The Humanities are Dead

Or so say some.

Before you look at the date on this article let me explain that I have been very busy....

Stanley Fish wrote an interesting article on the rise of adjuncts and the growth of "for profit" universities.
Here is a snippet:

What is happening in traditional universities where the ethos of the liberal arts is still given lip service is the forthright policy of for-profit universities, which make no pretense of valuing what used to be called the “higher learning.” John Sperling, founder of the group that gave us Phoenix University, is refreshingly blunt: “Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that ‘expand their minds’” nonsense.

The for-profit university is the logical end of a shift from a model of education centered in an   individual professor who delivers insight and inspiration to a model that begins and ends with the imperative to deliver the information and skills necessary to gain employment.

Having worked for six years either as a full-time instructor or an adjunct at the collegiate level, I can agree with this article. Although, the very scary implications to this sort of mindset (which I also experienced at a different "for profit" university) bring up images of future automatons produced by the schools they pay thousands of dollars to "learn" from.  

Having been an adjunct for the last four years, I have seen numerous problems with a heavy reliance on this system. When there are a large number of adjuncts at a school there tends to be less of a feeling of community in the faculty body and the University tends to take the adjuncts for granted, because they are easily replaceable and often are desperate for money (which is what put them in that situation to begin with). Thus, when these attitudes are in place, I think it leads to a lower quality of education for the student because the adjunct has no motivation to continue his or her own personal learning and no motivation to improve in the classroom. The only adjunct who will do the things required to become a better teacher is the one who is able teach for the intrinsic value of teaching, which is hard to keep up with a 5-5 load and when he or she is getting paid almost nothing.   

Comments

[Kelly]

Alas, I'm afraid I am about to enter this kind of environment. I'll keep my idealism through the end of the summer, at least, but already in conversation I've heard more than a little on this topic...

[Katherine]

Are you going to be an adjunct Kelly? Or a student? Thankfully, most students are blissfully unaware of this predicament.

[Elisabeth]

Oh word. This post brings back memories of football coaches working as high school math teachers simply for the benefit of saving the school district a bit of money. Although you're talking university and I'm talking high school. But that's what I thought of. No wonder I'm terrible with math.

[Joseph]

"Lip Service" is becoming more and more the appropriate term at many universities. I think that most of my classmates while I was an undergrad in philosophy were there only so that they could get a job. They neither wanted an education, nor valued one- and if they could have believed that they could have had a substantial career without a college degree- they would have not hesitated to drop the idea of college entirely.

Now, of course, there are more college graduates than there are people wanting college graduates. This means that economically the value of a college degree is falling. Given the expense of schools this is a doubly bad blow to students once they graduate. Interesting post, by the way. I have been thinking about this for some time.