interruptions

Feb. 20, 2012 at 9:45pm with 330 notes

Reblogged from anticapitalist

Why can’t education be free? Because knowledge is commodified, restricted, patented and sold

When people talk about “higher education”, they are not talking about intense learning in a field of your desire. They’re not talking about developing yourself into an intellectual. They are talking about preparing yourself for corporate slavery.

The various Bachelors, PhD, Masters, and MD programs we refer to as “higher education” are not higher education as much as they are licenses to work. Because you need these degrees to work, colleges charge exorbitant rates.

I believe education is a right, but the point of this post is not that. This is to explain the difference between education and job preparation.

If my philosophy degree was intended as preparation for corporate slavery, I think I want my money back.

More seriously - just based on my experiences and those of my peers, I don’t think higher education in the humanities has been transformed into a crash course in corporate slavery in quite the way described here. At least not yet. There’s still a commitment in a lot of institutions to the intrinsic value of the study of the liberal arts. But talking heads spouting the neoliberal consensus on reforming higher ed always include a bunch of stuff about how colleges aren’t producing graduates with the kind of skills employers want. Usually this includes some line about how we need more STEM majors and fewer humanities majors.

Also, I don’t think that the fact that people “need these degrees to work” explains the high cost of higher ed. Perhaps for professional degrees - the MD, the JD, certain masters degrees - that holds true. But that wouldn’t explain why the upward trend in the cost of tuition has been so dramatic for such an extended period. It’s not obvious that the wage premium for college graduates has really been increasing that significantly, not to the point that it would be driving up tuition prices by influencing the demand for higher ed. For the most part, I think I’d look in other places for the culprit. At least in the case of public, 4-year institutions, the consistent decline in state funding for higher education over the last 25 years has played a significant role.