If I understand this correctly, you are suggesting that any form of federal,
tax-payer support for access to higher education should be done away with. The
argument is that there is no room (or very little) in the higher echelon, which
is where these people think they are going, so they should not receive any tax
monies in order to attend college. Well then, what *should* they be doing?
Should they be going to technical college? Is it justifiable to give them tax
monies for that? Should they just join the (noble?) working poor? After all,
who needs an education to operate an elevator, right? That's your argument if
I understand it. Aldous Huxley give a pretty vivid picture of what an eficient
elevator requires in the way of intelligence. It seems to me that plenty of
college students are well aware that the jobs are not there, but also that such
positions as are available are often based on certain skills which they need to
get somewhere, and many employers won't take someone without a college degree
in any case. So, I am not as convinced as you seem to be of the gullibility or
the crass materiality of these students. If you are so convinced of the lack
of meaning in what academics do, then the current downsizing of the academy
should be of considerable pleasure for you. The market determines how many
departments, how many professors etc. In the meantime, the well-off will keep
sending their kids to college (they can more readily afford it), and the
reproduction of structures of privelege will continue apace. But at least the
poor tax-payers won't be paying for it... I think this entire argument rests
on 1) a denigration of the rationality of people who choose to be students,
especially those who 'aren't too bright'; after all, why should people who have
been let down by the high school system, and American education generally, be
supported by the poor old tax payers to learn some basic skills -- like reading
and writing? God, it almost sounds like socialism. Let them learn at home, the
same as they learn about sex. 2) an assumption that the kinds of skills that
these people may be looking for -- which includes as a necessary by-product,
not an either/or, clear thinking and the like -- are just beyond them in a
college environment. Let them look for these elsewhere so that college profs
can teach the smart kids -- who just happen to be easier to teach anyway. How
convenient not to have to educate the also-rans. 3) assumes that the mission
of the university is somehow settled, and not subject to revision in the
context of structural change outside it. These people are then to be denied
access to the resources -- of all kinds -- that the modern university contains
unless they can pay for them themselves. Like the well-to-do can. See above.
Surely it is at least arguable that the role of the university is to provide
these people with information which will benefit them. That can take all kinds
of forms. But why should not the wider society pay for it? Don't we all
benefit from a better informed, better educated populace? Or are the merits of
education only to be judged by whether you can get a good job at the end? I
wonder how that plays for those who have traditionally been excluded from the
institution. Presumably we shouldn't pay for them either. Althusser had it
right, I think, when he said that the universities were sites of struggle. It
is a pity that you have given up.
