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   John (johnzajac@dice.camp)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Mar-2025 03:52:36 JST John

   • Paul Cantrell
   • J H Libby

   @inthehands @jhlibby

   I'm ambivalent about the destruction of these institutions. Higher education in general has been on an unsustainable trajectory for decades, and imo this is just the "cannot be sustained" part of that manifesting.

   Also, there's nothing *particularly* special about Ivies that isn't entirely caught up in their faculty and the students they attract. Once the good faculty go somewhere else, the students will follow, and other unis will take their place.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Mar-2025 03:52:34 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • J H Libby

     @johnzajac @jhlibby
     I’m highly skeptical of the train of thought in that first paragraph. It’s true, to a very large extent, but the “unsustainability” of higher ed is much like the “unsustainability” of social security: the gap between the real problems and the imagined ones is •vast•, and right-wingers bent on institutional destruction prey on that gap.

     What’s actually unsustainable about higher ed is our society’s vast and growing economic inequality: colleges want to remain accessible to people on the low end of the divide, but have to pay people on the “skilled labor” (hate that term) side of the divide. Those two are diverging faster and faster.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Mar-2025 04:08:20 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • J H Libby

     @johnzajac @jhlibby
     It’s an ideological half-difference. I believe education a human right and something every human being should have access to. It should either be free or, that failing, withing financial reach for absolutely everyone.

     I think it’s •extraordinarily• dangerous to concentrate all education under the single umbrella of the state. Too many eggs in one basket. That danger has never been clearer than it is right now: one of the reasons the admin is trying to make an example of Columbia is that the state schools are already rolling over for the fascists with no fuss en masse, and it’s private colleges that have been standing strongest on, say, sticking with their DEI mission.

     It’s a miserable tragedy that mechanisms to spread public support to diverse institutions have largely been attempts to destroy the public ones (cf charter schools). I don’t have easy answers. But “outlaw private education” is a dangerous non-answer in my book.

   • Embed this notice
     John (johnzajac@dice.camp)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Mar-2025 04:08:21 JST John

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • J H Libby

     @inthehands @jhlibby

     This could be an ideological difference, though I don't know where yours lie: I think private education at all levels should be outlawed, and all education should be free.

     I strongly believe that the civic state is like herd immunity: if people are allowed to opt out, it will fail. To me, public education is one of the beating hearts of a modern equitable society, and so my criticism comes from that.