this field is required

A few days back, this post about higher ed in the UK appeared over on one of my favorite blogs, Fem­i­nist Philoso­phers. Here’s the big quote: “Busi­ness sec­re­tary wants stu­dents and par­ents to be treated more like cus­tomers in pro­pos­als to over­haul higher education.”

The orig­i­nal poster wor­ries that “uni­ver­si­ties get put under a great deal of pres­sure to pro­duce a prod­uct that can be rec­og­nized by the con­sumer, and that tends to lead to, among other things, mas­sive grade  infla­tion and all that entails, which is a sense  that money is just about enough to enti­tle a stu­dent to be called edu­cated.” Other com­men­tors worry about cap­i­tal­ism in gen­eral, the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of edu­ca­tion, tak­ing the spir­i­tu­al­ity out of edu­ca­tional prac­tices, etc etc.

Maybe my think­ing on this mat­ter is too sim­plis­tic / ide­al­is­tic / naïve / unin­formed by expe­ri­ence work­ing in acad­e­mia / or some­thing. But I tend to see things this way:

If you are try­ing to sell some­thing, and peo­ple don’t want it, the answer is not to make them buy it, but to sell some­thing else.

Peo­ple with aca­d­e­mic cre­den­tials are going to have to get more cre­ative in sell­ing their labor to uni­ver­si­ties, and per­haps more and more to other enti­ties like non-profits, polit­i­cal groups, pri­vate schools, etc. This will not be wholly suc­cess­ful, and some aca­d­e­mics will be unem­ployed. But guess what, that’s already the case, par­tic­u­larly in the human­i­ties where the job mar­kets have been dis­mal for some time and have lately only been get­ting worse. The face of acad­e­mia will change, in some ways we can pre­dict and in other ways we can’t. If a degree really can just be bought out­right, it will no longer have much value in track­ing who is qual­i­fied to work in what field, and the sys­tem will change again.

Change will, of course, con­tinue to occur across all sec­tors of soci­ety, and I am con­sis­tent in my belief that respon­si­bil­ity falls upon work­ers to adapt accord­ingly. Pro­vid­ing sup­port to fac­tory work­ers or admin­is­tra­tive assis­tants whose skills are no longer rel­e­vant only post­pones ben­e­fi­cial improve­ments in tech­nol­ogy and pro­duc­tiv­ity at some­times great cost (I sug­gest that you read Eco­nom­ics in One Les­son by Henry Hazlitt if you don’t under­stand why). Pro­duc­ing sound social pol­icy is a bal­anc­ing act, and other con­cerns, such as those for the unemployed’s imme­di­ate wel­fare, might some­times take prece­dence. But we ought not to speak or act as if main­tain­ing endan­gered jobs or indus­tries is an unequiv­o­cal moral or eco­nomic good.

It’s one thing to engage in some con­scious­ness rais­ing to show oth­ers why one’s work is valu­able. In the case of phi­los­o­phy, for instance, this might involve efforts to get peo­ple to rec­og­nize that it is not just mind games and has prac­ti­cal value (hello, busi­ness ethics and bioethics!) But that is very dif­fer­ent from try­ing to get the gov­ern­ment to prop up one’s way of life using the money of oth­ers. Aca­d­e­mics have the right to study what­ever they wish, but they don’t have a right to be paid by oth­ers for it. If peo­ple don’t want what you’re sell­ing, and you’re some­how still receiv­ing a pay­check, it’s time to ques­tion whether some­thing has gone morally awry.

So, the only fear I have regard­ing changes to higher ed is a generic one, shared by those who work in many fields, that some­day what I have to offer will no longer be in demand. This is an unfor­tu­nate yet per­sis­tent and inerad­i­ca­ble fea­ture of the human con­di­tion. So I say develop your skills in accor­dance with your best judg­ments, get what­ever expe­ri­ences you can, and keep your eyes open for oppor­tu­nity wher­ever it might exist. This is prob­a­bly bet­ter for your wal­let and your soul than lament­ing the inex­orable march of time and change.

P.S. — None of this is meant to sug­gest that the kind peo­ple over at Fem­i­nist Philoso­phers would sup­port a new tax to pay philoso­phers, or any­thing of the sort. In this case, it is actu­ally the gov­ern­ment itself which is push­ing for the unde­sired change in edu­ca­tion.  I’m just sayin’ that often, when peo­ple are scared or unsure about the future, they do call upon the gov­ern­ment to make it right. And I think there are rea­sons not to do that.