PSA Amplifies the Positive Impact of Higher Education on Students

A couple of years ago, Inside Higher Education published a piece on how college transforms students. The author, Steven Mintz, is an historian who opens with reference to how industrialization enabled women to blend traditional affairs in domestic life and cottage industry with work outside the home in factories, adding to the bargain another task master in the form of capitalist bosses. Being in the company of sisters for twelve-plus hours a day earning under an overlord who is not one’s blood or a blue blood enabled women to share, organize, speak up, withhold, refuse, and other flexing that pushes back against exploitation and pushes forward to emancipation.

In this mix of home, cottage and factory, things like productive forces, personal wealth, political authority, and personal autonomy went through complex changes for women and society. His factory-work emancipation is a rich reference, akin to that found in the migration of Blacks to the factories of New England during the 20^th century.

We can add to the tapestry of these changing times, the universities and colleges that produce opportunities for earning and learning in a place and space often likened to a factory. Even with all the resources spent on trying to localize and levitate their place and space, and after spending over twenty-five years of my life earning and learning inside these institutions, when I think of a university or college the first image is of a place, a where, not a who or a whom, but a edifice with its employee and enrollee, not you, me, or we. I wonder, when late-Victorian women thought of the opportunities factories presented, were images of sisters the first to flash through their minds or was it the horrid buildings, exploitive employment and tyrannical bosses? Was the first and lasting thought of employees or of employers, when north-migrating Blacks strove to control their futures by earning and learning in factories, of all sorts?

This post explores how access to these institutions and the positive impact of higher education that they provide to people is aided or better facilitated by the Professional Society of Academics (PSA).

Another Day in PSA

The alarm rings. Two tiny humans hoover cereal, as she enters the kitchen.

“Mom, it’s funny.”

“Yes, but don’t stare. He’s sensitive.”

“What? No. Your holidays are the same as ours.”

“Sort of. Today’s not a holiday, Sweetie. It’s a PD day. Your teachers still have to go to school.”

“But we don’t, right!?”

“Correct! Today we go to the zoo!” Collecting her coffee, she pecks each crown. “When you’re done, dishes in the sink, and suit up for safari!”

“For some fairies?”

“Yes, we’re having lunch with three,” she chuckles from down the hall, slipping into the office for some practice maintenance.

But once seated, it’s no use. She cannot concentrate on work, when work is in jeopardy. When everything is in jeopardy. Fresh pajamaed coffee, the clink of spoon and bowl, morning teases in the air. As much as one can, she controls this life…for the two who scurry past to depajama. She thinks.

“Deny the inheritance,” slips out, standing with a defiance that refutes even professional routines. Inconsistency, fleets through her mind as she sends herself for depajamaing. [See Part 1 here.]

PSA vs F2CO

In a recently released Lumina Foundation policy paper, Sara Goldrick-Rab and Nancy Kendall reveal their plan to give Americans a free 2 year college option (F2CO).  That is, the 13^th and 14^th years of (postsecondary) education at community college would be free, which under F2CO means:

“…students will not face any costs for tuition, fees, books or supplies, and will receive a stipend and guaranteed employment at a living wage to cover their living expenses. Unsubsidized, dischargeable loans of a small amount will also be available for those who need them.”

In a number of important ways, this plan is inferior to the professional model for higher education that I propose: the Professional Society of Academics (PSA). Having made this claim in a tweet to Sara Goldrick-Rab, her reply was that PSA is:

“…not adjusted for increases in enrollment and persistence rates; would result in declining per student $ over time.”

"Community colleges' learning disability" - Los Angeles Times

http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-oe-schneider-community-college-graduation-rates-20120411/10

"College Completion: Are measures of completion the best tool for the public to judge the quality of an institution?" - The Chronicle of Higher Education

http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/2012/are-measures-of-completion-the-best-tool-for-the-public-to-judge-the-quality-of-an-institution/

"College Completion: How can colleges find, enroll, and graduate the millions of people in the United States who have some college, but no credential?" - The Chronicle of Higher Education

http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/2012/how-can-colleges-find-enroll-and-graduate-the-millions-of-people-in-the-united-states-who-have-some-college-but-no-credential/

"College Completion: Are graduation rates just a function of spending? Can institutions with scarce resources really do anything to improve their completion rates?" - The Chronicle of Higher Education

http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/2012/are-graduation-rates-just-a-function-of-spending-in-other-words-can-institutions-with-few-financial-resources-really-do-anything-to-improve-their-completion-rates/