, 15 tweets, 6 min read Read on Twitter
@chronicle has published another piece arguing that #highered is out of touch with regular Americans and disliked by them. It stages the eternal battle between a dynamic society and backward educators. The conclusion is always the same: colleges must "change how they do business"
The frame is compiled from Republican talking points, particularly that college means liberal brainwashing. bit.ly/2tyh31u
@karinfischer puts this out there as though it were a common opinion, not a refutable falsehood (start w @AaronRHanlon bit.ly/2SeAINK) /2
The culture wars discussion goes on for a long time, hitting themes we've heard since the 1980s. They are all about how #highered has been bad--has failed the reasonable expectations of the economy and society. Us must repent and conform to the surrounding society. /3
This frame suppresses a more accurate story. In this story, universities don't fail their society. Society--economic and social policy--fails its universities. This might be a story of interest to higher education journalism. /4
Let's limit the story to familiar economic goals. Once upon a time, like the 1960s, people's wages rose as their productivity increased. If they increased their productivity by finishing college, they would make more money-a private pecuniary benefit. /5
After the 1970s, people kept increasing their productivity. But their wages didn't go up. Returns were moving from labor to capital. Unions were being weakened. Innovation rather than labor was celebrated. And innovation meant tech not the broad integrated learning of college/6
this last shift away from joined liberal arts and sciences, tech joined with deep social and cultural knowledge as societies massively diversify and face complex socio-technical problems (global warming)-this shift, forced by economism @jamesykwak, was an epic knowledge disaster.
Shifting returns from labor to capital involved regular tax cuts. These encouraged states to cut public funding for public colleges. An ideology- neoliberalism-said this wasn't the selfishness of rich and propertied people, but efficiency-seeking. High tuition was efficient! /8
Right-wing economic policy, assisted by culture-wars attacks on PC, which meant racial equality, social democracy, etc, completely repositioned #higher ed. It used to increase equality. Now it increased inequality /9
both parties pushed #privatization schemes that made college go from affordable to unaffordable. The gaps were filled by student debt, which lowered the net pecuniary returns that policymakers insisted was the only value of a college degree. /10
The economy moved from middle wages for middle-skill jobs to low wages for as many people as possible, including most middle-skill college grads. /11 @sivavaid @EricRoyalLybeck
In the piece, Buck Goldstein is right: People are really asking not is college worth it, but is it worth it to pay for someone else’s kid through taxes. Colleges have been hit by booming inequality and the massive failure of neoliberalism to support collaborative development/11
A strapped middle class in a society habituated to racial scapegoating is decreasingly likely to want to share each others’ educational costs. Colleges pay a kind of racism tax in lost support. @gerrycanavan @hystericalblkns @bureaucatliu
It's NOT insufficient ed-tech or not enough cutting teaching costs. @chronicle would to better to link the disrepute of colleges to resurgent white nationalism as aggravated by the failures of neoliberal economics. /12
Until this word gets out, #realcollege, #freecollege and the other real solutions to getting mass quality at a low low price will never happen. Tell a version of this truer story please! @saragoldrickrab /13 end
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