A Modest Proposal for the Reform of Academe

…found searching archives for something else & now reblogging a 2010 repost from The Faster Times, attributing belatedly, apologizing profusely, linking thrice for good measure, bookmarking & adding the college section to reader. The section is not large but choice, especially for those taken with the quirky. Incidentally, "modest proposal" is a popular reform title, especially for higher ed. A series? Not all meet Swiftian standard: this one does. I will definitely do this more often…

College section blogger, medievalist ~ fencer Ken Mondschein (PhD Fordham + studies at BU, SUNY Buffalo, Harvard) writes...

Most every commentator on academe has mentioned the sorry state of higher education: A decades-long oversupply of Ph.Ds, an undersupply of jobs, and the use of cheap adjunct labor for everything from teaching intro writing classes to supervising theses to cleaning the president's office. Despite the fact that tenure-track jobs are rarer than hen's teeth, that venerated institution has come under attack, as well. Critics charge that tenure gives professors license to be unproductive layabouts or maniac wingnuts, but there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it unless said tenure-possessor burns down the administration building or runs naked through freshman orientation. 

But I am not here to kvetch: I am here to offer solutions. It seems to me that all of these symptoms of current malaise of higher education could be solved in one sweeping stroke, were we only to reintroduce dueling to the academy.

The Costs of Higher Education: to Whom?

I saw the Fordham University student newspaper, The Ram, on February 1 and was not surprised to read an editorial therein, that discussed President Obama’s recent remarks on the costs of higher education, and his calls for accountability.

The Ram specifically mentioned that, as college students, they were obviously glad to “hear about a possible tuition decrease.” Left out of the editorial, unfortunately, as indeed it has been left out of most of the discussion of “reform” in higher education, is any discussion of the position of the faculty, which is that community in any college or university which is charged with the production, evaluation, and transmission of knowledge, and without which, one can easily argue, there is no higher education left to reform.