[dinopello]

Thought I'd start a topic on this. Corporations over the years have donated funds to universities and other levels of schools to get good PR and have their name attached to a building or lab. I've accepted that as a necessary evil in order to fund these things in a climate where many are not inclined to want to be taxed for educational needs. Things seem to be changing for the worse though.

At my alma mater, a recently appointed and mostly wildly popular President was forced to resign and there is talk that it was spurred by promises of a private or corporate gift. Worse, there is talk that a Cabal of business school graduates working for or with a large investment bank that has invested in an online education endeavor was interested in using the University (one of the best public schools in the nation) to launch their online education business with a highly credible institution on board, but the President wasn't willing and therefore they engineered her ouster.

It's all over the papers here including:
Washington Post

Local papers

and

Bloggers that are oulining the investment bank theory

Time will tell what the story is, but this idea of corporatizing education seems to be mainstreamed. Mitt Romney has discussed it as a potential plan for education going forward and Tagg Romney, his son has a venture firm that has invested in online, private education. The linked blog post talks about Goldman Sachs' investments in this.

Anyway, please comment or discuss anything that comes to mind on this topic.

Many of the Ivy league colleges have offered free courses online but not as part of a degree program. It seems that bankers are now looking at education as the next hot new thing. Diplomas would basically be a commodity that is being sold (with the education incidental to the business). That doesn't seem ideal to me.

[Cloud9]

There are several agendas at work here. First off a private school can separate its students away from the culture of failure that dominates the underclass. Poor performance and discipline problems will get a student cut out of these programs in a heartbeat. A tremendous amount of public education’s resources are consumed by the recalcitrant and nefarious. Second, with on line instruction, the pacing and content of instruction can be standardized and the personal prejudices of teachers minimized. This guarantees that students will receive a more homogenized set of instructions. Everyone will teach to the end of course exams.

That is both a good and bad thing. Here in Florida, we have cut the Constitution out of eleventh grade American history by starting the course of instruction with the Civil War. We have generations of students who think that civil rights are an encumbrance when claimed by populations they don’t like. Generations of new students will not even be bothered by a Constitutional crisis caused by laws like the National Defense Authorization Act. They will remain oblivious to events like Waco, Ruby Ridge and Fast and Furious but the will know that FDR saved the world for democracy.

[dinopello]

The University of Virginia situation is evolving quickly. After a FOIA request yielded emails showing the Rector and Vice Rector of the Board of Visitors were conspiring to push UVa into wholesale online courses (remote instruction is an area that UVa has led in for 20 years), the Vice Rector resigned. The Rector is stubborn but after a letter from the Dean of every college at the University that started thusly:

Thomas Jefferson considered the founding of the University of Virginia to be one of his most significant contributions to the American Republic. The University, he wrote, would be “based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of its contemplation.” UVa is one of the nation’s most distinguished public universities. Here we teach, create knowledge, and train future leaders. We are bound to uphold the principles upon which Mr. Jefferson founded this University: “For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

The forced resignation of Teresa Sullivan represents the most serious threat to the academic integrity, intellectual reputation, and national standing of the University in modern history. We agree with the Honor Committee that the failure of the Board of Visitors to provide a full and clear explanation of its decision has “created an environment that is inconsistent with the value of trust that runs through the very fabric of our University.”

Some of the Board of Visitors came out and said they were unaware that any of this was going on making the whole thing look more like a attempted hostile takeover by a few Board members and their Billionaire backers in connecticut. One multi-billionaire alumnus Paul Tudor Jones wrote an op-ed supporting the events but he's about the only one.

I realize there is much inside baseball going on here - but where I live there are thousands of Alumni that love this school and are heavily involved. There are national consequences as well. I will post a Coda when things are decided.

[SeaGypsy]

Currently working in a government funded/ corporate sponsored trade school (Plumbing and building courses/ some MS computer and Linux stuff) and in a community education center (Adult literacy)/ studying at 2 online universities (one of which I contract to) in community services. About to do a full time month of study in a private trades college, to do heavy transport to certificate 3 level. This is the equivalent to a trade apprentice qualification taking at least 3 years to complete through the government school system. It gets me to a similar earning capacity.

IMO there is a big shift underway in the corporatization of eduction. As cloudy says, this can be both a good and a bad thing. I would add to his comment that the way things are going economically, the surplus available in society is ever shrinking, for things like non to marginal vocational training. Equally there is a growing demand for fast track courses, much of which comes from 'grown ups' needing to reskill as their professions become outsourced and or otherwise redundant. Adults usually can't afford to go back to college/ university/ apprentice wages etc. I know I can't. We are in a world now where continuous upskilling and reskilling is mandatory for the bulk of the population throughout their working lives.

From an educator's perspective, the days of life tenure etc. are drawing to a close. Where I am, the permanent teaching job market has been shrinking continuously for years, whilst the contract by hour/ sessional teaching sector expands in leaps and bounds.
This leaves teachers who are and have been just that- career teachers, somewhat out on a limb. What is in demand is hands on professional and trades knowledge with current and up to date industry experience and connections. Tradies and professionals who want to teach a few sessions a week for extra bucks basically.
Very different mode of education.

[Oneaboveall]

Naked Capitalism has bunch of links and info on the UVA situation. You need to scroll down for it, but its right here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/links-62512.html

[dinopello]

Naked Capitalism has bunch of links and info on the UVA situation. You need to scroll down for it, but its right here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/links-62512.html

Thanks, today is the big day as the Board of Visitors will 'revisit' the decision that was made. Let me summarize how this decision was made in the first place.

There are 16 members on the board, and 6 on the executive committee. The Rector and Vice Rector conspired to oust the President. They called her into an emergency executive committee meeting with just 3 of the 6 executive committee meeting members present and told her that they had unanimous consent to fire her at the next full board meeting. They offered her the opportunity to resign instead and she did and the three board members accepted her resignation. All that is apparently legal, but it is also apparent that the Rector lied when she said they had unanimous (or anything near that) consent. A full board vote would have required a 2/3 majority to fire her. Wash Post has a guess at today's vote tally.

I point out the process to show how sleazy the forces are that are trying to effect this change in higher education. There was never a hint in the meetings of the Board that they were in any way dissatisfied with the president of 2 years performance and she has been universally praised for jumping into the job, increasing fundraising and many other metrics. It is believed that the cabal had a candidate that was ready to jump in and make the changes they desired.

The billionaire in the shadows on this are interesting. UVa billionaires are mostly wall street traders that have decided to flaunt their wealth through philanthropy. Thats not such a bad thing but they also want to have influence.

Check out this video of my fellow alum Paul Jones and his lovely wife after they donated money for a contemplative center at the university:

(you might want to check out a related video that comes up called "Wall Street Billionaires" as it is quite funny and also features Paul Jones).

Jefferson, I think, would be abhored by the direction we seemed to be heading in higher education. The state provides less that 10% of the funding at it's premier University with the rest being made up of tuition and fees (which everyone agrees are pretty low for in-state student) and largely by donations from alumni and corporations. The corporate donations are actually better in some ways. They tend to fund the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Management) and don't seek to do much in the way of influencing and only ask that they get some attribution and a place on career day to recruit new employees. The eccentric billionaires, however are all over the place. The old money tend to be happy with their name on the building or some other perk but leave the education to the professionals. The new money (which has grown larger than the old money) want to have radical changes and based on their self-perceived genius in their hedge fund (usually) they seek to influence what that change is. Jefferson wanted the thinkers to drive the question, and certainly not the plutocrats.

[dinopello]

Well, the opaque process that led to the ouster of the President of The University of Virginia was atoned for today when the Board of Visitors recinded that decision.

Now, on to the debate as to what we do next here in Virginia.



I will continue to post things I come across here related to the attempts at takeover of public higher education by corporate and private interests. If stuff is happening in your neck of the woods, please post.

[Tanada]

This autumn, more new students are expected to enroll at UK universities than ever before. The rise is a reflection not only of young people doing better at school but of universities taking more students. They made high numbers of unconditional offers last year and will have admitted more applicants who just missed their offer. They have to, or their incomes will fall.

Then there’s the fact that other options for young people appear bleak. For more than 30 years we have had high youth unemployment and have failed to offer good apprenticeships. The next generation needs to have real choice at age 18 – but, sadly, that is not going to happen any time soon. Inequality is now so extreme that even a government committed to full employment would take years to implement this.

The excessive income earned by a few used to be spread across the population, with income inequality declining from 1918 through to 1978, albeit in fits and starts. Full employment for men was not achieved until the 1950s; we have never had full employment for women. Simply increasing access to education does not ensure full employment – you also have to spread the pay more evenly to be able to afford all the wages.
Advertisement

So what are all these keen young students there for? Our universities are arranged in a steep hierarchy. Competition has been manufactured that encourages many young people to aim high and apply early in case they miss out in future, rather than take their time.

Today’s young adults are rarely advised to take a year or two out to work and make sure they want to go to university. While it’s in the short-term interests of both schools and universities for most to go straight away, it’s not in the interests of students themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... elay-going