The Rise of the Old Academy from the ashes of the University?
Harvard announced that its endowment has taken an $8 billion hit. It will have to make cuts.
According to a letter to deans from university heads, Harvard must take a "hard look" at staffing levels and compensation. They're also forecasting a 30 percent drop for the fiscal year ending in June 2009.
But already, University is now financially out of reach for most people. Many who used to borrow won't or can't.
The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.
“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.
But universities are stuck, like auto plants - like news papers - like TV Studios - like the US Armed Forces - with infrastructure and unionized workforces that cost a bomb.
Like the newspapers or auto makers, they will soon be faced with a dilemma. They cannot get their revenues up to cover their costs. Like papers they will have to cut "content". At some point like the news papers they will be left with being expensive and poor value.
I don't see any way around this. For like the Big 3 automakers and the UAW, for like the Newspapers and their presses, unions and pride in their craft of Journalism, most universities' identity is tied into the campus, into their academic closed shop and their unionized helots. If they step away from this, they will kill who they are.
So what will happen?
I think that there is a chance to return to what universities started to be. Padua was a city where the influence of the Pope was minimal. Teachers went there and hung up a shingle:
The university was founded in 1222 when a large group of students and professors left the University of Bologna in search of more academic freedom ('Libertas scholastica').
I am nearly 60. I know some stuff. I also know I love teaching. I also know that I am good at it.
I intend to hang out my shingle. I am also looking forward to having a few friends do this with me. This is the work I want to do in the evening of my life.
So what about the "credential"? Will a student miss out by being taught by me or someone like me?
First of all, in the post industrial world. I suspect that having a meaningless credential that really says that all you did was attended a school, may not have much value. But I think that if you showed that you learned math from an acknowledged great math teacher, this would mean something. If you learned how to write code from a player in the field - that would mean more than a computer science degree. If John Robb taught you about global security that would mean something. If Stuart Baker taught you abut how values really work in society, that would mean something. You would also be part of the network of real teachers and there would not be that gulf between university and life You would show that because you had been accepted by a leader in your filed as a pupil that you were indeed special..
This would be very inexpensive compared to the alternative. All the institutional costs in money and effort would go away.
But this would not fit everyone! Of course not. The idea that higher education is for everyone is a silly idea as well. I taught for 5 years at UPEI. My sense is that at best 15% of the kids had the talent to be there. The rest were there because they felt they should be. Universities have become car plants.
When I say higher education, I am talking about symbolic thinking. Most people I meet find symbolic thinking a real trial - even though they have been to university. They are much more comfortable in the concrete world.
Well there are millions of great teachers out there too and a great need for people with skills that enable them to do concrete things too.
It's going to be interesting to see how this unfolds. The web offers a whole new way of restoring this way of learning directly from an expert rather than from an institution.














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