Week 4

Anna De Villa

A03

Fredrick deBoer’s article Why We Should Fear University, Inc. portrays a more introspective version of the colleges we go to. They especially highlight the difference between the common view of corporatization, with businesses taking over the decisions of a normally non-business related institute, and the way administrators run their school like a business. Schools, especially colleges, should be run in such a way that they promote free thought and growth, much like the garden in Blank's article. Instead, more focus is on the money that can be made from students who are told that a higher education is the only way to succeed in life. The way people are groomed from the moment they enter school is to believe that the ultimate goal is to make money: go to school to get an education to get a good career that gets money. It is so important to have people like Joy who are willing to point out the injustice of this corporatization despite the consequences.

Personally, I never felt that the administrators in my old high school had much regard for the students as people. The teachers and counselors obviously cared for the students, but people never really got the same feeling about the principal and other administrators. Students from the ASB would often complain about how the principal would shoot down interesting ideas for school events and rallies. Recently, the principal left and has been replaced, along with the rumor that she and another administrator were embezzling money from the school, which is a shame since most of the classrooms were so dilapidated and the textbooks we used were outdated. While I can not say if the rumor is true or not, I find it completely possible, which says something about how the administrators present themselves; the students can pick up how little they care about them as humans.

Question: Would a system like that in Scandinavian countries, which offer free higher education, work in the United States?

References:

deBoer, F. (2015, September 9). Why We Should Fear University, Inc. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html?_r=0.

Parker, J. (2005). Retrieved from https://junctrebellion.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/student-debt-cartoon-big.jpg.