<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><br><br>Dropping into this list again, I find it interesting that there's both a distaste for higher education's elitist concerns and an insistence on protecting faculty and students from the watering down of an education directed by market forces. Which does reading Heidegger represent, an expression of the problem, or precisely what is to be protected? An activist education and an ivory tower research program share a distaste for the kind of discussion you can expect on a popular television show. But if enrollment numbers can be expected to dwindle when the live classroom experience neglects to speak a language that engages student experience, the challenges of teaching include those presented by an evironment hostile to intellectuals (Oklahoma). Small classes are to be expected, and from a research
perspective are desirable, when the material is substantial, online or not. Given the revenue-generating power of college athletics programs, the importance of military bases and the criminal justice system in the local economy, and the degree to which a demand for skills that are employable reduces the educational level of conversation, how does a "fruitful exchange" about "The Daily Show" compare to an "academic" one about Heidegger? Which one gives pride of place to education?<br><br>Bernie<br><div> </div><div><br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Arial" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Trebor Scholz <scholzt@newschool.edu><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> idc@mailman.thing.net<br><b><span style="font-weight:
bold;">Sent:</span></b> Friday, September 9, 2011 9:24 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [iDC] iCollege Re-run<br></font><br>About a year ago, we had a fruitful exchange about Gov. Tim Pawlenty's<br>dreams of the privatization of education.<br>This list has grown quite a bit since then and I am re-posting it for<br>all iDC newbies. <br><br>==<br>Roughly four minutes into this conversation with Jon Stewart of "The<br>Daily Show," governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, brings on the Good<br>News. There really is an efficient business model for higher education<br>where networked learners can simply pull down their just-in-time<br>education onto their iPads, he claims. <br><br>“Do you really think in 20 years somebody’s going to put on their<br>backpack drive a half hour to the University of Minnesota from the<br>suburbs, hault their keester across campus and listen to some boring<br>person drone on about Spanish 101 or Econ
101? . . . Is there another<br>way to deliver the service other than a one size fits all monopoly<br>provided that says show up at nine o’clock on Wednesday morning for Econ<br>101, can’t I just pull that down on my iPhone or iPad whenever the heck<br>I feel like it from wherever I feel like, and instead of paying<br>thousands of dollars can I pay 199 for iCollege instead of 99 cents for<br>iTunes, you know?” <br><br><a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-10-2010/exclusive---tim-pawlenty-unedited-interview-pt--1" target="_blank">http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-10-2010/exclusive---tim-pawlenty-unedited-interview-pt--1</a><br><br>Quality online courses are in fact neither cheap nor easy to teach but<br>such nuance does not fit into the shtick of the Republican governor. The<br>subtext of his appearance on the national stage is an alarming crusade<br>by for-profit online-education companies that try to activate
an<br>understanding of their money-making courseware as being more deserving<br>of state funding than, say, liberal arts education, which is cast as<br>Luddite and stuffy -if not obsolete- ivory tower where administrators<br>just don't get today's "digital natives." When students default on their<br>loans, for example, let's stick the debt with the government. <br><br>Pawlenty proposes to "put the consumer in charge, whether it’s education<br>whether it’s health care to the extent we can technology can help a<br>lot." and Jon Stewart retorts that, well, it's “hard to disagree with<br>that.” <br><br>Really, Jon? <br><br>best,<br>Trebor<br><br>Post:<br><a href="https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2010-June/004339.html" target="_blank">https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2010-June/004339.html</a><br><br>Discussion:<br><a href="https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2010-June/thread.html"
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