Week 5 Bryan_J_Magaline Section A02

           Kill or to be killed. The stories in the reading Hamamoto Empire of death illustrate murder cases that happened and what are the causes to the murders in our country. As I read through the reading, I found that one of the most common motive of the murder is hatred to a race. Most Asian Americans that migrate to the States came from a war-torn country like Vietnam. Since the USA has a long bitter history with these countries, some war veterans and their offspring still resent people that have the same ethnicity as their used to be enemies. Asian Americans had become the target of racism and murder because of the truthful past. In one of the stories, I even read that Asians are less likely to receive equal justice from the law enforcer. Despite the Cases that have been told in these stories, I still believe that murder can happen to anyone and to any races not just Asians. Considering 17.284 cases of murder in 2017 in America, 48% of the murder victims are black and only less than 10% of the murder victims are Asian Americans. Even when the crime against Asian Americans were not reported, I still believe that it will reach a significant number. It is true that there are cases against Asian Americans in these murders, yet America is well known for its murder rate and most of the victims are not from an Asian descent.  

Question: does the motive "race" contributes to the highest percentage for murder ?

REFERENCE:

https://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-and-no-murder/

Darrel Y Hamamoto. Empire of death

 

Week 4_Christina Lukban_A02

In the reading Whistleblower: Police and A Tale of Two Campuses, all I felt was pure frustration. It makes us as students seem so naive and so easily manipulated by attending this so-called “prestigious” school. It just puts into perspective how little students know of what’s really happening in the behind-the-scenes work of the university. You would think that a university being held at such high regards would actually care about education, its students, its faculty, but we are all nothing but customers in this academic enterprise and it’s so disappointing that we all just accept that this is how the system works. We are taught to be afraid to stand up for what’s right, to not use our voices and now we are silenced and nothing is changed. This is what they want. The idea of getting quality higher education has always been ingrained in my mind ever since I was a kid. Growing up I was always taught that the only way to ever be successful was to graduate college, but never did it come to mind that this was all part of one giant scheme and we’re all just a byproduct of capitalism. Tuition is ridiculously high on top of paying for books, class materials, etc. and so many of us are struggling just to get by but where does all this money even go? Does the quality of my education even match the amount of money we’re all spending? Does the university even care about my education and my future or is it truly all about the money? And then A Tale of Two Campuses goes to show that it really is all about the money. It’s all about the university’s image and simply getting more people to fall for the scam of the UC system. Then in the Whistleblower: Police it talks about embezzlement in the university and the lengths that the UC will go in order to protect its image. It really makes you think how did I get so fooled into falling into this corrupt system?

Question: What were further actions taken from UC Davis students in response to the school’s announcement after the Occupy Movement? Was anything resolved?

References:

Joy, A.B. (2010). Whistleblower: Police.

Markow, A. (2011, December) A Tale of Two Campuses Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy movements.

Perera, S. (2016, February 09). Capitalism and the efficacy of education reform. Retrieved from https://philosophersforchange.org/2016/02/09/capitalism-and-the-efficacy-of-education-reform/

Week 4 - Jessica Garza A04

The readings this week of whistleblowers, societal and economic change, and changes to universities are chilling.

In “Unmaking the Public Universities” the author breaks down the university as a public institution for different people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, blue and white collar workers. It was meant to be about “seeking and discovery of truth” but as the public university budget was slashed, there was a concern to find private funding to support essential education to create a flexible loyal non questioning workforce in the new global economy. There was a shift from truth seeking education, to one of a prepared workforce ready to support the new, unstable economy.

“Why We Should Fear University Inc.” by Fredrik deBoer explains the corporatization of the University. The corporatization of the university is concerning.  If corporations are legally individuals and universities become corporations, these institutions of profit can take control of what people can know. The corporized institution does not protect the individuals it supposedly serves, but seeks to protect profits through exploitation of individuals, in the increasing corporate environment and desires.

The university as a corporation creates an increasingly safe and dangerous environment. The professors are temporary, instructors who are visitors on campus who are temporarily hired for short and sporadic semesters.

This is frightening. Corporations serve the people who profit from revenues brought in. If revenue is the only desirable outcome from these universities we are in jeopardy. If our education is in the hands of the few, self interested, profit driven institutions, the people who are educated by these institutions will never learn to question. They wouldn’t want to question who they serve.

Week 4 - Armanjot Bhangu - A04

Armanjot Bhangu

Section: A04

Week #4

For this week, I chose to read “Why We Should Fear University, Inc.”, written by Fredrik DeBoer. In this
article, DeBoer goes into detail about how as time has gone by, universities across the United States
seem to have developed characteristics similar to that of a business rather than than being hubs for
academia. Universities are acting more and more like corporations and as a result the students who
study at these institutions are forced to suffer. Therefore, being the ones who are getting impacted
directly by this change, DeBoer suggests that it is up to the students themselves to try and reverse this
trend. According to him, “students will have to be the ones who lead the way, not by making appeals to
institutions that will never truly serve their needs but by creating a new, human — as opposed to
corporate — campus politics.” Simply put, until students make an organized effort towards colleges that
is filled with demands rather than requests, universities will only become more corporatized. The author
also goes into detail about how rather than spending university funds in areas of actual need, they
choose to spend money for things that are completely unnecessary and can be looked at as a waste
of time, effort, and money. This leads to the notion that universities do not have the best interest of the
students in mind when making major decisions. It is up to the students to decide whether or not they
want to act against this injustice, or watch it continue to go on and directly affect their academic
experience.

QUESTION:

How can students rise up and protest the injustices being done towards them by universities, without
having their voices shut down due to the immense amount of funds that the universities have access to?

REFERENCES:

DeBoer, F. (2015, September 9). Why We Should Fear University Inc. The New York Times Magazine.

Week 3 - Armanjot Bhangu - A04

Armanjot Bhangu

Section: A04

Week #3

For this week, I chose to read “Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American
Woman: An Autoethnography”, written by Manee Moua. This journal revolved around Moua’s struggles
as a Hmong women in terms of her graduate education experiences and the hardships she faced trying
to receive her education. According to her, the primary reason she wrote this piece was to “highlight
stories such as mine to challenge traditional understandings of Southeast Asian American (SEAA)
identities in education by providing a more complex and deeper understanding of Hmong American
women in education”. By doing so she simultaneously is able to describe the oppression that students
of color face when trying to simply get an education. She explains how even though in recent years there
is a greater representation of women in academia, there is still an underrepresentation of women of
Hmong descent in areas such as “literature and graduate education”. She also goes into detail about
the “model minority” dynamic that Asian-Americans face and how negative it is towards Asians who do
not fit those arbitrary standards and the effect it can have on them. Specifically, towards Hmong
Americans, it seems to make all the work that they put into their studies seem much easier than it really
is due to it being expected of them as a model minority.

QUESTION:

What impact does the idea of Asian-Americans being the model minority have on them in terms of
societal pressures and expectations?

REFERENCES:

Moua, M. (2018). Navigating Graduate Education as a First-generation, Hmong American Woman: An
Autoethnography. Hmong Studies Journal, Volume 19.

Week 2 - Armanjot Bhangu - A04

Armanjot Bhangu

Section: A04

Week #2

For this week, I chose to read “Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic, Gender and Generational Differences
in Asian American College Access and Choices”, written by OiYan Poon and Ajani Byrd. In this piece,
the authors look at the development of and history behind tiger parents, who are defined as being
parents who combine “...high levels of negative parenting (e.g., strict rules) and high levels of positive
parenting (e.g., warmth and support).” according to the American Psychological Association. Before
reading this piece, I was not familiar with the term tiger parent, as my own parents never displayed traits
to the same extent as the ones described. I was familiar with the term “Helicopter Parent” which seems
to be similar in certain ways. The authors attempted to find a connection between Asian-American
students who had tiger parents and how they viewed their parents when making decisions such as
choosing what college to go to. It was revealed through their studies that factors such as what generation
the student was played a huge role in the decision making process. For example, a first generation
student generally looks outside the household for help, while second generation and any future
generation have their parents to go to for help since they would have experienced similar struggles due
to growing up in the same country. In this way, if a first generation student were to have tiger parents, it
is much more likely that they would not appreciate any attempts by their parents to push them to succeed
academically due to them viewing their parents as not understanding of what the student was going
through. On the other hand, a second generation student would recognize their parents as a useful
resource and as a result be more privileged in that they have parents who have been through similar
struggles as them simply due to growing up in the United States.

QUESTION:

In the long-term, does tiger parenting actually help or hurt the children, in terms of their mental health
and sociability?

REFERENCES:

English, Rebecca. (2018) “From Tiger to Free-Range Parents – What Research Says About Pros and
Cons of Popular Parenting Styles.” The Conversation, The Conversation, theconversation.com/from-tiger
-to-free-range-parents-what-research-says-about-pros-and-cons-of-popular-parenting-styles-57986.

Kim, Su Yeong (July 2013) “What Is ‘Tiger’ Parenting? How Does It Affect Children?”
Http://Www.apadivisions.org, American Psychological Association, www.apadivisions.org/division-7/
publications/newsletters/developmental/2013/07/tiger-parenting

Poon, OiYan, and Ajani Byrd. (2013) Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic, Gender, and Generational Differences in Asian American College Access and Choices.

Week 1 - Armanjot Bhangu - A04

Armanjot Bhangu

Section: A04

Week #1

For this week, I chose to read “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia”,
written by Professor Valverde. In this piece I was made more aware of the discriminations that occur
in academia, specifically towards women. Although I previously knew of and had heard about
wrongdoing being done towards that demographic, I did not know that it was as systematic as
described by Valverde. This story connected to me personally because my mother had also
experienced this type of discrimination when immigrating from her home country to the United States.
After entering the United States, although she had a college degree from back home, it did not transfer
over and she had to essentially re-do her college education. Even after earning a degree from here,
she struggled to find job opportunities and had to work various side jobs in order to help provide for
my family. Therefore, just as Professor Valverde struggled and fought for her rights as a woman of
color, my own mother also went through a similar experience. This speaks levels on the sheer amount
of unnecessary hardships that women of color have to face just in order to have equal rights, even in
possibly the most progressive country in the world. It is the unfortunate reality that we live in, and until
a concerned and focused effort is made to reverse this trend it will continue to go on.

QUESTION:

What started the prejudice against women of color and what is the most correct way for women of color
to receive equal rights in terms of academia?

REFERENCES:

Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline. Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. 2013.

Aparna_Komarla_A04_Week_4

Aparna Komarla
Week 4: Blog Post
SID: 913896026

This post is in response to the article about Amy Block Joy, a UC Davis professor who revealed embezzlement and fraud in the UC Davis Department of Nutrition, when she worked as a director of the UC Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program. 

It is shocking to confront the fact that this incident occurred on our campus not many years ago. It prompts me to think about similar instances of whistleblowing that have occurred in recent years that have perhaps been covered up through settlements or other tactics to keep information under the radar. The case of Sarah Hahn, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services who was terminated after she filed for whiste-blower protection when she claimed that the university had misused 18 million dollars that was meant to increase mental health services on campus. An excerpt from The Aggie reads “The letter comes on the heels of mounting criticism and concern expressed by Hahn to both her superiors and administrators at UC Davis, as well as officials from the UC Office of the President, that an increase in student fees for the ongoing $18 million mental health initiative from UCOP was not spent to hire 12 additional counselors at UC Davis, as the money was intended to do.”

This discussion on whistleblowers, and embezzlement and corruption in the UC system brings to light the corporatization and capitalistic machines that the institution of education has reduced to today. It is interesting to think about these incidents within the context of the ideals of the Rockefeller, who sought to establish education as a tool to further capitalism and “train” the masses to serve the needs of the growth of capitalism in the United States. Perhaps the institution of education was never established to truly “educate”. Perhaps these incidents of embezzlement truly are a consequence of what was intentional.

Media:
https://theaggie.org/2018/02/16/director-counseling-psychological-services-terminated-raising-concerns-allocation-mental-health-funds/
https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/ucd-whistleblower-gets-1-7m-settlement/

References:
1. Joy, Amy Block. "Chapter 1." Whistleblower, Bay Tree Publishing, 2010, pp. 1-9.
2. Holzer, Hannah. “Director of Counseling and Psychological Services terminated after raising concerns about allocation of mental health funds.” The California Aggie. Retrieved from: https://theaggie.org/2018/02/16/director-counseling-psychological-services-terminated-raising-concerns-allocation-mental-health-funds/

Week 4 - BIlly Wang A01

Billy Wang
ASA02 Section A01
Week 4

In this week's readings, A Tale of Two Campuses UCD & UCB occupy by Alan Markow is the one interests me and made me feel most related. In this article, the difference in handling students' protest and public concerns is pretty obvious. To my understanding, students participating in social movement and the democratic process has been a long lasting tradition since the civil right movement, which explains why the administrators in Berkeley behave more reasonable to students' urges. However, it is no excuse for UC Davis administrators to ignores students' urges, by which, sadly, they still do. After reading this article, I do relate to these protesting students as I am an international student myself. But I am kind of jealous as well, about their freedom to speak up for their right. In the last spring quarter, a similar incident occurred to me as well. At that time, the tuition for international students was increased from 10% to 15%, which was already three-times of the tuition for local students. And when making such a decision, no international student was consulted nor notified. The several thousand dollars extra bills just appeared on the statement with no explanation. There was indeed some protest and collective petition urging the university to explain its decision. And the result is very "UC Davis", which means no response with useful information. Ironically, the way UC Davis treat this event is really close to how the Chinese government will do-blocking the information until no one remembers.

Reference
Markow, A., & Markow, A. (2011, December 22). A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy movements. Retrieved from https://ivn.us/2011/12/19/a-tale-of-two-campuses-berkeley-and-davis-respond-to-occupy-movements/


Image
Retrieved from Internetserver.net:https://www.interserver.net/tips/kb/404-error-fix/

Week 4 - A01 - Jarrod Baniqued

Week 4 (27 January 2019) - Jarrod Baniqued (914629580 - Section 1 - Wayne 6-7)

(From Wendover Productions, which only lightly touches on the boom in administrators and the increasing popularity of college translating into less state government support per student, pointing at )

This week, I read about the increasing corporatization of education in our public universities. (The Amy Block Joy paper on ethics was lightly amusing to me, but I'll only say that 1) ethics should be taught more in academia and corporations, but 2) rather than just Breaking Bad season 5, a wide variety of pop cultures, when sufficiently analyzed and complemented with enough Classical and Enlightenment philosophical tracts, should be used in any single ethics course.)
The first work I'll address is the introduction to Unmaking the Public University by Christopher Newfield, as well as his 2011 Huffington Post article summarizing the book's arguments on the occasion of its paperback release. This is the work that intrigued and motivated me the most, seeing as it appeals to my love for the great egalitarian, publicly-funded projects that marked the post-Second World War economic consensus. The main argument Newfield makes is that the American New Right have undermined the egalitarian visionary projects that included expanded access to public higher education, by tying them to market-driven rather than abstract, intellectually-driven goals, and pitted middle-class voters against their working-class allies in order for the former to look the other way by withdrawing sustained support for the egalitarian ideal and abstract intellectual goals. The New Right obfuscated and distracted middle-class voters from this manipulation by 1) using deficit hawk rhetoric, beating their chests about the burgeoning national and state debt to justify across-the-board budget cuts for education, and 2) using the "culture wars" debate to create an exaggerated boogeyman of over-racialized student politics and radicalized faculty, alongside a larger attempt to discredit the value of public sector workers to the economy. In other words, the right got Big Business to meddle with public education and used the "culture wars" and alarmist rhetoric about race and the deficit to split the middle and working classes from their foreseen project to reshape the economy in the new millennium. Being pressed for time, I won't say anything more than I wholeheartedly agree with the premises of this work.
The other work I'll address is the New York Times Magazine article "Why We Should Fear University, Inc." by Frederik deBoer. In it, he argues that 1) university administrations are becoming increasingly more like corporations, in both outlook and organizational structure, 2) student activists are being "played for tools" by these cynical administrators, continually begging for the board's and alumni's adulation and trying to avert bad publicity by addressing or even colluding with said activists while controlling their speech, and 3) faculty are also prevented by administrations from protesting this arrangement through similar controls of speech as well as tenure denials and stoking interdepartmental resentments. DeBoer predicts that "the educational function of the university will become sanitized and smoothed over, while the spaces that have always resisted fair treatment of difference will continue to do so". He thereby examines the "culture wars" debate alluded to by Newfield and places it in the context of corporatization. Therefore, it seems, it is only up to me, the reader, to connect the New Right's retooling of public education to this corporatization.
I want to mention, though, that there are many, many, many sides to this issue. The Wendover Productions video above, from 2016, posits that the reason for the boom in administrators since 1980 is because more people are simply seeking a higher education. But as Newfield points out on page 4 of Unmaking, this increased drive (or, college's increasing popularity) may have been due to the influence of the New Right on white-collar workers, who used college degree attainment as a "dividing line" between those who would fail and those who would succeed in the economy of the new millennium.
Ultimately, what is to be done? Obviously, a return to the 1950-1970 order of intellectual priorities over market-based reforms, of education needs dictating budget and not the other way around, and giving more power to both students and faculty to confront administrators would be the ideal package.
Yet, we must also attack the root causes of this administration boom, by 1) rebuilding the middle and working class coalition of support for grand public works and public education, 2) easing demand for college by getting more high school graduates into the skilled trades through job training and apprenticeships, and 3) improving the supply of colleges, simply by having Congress charter more of them.
And 4) increasing state support per student, especially alongside improved outreach to the poor, as the UCs have pioneered:
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/05/university-california-pell-graduation-enrollment/559325/
To conclude, I bring you this lecture from May by Emmanuel Saez, which analyzes many of the same issues in the context of intergenerational mobility and the effects of having alumni as parents:

Questions: What is the immediate future for public universities, as Newfield, deBoer, and Saez see it?

Bibliography:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html?_r=0

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amyblockjoy.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F05%2Fscce-cep-2014-05-Block-Joy.pdf

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fselforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F11%2Fnewfield_unmaking_public_univ.pdf

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-newfield/still-unmaking-the-public_b_840727.html

Victor Dionisio, Week 4 Sec. 1

In this week’s readings, it dealt with the corruption of the University systems and how easy of a target students are when it comes to taking their money. Before reading, “A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy movements” by Alan Markow, I believed University of California, Davis always had their students best interest at heart-- I was wrong. I was amazed about how the two Universities (Berkeley and Davis) responded in regards to the student protest about the rise in tuition costs. The two completely different responses revealed Davis’ true colors. When students at Berkeley protested the faculty took into consideration the issues they wanted to be fixed and actually listened, however, Davis had completely disregarded the issues of the students but rather talk about how the Occupy Movement are to blame for the expenses needed to fix their buildings. I’ve later came to realize that whistleblower is not only for businesses and corporations but also pertains to the education system. As colleges are becoming more corrupt year after year, it is the students right to speak up and expose the institutions for who they are, to better not only their college experience but upcoming students who enter four-year universities.

Question: When did the UC system start becoming such a scam?


References:

• Markow, A. (2011) A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy movements. Retrieved from: https://ivn.us/2011/12/19/a-tale-of-two-campuses-berkeley-and-davis-respond-to-occupy-movements/
• Davis, Z. (2017) College is a Scam. Retrieved from: https://www.hercampus.com/school/desu/college-scam

Week 4 - A02 - Richard Nguyen

The theme for this week’s readings is the corporatization of the university. From a young age, we are conditioned to believe that going to a good university will pay for itself with future economic stability and opportunity, despite requiring more and more loans to afford the cost every year. In a sense, it is University Inc.’s business pitch repeated to us over and over again, until we accept it as fact. I think this is especially prevalent for STEM majors, from my experience. I was told that if you majored in STEM at a good college, you would land a good job and live a good life. Anything else was deemed a waste of time. When I was participating in on-campus tours during my senior year of high-school, the college staff would make sure to reference the number of alumni that get sent off to work in prestigious corporations, or brag about the number of recruiters they pull from big companies like Google or Amazon. All of this served as a sales pitch for University Inc. University Inc. doesn’t try very hard to hide the fact that its bureaucracy is ran by middlemen placed by the industries they regularly name-drop to entice young, bright-eyed high school students into joining. In Chris Newfield's "Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-year Assault on the Middle Class,” the technology industry was used as an example of an industry that has carved a position in higher education in order to farm future laborers.

Scandals, which are another thing we commonly associate with shady businesses, runs rampant in universities. From some of the readings, Block Joy describes having evidence of embezzlement from the chairman of UC Davis. Embezzlement is the type of crime typically seen in K-dramas, with the corrupt CEO and their underlings reaping all the benefits. Most of these scandals are often swept under the rug due to the competency of University Inc’s PR department. Every public statement in the face of a scandal is measured in order to maintain the image that universities remain the bastions of free thought and higher education.

What can we as students do in order to better combat University Inc? Frederik deBoer suggests that we create a new human-campus politics, but I don’t know what that entails. How would we even start such a thing up?

Source (for image)

MacKay, Kevin. “Neoliberalism and Postsecondary Education: A View from the Colleges.” Academic Matters, 28 Nov. 2018, academicmatters.ca/neoliberalism-and-postsecondary-education-a-view-from-the-colleges/.

Week 4 Kathlene Ngo A03

Week Theme: Corporatization of the University
In this week's article "Why We Should Fear University, Inc," written by Fredrik DeBoer, American universities are used as a growing example of corporatism. DeBoer talks about how universities across the nation operate like corporations, accepting students like customers and producing education further away from the academic enterprise. Professors become merely servants and students become customers. DeBoer argues that this growing phenomenon impacts the American society as universities are supposed to be nurturing the future workers of society. Universities are sacrificing the welfare of  students for corporatism. With the rising tuition, financial aid continues to become less and less helpful to students from low-income families. This current system prevents people with lesser opportunities to get a degree. As money is poured into making campuses become more beautiful, I began to wonder about how universities became more similar to an advertisement where the beautiful campuses and dormitories are shown off. Rather than giving the money to students with fewer opportunities, the funds are used on extensions of the campus and other areas. Since universities also have an abundance of money, articles and activists that protest against the rising tuition fees are shut down almost immediately. It raises the question, "Can universities be criticized for their actions?" Since universities are known to an "opportunity" and place of no corruption, how are students able to take action against corruption in universities if there are any?

Question: How will students and society recognize corruption in universities & how will they fight against such strong institutions of education that have a lot of money and reputation?

References

deBoer, F. (2015, September 9). Why We Should Fear University Inc. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html

“Education and Corporations Don't Mix Well.” The Jose Vilson, 4 June 2013,

thejosevilson.com/a-future-too-big-to-fail-using-corporate-thinking-corrupts-the-classroom/.

Week 4 - Anneka Christie A02

"I wish that committed student activists would recognize that the administrators

who run their universities, no matter how convenient a recipient of their appeals, are not their friends. I want these bright, passionate students to remember that the best legacy of student activism lies in shaking up administrators, not in making appeals to them. At its worst, this tendency results in something like collusion between activists and administrators."

This quote from "Why We Should Fear University, Inc." stood out to me because I had never thought of a university, let alone the university I attend, fell in love with, and will pursue a post graduate degree from, like a corporation but as I do more research I don't know how I did not see it sooner. The structure, mentality, and procedures alone show as much and its truly horrifying. Here I am, a member of an ethnic minority group, a woman, a first generation college student, a child from a single parent household, and a person who grew up in a very low income family. I can check off so many boxes that represent previously underrepresented, mistreated, and overall oppressed groups that I am like a walking poster child for the "American Dream". I must also recognize my privileges as growing up who I am, where I am and when I am. I am so poor that financial aid completely covers my tuition plus some change and in that regard I am lucky. I am from a "model" minority ethnic group and am only half at that and unfortunately my "white passing" features also make me lucky. Despite this and these benefits I have gained, I can see how the wave of corporate universities have had a huge impact on my every day life and probably much more of an impact on the lives of others. 

Being a student activist is something to be proud of and something to work really hard for. It is a title earned, not a title given. This other side of the coin and the critique of common activist approaches was honestly really shocking. It makes sense and although some do benefit from this system, it falls short to provide enough difference to the majority and fails to be enough. "That the contemporary campus quiets the voices of both students and teachers—the two indispensable actors in the educational exchange—speaks to the funhouse-mirror quality of today’s academy." It is frightening to think about what happens behind close doors and specifically behind the closed conference room doors of the administrators and high officials in university systems; what they do with student money, how they prioritize students and teachers low on the list, and why covering up and keeping people silent is a much better plan for them than doing their job (educating for the future and looking out for students as well as teachers). I am now interested in seeing more of the hidden stories and untold tales from activists, student or otherwise, that could have or did make a huge impact. Learning their strategies and what went well/what could have gone better, could help future change and progress actually happen. Although this article and this class in general has really opened my eyes and made me question, it has also given me hope.

Question: 

How can one "shake up administrators" and make a significant contribution without seriously jeopardizing one's position, benefits, etc. and while still being seen as respectful yet passionate, reasonable yet assertive?

References:

DeBoer, F. (2015, september 9) The New York Times Magazine. Retreived January 25, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html

Ranzetta, T. (2018, July 4). NGPF Blog. Retrieved January 26, 2019, from https://www.ngpf.org/blog/paying-for-college/cartoons-a-not-so-humorous-look-at-student-loans/

Week 4_Yueming Tan, A01

In the article "Why We Should Fear University, Inc. Against the corporate taming of the American college” by Fredrik DeBoer, the author mentions that the university has commercialized and that students treated as guests and teachers treated as workers. This is terrible because American universities have moved away from the university, and they operate like a corporation. For example, Ivy League schools always give priority to international students because they can pay expensive tuition. On the other hand, these international students want to get a diploma from the American Ivy League University. They don't care about expensive tuition, which is an incredibly massive amount of their annual expenses. At the same time, it is devastating to operate a university as a company, which means that the quality of students is no longer the primary. The university pursues the number of students for their own profits.

Question: How do the top executives of the university make a profit?

• DeBoer, F. (2015, september 9) The New York Times Magazine. Retreived January 25, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html

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