Talk amongst yourselves

Alan Gerstle’s comment on Scott Jaschik’s “The Evolving (Eroding?) Faculty Job,” Inside Higher Ed (May 1/06):

Should academics be surprised?

Jacques Ellul, the propaganda theorist stated several decades ago that neither intelligence nor education immunized the individual from propaganda. If one uses an informal definition of the how propaganda triumphs by stating: “when the propagandists make losers feel like winners,” then the victory over professors has been sweet for administrators. When the PC and its ancillary devices came on the market in the 1980’s, many professors, humanities professors included, hailed the arrival as time saving and a boon to research, and many other wonderful things. These ‘winners’ did not foresee that the portability of technology (cell phones, laptops, blackberrys, etc.) and the ability of technology to transcend the breadth of geography: both having the ability to increase the time demands on the profession (not to mention keeping tabs on it)Most also did not predict the widespread development of the e-university with disembodied teachers communicating with disembodied students: This was perhaps a naive notion that the world of economics and commerce would remain separate from the affairs of academe. But, like any other institution in the U.S., higher education, of course, is not immune, and those holding the purse strings determine the function and purpose of any organization. And to get consumers in line with their ideas, need only a good public relations campaign. Now that there is no ability to reverse the trend of the commercialization of the university, professors from all disciplines begin journals and websites devoted to the effective use of technologies in education, as though the efficient transmission and acquisition of information is the major purpose teaching of education. Such new academic forums seem to me obfuscations of the real issues, and remind me of the purpose of jailhouse newspapers: losers trying to have a voice in an unfortunate situation. I think at this point most professors understand that the true purpose in the change in the nature of instruction is to garner profits by saving money on ‘bricks and mortar’ and providing convenience to consumers (students) that mirror the economics that make 10-minute oil change franchises profitable. How many in the profession feel like winners now?