Op-Ed Deplores what Higher Education Has Become

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Mark Bauerlein, a professor at Emory, has written a --scathing, I believe-- op ed in the New York Times entitled: What's the Point of a Professor?

I did not read it.  I'm not the sort of professor who inhabits the concept-world of senior academicians of the 1950's.  A rebuttal appears in a blog here, which still responds to the original article on its own terms, by and large, and how the writer of this rebuttal describes what he does is a little closer to what I do: provide information to students who are looking for it, provide a basic experience for students who just want the accreditation, and occasionally be the role-model which Bauerlein wishes he would be allowed to be.  (I know, I didn't read it, but I read the cheat sheet.)

I've been writing about this for years, and there isn't any point to repeating what I keep saying.  Perhaps I never said it succinctly enough: private higher education does not sit comfortably in the business model we have in the USA.  I don't even think what should ideally take place in on a college campus comes exactly under the heading of mentoring.

One theme does stand out in all these writings about the undergraduate experience: nothing is going to work if an undergraduate is in the classroom unwillingly.  I suspect lots of undergraduates are on campus willingly: they get to stay away from home; they get to play sports; they get to meet members of the opposite sex unsupervised by their parents; they get to eat what they like in the cafeterias, and complain all they want.  They get to be slobs, and piss off their roommates.  But they're in the classrooms unwillingly.

This is quite unsurprising, because the society is becoming more and more exploitative.  Whereas a half-century ago, it may have been a pleasure to work somewhere, and you may have got some credit for whatever achievements you were able to make, today a worker has all his effort and energy sucked out of him at work, and is paid relatively less for equivalent work.  It follows that a youth prepares for employment grudgingly, and college is seen as preparation for employment, and the classroom is seen as a hurdle.

While there may be professors who are in the business for the prestige and the money, the vast majority of professors take up employment in academe because they love their subject, and they love teaching young students.  Teaching undergraduates is like a drug; it is surprisingly enjoyable, if you have halfway decent students.  (It does lose its shine over eight months, at which point you need some time off.)  But I honestly think that education should be absolutely free, and that you should qualify for it by competitive examination.

The open university is a whole different thing; a different sort of professor is needed to teach students who are not qualified, to engage them and seduce them into learning beyond their expectations.  Unfortunately, all of academe is heading in this direction, because often it is the unqualified who have the money.  So, to earn the right to teach bright, poor students, you have to put in some time teaching lazy wealthy kids, who just want to be accredited.  Sick Sad World, as Daria would say.

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