Academics Get Reality Check

Accuracy in Academia ^ | January 20, 2010 | Malcolm A. Kline

[bs9021]

Academics Get Reality Check

Malcolm A. Kline, January 20, 2010

There is such a disconnect between what colleges and universities offer and what students need that even professors are starting to notice. “For over half a century, a college education has been seen as the conduit to white collar employment in this country,” Emily Schnee wrote in the December 2009 issue of Radical Teacher, “a socialist, feminist and anti-racist journal on the theory and practice of teaching.” “Yet the expansion of higher education has created greater expectations for upward mobility than the job market can bear (Anyon, 2005; Carnoy & Levin, 1985; Lafer, 2002l Nasaw, 1979).”

“In the last decades, institutions of higher education have consistently produced a greater supply of college graduates than available middle class jobs.” Schnee is an assistant professor of English at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York.

In that capacity, she is affiliated with the union-supported Worker Education Program (WEP) there. “While working class students often come to higher education in pursuit of social and economic mobility, radical educators, like many who teach at WEP, aspire to teach for critical consciousness and social transformation,” Schnee notes. “The space between these seemingly opposed intentions can be fraught with frustrations on both sides.”

From the student’s perspective, given the WEP syllabi, that may not be too surprising...

[Ciexyz]

Sounds like the students actually expect a 40K-a-year job so they can pay off their 100K student loan.

[randog]

IOW, standing on a street corner and yelling ‘down with whitey!’ has limited career potential.