Bernie's Perfectly Awful Plan to Save Higher Education

[masmdu]

Thoughts on this?

http://chronicle.com/article/Bernie-Sanderss-Charming/231387?cid=megamenu

Sanders wants every student in America to be able to attend a public college or university without paying tuition.... In exchange for billions of new taxpayer dollars, the federal government would enforce a specific vision of what a high-quality college education means.

States would have to promise that, within five years, "not less than 75 percent of instruction at public institutions of higher education in the State is provided by tenured or tenure-track faculty." In addition, any funds left over after eliminating tuition could be used only for purposes such as "expanding academic course offerings to students," "increasing the number and percentage of full-time instructional faculty," providing faculty members with "supports" such as "professional development opportunities, office space, and shared governance in the institution." States would be prohibited from using the money for merit-based financial aid, "nonacademic facilities, such as student centers or stadiums," or "the salaries or benefits of school administrators."

In other words, states would be required to embrace and the federal government would be obligated to enforce a professor-centered vision of how to operate a university: tenure for everyone, nice offices all around, and the administrators and coaches can go pound sand. It’s as if Bernie Sanders looked in the mirror, regarded his rumpled, redistributionist self, and said, "What legislation would most please the people who look and think the most like me?"

Tenure is the Israeli/Palestinian dispute of higher-education policy: As soon as you utter a word on the subject, you are immediately assigned to one of two warring camps and subjected to lengthy ritual denunciations by the other. So, for the record, I don’t believe that tenure is responsible for most or even many of the ills besetting higher education.

Tenure is not the main reason college keeps getting more expensive, which should be obvious given that tenure has been declining in lock step with rising tuition over the past 30 years. Tenure is an important part of vital academic freedom that has been under fresh assault in Wisconsin,Kansas, and elsewhere.

Tenure is also a rigid and unwieldy way to organize a profession. Combined with the overproduction of Ph.D.s, it can be a vehicle for heartless labor exploitation within the academic guild. When tenure-protected academic freedom shields classroom teaching from oversight and accountability, it prevents colleges from having any kind of collegewide educational standards or practices, or from experimenting and innovating in any systematic way.

Deciding who should and should not be a member of the tenured faculty goes to the heart of scholarly identity and self-determination. This is the very last thing a college should want subject to federal regulation. A U.S. Department of Education charged with putting the Sanders plan into effect would start drafting regulations defining the exact meaning of "tenure" and how to define the numerator and denominator of the 75-percent equation.

Does a cubicle count as "office space"? What about a shared desk? What percentage of a building’s total usable square footage has to be devoted to student-oriented activities in order to classify it as a verboten "student center"? (Which leads to another question: What activities are and are not "student-oriented?&quot Is governance officially shared if faculty members are cc’ed on all the memos? Is a department chair who also teaches a couple of classes too tainted by administration to receive federal funds?

Expect lengthy regulatory guidance explaining all of this and much more three to five years after Sanders takes office. Expect lawsuits based on your noncompliance within three to five minutes.

It is unwise to anchor a college-affordability law to a single, undeniably expensive organizational model. It is almost certainly possible to design an organization that provides a high-quality college education at a reasonable price using a mix of labor, capital, and technology that is different from that of the traditional university.

Instead of "expanding course offerings," such organizations might specialize in fewer. Instead of tenure, classically defined, they might protect academic freedom in a different way. The Sanders plan would harden a system that is already not nearly flexible enough.

This is important not because the Bernie Sanders’s plan will become law, but because some other plan might. Middle-class anxiety over rising tuition and growing debt has become a potent force in American politics. Candidates are responding with an array of proposals for free college, debt-free college, or some combination of the two. None of those will provide states or colleges with blank checks. They will come with serious conditions based on some vision of what constitutes a high-quality college education.

Rather than define the means of education — more tenure and offices, fewer stadiums and lazy rivers — these plans should define the ends, requiring each state to meet them in a way that fits its own blend of politics, population, and types of institutions. Bernie Sanders is right to call for new federal support for affordable higher education. But there are many ways to reach that goal, some based on a kind of organization that doesn’t even exist yet.

[arcane1]

1. The article seemed like mostly mind-reading and "this won't work because it won't" statements.

And what about this part:

"This is important not because the Bernie Sanders’s plan will become law, but because some other plan might."

[daleanime]

2. It will be time to worry about the specifies...

when we're actually putting the plan into action.

[arcane1]

3. And it's hard to take this as objective policy discussion when the author says things like:

"It’s as if Bernie Sanders looked in the mirror, regarded his rumpled, redistributionist self, and said, "What legislation would most please the people who look and think the most like me?""

[beam me up scottie]

4. Thanks for saving me the trouble of reading it, arcane1.

Some folks don't even try to to hide their bias.

[Luminous Animal]

5. You've gone way over the copyright limit. Please pare it down to four paragraphs before

your OP is locked.

[Fred Sanders]

6. Academic tenure exists so the nation's most learned scholars can remain speak freely and be independent. This attack on

tenure, which Sanders wants to persevere for that reason, is a RW meme.

[Maedhros]

7. I have absolutely no problem with implementing a college-professor's vision

of how colleges should operate.

Better than letting education policy wonks and corporatist "reformers" do it.

[CharlotteVale]

8. It sounds good to me.

[Jefferson23]

9. He is kidding, right?

**...tenure for everyone, nice offices all around, and the administrators and coaches can go pound sand.



This for me is a red flag on his perspective, the corporate model used for university has been
a detriment to the extreme.

[Cleita]

10. I remember when we had tuition free public education in California

until a bunch of Republican politicians pulled the plug preferring to funnel that money that paid for education into the real estate market instead enriching the speculators in the market immensely. We used to educate the best and the brightest. Now we educate the entitled and the forever indebted. It has measurably lowered the quality of education because the colleges and universities are dependent on tuitions to operate.

Most Scandanavian countries have free education too and it works quite well for them as well. It seems like the author of that hit piece didn't look at history to make a comparison of what works and what doesn't.

[LWolf]

14. So do I.

My first 2 years of college in CA were tuition free.

[Cheese Sandwich]

11. New taxpayer dollars? Paid for with a tax nobody would notice except high frequency traders.

Re:

"billions of new taxpayer dollars"

This makes it sound like my taxes would be going up.

But the plan is to pay for this with a tiny tax on Wall Street transactions.

I'm not treating the stock exchange as a glorified casino so I don't see how this affects me.

Except in the positive effects of discouraging risky trading behavior, and strengthening the community with education.

[HooptieWagon]

12. So the author wants unis run by elitist admins and coaches...

...and the professors can go pound sand? WTF? Did Scott Walker write this? Students interact with their professors daily, may never interact with an admin or coach in the entire 4/5 years. Who the hell is more important to education? Did Plato or Aristotle need admins and coaches to teach?

[arcane1]

17. I remember seeing a map which showed the highest-paid public employee per state

And it was astonishing how many of them were coaches.

On edit, here it is:

[Le Taz Hot]

13. I don't know, how did California pay for it in the 1960's and 1970s

and part of the 1980's? It wasn't until the whole fucking country went up for sale (thank you, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama) that public higher education tuition began to rise at the same time class offerings were reduced and classes began being taught by graduate students instead of an actual professor.

It's been done before and there's no reason in the world that it can't be done again.

[Cleita]

15. Property taxes. Prop 13 or the Jarvis amendment ended it and at lot of

other programs that prevented homelessness too. I like Bernie's way better of taxing the Wall Street casino instead. I also think large corporations should pay an education tax because they are the ones who benefit from and educated work force. It's time they paid for it.

[Le Taz Hot]

16. At this point I don't care how we do it

just as long as we take higher education (hell, ALL education) out of the hands of the profiteers. My first two years of college were tuition free at a wonderful Community College from which I graduated and later taught at. Even the CSU that I went to you could still work and pay your way through. I was a poor kid I went to college with poor kids. None of us would have been able to achieve higher education had those opportunities not been available to us.

The outrageous tuition that these kids are being charged and graduating with $100,000.00 + student loan debt is an absolute disgrace and this country should be ashamed of itself.

[AgingAmerican]

18. A whole lotta nothing

Just like every other smear attempt against Sanders.

[TheKentuckian]

19. My thoughts? Old crusty Reaganism put in the microwave with a damp paper towel over it

and calling it's self "pragmatic progressive", "sensible centrist", "New Dem", "bipartisan", "DLC", "Third Way" or whatever bullshit distraction name for Republican but hold the Southern Strategy.

[restorefreedom]

20. bernie is right.

colleges and universities are risking their future to moocs and affordable for-profit universities because they are replacing tenured track positions with adjuncts, and they treat and pay the adjuncts like shit and removes instructional consistency from students.

loved this line from the article

....states would be required to embrace and the federal government would be obligated to enforce a professor-centered vision of how to operate a university.......


yes much better to let the profiteers make the decisions. that is how this problem started.

[Half-Century Man]

21. For me the-tell tale statement is

Rather than define the means of education — more tenure and offices, fewer stadiums and lazy rivers — these plans should define the ends, requiring each state to meet them in a way that fits its own blend of politics, population, and types of institutions.

Scott Walker's own brand of schooling to make worker drones. As in when he attempted to change the mission statement by removing the "Wisconsin Idea" and replacing it.

Walker proposed replacing the mission's goal to "extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campus" and to "serve and stimulate society" with a goal "to meet the state's workforce needs"

[smitra]

22. Senator Sanders is absolutely right ...

.... if his ideas on how to enhance affordability and academic standards in our colleges and universities as reported in this article are accurate.

For one thing, the growing reliance on adjunct faculty who can be fired at whim by an administrator is a major factor in reducing the quality of many curricula. Having 70 to 75% tenured and tenure-track faculty SHOULD be the way to go.... yes, with college presidents and other administrators - and possibly coaches - earning much less than what they do now.

[aikoaiko]

23. Kevin Carey, the author of this commentary, is either disingenuous or ignorant.

When Carey poses questions that don't seem to have answers, such as this:

Does a cubicle count as "office space"? What about a shared desk? What percentage of a building’s total usable square footage has to be devoted to student-oriented activities in order to classify it as a verboten "student center"? (Which leads to another question: What activities are and are not "student-oriented?&quot Is governance officially shared if faculty members are cc’ed on all the memos? Is a department chair who also teaches a couple of classes too tainted by administration to receive federal funds?

He is ignoring the already existing and effective decision making, assessment, and enforcement structure for higher education. The Department of Education makes policy which sets the big six regional accrediting agencies into action. Regional accreditors refine the policies and review universities and colleges every 5 to 10 years for compliance.

Outcomes assessment already is a big part of higher education. Sometimes its done well and sometimes not.

It sounds like Kevin Carey just wants to get rid of tenure and will resist attempts to bolster it.