If you share this vision and would like to play a part in bringing it further into the mainstream so we can have a conversation about the future of higher ed that goes beyond “Let them eat pixels,” please consider preordering directly from the publisher, Belt Publishing. Belt is an independent outfit located in the Midwest (Cleveland), and ordering directly from them has an outsize positive effect on their bottom line.
If you don’t share this vision, please consider preordering directly from the publisher, Belt Publishing, so you can be prepared to tell the world what a fool I am.If you go to the link you'll discover the book costs $16.95! Wow! That's a lot of money for a book that may only be 200 pages long. The webpage gives no vital statistics, so I don't know how long the book actually is. I also don't know what format it comes in: paperback or hardcover? In other words, I'm asked to buy a pig in a poke. I do know it's not available on Kindle since it's not being sold on Amazon at all.
Trotsky's First Law of academic literature is that the value of the product is inversely proportional to the price. My most recent book purchase was $0.99 for a 438 page, very readable account of medieval German history, Kindle edition--a much better bargain.
I don't understand why Mr. Warner's book costs any money at all. He does, after all, say that a college education should be free. Indeed, he claims that free college "will have genuine, broad-based macroeconomic benefits." But doesn't the same hold true for his book? Why should college be free, while his book costs an exorbitant $16.95? Note that part of the purchase price is charity for the publisher, who is too selfish to forego his bottom line.
Then he touts "sustainability" as a virtue, which surely should apply to his book as much as any college. Not having read his book, I'm not exactly sure what he means by "sustainable," but let's suppose it's environmental as opposed to financial. (Colleges are obviously not financially sustainable.)
In which case the book should be distributed solely in an electronic format. Paper consumes trees, subjecting them to chemical processing. Physical books have to be shipped in diesel-burning, fume-spewing trucks! Mr. Warner, by countenancing only dead-tree editions of his book, is certainly not acting sustainably.
Here, at least, Mr. Warner is consistent. Obviously the most sustainable medium for college instruction is on-line. No more commuters, buildings, parking lots, traffic--on-line is as carbon-neutral as you'll ever get. Yet for some reason Mr. Warner is against on-line. I haven't read the book so I don't know why, but it seems at odds with his demand that colleges be "sustainable."
Then there's "resilient." Again, I can't tell what Mr. Warner means by the word, but to me it sounds very much like a synonym for "fossilized." Faculty should never, ever be laid off--not even when they're 90 years old and teach accounting the way it was done in 1925. Even rapidly changing subjects--e.g., computer science--have to keep the superannuated sorts on staff, despite the fact that they know nothing about any relevant technology. All because of "macroeconomics," or whatever.
Old age isn't the only reason to fossilize the faculty. The history department, for example, only graduates 12 majors per year--out of a class of 553. Of course that means that all 22 faculty members have to remain employed forever--never mind that they outnumber the students.
A "resilient" book perhaps is one you'd like to reread 5 or 15 years from now. Those are books that might justify the dead-tree price--they deserve shelf space in your study. Does Mr. Warner's book rise to the occasion? I think not--rather than "resilient", it's likely journalism. Read it once, and then use it to line the bird cage. I'm not against journalism, but it should be distributed electronically.
Mr. Warner writes: "A good portion of the book will cover how students became customers and some of what it will take to undo this problem." One often hears this complaint from academics--whatever else students are, they shouldn't be customers.
What should they be instead? How about rats in a rat race? Academics today is not much more than a huge bureaucracy: check this box, write that paper, regurgitate the opinions of your teacher, pay money in that office, unless it's for this expense in which case you have to pay it in another office. Jump through all the hoops and you'll end up with a diploma--a result achieved by only 33% of public college and university students.
Or perhaps students are suckers? After all, they're easily scammed into taking out ruinous loans from which at least 67% will never derive any benefit at all. This all supposedly for the good of "macroeconomics." That doesn't count the time and opportunity cost to students in not getting a diploma.
Mr. Warner's solution to the student loan problem is to have taxpayers pay for it. What this ultimately reduces to is that people who don't go to college should subsidize the people who do go to college. Or, to phrase it more colorfully, minimum wage Walmart employees are paying for the education of highly-paid engineers at Google. I hope Mr. Warner's book explains the justice in this arrangement.
Much fairer would be a rule where the colleges themselves have to reimburse the government for defaulted student loans (at least in significant portion). Or better yet, abolish the student loan program altogether, which would force colleges to lower their price.
Or maybe students are a blank canvas upon which faculty can paint their egos. Conservatives frequently complain that the overwhelmingly progressive faculty are brainwashing students to be radical Lefties. I think the case is overstated, but it remains true that if you want to graduate you have to pretend to agree with the teacher--no matter how ridiculous she is. Fortunately, upon graduating (or flunking out) most people come to their senses and make up their own minds. But this does not count as an education.
Among the many "macroeconomic" benefits of universities are the army of grad students and freshly-minted PhDs, most of whom are under- or unemployed. Often they work for sub-minimum wages as teaching assistants or adjuncts. Collectively they're a true lumpen proletariat. Or put another way, they're the ultimate victims of the college scam--spending years sucking up to the faculty after which they graduate with a useless diploma and no viable career path.
Seriously, I'm happy to read Mr. Warner's book. I'll try hard to give it a respectful and honest review. This means I'm spending my most precious commodity--time--on it. But there's no way I'm paying $16.95 for the privilege!
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