The real purpose of higher education

ah...! the priceless benefits of a college education, not the least of which is to insure that you will be forever in servitude to the money and power elites that make the rules...

barbara ehrenreich...

[N]ever forget that your real purpose here is to shake off the pointless freedom of youth and assume the burden of debt. To this end, we have just raised our tuition in an attempt to keep up with such top-of-the-line institutions as George Washington University (now weighing in at $39,210 a year, or $50,000 with room and board). You will find us also charging a plethora of additional fees -- a "student activities fee," a "technology fee," and an "incidentals fee." In addition, we will be experimenting this year with a "snow removal fee," a "lecture hall seat-use fee," and the installation of pay toilets in the dorms.

[...]

On average, you will graduate with a respectable-sized debt of $20,000, which will enable you to establish your all-important "credit history." If we have succeeded in our educational mission, you will be a first-rate debtor, capable of making minimum monthly payments much of the time. As fresh offers of credit cards and home equity loans pour in, you will beam with pride at your achievement.

Please note carefully that Fleece U degree cannot guarantee you a future income that will allow you to pay off your debts. Many of our most promising graduates are now, three or four years later, working for $8-12 an hour serving up lattés, counseling disturbed youth or creating business computer networks. They are set for a lifetime of debt, and we are proud that they first began to accrue it right here, on our lovely mock Oxfordian campus.

We don't have to remind you not to stigmatize debt as a condition associated with poverty. In 2006, for the first time, the average household's debt exceeded its income. By becoming a debtor, you will have entered the American mainstream! We have confidence that you will go on to mature effortlessly from college debt to car loan to mortgage to medical debts occasioned by the ever-growing gaps in coverage.

as the parent of three children, all of them saddled with significant debt left over from their college educations, i all too well understand the dynamics of this particular form of slavery...

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MBA programs teach leadership? I think not.

this business college professor demonstrates a profound lack of insight into mba curricula...

Babson College business professor James Hoopes ... has landed a publisher for his book, Hail to the CEO: The Failure of George W. Bush and the Cult of Moral Leadership. “His premise: President Bush, a Harvard University M.B.A. grad, is proof that business schools focus more on leadership than on management.”

i have taught mba courses for 20 years... in a post the other day, i said i would postpone a rant on graduate biz school education for a later time... that time has arrived, but i'll be brief...

the major failures, imho, of graduate biz education in the u.s. are many... one of the biggest is that they DON'T teach LEADERSHIP, they teach MANAGEMENT... oh, sure, there are tons of courses labeled "leadership" (full disclosure: yes, i teach one myself), but, in my experience, few of them even attempt to teach authentic, principled leadership... they are most often taught in the context of learning from the Great Leaders Themselves, folks like iacocca, gates, jobs, packard, dell, bezos, merck, porras, welch, etc., etc...

the above folks are the very ones who have achieved their "success" (i put that in quotes precisely because i seriously question our national definition of "success") by obsessively focusing on shareholders and the bottom line, precisely what they have been taught to do, and precisely what they are rewarded for, often in obscenely excessive ways... what we have posing as business "leaders" in this country are passionately, obsessively driven, profit-at-all-costs MANAGERS, who, yes, have leadership qualities that, imho, are devoid of the one value that i believe makes a leader a leader - a devotion to the common good - the same value, interestingly enough, that's missing in many of our elected officials... coincidence...? i don't think so...

in concluding, i will unequivocally state that george w. bush wouldn't recognize authentic leadership if it bit him in his made-firm-and-fit-by-cycling white ass...

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Sitting still for long periods while appearing to be awake

barbara ehrenreich's take on higher education...

My theory is that employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one's ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white collar job, most of the time you'll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end -- whether in library carrels or office cubicles -- does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned -- although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.

Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-"team-player." You will do anything. You will grovel.

having taught in mba programs for 20 years, i can vouch for the "ticket to ride" factor of higher education degrees, and could easily start foaming at the mouth over what i consider to be the massive failings of graduate business education, but i'll save that rant for another time...

the single most important missing ingredient, imho, in ALL education, from kindergarten on up, except in rare instances, is that people are not empowered, encouraged or taught to think for themselves... we are surrounded every minute of every day by people, whether it be in the form of news media, advertisers, friends, colleagues, teachers, bosses, or authority figures of every imaginable stripe, all working feverishly to get us to agree that THEIR way of thinking and seeing the world is the RIGHT way... it's extraordinarily difficult to shut off the incessant racket, to learn to be still, and to hear that small voice inside, the voice that is OUR voice, OUR truth...

i often think that the ceaseless racket is purposely designed to MAKE that inner voice virtually impossible to hear, so much so that we begin to believe it isn't there, that the only REAL voices are the ones that come to us from the outside... if education were more focused on finding your OWN truth, it would be a wonderful day indeed...

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