Losing My Religion

I became a university professor because I wanted, more than anything, to work in a field that did real, concrete good for ordinary working people. I wanted to work with people who were not honor students, not independently wealthy, not privileged in any way. I wanted to show people who thought they weren't good at reading and writing that they could do it. As an undiagnosed dyslexic who got a PhD in Composition/Rhetoric/Literacy, I have tricks and methods that have given me the thin end of the wedge into advanced literacy against all odds. In my graduate studies, I found that the little memory systems I had invented to get myself through the school system were very like ones the ancients used in a world before writing. I discovered theorists who explained logically how and why electronic literacy works differently from print literacy and I saw in this an advantage for people like myself.

Yes, I would use my knowledge of Rhetoric to analyze Literacy problems so I could effectively teach Composition to pretty much anyone. That's work I could spring out of bed every morning to do. It was honorable. It used my particular gifts. It was obviously a calling. Yes, I actually mean a calling from God. Catholic education taught me that I was responsible for using my talents to benefit my community and I felt enormously blessed to have a clear view of how I could do that. I even told friends and family that my time as a graduate student was like being in the seminary for the priesthood (usually to explain why I wasn't playing and partying like I did as an undergraduate). Until last year, my life had purpose and direction. I had passion for my work and was rewarded with tenure at a rural regional university that exactly fit my abilities. But, last September, I resigned from that job. I resigned from my calling. It has been very much like losing my religion. It's a painful shock to my worldview and my identity. I'm still struggling with this.

I had to quit because I was the target of my dean's petty corruption. Of course, deans are often victims of the Peter Principle. Every academic has had at least one. However, the petty corruption that led me to walk away from that particular job made me question the mission of the university--first, this one university, and then the entire enterprise. Of course, I've walked away from bad working conditions before--I imagine anyone with self-esteem has had to do that at least once in a career--but I did not leave my job in order to take another one in academe. When I looked at the reasons for the petty corruption, I found that my profession was not what I had thought. I was not viewed by my employer as an educator. I was employed to be a veil of legitimacy for an industry that needed to compete in the marketplace. The administration did not want me there to empower students. In fact, empowered students were the administration's worst fear. No, my employer wanted a PhD to sign off on grades because that's what accreditation demanded. My tenure was granted because they couldn't legally deny me. Law suits are administrators' only other fear. Petty corruption aside, an entirely new perspective on American academe has occurred to me and I can't shake it off. The profession I chose no longer exists. In its place is a corporate-model machine that will render higher education unrecognizable within ten years. In some places, the transformation will occur much more quickly because of the dreaded funding cliff that loomed even before the financial crisis. Now, that cliff is even steeper as stimulus money is about to run out.

Federal investigations into the practices of for-profit universities has revealed them to be nothing more than sponges for tax money. But the champions of deregulation are winning and they will change the way the university system works. The pro-corporate legislators will fight for the right of for-profit universities to make money. Academics have all already seen the ground-work being laid for the victory of corporate profits: mountains of new paperwork flooding the desks of every teaching professional. Syllabi now need to have "expected student outcomes" statements. We have found this a strange new task, a seemingly superfluous bit of nonsense. But it's not nonsense. It's a very important framework that must be in place for the dismantling of higher education to proceed. Even the last week's midnight madness budget fight included the issue of for-profit sleaze. The for-profits one that one and they will keep on winning.

For-profit universities are currently needing to demonstrate that the terrible job they do in preparing their students for career success is no worse than that of the traditional universities. Their investors, who are pulling down enormous profits amid shady business practices, have literally bought the standards for higher education. (Mind you, in most of the world, government offices oversee the accreditation of schools. The United States, however, has private accreditation entities.) The reason new "accountability" procedures are being forced on not-for-profit schools has nothing to do with educating students (any educator can tell you that this is, in fact, a great impediment to classroom learning), it's all about preparing not-for-profits to convert themselves into for-profit institutions.

Yes, that's where this is headed. The current economic crisis is being used to bust unions now. Tenure elimination is next, followed by states unloading the expense of their public universities in the name of fiscal responsibility. "After all," they will say, "there are successful profit-making models out there. Let the state schools be accountable for paying for themselves. If DeVry and Phoenix can do it...." The decades ahead will be spent on public debate about whether the universities are properly "accountable" for student learning, thereby leading higher education into the nightmare of standardized testing that primary and secondary education currently endure. Make no mistake, pushing higher education into that nightmare is an actual goal here. Standardized testing is big business--a big, shady business.

And that's the vision of higher education in the USA that I can't shake off. I can't make myself apply for another teaching job. It feels wrong. I've seen the little man behind the curtain. I've taken the red pill instead of the blue one. I've lost my religion. "But," I can hear my former students say, "even if the business is going to Hell, you can still help students, change their lives, make their worlds better places." Well, no, not really. I can make a difference in the lives of anyone I encounter by being truthful. I don't need a classroom to do that. And it compromises my ability to be truthful if I make a living in a profession I suspect may be on its way to becoming a scam. That sounds harsh and I am already receiving some scorn from former colleagues because I'm saying this--but, I really do believe it's true.