The effects of the economic uptick, however slow that might be, are visible on college campus. Student enrollment has decreased. Classrooms seem to be vacant more often than not, and finding a parking spot is considerably easier than getting an A in my class.
Typically, the post-recessionary economic growth is bad news for most of the higher education industry--the vast numbers of community colleges and universities like mine have to deal with the budgetary implications of enrollment declines. Further, the demographic future doesn't suggest huge increases in student growth either--families having fewer kids translates to fewer college-going future adults. All these in an environment of decreasing taxpayer support.
Which means we will soon revisit the budget-balancing decisions that public higher educational institutions will have to make. Yet again, like in the past, the discussions will then come down to the easiest of metrics of numbers of students in classes, and academic programs that fail this test will be put on the proverbial chopping block. Thus, the personnel in the humanities, the social sciences, and the creative arts will be forced to defend the existence of the programs and its people.
This tenuous existence of intellectual pursuits that are not about vocations per se is such a vivid contrast to the future that John Adams imagined in one his many letters to his beloved Abigail. Adams wrote, "I must study politics and war, so that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
Adams imagined a prosperous and peaceful future America, where the youth will be able to pursue interests and live a life as opposed to being preoccupied with making a living, which is equally important. We are an incredibly prosperous country now, perhaps way beyond Adams' wildest imaginations. Yet, our focus on higher education will apparently be on how to make a living, and we will systematically downsize and discredit the education that is about how to live! To make this worse, "how to make a living" has been so much debased that we have come to see the youth as nothing more than human automatons in the economy.
Of course, the higher education industry itself is also at fault. Over the decades, especially during the "false" enrollment gains that resulted from people unable to find jobs in a recessionary environment, campuses spent multiple millions on fancy buildings, and even more millions on sports, as if building monuments and entertaining the population were the mission in higher education. If only they had instead strengthened the implementation of education that would help students learn how to make a living and how to live!
At least in "Groundhog Day" the protagonist, Phil Connors, arrives at the correct answer after living through the same day over and over. But, it is certainly odd that an industry with highly educated people opts for the wrong answers again and again, and it is particularly worrisome when it feels like the movie is coming to an end. After all, as the late Herbert Stein observed, "if something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
Typically, the post-recessionary economic growth is bad news for most of the higher education industry--the vast numbers of community colleges and universities like mine have to deal with the budgetary implications of enrollment declines. Further, the demographic future doesn't suggest huge increases in student growth either--families having fewer kids translates to fewer college-going future adults. All these in an environment of decreasing taxpayer support.
Which means we will soon revisit the budget-balancing decisions that public higher educational institutions will have to make. Yet again, like in the past, the discussions will then come down to the easiest of metrics of numbers of students in classes, and academic programs that fail this test will be put on the proverbial chopping block. Thus, the personnel in the humanities, the social sciences, and the creative arts will be forced to defend the existence of the programs and its people.
This tenuous existence of intellectual pursuits that are not about vocations per se is such a vivid contrast to the future that John Adams imagined in one his many letters to his beloved Abigail. Adams wrote, "I must study politics and war, so that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
Adams imagined a prosperous and peaceful future America, where the youth will be able to pursue interests and live a life as opposed to being preoccupied with making a living, which is equally important. We are an incredibly prosperous country now, perhaps way beyond Adams' wildest imaginations. Yet, our focus on higher education will apparently be on how to make a living, and we will systematically downsize and discredit the education that is about how to live! To make this worse, "how to make a living" has been so much debased that we have come to see the youth as nothing more than human automatons in the economy.
Of course, the higher education industry itself is also at fault. Over the decades, especially during the "false" enrollment gains that resulted from people unable to find jobs in a recessionary environment, campuses spent multiple millions on fancy buildings, and even more millions on sports, as if building monuments and entertaining the population were the mission in higher education. If only they had instead strengthened the implementation of education that would help students learn how to make a living and how to live!
At least in "Groundhog Day" the protagonist, Phil Connors, arrives at the correct answer after living through the same day over and over. But, it is certainly odd that an industry with highly educated people opts for the wrong answers again and again, and it is particularly worrisome when it feels like the movie is coming to an end. After all, as the late Herbert Stein observed, "if something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
thanks for the movies, Harold Ramis
2 comments:
You know my views on this. Education dos not stop at 23. When you are in the teens and early twenties, of course education is about getting a good job. But later on, we all realise the value of a more rounded education.
Why not market humanities to the above 30s. Maybe evening classes. Why not ???
Nope, that defeats the very idea of education that I adore. Education is not merely about boosting economic productivity. The greatest mistake we ever did was to authorize colleges as the credentialing institutions for trade guilds.
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