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John Warner
@biblioracle
, 5 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Struggling this morning between my deep belief in the enduring values of public higher education institutions and the possibility that those values are so corrupted they need tearing down and rebuilding from scratch.
There's just so much happening on campuses (particularly in regards to labor) that are an affront to the putative institutional values, but have become utterly routine and unremarkable.
For sure, a lot of the betrayals of these values are rooted in larger systemic problems that the higher ed institutions are attempting to navigate, but I don't know how to get past the problems without a hard reset.
Maybe debt forgiveness/free college is that reset. If it is, and it happens, I hope institutions pause and reflect on how far they've strayed from their values.
Perhaps ending the chase for "revenue" is the answer. I know that it's a big part of the problem.
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John Warner
@biblioracle
Seen an interesting divide in my Twitter feed to this story. Tech-skeptics (primarily faculty) tend to say "no duh, this thing was doomed." Admins and edtech folks admire the attempt at experimenting around increased access. insidehighered.com/digital-learni…
I'm much more inclined toward the skeptic crowd, but I take the point of the pro-experimenters. Universities should be exploring new avenues for teaching and learning. That's part of the mission.
The pro-experimenters point out, correctly, that these programs were low-risk for students enrolling in them. They weren't charging a bunch of up-front money for a potential positive outcome. Students only paid if they saw value in what they were asked to pay for after the fact.
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John Warner
@biblioracle
Harvard has a policy that forces some of their best teachers out on a strict timetable. Why? No good reason.
thecrimson.com/article/2019/9…
Experienced teaching faculty either being flushed out of the system or having to leave for other opportunities against their deepest desires is embedded in the very fiber of the system. It's idiotic. I could sit here for 20 minutes and name great people who no longer teach.
When institutions say they value teaching but do. nothing to retain experienced teachers, they're lying, sometimes to themselves, but lies nonetheless.
Read 3 tweets
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John Warner
@biblioracle
Last night in my first-year experience class I read my students the excerpts from the student reflections about reading and writing I quote in this post and they all agreed they reflected their experiences. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…
It was interesting because I had assigned a reflective piece of writing in which I very carefully never used the word "essay" and made it clear they could respond in any form they wanted. Every single student wrote a five-paragraph essay. They'd been conditioned to a default.
Thing is, within those 5PE's were some amazing and well-written narratives that illustrated their experiences. (I asked them to reflect on times they'd had to work collaboratively.) They'd done real stuff and had real wisdom, but it was diminished by forcing it into a template.
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Kevin Seeber
@kevinseeber
Hello higher education friends! I hope your fall semester is off to a good start. If your campus is anything like mine, you've probably been in meetings with folks talking about enrollment concerns, and maybe you've heard the year 2025 mentioned. Let me walk you through this...
Although a lot of factors contribute to enrollment in higher education, it is possible to predict (roughly) where things will be for the next couple of decades. The reason is that the biggest contributing factor to higher ed enrollment is the birth rate 18 years earlier.
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Steve Campbell
@Historian_Steve
I'm literally nerding out on this series of maps I've created. Sometimes a bit of repetitive, mundane work can pay off! These maps show Dem v. GOP candidates at the presidential level by county every four years from 1944-2016. historianstevecampbell.com/uploads/4/4/6/…
You can read it from left to right to see change over time through periods of 20 yrs, which has the advantage of smoothing out freakish elections when something rare was going on or when there was a third party candidate, and from top to bottom to see change between each election
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Trevor Griffey
@TrevorGriffey
What is the neoliberal university (or college), where did it come from, and what should be done about it? A Thread. #highereducation #capitalism #neoliberalism
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2) As part of their search for new revenue, neoliberal universities invest heavily in marketing to solicit new students, donations, grants, and partnerships with other schools, governments, or businesses.
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Justice Seeker
@helena_jennie
Killing universities:
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Sam Cohen
@cohenss
"The General Assembly has chosen not to fund the University Press of Kentucky. We received $672,000 in the current fiscal year; and we will be working with our partner institutions to identify ways to sustain the financial viability of the Press." 1/

wtvq.com/2018/04/02/uk-…
I gave a paper this past weekend on the condition of university presses in the context of what's happening in public higher ed. It focused on the history of scholarly publishing at my school, the University of Missouri. Kentucky came up too. 2/
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