Thread by @tressiemcphd

There is nothing wrong with getting rid of college majors *per se*. But let me vent my anger with @DomEnergyVA with a thread about the real world implementation of these plans

First, I should tell you my colleagues and I are watching how these dinant narratives come about. About nine months ago, "get rid of majors" joined "university college" as the standout highered revolution narratives. How does that work we wonder?

I, of course, believe in responsive curricula. I write that curricula. I advocate for it. We all deserve it but few of us get it.

But I don't think college leaders and "universities are monopolies" boosters are advocating for dynamic responsive econ or creative maths or digital sociology or what have you. They seem to be proposing two things:

1. Homogonize all liberal arts and most social sciences into amorphous "university college" type programs and

2. Increase specialization among sciences

There would still be majors but they would be retooled for the market. Which is one set of issues. I will return to those. The other set of issues is how this should be done. What I see proposed is:

1. Homogonize lib arts and social science

2. Craft courses for student interest. That means make the classes marketable. Enjoyable. Fun!

3. With no majors you don't need departments. This new amorphous pot of non-program courses can be taught by less expensive faculty

That's how the idea gets its legs: it is a cost savings tool. It has little to do, in how it is proposed, with actual market demands, student needs or responsive curricula design

The specializations will move to sciences where unis perceive there is more grant money and profit to be generated. Both are kinda true although I will say many unis find the cost of managing the grants outstrip any economic benefit.

Those faculty are also perceived as "worth" their cost because there is an external market for many of their skills.

At the moment those courses are harder to adjunctify but may also be easier to scale. Uni leadership love the scalibility of org chem and macro and the like. There is a whole industry ready to scale that for them.

It doesn't matter that the scaling up generally comes at the cost of student progress and retention. The economic incentives tied to STEM majors is so great that many uni leadership feel like the risk isn't to them but to the student. They may be right. Callous but right.

There are a few potential consequences of this given our current economic conditions. 1: bubble schools will further extend the k-12 tracking into highered. Different tiers of education within a single university, maybe even a single unit.

2. Lower prestige unis will embrace this wholesale and elites will double down on majors as a class indicator. This is already true but it may become more visible.

And the final long game here is 3: differential pricing for major, degree and, by extension, student charactersitics.

The usual challenges remain. The market isn't demanding types of education. It is demanding cheap, on-demand education. The market doesn't want a type of software engineer per se. It wants a cheap expert labor unit.

And public highered has a legitimizing mission of access. Get rid of majors but if we get rid of them as currently proposed there is no way we can seriously defend public higher education as a public good.

Get rid of majors. Many of them are steeped in racist, sexist rhetoric and histories anyway. But get rid of them while preserving access, democratization. I've not seen any proposal yet that consideration balancing these two aims.

Admittedly getting rid of majors that way won't save you a ton of money but that's the point.

I did all this and still don't have any power. If you enjoyed this thread please tell @DomEnergyVA to fix my power lolbutseriously

Oh I forget to say plainly: getting rid of majors in this way gets rid of departments, which guts faculty governance and that's the real rationale.

*dominant narratives