hi all<div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 17 September 2011 00:19, Alex Halavais <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:alex@halavais.net">alex@halavais.net</a>></span> wrote:</div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">
<div>[snip] </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div id=":115">
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1. Accreditation. You can't get a retail job without a BA. It's a<br>
joke, but one that isn't very funny. Accredited universities have a<br>
stranglehold on accredited degrees (for the moment). Opting out of the<br>
degree path carries substantial risk.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is not the case in Australia where accreditation for such things happens via the Technical And Further Education system, which is linked to the university system but is distinct and about technical education. Having said that I would probably want to argue that the move towards such systems of accreditation is symptomatic of the thing I'm trying to describe. If they don't come for the studio, they come because they have to get a licence. It is just a variation on the theme of scarcity, mutated into a regime of accreditation. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Having to be accredited is not a bad thing, but seems to have happened here is that once an institution does this then there is a shift (which has happened, and is happening in Australia) where compliance regimes become naturalised as a part of the discourse of education within the university. We become subject to what my colleague Andrew Murphie has characterised as an 'audit culture' and education then becomes normalised to a variety of poorly conceived (and educationally problematic) metrics. I think North America has had this forever, it is reasonably new here. It is evidenced in things like our 'course experience surveys' which produce a 'good teaching scale' which involves questions such as "the teaching staff put a lot of time into commenting on my work". This is a quantitative question masquerading as a qualitative one. The issue is compounded where if you think that teaching students how to critique their own work (themselves and within their peer groups) is a better learning outcome than the teacher being the fount of such wisdom then you either get a bad teaching score. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Given all that however, most of my students come for accreditation, even where they may be entering professions where there is no formal accreditation system - having a degree is not a guarantee of entry, nor necessary. That's fine, as long as one of the things they learn along the way is that it is not the 'licence' that matters beyond a compliance regime. In my own areas I take this as an opportunity to shift their understanding (a qualitative change) and not just ticking the boxes for accreditation. So just because they come for this, doesn't mean that's all they leave with :-)</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div id=":115">
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2. Community. It's not just the experts that you have access to--and<br>
to be fair, I had all of two or three substantive discussions with<br>
experts during my undergraduate career--it's the peers. It's easy to<br>
say that social media replaces this, and there are ways to structure<br>
online interactions so that they can provide a different kind of<br>
community (not better or worse, but different), but for now, there is<br>
much to be said for the kind of community built by sharing physical<br>
space. That means more than drinking coffee and talking about<br>
Nietzsche, it also means drinking beer and talking about life.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Absolutely, but for students in Australia this is an assumption that is more often than not not realised. They come to university after a 6 year secondary school experience where community is fundamental. But here most students go to a university in their home city - they don't move to a campus in a different state and live in college with a group who have also done that, and they move from a school where there is active parent involvement, they know a lot of students across subjects and classes, to a large institution where, in many instances, they commute in, attend a large lecture, commute home. This is not always the case, but is a common experience. So here the issue is that students come assuming there will be community (as this has always been their experience of education) and so in some programs it happens (because they are small, it is nurtured) in others it doesn't. Because they come from an experience where this is a given I don't think (in Australia at least) this is a compelling reason for them coming to university as they assume it will be present. The problem is that it often isn't! </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div id=":115">
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Both of these can be replaced, but I don't think there are strong,<br>
easily accessed alternatives to either at the moment.<br></div></blockquote></div><br><div name="mailplane_signature">an appropriate closing<br>
Adrian Miles<br>
<a href="http://about.me/vogmae">about.me/vogmae</a></div></div>