Crass cross-promotion.
What's in a platform? Plus updates and miscellany.
Everyone’s talking about platforms these days. Substack is doing its best to convince you that it’s the new blogosphere circa 2005. Twitter is on fire. Facebook has been a hothouse of deplorable geezers for as long as anyone can remember. TikTok is Chinese spyware with dancing and unsettling voiceovers. Instagram has become a parody of itself. Meanwhile the eggheads and NPR crowd have decamped for something called Mastadon, which will surely be a hoot. It seems that everyone is looking for the Platform Promised Land.
The university is another such platform—perhaps the original knowledge-producing and sharing platform. And universities are also on fire. As I write in the introduction to my book manuscript (which now has nearly three whole chapters!)
The contemporary university is the most durable platform for the production and dissemination of knowledge in the West; in the US context, historically, it has also been a peerless promotor of upward economic mobility. However, at this moment in history, the university is under fire from just about all corners. While we would do well to remember that in its 400+ year history on the North American continent, higher education has never been immune to systemic crises and large-scale upheavals, for decades the steady drumbeat has been that the university is in crisis. Many of the forces that threaten to capsize the modern university are external, caused by a changing macro-economy, socio-cultural and demographic changes, and disruptions brought about by rapid developments in digital technology over the last three decades (Levine & Van Pelt, 2021; Newfield, 2016).
But there are also powerful internal forces that must be considered: the erosion of shared governance and faculty autonomy, attacks from the political right, administrative bloat, stagnant wages, increased workloads, skyrocketing tuition, pandemic burnout, and a seemingly intractable academic labor problem more than half a century in the making.
Bryan Alexander, author of the books Academia Next and Universities on Fire, as well as an inveterate blogger and chief cat-herder of the Future Trends Forum, a weekly (virtual) conversation about all things related to the future of higher education, has just published a blog post that recaps new data from a Wall Street Journal poll about Americans’ opinion of higher education. Given that it’s the WSJ, the article itself is behind an ironclad paywall, but here’s Bryan’s overall summary of the data:
The main takeaway is that our view of higher education’s value is souring. Fewer of us see post-secondary learning as worth the cost, and now a majority think college and university degrees are no longer worth it: “56% of Americans think earning a four-year degree is a bad bet compared with 42% who retain faith in the credential.”
So, according to the WSJ, the majority of Americans don’t find higher education to be a worthwhile investment. This is refreshing for me personally, since I essentially make the same argument in the introductory chapter of my book. The university is under siege. The problems that have always been there—adjunctification, rising tuition and debt levels, a bottom-line mentality among admins and leadership, declining enrollments, disengaged students, partisan attacks from the political right, and all the rest—are now cast in even sharper relief as more and more Americans opt out of higher education altogether.
In the last decade, according to the WSJ/NORC polling, the percentage of people who say that a four-year college degree is worth the cost has fallen by 11 points, while the percentage of those who say that college is not worth the cost has risen by 16 percentage points over the same span.
Another infographic shows that young people tend to be more skeptical of college and women tend to be more positive about higher education than men.
Bryan’s analysis of the WSJ data and report notes that the polling here is based on a single question asked of just over 1,000 people, so it’s a small study that asked a decidedly economics-focused question about the value of higher education. There are many other ways to think about the value of college beyond just its ability to propel people into the middle class. (The fact that unemployment has been stuck at historic lows for what seems like forever doesn’t help either, though as my former Chancellor once said, “We don’t want to be in the business of relying on economic recession as our enrollment strategy” either.)
As Bryan enumerates it, aside from its economic benefits—there are, let’s remember, quite a few professions that are simply closed to those without a college degree—higher education offers
Personal growth, especially for traditional-age undergraduates; finding purpose in life; exposure to different ways of thinking; immersion in new social contexts: a purely economic assessment ignores these desiderata. The public desire that post-secondary students learn certain things (civics, numeracy, communication, etc.) is also nonpecuniary in outcomes.
And then we get to the part of Bryan’s analysis that really speaks to my own project: what about the Big Societal Problems facing the US—and the planet—that higher education is uniquely suited to tackle?
Second, a series of major challenges facing humanity need academic input. The climate crisis might be the most salient of these. Dealing with technology and disinformation is a leading topic for many people. If enrollment declines, we reduce the number of scholars producing research as well as the number of students educated to handle these crises. Decreasing support for higher education could also sap our ability to collaborate with communities and influence public debates.
Twitter is a platform that many people are loathe to give up, even as they rail against its frattastic overlord, because of its many affordances, their personal history with the platform, the connections and communities they have forged there, and so forth. We need to think of the university in the same way—as yet another knowledge-producing social platform with unique affordances (as well as drawbacks) and potentials for collecting, vetting, and disseminating knowledge. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that the university could in my lifetime become something unrecognizable, a hollow shell of its former glory. We need to be prepared to deal with the stakes of this fallout.
Just a few quick updates
I’ve been busy this past few months. The writing (on the book) has gotten easier. I keep telling myself that I just have to do a little every day (which is true) and that it doesn’t matter whether any of it is any good (which is mostly true, though not completely). Writing a book after becoming a full professor is fun because the pressure is off. I’m tenured, I’m promoted, and to be perfectly honest, the only person who truly cares whether this book ever sees the light of day is me. By the way, there’s a new working title: The University in Postdigital Culture: Lies, Literacy, and Language.
As my sabbatical wanes, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what I have accomplished since January 1, 2023. (You may recall I had a nasty bout with COVID at the very beginning of the year that put me a week or two behind the 8-ball.)
As I said, the book is coming along. I have three chapters drafted with a fourth at approximately 10,000 words. So, grand total: just over 40,000 words. The whole thing will be between 75,000 and 85,000 words. The proposal has been sent out to the publisher, and I am waiting to hear back. I’ve given myself a couple of back up plans in case things don’t work out with the first publisher, though one of these will require revamping the book quite a bit.
The freedom to set my own schedule means that I have been able to run a lot more than is normally possible, even in the bitter cold months. I’ve seen some pick ups in my fitness level and speed. I also joined Strava recently, which is sort of like social media meets running. You get to follow your friends, see their runs and workouts, and cheer each other on. I wrote a couple of weeks back about the Tippy Trail 10-miler in which I came in first in my age division. A week later, I ran the Butler Bulldog Jog 10K and finished second in my age division and eleventh overall, with a finishing time of 42:53 (or 6:53/mile). I can’t tell you the last time I ran a 10K that fast. But we had the perfect weather for it this year, and the 10K course, which wended its way through the Butler campus and the Central Canal Towpath was breathtaking in more ways than one. I am enjoying the extra fitness just in time for May and warmer weather. It will likely come in handy.
Kaylin started a new job this week at Paganelli Law Group. She has developed as a litigator and is ready to take on a new challenge with a new firm. The hours will likely be a bit more humane at Paganelli and there will be opportunities for leadership. I am so proud of her and everything she has accomplished so far in her legal career. Their dental and vision coverage are actually more generous than IU’s, so I’m going to jump on Kaylin’s plan.
I scored Pearl Jam tickets for September 10 here in Indianapolis!
Happy May 4th to those who celebrate. May the fourth be with you!