The Problem with Higher Ed
people can't afford it, programs are disappearing, what's next?
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This week has been a whirlwind. November is the busiest time for my 9-5 academic job and I feel exhausted with little capacity to do much of anything. I hate capitalism. It always just takes and takes and takes. How much energy might we all have if we didn’t need to work to live? I think about that a lot until it starts to feel depressing.
I thought about not writing the newsletter this week. But it’s one of few rituals that keeps me on schedule. So… my thoughts here today are bit messy.
The week has been spent listening to students’ fears around the election and asking whether our program would still be in existence during a Trump presidency. I have tried my best to quell these fears, but the truth is: I don’t know. The state of academia has already been precarious. There is too much unchecked racism, sexism, zionism, ableism, transphobia (and more) that continues to grow and thrive in academic spaces. I was to believe in higher ed, but I’ve felt disillusioned for a while. What is the point of any of it anymore? Is higher ed becoming obsolete?
I am a grossly over-educated higher-educated person. I have two master’s degrees. Where have these degrees gotten me? Were they worth it? I don’t regret them, but I wish I had something more tangible to show from this education. I wish I had a niche. I wish, maybe, that my interests and expertise were valued.
People don’t have money and it costs a lot of money to go to college (and beyond) here in the U.S. Typically, college students will learn important media literacy skills, but what happens if people aren’t going to college anymore? How can we reach people who can’t participate in academia? With history being removed from various education curriculum in grade school, I would imagine anything teaching kids about information literacy is also getting the shaft.
Literacy skills are exceptionally low in the U.S. People consistently vote against their own interests, partially due to lack of literacy skills. In a 2022 article for The Salk Lake Tribune, the author discusses “behavior economics,” and why people vote against their own self interests:
…individuals are often influenced by biases that lead them to make irrational decisions. People purchase things they never use, make investment decisions following the herd, act with overconfidence in making key economic decisions and allow irrecoverable costs to affect current decisions—the sunk cost fallacy. Marketing and advertising enhance this irrationality, playing to people’s biases.
Education is incredibly important to society. College is not the only way. That being said, we have to figure out how to meet people where they are. The TikTok-ification of teaching and learning leaves much to be desired. The capitalist hellscape that exists not only offline, but online keeps us stymied. We are always being sold to and we have less education on how to not participate—or to, at the very least—think through things before we participate.
Do we teach decision-making in schools? Do we teach media literacy anymore? How do we unbrainwash people who believe their specific religion should be guiding a society? Do we teach about money (how to make it, how to save it, how to use it to help ourselves and our community)? I learned how to write checks in 5th grade. That was the extent of my formal education in money management. We have to rely on our communities now more than ever to skill share and teach.
We are in changing times and have been in changing times before. We can’t depend on college to radicalize people—not any longer. We can’t rely on institutions, including academia, to fix or solve anything. We need to be doing outreach outside of academia, outside of all institutions.
How can we make sure to carry everyone with us?
Meta's Threads is 'overrun' with liberal election fraud conspiracies -
Dorothy Allison, author and force of nature, has died. - Brittany Allen
Undocumented Families Are Fighting for Our Future. Will You Join Us? - Sandra Avalos
Veteran activists started a decade-long pipeline fight in Appalachia - Denali Sai Nalamalapu
How public libraries are becoming community hubs in the midst of disasters - Patrick Sisson
Privatized Idaho: A Far-right Attack On A Community College Reveals A Blueprint For Destroying Higher Ed - Laura Jedeed
Why Is Canada Protecting the Names of Suspected Nazis? - Taylor C. Noakes
Exit Right: Trump has remade Americans, and to defeat Trumpism requires nothing less than the left doing the same. - Gabriel Winant
Folkweaver: Germinating Dreams of Community -
an oldie but goodie:
Just posted a "girl, same" note because FUCK, the energy has been so so intense at work. The institution is just so so so not built for creating safer spaces for this kind of collective trauma/processing...I hate so much about it!! Thanks for this, it helped me feel less alone.
I haven't learned any of the most useful things in life through school, not even media literacy. In fact, having done both academic and non academic learning at the same time since even high school (I'm 30+), it has only blatantly shown me how far behind academia really is. I mostly just spend time UNLEARNING what academia has taught me.