Don’t get ME started… :-/
Both sparks and kell are the oddest of buildings, but yeah… I think Blankenship was a phd student, and I think he was gone well before I was even around.
I think that they may not seem usefully, but are sneakily useful. Writing well matters, as does understanding how the world and peole function, all of which the humanities can give you a firm foundation on.
But should they? That’s my question–should universities only be glorified welding schools, or should there be a deeper purpose to the pursuit of education…
I think that is actually where many end up, just not in any place where they can make a functional difference. I’m not entirely sure the public sector is shrinking all that much.
Marx theorized that the capitalist economy was the bourgeoisie economy–if that’s true (and I’m not necessarily saying it is, but IF it is)–than the lack of a middle class means the whole house of cards comes down. You need a middle class to support an ever expanding economy, because you need people to buy stuff, because the way that an economy can continually expand is to create an endless variety of stuff, and that can only happen if you have a large number of people who can spend a surplus… I think the capitalist model will only function if we live in a consumerist economy, which endlessly creates… stuff. No middle class, no one to buy that stuff. The working class only has so much surplus. So, if Moglen is correct, and we now have an information economy, whose backbone is information, not steel, well, how do we have a middle class based on the commodification of information of all kinds–art, culture, literature, knowledge, software, etc and so on. I think I’m rambling now… thanks cabernet…
I think this is a tough question and I can see your point about tenure entrenching one class, and not providing opportunities for all in academia. If there is a better arrangment, I’m not sure what it is, but I’m also aware that a tenure track job is going to be tough to come by. I think this is something that those of us up and coming are going to have to think hard about. However, I will say the direction of the majority of colleges and universities now is something that will not expand opportunities for those of interested in the production of knowledge–the new mode of operations is endless adjuncting and that does not allow for the sort of creative thinking you and I value. All it does is create bitter academics.
[quote=“ActionAbe, post:5, topic:19200”]
If you organized maybe you could track down a solution.[/quote]
This is something I would dearly love to do. There are some things I’m working on in regards to cross university representation for grad students… needlessly to say, this is Georgia, and it’s uphill battle. Anything that smacks of unionism is hard to bring to fruition…
Maybe I’m something of a luddite, but I’m not necessarily onboard with technology as the solver of human problems. I think it can, but it can also cause problems as well. Technologies, especially those for profit, are a double edged sword.
On rent seeking… I think maybe the issue is that not all things are going to create wealth on their own. Maybe not everything should? Somethings are just not suitable to creating wealth and I think that should be okay.
