The Inheritance, The Assumption

On and off, for over thirty years, I’ve tried to raise awareness of assumptions surrounding the service and stewardship of higher education. For instance, if I ask, where is higher education, what’s your immediate thought? Or if I ask who provides it, what’s your response? Or to whom are you applying for it? To whom are you paying for it?

Mass diagnosis of the assumptions of others is perilous, so wish me luck.

The hypothesis is that the failure of others to entertain PSA is in part the result of unexamined assumption. Assumption being the work yard of philosophers, I hazard a guess that, for most people, a principal response triggered by such questions includes the institutions of our inheritance. Universities and colleges are what comes to mind whenever we reflect, discuss, dream, organize, bargain, teach, graduate, discover, publish, pixelate, politicize, ……or try to improve our social pillar. Higher education action and thought is scribed, even sculpted, by these institutions and the ethos they embody, covering everything from student meals and academic research to government fund-trolling and global economies.

I do not assume this institutional inheritance. I recommend you do the same.

Instead, as is expected of philosophers, I expose and test the assumption. As academics are obliged, I exercise stewardship by submitting an alternative means for the provision and protection of higher education.

It’s a simple, old submission: liberate academics.

The universitas of our inheritance places higher education institutions in a chief and barring position with respect to the work of academics, the only essential labour. These employers are the only means by which academics can earn a living in service and stewardship to higher education.

The universitas of PSA offers a contrast grounded in professional service and stewardship. The professional model expands how academics can earn a living in higher education beyond the bar set by institutional faculty employment.

Take me as an example. My PhD is from a public university that pimped the degree abroad just to keep the institution solvent. I have no publications. I have not been a department Chair or a Dean or even a tenure-track employee. I have been an adjunct, contingent, sessional, whatever-the-class employee at various universities. In my employ, I have been a (willing and unwilling) member of faculty unions. I owned and operated a private education company. I have a lot of teaching experience and I’m good at it, because I had very good teachers.

My higher education service and stewardship has been provided within and without the employment of a university. The twist is, though I do not need or want their employment, I am forced to take their enablement, which means I must take their employment. You see, I do want to contribute to the social pillar of higher education, but under my self-employment and with the enablement of my peers, not some employer and its bargaining unit counterpart.

The rub is, I cannot contribute as I wish, with the authority over credit and quality that I wish. This circumstance is absurd, unjustified, counterproductive and unnecessary.

I have done the same thing outside as inside the boxes, but when out it is illegal for me to advertise for credit or degrees. Without this value in my service, well, just imagine how Harvard or Cape Breton University would react if someone tried to take from them the power to issue course credits and program degrees. No, really, please, spend some time thinking about what would happen. It gets you closer to the PSA rationale.

College course credit is legislation. The legislative act that forms the social contract between the people and the higher education institution, the act of incorporation that forms the institution, and another that designates quality control through accreditation agencies that are also corporations of current and former administration and faculty employees of these institutions. This is authority to issue credentials and authority to effect quality control. This is highly simplified, but not inaccurate.

To liberate academics, create a different (but familiar) social contract for higher education with an incorporated body like the Professional Society of Academics, where PSA has the authority to issue credits and effect quality control over the service and stewardship of independent academic licentiates. Other professions are a model for this sort of shift in social contract, with the medical and legal being perhaps the best sorted. A professional model invites an individual, not institutional, nucleus to higher education. A change in emphasis and authority from the tools to the people.

It’s unrealistic to think that PSA is poised to replace Universitas Oxoniensis or Monsters University. Their cultural roots run too deep, and the PSA model still needs sorting. Instead, this prima facia viable professional model can operate alongside the institutional one of our inheritance. The enabling of independent professional academic practice in society has numerous benefits, but for now, think of how such a career option flattens the mountain of monopolistic institutional employment.

I suppose there isn’t much to recommend me as a collaborator or consultant. Nevertheless, I leave you with another question and another invitation.

Question: Can we have higher education without universities and colleges? 

Invitation: To all, please contribute to the development or dismantlement of this alternative means of provision and protection.