HEI Closures or PSA Conversions: What’s to Lose?

In 2013, I posted a pair of responses to the crisis faced by the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) as its accreditation was about to be pulled. Along with the administrative and support staff, 2600 academics and 90,000 students were to lose their access to higher education (HE). At that time, I explained how loss of accreditation is not loss of the qualified academics that provide education or the students that seek it, but merely the loss of a middleman. In the absence of such institutional tools, the talents and targets of students and academics remain.

Universities and colleges are not HE. Academics and students are HE.

Academic Cooperative: A Second Alternative

There are in fact two viable and desirable alternatives to the current triad paradigm of institutional service units (universities/colleges), government finance (state/federal) and union labour representation.  Higher education and research do not need to be provided and are not sustainable under the triad, and are better served under the professional and cooperative service paradigms.

Higher Education Can Be More than Mere Election Among Evils

Moral Responsibility

Behaviour considered normative in nature is bound by the familiar Kantian paraphrase, "ought implies can." Proper analysis of the phrase depends on the meaning given to "can" and related notions of possibility, but on one interpretation: if an agent’s behaviour is unavoidable, if there is no possible alternative, then there is no moral traffic.

This is a logical point that partially scribes the domain of ethical theory.

A Letter to American Academics

Dear Fellow Academics,

I am a Canadian, presently residing in our capital.  For over a decade I have been a “part-timer,” an “adjunct professor.”  I am writing to the majority of American faculty, lecturers, and instructors who find themselves in similar employment circumstances.  This is not to say that the minority might not also find my correspondence of interest.

"Higher education and research can and should be provided under the professional paradigm, not the university-government-union "hybrid"." - TED Conversation

http://www.ted.com/conversations/10638/higher_education_and_research.html

"Is the global state of higher education a more pressing concern than others such as the environment, energy, food, human rights,...?" - TED Conversation

http://www.ted.com/conversations/10639/is_the_global_state_of_higher.html

"Universities leading the way with education technology" - The Guardian UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/mar/28/education-technology?commentpage=1#end-of-comments