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Isn't this part of a larger, global trend of turning public institutions into private businesses? It happened to the American prision system, it's happening to

• zackmorris 12y ago
  Ya just replace private with hierarchical. I don't think many techies grew up dreaming of being cogs in an industrial machine but for whatever reason libertarianism/authoritarianism has taken a strong hold on many of their imaginations and we're seeing a lot of these controversies framed in ways that limit possibilities. College is wonderful. Everyone should get to go. Acceptance should be based on age or merit, be freely provided by government funding, and the alumni should remember how they got where they are and pay it forward. And to extend that, significantly more research needs to happen at universities so it’s not tainted by the profit motive. Also we should remember that the adage “those who can’t do, teach” gave us the gift of a system where a single person can change dozens or even hundreds of lives a year, and thousands over a lifetime. Frankly the older I get, the more these “lets all just forget the lessons of the past” arguments sound like a bunch of hooey. Yes there are compelling innovations all of the place that will let people learn at a vastly accelerated place outside of school. But public education was never just about learning. As much as I hated long periods of it, I can’t really imagine a democracy functioning in its absence. And fixing it would be rather straightforward, if we let teachers/professors have more of a say in it and got the blasted politicians and financiers out of it.