Mastodawn

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

I listened to a great podcast episode recently, and would like to quote some from Tressie McMillan Cottom (whose has two appearances in the episode). She really puts her finger on a number of systemic issues in higher ed. #HigherEd #LowerEd
https://theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/the-education-gospel-enshittifyedu

The Education Gospel, Enshittify.edu, & The Expansion of Lower Ed

with Tressie McMillan Cottom, Andrew Douglas, Kelly Grotke, & Jared Loggins

The American Vandal

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: "Every problem you have that is new to you is a an old problem for HBCUs. Our legitimacy has always been questioned, we've always been defunded, we've always been politically compromised, and somehow we have sustained. ... I like to point this out because we tend to look for guidance at the very institutions that don't have the kinds of problems that are coming for most of us in higher education." (11:45)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: "Our inclination when the culture turns against you, especially powerful interests turn against you, is to retreat, tell them what they want to hear, keep your head down until they bored of it, they'll move on eventually. HBCU's have said "no, double down on who you are"." (13:00)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: "Faculty governance was not just meant as job security. Faculty governance was meant to buffer students experience of the university from administrative creep. We were supposed to stand in the gap. [...] when we use faculty governance to defend our students, students will help defend us." (15:45)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: If you look to technological change you usually see where the for-profit models are. [...] That was the way bootcamps and MOOCs and short-term credentials were folded into the not-for-profit traditional university. At my university, [...] it's getting the ads on TikTok for the UNC Bootcamp in Data Science. If you look beneath the hood of those programs, they're almost always managed by a for-profit. Those were purchased whole-sale from the for-profit college system. (1:04)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: I think the increased power of the technology administrative class is lower ed. [] probably the most powerful person in admin at your university, that you don't know about, is not the Provost, it's the Chief Technology Officer. They are entering into vendor agreements that will absolutely change how faculty works and how students learn. (1:06)

TMC: [Bob Shireman] wanted good data on the outcomes of Masters degrees. What we know is in the student loan debt world, we kinda tapped out on extracting profit from people with student loan debt at the undergrad level and all the growth got shifted to Masters degrees. But we didn't know anything about the quality of them, labor market outcomes. He's got new data out about what he calls the "worthless Masters degree" [...] at not-for profit traditional institutions. (1:08)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: High-cost, almost 100% financed through student loan debt, disproportionately enrolling minority, low-income, first-generation students, all those students who bring relative negative worth positions to higher education. Which means they need the outcomes even more.

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: This is the core of the education gospel: there is no such thing as a bad education. What that means is that you should take on an educational opportunity at all cost. Nothing has fueled the growth of worthless Masters degrees more than the idea that there's no such thing as paying too much for education because it will pay off, if not in a good job, you will at least be what, a better person.

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: And we're using those masters degrees, the revenue from that [...], they are filling the gaps, some of the economic cracks of institutions that have experienced a lot of disinvestment. I've been at those institutions, places where we sit in the room and we want to offer the new online Masters degree. We have lots of questions about how to do it, very few questions about whether it's worth doing. (1:10)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: The education gospel remains most powerful among the most vulnerable groups of people. It is still core to how immigrants and the children of immigrants think that they will be integrated into American citizenship. And that would be fine if we were able to offer that opportunity at affordable cost with high rewards. But increasingly, we just can't promise that sort of social mobility.

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: The trap we put ourselves in was making ourselves necessary, but unaccountable. I want the accountability back, to democracy and to communities, without the necessity. Necessity is where desperation comes from, that's where the profit motive comes from, that's where the drive comes from that creates all these worthless degrees and programs. (1:13)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: Public not-for-profit higher education institutions should see their institutional fate linked with unions, social movements, because those are the things that make us less necessary but more valuable. (1:14)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: I want institutional detox. I am (professionally) here in part because I have been deeply embedded in digital movements. I clearly think they have a right place, and a right scale. [..] And I think right now the scale is completely out of whack in our institutions. Nowhere to me is that more clear than in our complete, uncritical adoption of AI into institutions without any understanding of what it means, what the consequences are, why or how we should use it and for whom. (1:17)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: I want higher ed institutions to write a Digital Bill of Rights for students' data. I think we could model for the broader public what it means to give people control of their data. Which is not a ridiculous idea, it's what they've done in the UK. We won't do it in the US because we don't have the political will to do it. But universities aren't beholden to that. (1:18)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: We've got a captured population. There are only two of those, BTW, students and prisoners. And frankly, the student data is richer, more diverse, [..] in ways that make it more valuable. (1:21)

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

TMC: What radicalized me in new ways was sitting in the room in vendor negotiations for ed-tech companies, most of them coming to us with barely a proof of concept, but if they can get a university to sign on, they became instantly profitable. [Matt: they're laundering the prestige, the education gospel.] Yet we would sit in the room as if we were in the weaker negotiating position. Wouldn't push back on boilerplate language, wouldn't negotiate for more control... We would just give it all away.

d@nny disc@Dec 20, 2024

@jedbrown getting rejected from phd programs and getting ads for their paid masters and other paid programs afterwards made me feel incredibly nihilistic about academia. i applied again in a different field but i'm glad i saw through the frankly naked scheme

Jed Brown Dec 20, 2024

@hipsterelectron Yes, the proliferation of masters programs is exploitative, and boosted by online programs that are rarely completed.