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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (130824)	8/9/2005 8:40:20 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 793955

How precisely has competition destroyed our institutions of higher education? And a hello to you, Michael. As you might guess, that's a very good question. Not a short answer to it. I don't have time for a careful, essay on it, but let me just pop points up. 1. My point is not that competition is the problem but that introducing economic incentives into education introduces profit/loss statements, which, when the opportunity to seriously scale operations up, produces temptations hard to avoid. The use of public taxpayers money via vouchers look to me to do that. 2. The history of private education in this country, including that in higher education. looks to me to be closely tied to religious motivation. Not totally, but significantly. In the east, the great majority of private higher education has its roots in religion. 3. There have been attempts, of which I'm aware, to start colleges/universities in an attempt to make money. Certainly trade schools and the like. But there were one or two liberal arts colleges which didn't last long. 4. My sense that economic motives introduced into education screw it up is drawn from experience but also from Michael Walzer's argument in his early 80s book Spheres of Justice. Certainly not "precise," but I thought that term was inappropriate for the level of bs that's passed around by all of us here.