We all are aware of the increasing costs of a college education, of the pressure of admissions and the role money continues to play, and in a recent article Kevin Carey tries to explain why this has happened. He writes universities had a choice and when they were at a crossroads they chose the way of profits. When online education took off, and some universities signed on, it was, he says an opportunity for education costs to be lowered, particularly benefiting low income and others who couldn’t afford the costs of elite institutions and receive an education regardless of their financial status. But that is, he describes in some details, not what happened. OPMs happened instead. They are online program managers, sometimes called enrollment managers, people and organizations which begun as start-ups helping students with tests like the SATs and were so successful they branched out to eventually be partners in offering online degrees. Some are now also publicly traded and have been able to show a large profit for themselves as well as for the universities they partner with, showing profits of about 42% roughly half for them and half for the universities. They tend to have strong marketing and operate much the same way as for profit colleges do and did, and some of the same people are involved. The Education Department divisions which had tried to change the rules to protect students against for profit colleges practices are now apparently rather secretly rewriting these rules and the author points out that it looks like OPMs will be able to do whatever they see fit to make as much money as they can. While some view the role of enrollment managers as being more benign and as being of use to universities, what I find distressing is how academic institutions which are meant to guide people to uphold the values that make us an open society, have allowed themselves to be led by profit motives. And even more distressing in the case of their involvement with OPMs they have done so in a way that does not benefit the current and future students who need help.
April 2019
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Vaccination And Public Safety
First it was an outbreak in California, then one in Washington State, now one in New York State. Measles outbreaks are becoming more frequent and for me they stand as a symbol of a troubling trend in society, the masking of social responsibility. As a young girl I attended a French Lycee and we were schooled in the responsibilities of being citizens. We read excerpts from Rousseau and discussed the Social Contract. In the UK children are more prone to discuss Hobbes and Locke who similarly believed in social responsibility. True, in the US those philosophers seem outdated and do not appeal to national pride. Still the idea of social responsibility is part of US culture. Yet somewhere in the curricula of our schools, somewhere in the practice of our values perhaps we have lost it. When I first came to the United States It seemed to me that American teenagers were much more interested in conforming that we had been. As teenagers our emphasis was to put the stamp of individuality upon who we were. Being distinct individuals with our own views, beliefs, interpretations and preferences was very important. Perhaps it was the aftermath of experiencing WWII but while we were taught that individual rights are constrained when it comes to the public good, neither we, nor our elders for that matter, had discernible difficulties being both individuals and responsible citizens. I know many people who do not believe in vaccination and some of them are people I love, so I am well aware of their arguments. The fact remains however that when the exercise of individual rights interfere with public safety, I can’t help believe that public responsibility ought to come first. It may not be universally approved of, certainly to those who are against vaccines, but as far as I know public responsibility does not need to meet the test of universal approval.