Higher Learning Higher Learning
for Aaron and Sarah “We monetize the university. Raid the pension-fund, lease out the classrooms, put coin-slots on the phones and copy-machines, and we throw money at the football team, the basketball team, the track team, all the other teams. Sport deepens the Crocodile brand. Sport kicks communities and builds ass. You can shove the rest. We casualize the support staff. Who’s scared of a few roaches and spiders. We empty the bins once a week, then once a month. Are we serious about paperless learning or not? We stop the water fountains. Don’t replace bulbs, call it green, and save thousands. To think big, you’ve got to dare to think small. We pause the elevators, let the profs find their own way downstairs by the light of their towering intellects—or, more likely, their smartphones. Bunch of limey faggots. Underpaid, undersexed and underwear. Or as I believe they like to say over there, ‘pants.’ We get some proper K Street chops into our fundraising effort. Personalized databases. Twitterfeeds. Birthday messages. Con-dolences and -gratulations. A little complimentary merchandise goes a long way. Pre-formatted wills. Candlelight giggle-o dinner-dates with Old Croquettes. We hike the fees and we re-prioritize. It’s what you do in a race to the bottom. We lay on handmaidens and academic tutors and personal chefs for our MVPs— everything, and the great lunks still pass out at traffic-lights. We do a heavy concentration on STEM subjects, plus microbiology, medicine, law, and one other. Entrepreneur. The rest can go wither. What are we here for—educating citizens?! We free up tenure. We de-accession the library. You don’t need books to cut-and-paste, I always say. We boost distance learning. Streaming lectures. Log on and goof off. Overspill classes. Computer grading. Multiple choice. Redefine the contact hour. Redefine the degree. Virtuality is the new reality. We put in a Gap and a Walmart, and call them bookshops. We sell Pepsi one university-wide monopoly franchise in perpetuity, and Taco Bell another. and in general we take a leaf out of the contemporary airport: a shopping center with half a runway attached. We award our sports coaches ius primae noctis (for wins only), plus 40,000 square foot pasteboard-and-marble mansions on prime lakeside real estate, with green lights at the end of their private piers. Throw in a motorboat and some stables, or else we’re uncompetitive. We put up a new building a week—prospective parents like to see that stuff—and we sell on the naming rights to the old ones. They plough up cemeteries, don’t they? Nothing’s forever. Go, Crocks.”
Jul 16, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Michael Hofmann
Mountain Views Mountain Views
Angus Burgin revisits Friedrich Hayek’s Mont Pelerin Society in The Great Persuasion.
Jul 16, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Kim Phillips-Fein
Leakonomics: Edward Snowden and the Pirates Leakonomics: Edward Snowden and the Pirates
Bounties on the mutineers demonstrate the limits of transparency.
Jul 16, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover
Puzzle No. 3289 Puzzle No. 3289
And don’t miss Kosman and Picciotto’s crossword blog, Word Salad.
Jul 16, 2013 / Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto
Exchange: Get Thee to the Barricades! Exchange: Get Thee to the Barricades!
Response to “Letter to The Nation From a Young Radical”
Jul 16, 2013 / Our Readers and Bhaskar Sunkara
Charles Koch on the Poor: Let Them Eat Economic Freedom Charles Koch on the Poor: Let Them Eat Economic Freedom
Just give free-market ideology a few seconds of your time and you, too, can join the 1 percent!
Jul 16, 2013 / Leslie Savan
The Eye on the Pyramids (Part 2: Bushed) The Eye on the Pyramids (Part 2: Bushed)
The scammers of the ‘multi-level marketing’ industry were on their way to being shut down in the 1990s—and then a Republican came to the White House.
Jul 16, 2013 / Rick Perlstein
Help Iraqis and Iraq Veterans Gain the Right to Heal Help Iraqis and Iraq Veterans Gain the Right to Heal
Iraq Veterans Against the War and human rights organizations in both the US and Iraq are collecting signatures for a petition to pressure the Inter-American Commission on Human Rig...
Jul 16, 2013 / The Nation Video
Fear and Consequences: George Zimmerman and the Protection of White Womanhood Fear and Consequences: George Zimmerman and the Protection of White Womanhood
White women are taught to fear men of color, but the results of George Zimmerman’s trial prove that it’s time to change that.
Jul 16, 2013 / Jessica Valenti
Huge Victory on Filibuster Will Be Tested Soon Huge Victory on Filibuster Will Be Tested Soon
Democrats won big on the filibuster—but will Mel Watt get an up-or-down vote?
Jul 16, 2013 / George Zornick