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April 10, 2005
Professors in Space
I'm making a brief re-entry into blogworld only to mention a few news articles about universities that have been popping up on my radar screen. First, Steven Roy Goodman's "Hey, Profs, Come Back to Earth" explicitly connects the issue of professors' political activism with rising tuition costs, arguing that parents and students are becoming "resentful" about sending their students to expensive universities filled with "questionable courses and politically absurd camus climates that detract from the quality of a university education."
Goodman mentions the laundry list of recent academic controversies -- Ward Churchill's Hamilton College de-invitation, Michael Moore's de-invitation from George Mason U, and the Joseph A. Massad controversy at Columbia -- in order to imply that political radicalism runs amuck on college campuses throughout the country. He also cherry-picks course titles ("Pornography and Evolution," "The Beatles Era," "Introduction to Material Culture") and pulls them out of context to imply that college professors are distracted from our obligation to give students the best education possible. In context, these course titles would likely make more sense, and Goodman doesn't bother to explain whether these courses are required or elective classes, using them only to further the perception that university faculty are out-of-touch elites.
Alongside this narrative, Goodman notes that tuition costs are making it much more difficult for many students to attend these (elite) universities (the article pasy little attention to state universities). I'll be the first to admit that tuition costs are increasing dramatically, but Goodman's article obscures the fact that rising tuition costs, at least at the state university level, derive in part from decreasing support for universities from state governments (Richard Ohmann has a lot to say about this topic in The Politics of Knowledge). But he's right to note that in most cases, parents sending their children to these elite colleges are facing an increasing tuition burden even while the economy sputters along. In a consumerist model of education, such as the one that Goodman describes (he explicitly uses the phrase, "consumers of higher education," at one point), there are legitimate reasons to view tuition as a very large, potentially risky investment.
But what's troubling about Goodman's account is that he implies that state governments, concerned parents, and even disgruntled alumni are less likely to support universities because of out-of-control professors. Goodman doesn't consider that shrinking tax revenue might affect state contributions. He doesn't acknowledge that a struggling economy might prevent alumni from making donations. He also blames only liberal arts programs and professors for the declining esteem of the state university. Here, it's worth noting Godman's characterization of what liberal arts programs ought to do:
Liberal arts courses, taught in the context of free speech, have always helped open young minds to the excitement of the marketplace of ideas and to the value of even unpopular opinions. But that tradition seems to have been stood on its head. There is a world of difference between challenging students to think more broadly and trying to shoehorn them into a more narrow spectrum of thought, which many parents feel is happening.It's worth noting that he offers little evidence, if any, that professors in the liberal arts are "shoehorning" students into thinking more narrowly, but Goodman's persistent use of consumer terminology to describe liberal education ("marketplace of ideas") feeds into the idea that education is a mere commodity and not a means of developing new ways of thinking about the world.
I didn't intend to write such an extended entry, but the recent attacks on academic freedom have been bothering me quite a bit, and Goodman's characterization of the university seems complicit with that, espeically in the consumerist model of education he describes. What's more frustrating is that I don't have any easy answers. I know that many of my students do see a college education as a ticket to a professional career, and my students' needs are very important to me (and I believe this is true of most college professors). I need to get some other work done now, but at some point I hope to return to this topic in further detail.
Posted by chuck at April 10, 2005 9:42 AM
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