher education as a career enabler with positive ROI is the #1 bit of propaganda that has justified and reframed how tuition is evaluated and is directly responsible for the steady and insane yearly tuition hike since the 1980s.
Fighting for the essence and purpose of higher education is therefore not trivial but in fact paramount.
The fact that we are having this conversation in a thread suggesting that the federal government enforce universities as job mills is, I trust, enough evidence to make my point.
For a more in-depth treatment of this topic, see "Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media" on Salon: http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behind_the_three_decade_scheme_to_raise_tuition_bankrupt_generations_and_hypnotize_the_media/ http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...
- praxulus 11y agoHow is that propaganda? People with degrees make more money. The fact that universities had other goals doesn't mean their effects on graduates' earnings are any less real. Are you saying we should lie to high school students about what does and does not lead to a high-paying job?
- rlucas 11y agoNo, GP is saying that the value (societal or individual) of higher education may be orthogonal to the change in job pay of the person educated. The framing of the conversation as being around job pay rates has consequences. There are real economic effects that happen when new frames of reference / paradigms / conventional wisdom take hold. Think about the ridiculous 2003-2008 house price run-up and how it was concomitant with a mass change from seeing housing as a cost to seeing it as "investment". Positive feedback loop, that. Maybe the same idea here with higher ed.
- ryandrake 11y agoYou're confusing an organization's stated purpose with its actual purpose. Whether you or I like it or not, higher education IS a career enabler. No matter how this came to be, it's currently reality. People are willing to go into six figures of debt BECAUSE they believe it is a career enabler. Companies filter out non-college-grads because they believe it is a career enabler. Therefore, it is a career enabler. It doesn't really matter what higher education's stated purpose is...Its actual purpose (in the real world, the one we live in) is to enable careers.