[I]f we’re expanding access to college through alternative, technology-based systems, is this really expanding access to college or providing a different experience entirely? Perhaps the biggest flaw of this book is that while Selingo offers a very good take on what declining state funding and innovative technology could mean for both colleges and students, he fails to consider what this “revolution” in higher education might mean for American society as a whole.

“The college of the future will certainly be different than the one of today,” he explains, “but robots will not replace professors in the classroom anytime soon. Harvard will remain Harvard.” He estimates that 500 or so of America’s 4,000 colleges have large enough endowments to remain unchanged by this revolution. But isn’t that a problem? If Princeton and Williams will be unaffected by these trends, what’s really going on here?

It seems that the future won’t unbind higher education for everyone—just for the working and middle classes. That’s because rich people will always be able to afford traditional colleges. America’s affluent parents recognize that the actual point of college is only partially about earning four credits in microeconomics and more about drinking with your roommate and talking about philosophy until four a.m., working together with classmates on problem sets in the library, negotiating a new social scene, and falling in love. College students make friends, cultivate interests, and develop connections through which they eventually get jobs. Those experiences cannot be replicated through badges.

.       .       .       .       .

Given the current 90 percent dropout rate in most MOOCs, an 8-point gap in completion rates between traditional and online courses offered by community colleges, the 6.5 percent graduation rate even at the respected Western Governors University, and the ambiguity of many other higher education reform ideas, there’s good reason to think that an unbound future might not be so great.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:  This tulip bulb is a bargain at only $8,000!  Dot.bomb!  Dow 36,000!  It makes perfect sense to take out a $450,000 mortgage on a $50,000 salary with balloon payment due in 2009!

Here’s another thing to consider:  these other speculative bubbles had nothing to do with democratizing access to anything.  In case you aren’t cynical enough already, just take a look at Irene Ogrizek on Daphne Koller’s dishonest TED talk, for example:

What we are seeing is a carefully calibrated infomercial, one that has been created specifically to push all the right buttons. Who is against helping the disadvantaged in Africa? Who would deny a young father with an ailing daughter a chance to improve both their lives? Who doesn’t want single mothers to succeed? Anyone who speaks against Coursera, Koller’s video seems to be saying, is likely an educated and condescending elitist who, owing to innate snobbery, is against helping the worthy and disadvantaged among us.

What kinds of idiots get taken in by this utterly empty showmanship?  Oh, yeah:  the kinds of idiots running American universities, I guess.  The more I read about the dishonest promises proffered by the Lords of MOOC creation, the more I see Count Olaf, the villain of the Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snicket.  As his representative Daniel Handler suggests below, when you see Count Olaf count to zero, then scream and run away!  Run, RUN run run run run run run, or die, DIE die die die die die die die die die!

But wait:  there are two online reviews of Winthrop’s journal, which I thought was pretty interesting as he’s been dead since 1649.   “Imi” wrote, “Thank God we only have to read a small part of it for a lecture, because even those couple of pages were really boring. I don’t think I’ll ever read the whole thing, it’s not interesting at all. The bit with the serpent and the mouse was good, though, with the interpretation, but that was it for me.”  (The serpent and the mouse–was that a parable about the Antinomian controversy, or an allusion to the political ambitions of Sir Henry Vane?  I’ll have to look that up.)  “Amy” left an even pithier review:  “Governor Winthrop is an a**hole.”

And they gave him just two stars out of five!  Methinks that “Imi” and “Amy” might really be sock puppets for John Wheelwright.  (These reviews were of the abridged edition, not the full version–maybe that was the problem.)

For those of us non-coastal Westerners, it’s just too damned cloudy and rainy.  (Heck, I thought Hawaii was too cloudy!  Colorado spoils a sun-loving person, I guess.)  I’m here for a small conference that promises to be full of friends, fun, and some really interesting ideas.  Play nice, and definitely let’s keep the conversation going in the previous post.  Jonathan Rees of More or Less Bunk has responded to Susan Amussen and Allyson Poska’s post, among other recent MOOC critiques, so stop by his place if you can, too. (You can at least enjoy the Bugs Bunny cartoon at the top of his post. If only the boards of our major universities were as bright as Elmer Fudd!)

Amussen and Poska ask a number of provocative questions:  Why in spite of the hype do MOOCs appear to be merely a digitalized version of the “sage on the stage” style of lecturing familiar to those of us in the United States and Commonwealth countries 100 (and more) years ago?  Why do MOOC-world advocates appear totally ignorant of feminist pedagogy, which disrupted this model of education going on 50 years ago?  What does it say about MOOC-world’s vision of the future of higher education that the Lords of MOOC Creation are overwhelmingly white, male,  and U.S. American professors at highly exclusive universities?  (And for the Lords of MOOC Creation, is this a bug, or a feature?  Friends, I’ll let you be the judges.)

MOOCs:  Gender, Class and Empire

Much of the discussion of MOOCs has focused on (alternately) their promise of providing “the best teachers” to students around the world, and presenting cheap quality education to the masses; or the threat they pose to education, in replacing face to face contact with potted lectures, further deskilling and de-professionalizing those of us who teach at less elite universities.  We want to argue that MOOCs raise broader questions than those usually mentioned. In the course of listening to a discussion of MOOCs at the recent meeting of the ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies), we realized that MOOCs must be analyzed in the context of the U.S. American discourse of gender, class, and empire.

One aspect of MOOCs is that the stars are (almost) all men.  At one website only 9 of 56 History MOOCS were presented by women.  Without a doubt, the model of the MOOC – of the authoritative talking head – is one that privileges cultural perceptions of men and male control over certain types of knowledge.  The gendered nature of the hierarchy of knowledge transmission that takes place is clear in the MOOC model of education. Although “students” are invited to respond at different points, to a large extent, the presenter controls the topic, the vocabulary, and the trajectory of whatever “dialogue” might take place. In recent stories on MOOCs at Princeton and Harvard, the instructors (all men) are described by their reputation as charismatic teachers.

MOOCs have also created new excitement among the mostly male presenters about the possibilities of the flipped classroom. Of course, there is no pedagogical innovation happening here; feminist scholars have flipped the classroom for years. What is flipped is usually the use of class time, not authority.  After all, a MOOC is centered on lectures, which are now given in front of a camera with no students present, thus denying any opportunity for response or interaction from the listener. The instructor remains the sole purveyor of information and the students remain the passive consumers; with pre-recorded lectures, the instructor controls the content even more than is usually case, and it is more difficult to adapt to individual student needs. Ostensibly, the time previously devoted to classroom lectures was now used for greater interaction with the students both in his classroom and around the world; however, such reallocation of time does not, in and of itself, alter the class hierarchy or the passive reception of knowledge by students.  Ironically, it may even re-inscribe that hierarchy: most teachers, even when lecturing, engage with their students and will stop, go back, or re-examine an issue to ensure comprehension and to respond to student questions and challenges.

At the moment, the classism of the MOOCs is most clear in the central unexamined assumption –  that the “best” teachers are at the “best” universities.   Now, it is true that the most prominent scholars tend to teach at the most prominent universities, but the skills of teaching are widely distributed – and the difficult job market of the last thirty years has ensured that there are outstanding scholars at many colleges and universities around the country.   Indeed, those who teach students who arrive at college or university with less preparation have often spent more time honing their pedagogical skills in order to engage their students and address the challenges that their diverse backgrounds, socio-economic levels, and intellectual strengths present. However, the high cost of developing MOOCS means that only faculty at America’s most elite universities have the opportunity to employ those technologies. The wealthy and powerful thus become the purveyors of knowledge and culture to those less privileged across America and around the world.   MOOCs are not, in fact, cheap, but the money goes to technical staff at the elite university, rather than to instructors at less resourced ones.

The third aspect of MOOCs that has been less frequently observed is the imperialist nature of MOOCs: not only is expertise the province of white men at elite universities, it is the province of (mostly) white men at elite U. S. universities. Certainly, the rhetoric surrounding the expansion of MOOCs sounds uncomfortably akin to the enthusiasm of nineteenth-century missionaries who whole-heartedly believed that they were best positioned to bring both Christianity and Western culture to the rest of the world.   Moreover, like missionaries of centuries past, the presenters of MOOCs seem to be blithely unaware of the broader cultural implications of their evangelization efforts.  They do not acknowledge that, like the few eager converts who wandered into missionary compounds, there is a high degree of self-selection in the type of people of join their classes.  They are, by nature, those who are attracted to both this type of provision of education and to Western (and American) viewpoints.  Those involved in the globalization debate hem and haw about how McDonalds homogenizes foodways around the world, but the debates about MOOCs have (surprisingly) lacked any similar discussion about the homogenization of knowledge and perspective.  While this might be less of an issue when the subject of the MOOC is a topic in computer programming, it can be quite serious when MOOCs turn their attention to the humanities and descriptive social sciences.  For instance, to talk about World History from a U. S. perspective and present that view as a definitive narrative obscures the power relations between American scholars and scholars in the rest of the world, and makes it even more difficult to construct counter-narratives to American hegemony and Western dominance.

These dimensions of MOOCs, while rarely articulated, are important considerations for our universities as they consider how to join the bandwagon of mass teaching.  Before we rush into the massive open classroom,  we need to consider whether we want to be so closely connected to sexism, classism, and imperialism.

Right on!  I might ask too that we consider who among us is really resisting change–is it those of us who are MOOC skeptics because we believe in the value of face-to-face teaching from diverse perspectives, or is it in fact the purveyors of and investors in MOOC-world who are selling a product that looks like the face of higher education in the nineteenth century?  Furthermore, does anyone truly believe that the Lords of MOOC Creation would be thrilled to have their children and grandchildren enrolled in online universities with an inaccessible Professor Hologram to guide them and peers to evaluate their work?  Say it in the comments below.

Don’t miss the cameo by Elaine Showalter, who appears in this video to restage one of my favorite scenes in American film history. Comedy gold! (Via Sophylou at True Stories Backward.)

Despite great reviews and an intensely positive reception from readers, The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming has not been widely covered in the mainstream media — with, of course, some notable exceptions, e.g., reviews in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, and a beautiful feature on NPR’s Morning Edition (if you haven’t heard it, wow, what are you waiting for?). The book has had no interest from television in the story, which is kind of mystifying, at least to me, given the nature of the story and its accessibility to a mainstream audience. But who knows how these things work? Wal-mart declined to stock Little Way, saying it wasn’t geared to their customers. Which is just bizarre to me, given that this is a book about finding true and lasting values in home and community, especially small-town community. But again, who knows how these things work?

I’ve been puzzled too by why Christian media hasn’t picked up on the book. True, Little Way got a rave endorsement from Evangelical superstar Eric Metaxas, and from the hugely popular Evangelical writer Ann Voskamp. Some Evangelicals objected to Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack, but it was a massive hit, and Young endorsed Little Way too. Additionally, Jake Meador gave it a great review in Christianity Today — in it, Jake made a case for why his fellow Evangelicals “need” to read this book – and Russell Moore, the top Southern Baptist leader, has recommended the book. That said, this deeply Christian book about faith, suffering, and redemption, hasn’t generally been taken up by Christian media. I’ve wondered why.

Dreher continues, wondering if the book’s Catholic content and discussion of his Orthodox faith (it is, after all, about a small town in Louisiana) puts off Evangelical readers:

Though my sister wasn’t Catholic, I was for a long time, and therefore there’s a significant amount of Catholic content in the book, including favorable parts about the Blessed Virgin Mary and a possible-saint, the Blessed Francis X. Seelos. Perhaps EWTN and other Catholic media aren’t interested in the book because I am an ex-Catholic, I dunno. It has been suggested to me by several current or former Evangelicals that the Mary and the saints stuff is why Little Way will never be embraced by the Evangelical media. Never having been Evangelical, I asked my friends why this should matter, given that the heroine of the book, Ruthie Leming, was a Methodist who went to her death holding firm to her plain Protestant faith in the salvation given to her by Jesus Christ. Anyway, one former Evangelical friend said that individual Evangelicals (Metaxas, Moore, et alia) might love the book, but that it would have a tough sell within the broader Evangelical media, because its author talks about finding Jesus Christ through Roman Catholicism, and later in Orthodoxy. That, and the fact that there’s a scene in which Ruthie and her best friend dance on the bar at a Cajun roadhouse (the place has a Sunday afternoon Cajun dance, which always ends with a ritual of people dancing on the bar for the last song of the night). That’s part of life in south Louisiana, and few people would think that to go Cajun-dancing is incompatible with the Christian life (though getting drunk would be, but that’s not what we’re talking about).

So he asks his readers:  what’s going on?  Why don’t Evangelical readers dig his book, when it’s a valentine to community, family, and faith that concludes with Dreher uprooting his life as an urban sophisticate to return to his home town because of his sister’s beautiful example?  Whatever your personal beliefs, you have to admit that he’s put his money where his mouth is.

I would have probably answered his question by proposing that mainstream Evangelicals appear in my experience to have a very limited imagination about the lives of others–not just about their spiritual or inner lives, but about the many different ways of living in the world, and especially about the different challenges people face, which I think makes them appear very rigid, self-involved, and un-compassionate towards those who do not share their faith.  (I will add that not a few secular academics can be described this way, too–that is, unimaginative and uncompassionate regarding others who are not like them.)  But I thought that commenter Thomas Andrews came up with a much better answer.  He says that it all boils down to the three Ps of Evangelicalism:  pietism, populism, and purity.  He explains:

This leads to several difficulties [with the Evangelical reaction to Dreher's book]. First, it’s primarily a pietistic movement with little in the way of intellectual basis. Thus, for the most part, if something violates the culture, people get upset. Perhaps mention of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc. causes an uncomfortable feel — ‘we don’t like it,’ but there will be little thought beyond the emotive. Second, it’s a populist movement for good and bad. I remember many times listening to Christian radio and hearing people with few credentials say things like “we need to censor CS Lewis and not let our kids read him because he was influenced and contaminated by Norse mythology and writes about witches…” Coupled with populism and pietism is the desire for purity which the radio example spells out. . . . . I think if you walk into many Christian bookstores, you will see that there is quite a love for the superficial and feel-good. . . . [In] such a broad movement united by a hazy pietism, . . . few deep things can be said without offending many.

The whole comment thread is worth reading (except for a threadjack about whether Mary is worthy of veneration and whether or not a Divine Incarnation could have been born from an ordinary woman, or if Jesus could only have been born to an extraordinary woman, but I suppose this is a common hazard when one is initiating a serious ecumenical conversation about the difficulties of ecumenicalism.) It’s a serious yet also good-humored conversation across confessional lines.

There was another answer to Dreher’s question I thought pretty good, although it is a bit prankish, by Charlieford:  “My suspicion for any lack of attention it’s getting from certain circles would land on the word ‘Little’ in the title.  Evangelicals are very American, and they like things BIG. ‘Little’ sounds to their ears like a synonym for ‘insignificant.’  I suspect that’s why Wal-Mart wouldn’t want it–it runs exactly counter to their entire business plan.”

I sure hope Charlieford is wrong about Wal-Mart’s aversion to the word “little.”  If he’s right after all, there’s no hope in getting my books stocked there, either!

The Slate writers had some pretty funny stories, usually involving teachers who were irritated about being corrected by their students, but the stories in the comments below are funnier. Check out the story of the kid who tried–and failed!–to convince his high school honors English teacher that Miguel Cervantes’s Don Quixote takes place in Spain instead of the Netherlands. (Because windmills–duh!) And the stories about not understanding a teacher’s thick Southern or New England accent are pretty funny too: what would you do if you were asked to lead your class “down yonder hill,” or if instructed to draw a picture of that cozy autumn ritual we know as a “barn fire?”

The worst thing I can remember was probably said by a student teacher in his late 20s who also volunteered to coach the debate team in my junior year of high school.  At the time, in true debate nerd fashion, I wanted to be an attorney or a journalist.  He informed me that I might one day rise to the ranks of the teevee newsreaders, “because you’ve got the look.”  I know, I know–it’s not that bad, merely patronizing, sexist, and douchey.  (I’m kind of envious of Chris Wade and his classmates in the last anecdote of the Slate story, who were told “Y’all are fuckin’ cocksuckers, get out of here” by their calculus teacher!  Now that’s a lesson to remember.)

Do you have any bad teacher stories?  Bring ‘em!

• Evan Smith at Hatful of History has published a five-part series on what the Young Ones can teach us about Thatcherism.  (Those of you who teach modern British history might want to take some cues from him on this–his posts are full of video links, which will entertain as well as inform your students!)
• Mouthy Broads Alert:  Claire Messud calls bull$hit on questions about her characters’ “likability,” and Jamaica Kinkaid sounds off on the racism and sexism embedded in evaluations of her as an “angry” author.  Meanwhile, not so coincidentally, Tenured Radical asks “Where are the Women at the NYRB?”
• Mouthy D00d Alert:Bitter Austerian Niall Ferguson says John Maynard Keynes advocated economic stimulus because he was “gay” and childless.  Business Insider’s Henry Blodgett writes, “This is the first time we have heard a respectable academic tie another economist’s beliefs to his or her personal situation rather than his or her research. Saying that Keynes’ economic philosophy was based on him being childless would be like saying that Ferguson’s own economic philosophy is based on him being rich and famous and therefore not caring about the plight of poor unemployed people.“  (I’m sure this wasn’t the “first time” a “respectable academic” slagged another because of hir personal life, but whatever.)  To his credit, Ferguson immediately apologized and retracted his statement, saying “I should not have suggested – in an off-the-cuff response that was not part of my presentation – that Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, nor that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid. First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations. Second, I had forgotten that Keynes’s wife Lydia miscarried.”  The detail about the miscarriage is irrelevant–so what if Keynes was an accidental or on-purpose non-parent?  This sounds like more posturing by parents who like to pretend that having children is some big favor to the universe.
• The news that a five-year old boy shot to death his two-year old sister with his own gun (!) has shocked the non-gun owning, non-reckless, responsible adults of the nation, but Cheryl Lemus notes that marketing guns to children is nothing new at Nursing Clio, in a post replete with striking images.  (And while you’re over there, wish them a Happy First Birthday!  If you’re missing Jacquelyn Antonovich’s Sunday Morning Medicine feature, you’re missing a major opportunity for learning, laughs, and grading-avoidance diversions!)
• Finally, it’s been a big week for MOOC critiques–if you’re not keeping up, I can’t help you much beyond directing you to Undine at Not of General Interest and Jonathan Rees at More or Less Bunk.  (Don’t miss Jonathan’s post about the letter from the San Jose State University Philosophy Department to a Harvard “Superprofessor” explaining why they have refused to outsource their teaching to him, and the Superprofessor’s response in solidarity with his not-so-superprofessor colleagues at SJSU.  Now that’s classy.)  In “MOOC’n'Bake,” Undine writes about how a story about marketing Shake’n'Bake in Jane Maas’s Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the ’60s and Beyond brought her to a revelation about MOOC technology and marketing.

Well, that should keep you busy.  Leave your complaints or suggestions for the management in the comments below. In the meantime, please enjoy this glimpse of The Endless Summer (1966). Ahhh–now, doesn’t that get you in the mood for summer?

No $hit, Fred.  And yet, we’re still treated to blathering by people–most of whose college degrees have at least 25 years’ worth of dust on them–who want the American people to question the value of a college education.  Moreover, these are in many cases the exact same people who have championed the disinvestment in higher education that started more than thirty years ago.

Interestingly enough, in the very same newspaper in which I read of this tuition increase, I learned from Ask Amy that the average price of a wedding in the United States is now $30,000.  If that number is anywhere near true, then I call bull$hit not just on the Bill Bennett’s of the world, but on the spending priorities of the American people.  When cost of a 4-year college degree costs only as much as one f^(king wedding, that does not suggest to me that college costs too much.  It says that Americans clearly don’t value college enough, perhaps because public universities have kept tuition too damn low for too long and have too effectively disguised the true cost of government disinvestment of higher education.

I hearby call a moratorium on complaints from individuals or their parents about the cost of a college education if they spent more money on a wedding than on their own or a child’s college education.  Enough, I say!  Where are your priorities?  Where are your values?

(And don’t b!tch here about the price of weddings these days.  It is possible to Just Say No to the Marital Industrial Complex.  I did it, and you can too.  My dress cost $89 off the rack.  I got married for maybe $3,000-$3,500 all told 17 years ago, including the volunteer food, time, and labor donated by family members.  And guess what?  I’m still married, to the same person!  Not all marriages are happy, and not all of them last, in spite of whatever ridiculous price you paid for your party, but as my grandmother used to say, “Once you’ve got your education, no one can ever take it away from you.”  Pretty smart for a mere high school graduate, Scott High School, class of ’34.)

Harumph.  Now, get off my lawn!  (Just kidding!  Pull up a lawn chair, grab a beverage, and tell me what you think.  It looks like it might be spring, at least for a day or two here on the high plains.)