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Welcome to History and Future of Mostly Higher Education.
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Hi, we're going to continue to talk about teaching like it's 1992.
And, better ways of teaching for 2014.
And, what I'd like to talk about now
is neoliberalism, and the defunding of state, state education.
Neoliberalism is a kind of a confusing term.
It harks back to the late 18th and early 19th century
idea of liberalism, which is an idea that everything should be privatized.
That, in fact,
the best state, is no state at all. The most
radical liberals of the 19th century especially people like
Herbert Spencer and the social Darwinians, actually believed that there shouldn't be
state money spent on roads, hospitals,
prisons or education. Throughout the course of the 20th
century, more and more functions that are social goods
and social functions have been taken over by the state.
And then, starting in the 1980s, with the so-called Reagan Revolution,
there was a massive change back at least in the United
States, but also globally certainly in the United, in the United
Kingdom, certainly in Europe, and even in Asia, too, of neoliberalism.
More and more taking
of public goods and public services.
And transferring them to private to
industry corporations and pri, and private hands.
The famous strike of the air traffic construct, trollers,
very soon in President Ronald Reagan's presidency, where he
simply refused to listen to the air traffic constrol,
controllers, brought in so-called scab workers to take the jobs.
And basically
said, this is the end of unions, this is
the end of state control as much as possible.
And our whole philosophy of neoliberalism or, it's also
called neoconservatism, arrived where more and more defunding happened.
President Emeritus James Duderstadt, he's President Emeritus of Michigan, the
University of Michigan, one of the great, great public universities
in the United States, one point quipped
that state universities used to be state supported.
Then you'd have to say they were state assisted,
now you had to say they were sto, state located.
That's how much federal funding and state funding for public
education has declined, even in his lifetime as a long-running president.
He later added to that, and even said, we might have to say, state molested.
That,
in the United States right now, there are many, many state governments
that are trying to dictate the terms of the curriculum of higher education.
Without fully, or even partially, or even substantially supporting higher education.
There's lots of, social, negatives that
happen from a defunding of public education.
And I'm just going to talk about three, two in the U.S. and one in
South Asia. The first is, 4.1.
I think 4.1 is a symbol of the GPA it's the
GPA of the median student entering the University of California this year.
On a 4, 4.1 and a 4.0 average, means that the students are, not
just perfect in their grades, not just
perfect in their test scores, but they're also
taking advanced placement course to be better than average.
If you have to be better than perfect, to get into your state university, something
is very, very, very, very wrong with
publicly-funded state education, and the concept behind it.
Second another figure to keep in mind, and we will put up graphs and pie charts and
lots of data that you can look at on the website, so you can read more about this.
A second figuring state of mind. 450,000.
That's the number of students on the waiting list for, to get into
community colleges courses in the University, in
the Cal, in the state of California.
That's a tremendous number of students who would love
to go to community college, who simply can't get in.
There's too many students.
This is an American problem, but its also a world problem.
For example in South Asia, right now,
only the top two percent of that top one percent, that's being even allowed to take
state entrance exams to get into the technical
universities in India, make it into those universities.
That's a travesty.
There's so many hundreds of millions, not just millions, but hundreds of millions of
students around the globe who need education for the high tech complicated,
legally, socially, morally, ethically complicated, world we live in now, but
who are not able to get the higher education they need.
I'm not a specialist, an expert, in education outside the United States.
So, I hope you'll use the forums to write in and tell us, and tell all of us,
to teach us all about state funding, public funding
of education in the country or state, municipal government,
that you live in, right now.
That would be such a wonderful service To help all
of us be better informed about the process of you, of,
state funding in the United States and in the world.
And in the municipality that you live in.
Let me throw out a few other figures.
The US spends 2.6%, 2.6, less than 3% of its GDP on higher education.
Of that tiny bit of money spent on higher education, 55%
of it comes from private
support: foundations, private universities and tuitions.
The rest is what comes from state, federal, and municipal governments.
According to the OECD, federal, state and municipal governments make a profit,
listen to this, a profit of $231,000 on each American who graduates from college.
I'm going to repeat that, because it's
such an eye popping and important statistic.
According to the OECD,
federal, state, and municipal governments make a profit
of $231,000 on each American who graduates from college.
What they mean is if you invest
in an American's college education, you will earn
back not only that amount of money, but a profit of $231,000 for each dollar spent.
That's astonishing.
There's nothing that yields quite that kind of profit.
For each American who graduates from college.
That comes from tax dividends, from not being on unemployment rolls,
since a college degree greatly increases your chances of having a job.
From not being on welfare and not being in prison.
The single biggest correlative of those entering the prison, prison
system are actually not college but dropping out of high school.
Being a high school drop
out, correlates with income level and it also correlates with a future in crime,
because there are just not available, jobs available for high school grad, drop outs.
We also know that the cost of a
college education is one of the three most important
factors in what precipitates high school students in
the United States from dropping out of high school.
If you know that getting a high school degree doesn't lead
to anything, won't get you into college, you have, you lose relevance of your,
of the importance of studying, and greatly
increases your chance of dropping out of school.
There's some other OECD figures that are really interesting
and important to think about, and again, we'll be putting
these up on the website, so you can look
at them in more detail, and really parse these numbers.
The OECD
says that it's a great investment for individuals, even in
the United States where tuition is twice as high, even
at public schools, as it is at most other, in
most other countries, and for private schools astron, astronomically higher.
For individuals in the United States, men earn
$365,000 profit, profit, even taking
out the cost of indirect and direct cost for tuition.
365,000 dollars profit in the course of their
life for having a college degree For women, it's
considerably less, $185,000, and that's because of the dis,
income disparity between men and women in our country.
But still, even at $185,000, and certainly at
$365,000, that's a good investment in your mon,
of your money in college.
That's important because there's been almost a campaign
lately to say that college isn't worth it.
That college graduates don't have jobs.
And, so, do, that debt is at an all time high, and that there's a tuition bubble.
All of those things are true.
And yet, it is still, even with all of
that, a good investment to get a college degree.
Saying that again, those figures are for the US, and I hope, I
very much hope that those of
you internationally, will add your own figures.
Same time, US is now only 11, 11th, the
richest nation on the face of the earth, is
only 11th in college graduates worldwide, in the number
of college graduates it produces relative to our population.
If you, we used to be number 1.
Now, now 11th. So, the decline in
the support for, for higher education has had a true effect on the numbers
of Americans going to college. So that brings us to one final point.
Are MOOCs the answer.
MOOCs are trying to deal with this education crisis.
All of those numbers that I've said throughout this segment, of
people who want to go to college, but who aren't able to.
MOOCs trying massive online, open coursework.
The massive is the key figure there.
MOOCs are trying to massively scale low cost education.
So that greater and greater numbers of people can attend university.
The, what we'll be talking about in our
next segment though, is, are MOOCs the answer?
Is something else the answer?
What is the best way to massively scale,
education?
This class is called The History and Future of
Mostly Higher Education, or how we can unlearn our old
patterns, and relearn for a more socially engaged, successful,
fruitful, satisfying, productive, humane, happy,
beautiful, and socially conscious future.
So that's the question.
Is massively scaling teaching, is massively scaling
learning, a way to achieve that very,
very happy objective?
That, I don't have the answers to that, I don't think anybody does.
Please use the forums to give us your own
opinion about what you're learning from this class, and whether
this is making your future a more socially engaged, successful,
fruitful, humane, happy, satisfying, beautiful,
productive, and socially conscious future.
Thank you, see you next time.
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