Badge Movements and the Professional Model for Higher Education

It has taken me longer to get to this than anticipated, but here is my first attempt to synthesize the professional higher education model and the badge model now in development. Please forgive me for its length (3000 words). It assumes the reader is familiar with the professional model for higher education. If this is not the case then please consult, The New Tender. This is cross-posted at HASTAC.

The Professional Model and Recognition of Badges

Institutions do not educate but provide support to individuals that do educate. The professional model fully embraces this fact and maintains that institutions (universities and colleges) are not required as support for higher education. The observation that other vital personal services such as legal, medical, engineering, and accounting can be provided through professional society and licensure is reason to believe the same can be done for all forms of higher education, from 2-year colleges to 4-year research universities, covering all subjects in faculties from the Humanities to the Sciences.

Whether it is the replacement or recombination of universities and colleges with professional society and licensed practice, this alternative model champions the necessity and primacy of individuals over institutions in higher education.

A New Model for Higher Education

Link: A New Tender for the Higher Education Social Contract

The above link is to an initiation document for the Professional Society of Academics proposal. It is in draft form.  Contribution is most welcome.

It presents the professional alternative as a bid for the higher education social contract, which has been recently and unofficially forced opened by crises across the triad, such as: 1) The purchase of accreditation through private "revitalization investment" in a growing number of struggling or near defunct institutions; 2)  The meteoric rise of private and public ventures into Massive Open Online Courses; 3) The continued reduction in public support for everything from higher education finance to its philosophy...

This tender is part of a larger reform effort wherein the service, governance, finance and representation features of the professions are combined with those of the co-operative model in use since the early 19th century. This professional/co-operative model can place higher education in the social economy, at a comfortable distance from capitalist or state involvement.

The Cost of Independence in Higher Education

This is basic rationale and costing for an academic practice in philosophy.  The practitioner is not an employee of an institution such as a university or college, but rather an entrepreneur of higher education.

It is prima facie evidence that universities and colleges, substantial government funding and union representation are not required for ample access to affordable quality undergraduate humanities education.

Higher Education in the Social Economy

This is naked thinking on systemic higher education reform aimed at moving higher education from the capitalist to the social economy. It discusses use of the existing co-operative service/business model as a plausible global strategic response to the crisis in higher education, with some notes on integrating elements of the professional service/business model.

Real Academics and Virtual Education

To protect their service, students and vocation, academics must better assert themselves as a unique and valued class of labour – independent of institutional employ. One of the pressing reasons we must do this is the rapid expansion of electronic education in all its dimensions and forms, including MOOCs, course sales, and virtual institutions.

Unions cannot protect labour if in response to economic and technical realities institutional employers and governments must (or simply choose to) alter the means of production and thereby eliminate or erode faculty (and other) employee positions.