Dear Donald, Wanna Open Trump University Again for the Greater Good?

Dear Donald Trump,

You opened a university and closed it with a court settlement. Without caring about fault, how'd you like to right that wrong and contribute much more to higher education besides?

Included in the case was a penalty of up to $1 million for operating an unlicensed university in the state of New York. I do care about this misdemeanor offence which government assesses in its control of higher education. I think this crime should concern everyone. I think it directly concerns you, Donald.

When you were opening Trump University I was working as an adjunct at two universities in my hometown and completing a PhD on the Hard Problem. Years before, in the early 90s, I was co-creating and promoting an alternative model for the service and stewardship of higher education. Along with Dr Peter March and Dr Robert Ansel, this profession-based model is our response to the obvious truth that everyone's higher education inheritance is fucked, like some twisted conditions in a crackpot will from a prickly distant relative, we inherited universities and colleges.

I offer wholesale change, in a new social contact, in the now.

Donald, you can open a university. I cannot. The reasons for this distinction are obvious on the surface. You are rich, powerful and well networked. I am not. This means you can exercise your right to earn a living by providing higher education without becoming a faculty employee. I cannot. This must change, but I neither want to be a billionaire nor the owner of a university.

This discrepancy in rights realization has nothing to do with you or me and everything to do with the exclusive employment arrangement that is forced on us by continued assumption of our institutional inheritance.

To contribute to formal higher education, an academic must either become a faculty employee or open their own university. There is no middle ground, no alternative, no other choice. This is absurd. In part because these conditions are not necessary and they violate my right to earn a living as an academic who disclaims my portion of the inheritance. But maybe I'm wrong and there is some good reason to think that a full-on, state-sanctioned, institution-employment monopoly on the only labour that is essential in higher education service and stewardship is a good idea. I mean, what could go wrong?

Higher education service and stewardship can be provided using a version of the professional model found in the provision and protection of other social goods. In such a model, one can open and operate a practice in higher education, as an attorney, physician, engineer, accountant, or psychiatrist is enabled solo or partnered practice in their respective professions, each having comparable public or private gravity. This is middle ground between you and me in higher education, between the billionaire owner of a university and the (unionized) faculty employ of one.

Here are some pictures I got from the internet to prove my claim:

Premise One:

Premise Two:

Premise Three:

Premise Four:

As the social contracts for law and medicine are struck with professional ink, so too service and stewardship for higher education can be penned. The internet says so.

The question is should it be so. And before you go, "Fuck, no!", remember we are talking about academics who have been, are or are expected to be the stewards of higher education, or rather, shared stewards, supposing they meet the necessary condition of opening a (licensed) university or becoming a ((unionized) full-time) faculty employee in one. With a professional model, academics are not restricted to or wasted on accreditation boards, academic senates, picket lines, unemployment lines, departmental meetings, alumni functions, and much else in this crap heritage. Instead, academics are on the frontline practicing with freedom from institutional employment, subject to and supported by a legislated profession.

To be clear, I am speaking of public higher education, but a professional model that covers independent (private) practice as well. Again, as one finds in the legal and medical professions, where licensed solo practitioners are also (unionized) faculty employees.

The University of the State of New York or the State Board of Regents are not teaching in my classroom, marking my students’ essays, helping me with research or performing my community service, and they ought not to be. Theses bodies merely help to facilitate the essential work of academics in higher education. Nor is the Appellant Division of the New York State Supreme Court in an attorney's office, boardroom, or classroom. And none of these meta-structures hire and fire academics or attorneys in aid of institutional employer mission statements, brands, bottom lines, shareholder demands, revenue sources, patents, bonds,...

Funding for this professional model aligns with your education policy, and more precisely, with something like universal choice. While there are stakeholders that stand in opposition to universal choice in primary and secondary education, they have no footing when the students involved are adults, attending university and paying taxes (with their part-time jobs). The state is quite happy to loan money to these individuals, burdening them with skyrocketing debt - because you assume the expensive, exclusive institutional model of our inheritance.

Obviously, if the state is willing to do that to citizens, then we should be able to respond with, "Give me my education tax dollars and I'll spend them on service and stewardship that I think is best for me and society. Now piss off!" A voucher system is better. Give citizens their higher education tax dollars and mind your own business, or rather, government mind its own business. And if you think the liberty of taxpaying adults is not persuasive enough, then take a look at both the public and private savings that a model of professional practice has over institutional employment. We're talking tuition-free higher education for less than current funding levels, never mind levels what stakeholders chronically cry they need. [For financials see: US, Canada, and Australia.]

Enough has been said to generate your own response to the should question, based on our shared right to earn a living and a now irrelevant distinction between you and me - irrelevant because in a professional model, in order to contribute to (formal) higher education, I do not need to be a billionaire who opens a university nor do I need to be a faculty employee of one. Instead, such a model enables independent practice of higher education in conditions that individuals can manage, in solo practice or in partnership, as physicians and attorneys have done for centuries and academics have done sporadically in the checkered history of our institutional heritage. Think of what this sort of social space can mean for all who depend upon higher education, and think of it in this sort of physical space.

Sorry, I'm a little lame from repeatedly arguing for what seems obvious to me. Forgive the self-indulgence, but let's have an academic look at students, whom faculty employees educate and institutional employers graduate, who become attorneys who use strikingly loose legal language. This detour might prove useful in future legal battles - nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

(224)(1) provides that no individual, organization, partnership or cooperation which does no hold degree-conferring powers granted by the Regents or the Legislature shall confer any degree, or shall use, advertise, transact business under the name "university" or "college," unless the right to do so has been granted by the Regents. 

From this we learn that the misdemeanor charge was (essentially) for not having a license to practice higher education (as a university) and calling the incorporated entity you own a university. This is how university educated and graduated attorneys codify the offence, "...no individual...which does not hold a degree-conferring status...shall confer any degree..." and "...no individual...shall use...the name 'university'...". That is, unless the Regents wave a magic wand over you.

Being mindful of the distinction between authorization and ability: Can an individual confer a degree? Can an individual be a university or a universitas? Can an individual refer to themselves as a university? Can an individual be conferred the right to refer to themselves as a university? On Jeopardy, under which category would we find the answer, "That which confers degrees": Old Institutions or Old Individuals?

Pass these questions around to your staff. And don't waste time with the answer, "A university is such an individual recognized by corporate, tort, criminal and other law." If that is the meaning of "individual" in (224)(1), then "organization, partnership or cooperation" merely serve as examples of corporate individuals. But that's not what's happening here. When the attorneys use "individual" they are referring to me, Shawn Warren, that person, or this one, someone, but not some corporate entity like a charity or lottery.

I don't know what to make of a legislature that forbids a person to call themselves a university. What's next, laws that make it a misdemeanor to refer to one's self as a squad, jury, bureaucracy or trio? Criminal acts, that is, unless you are granted the right to bend meaning from somewhere on high. 

No, that's not it. I can advertise on the quad that I'm a university or a trinity and no one is going to arrest or sue me. Some might think me crazy, some might get offended, most wouldn't understand me, and in the end, my hat might catch some coin off my witty prompts like: How can three things be one and yet I stand here alone? How does Santa Claus fit down the chimney, when we have no chimney? How can my buddy, Job, standing over there by the picket line be a university that confers degrees? 

"Hey Job, lawyers say you can't be a university."

"Really? How about my computer or your cat or Stonehenge? Anything illegal in these?" 

Being trippy is tolerable, even entertaining. But until each of us has a Jarvis, there won't be any degrees coming from individuals whose existence and acceptance alters meaning to the point that this greeting makes perfect sense, "Good afternoon. I'm Jarvis, your university. Shall we begin studies toward a joint degree in philosophy and medicine? Big data shows that this combination can..." And please notice how this (inevitability) renders labour unions quaint as they currently take a collective piss on the social pillar.

Speaking of trippy, how about opening a federal university, alongside the academies, but based on the professional model? The White House could lead by example, with current federal higher education funding, reduced government oversight, and no intrusion on state domain and institutions. They have theirs and you have yours, again. After all, what's one more universitas (not university) for higher education? Surely, the more the better. 

If I may sketch a path,

Step 1: Legislate the Professional Society of Academics, or the National Board/Bar for the Academic Universitas, or maybe rebrand as, Trump University Two, in stride with The University of the State of New York, but not like Congress did in the cases of Gallaudet and Howard (or maybe like that since you've got all the reigns right now?).

Step 2: Authorize degree-conferring for TUT and credit-conferring for professional academics.

Step 3: License academics for independent professional practice in their respective fields under TUT.

Step 4: Provide federal programs that support professional solo and partnered higher education practice under the protection and direction of TUT.

Step 5: Address the remaining details with the working systems that have been adopted through centuries of trial and error on the ground and in the ether, or invent new systems appropriate to a professional model (I did).

Step 6: Announce that this is a responsible test of a potentially viable and desirable alternative and close with something like, "Every minute of education is an experiment."

Dusting off your hands, there is then in place a professional universitas that can expand and contract as and where people and policy demands, with far less access inequality, government interference, public funding, college football, compromise, complicity, corporatization,... This model promises so much and is free. It is not about me. It is not about you. It sure as shit isn't about an abstract legal entity like Oxford or Harvard. These institutions are not going anywhere any time soon. So, I offer a viable alternative, some competition, or finally something with which to make meaningful comparison and relative claims in higher education. I mean, are universities and colleges the most effective, efficient, economic, or ethical means of providing and protecting higher education?

I am not marching in the same direction as the rest of the academy:

"Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's of to work we go!"

"Sleepy?"

"Yes, Dopey?"

"I feel like I'm assuming something."

"Be careful, you know what assuming does."

"Ha! Ha! Oh, Sleepy, you're being naughty.

"Yeah, ha. I know. Assuming fucks us in the..."

"GRUMPY!?"

You will have noticed in this explanation a professional translation for my earlier pictogram proof, I mean, for my premises, no I mean for documents that contain my premises in support of the viability of a professional model. I strongly encourage you to have staff versed in this model, use this professional Rosetta to translate the full text of documents like these, and use it in discussions related to higher education improvement, as a mindfuck for administrative and faculty employees of universities. 

In addition to this argument for viability, here is a bonus offer of reason to think the professional alternative is also desirable. In a PSA translation that demonstrates both, consider this self-description from the New York State Education Department,

With respect to higher education, the Board of Regents is responsible for planning and coordination, evaluating quality, and promoting equity and access. It also charters (incorporates) independent colleges and universities and authorizes proprietary colleges to operate in New York State. It approves major changes in the missions of public, independent, and proprietary colleges and universities through master plan amendments and authorizes out-of-state colleges seeking to offer instruction in New York State. The Regents also develop the Statewide Plan for Higher Education every eight years, in coordination with New York's higher education community. (See Premise Three above.)

The professional translation says fuck that:

With respect to higher education, Trump University Two is responsible for planning, coordinating, and executing functions common to bodies such as the State Bar of California or the New York State Board of Medicine. TUT licenses, disciplines and develops independent academics and authorizes solo and partnership incorporation of higher education practice to operate in the United States of America. Every eight years, in consultation with the national higher education community, TUT suggests and incentivizes areas of focus for higher education study by students and service by public, independent, proprietary, licensed professional academics who act as the frontline authority for practice and protection of higher education, using federal TUT oversight and professional prerogative.

Don't believe me? Then believe the internet,

Highest law in the land, baby! Now maybe the states won't like this, given the blow to funding and the thin, mixed soup that is state constitutional protections for higher education. But the available retorts pack a Tyson punch and Rogan slogan. Check out this news clip from the UK or was it Canada:

The new White House administration announced today that it has plans to reallocate federal funding for student aid, research grants, and contracts, worth nearly $175 billion, to the newly chartered, Trump University Two, in what the President is calling, "A bold new social contract, with nothing like it since the New Deal." But this isn't really a deal, Alex, it's more a notification. That's right Rachel, critics are claiming the move is a bully tactic, and an unnecessary, risky social experiment, given that the world uses a long-proven system of universities and colleges, reaching back to the likes of Oxford, Harvard, and the Sorbonne. The American Association of University Professors has released a statement claiming, "This is just another neoliberal privatization con being played on the public good of higher education." Speaking this week online to adjunct union bosses and members in a first of its kind nationwide table talk, President Trump said, "This move is consistent with and respects the education boundaries set out in the Constitution, leaving state higher education a true state affair, with no more federal interference or undue influence. Folks, I've shown you the numbers. With this money over fifteen million students can have tuition-free education, where before they had loans. TUT's not offering you a job, but an opportunity, an option. A way to earn and learn that, frankly, I understand as a businessman and, believe me, I've spent a lot of time around the lawyers you academics produce. Anyway, what the hell, I'm here to pitch TUT, so come on over. I mean, it's a free country, Shawn, and we're all law-abiding citizens here, right." JRE is going to have a field day with that one, Rachel. The President is of course referencing his failed Trump University and UAW President Shawn Fain. It looks now as though recruitment season is open again. Right, Alex, only this time the plan is to use tax dollars to fund a federal brand of tuition-free higher education, using a version of the voucher system found in the universal choice movement, another of the President's fronts in education...

No doubt there'd be resistance. But on whose side will the public be when they see the freedom, dynamism and economism of a professional model? Or that you are trying to give them such a model. I've tried for thirty years to give it and to get academics to meet their duty to challenge an assumed inheritance. I'm now desperate enough to pitch the idea to someone who will very likely never see it, probably wouldn't understand it, and ultimately might find it a political potato.

Thank you for your time, Mr. President. If you feel like kicking this can around some, I am always open to discussion. Or just take it and turn it into bud or butane. It's the product of academic community service.

Sincerely,

Shawn Warren, PhD.