Dear Donald, Wanna Open Trump University Again?

Dear Donald Trump,

Straight to the point, you look to adjustment higher education. I look to turn it inside out so there is no increased demand for public funding, no more exploitation and digitization of academics, nor leaning on labour unions, alumni donors, venture capitalists, accreditation boards, and departments of (higher) education. I offer a shift in paradigm from our inheritance.

We inherited an institutional model of universities and colleges that facilitates provision and protection of higher education through the employment of academics as faculty. This centuries-old heritage is assumed without challenge and enjoys a monopoly on earning and learning that violates rights and freedoms of students and academics, breaching social contract, ratified rights declarations and the natural freedom of Job.

But things are worse still. Universities and colleges are not needed or recommended.

Are higher education institutions - universities and colleges - the most effective, efficient, economical, or ethical means of service and stewardship for the good?

If you ask around, some of your staff might understand the question but none will have an answer. This should worry all of us.

My answer is, no. Not when compared to a model for higher education that is based on the professional model used for the social goods of law or medicine.

The institutional model is not a champion. We simply inherited universities and colleges. To be a champion there needs to be a contest and not one that is merely internal to the parties of our inheritance. I offer a match that should have rung in two centuries ago when the professions were emerging as social contract contenders. The professional model I back for higher education warrants study, development and testing in the ring.

I cannot explain a wholesale model here. But a thought experiment can help with perspective on what I propose: Suppose it were possible to provide and protect higher education without universities and colleges. I offer a way how but ignore that.

Consider some questions under this supposition:

How might researching or publishing change?

How might students and academics study together?

What role do professional associations or labor unions play?

What place is there for academic freedom, shared governance, or tenure?

These questions cannot be answered without ignoring the supposition and tabling inherited institutional responses. That is, unless there is available an alternative set of responses with no reference to institutional employers and enrollers.

The bitching and the band-aiding that passes for stewardship, the exploitation of faculty and the autoworker response from academics, the public and personal costs, the exclusion, the authoritarianism, the compromise and complicity. All of it must stop and it can with a professional contender.

In my retirement, this work is meant to meet ongoing community service obligations as an academic and is free to all. I am certain a professional option for higher education will work. The question is whether it will work for us, or will we continue to assume what is the past for us?

Thank you for your attention and I wish you wisdom in the office.

 

Best Regards,

Shawn Warren, PhD.

X: @ProSocAcademics

PSA Blog: http://bit.ly/ProfessionalSocAcademics

 

PS, Now if I can only figure out how to send this. Any ideas?