Comments on The Atlantic Site Containing References

The Atlantic Monthly wrote a piece which I believe misses important details, and, thus, issues, about student debt.  I wrote a comment.  I then replied to someone else.  If you read my blog, you probably won’t find my comment so new, but if you look at my reply, you will see references to some very good articles about higher edcucation.  One of the authors, David Kirp, has written a book about higher education, “Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education”.   I just bought it.  Here are my comments from the Atlantic and a link to the article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/are-student-loans-destroying-the-economy/275083/

“It is true that many “college degrees” represent a “college education” but there is plenty of evidence that, as David Riesman wrote in 1980 “…advantage can still be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions…” He is not just talking about for-profit colleges. There is abundant evidence that this is taking place to an even greater degree now, from daily NYTimes articles about AP courses, about students likely to never get a good job, to books like “Academically Adrift” and “The Lawyer Bubble”. I am a professor. I can tell you that David Riesman was both right and farsighted. It has only gotten worse.

I only wish that instead of advertising that going to school is a good idea, as if it were a good idea for everyone at every school, The Atlantic would investigate, and then write about, how advantage is being taken of students.  If The Atlantic would only listen to David Reisman, when he added that,

“…I seek to alert readers to what is happening …as students turn from being supplicants for admission to courted customers…I aim to show that the “wants” of students to which competing institutions, departments, and individual faculty members cater are quite different from the “needs” of students…”

I hope this magazine will investigate and show students, parents and the country the financial damage and misallocation of resources that these “…competing institutions, departments, and individual faculty members…” are doing

(If you want to go to my blog inside-higher-ed.com you can find resources about this problem.)

Thank you.

Reply From K Dawg

The Atlantic has certain narratives that it pushes in a quota driven journalism format. There are many issues that the writers of The Atlantic will never undertake either A) because it doesn’t fit their preconceived notions or B) it will take too much time for them to research and thus prevent them from meeting their quotas.
Have you ever considered writing the on the subject you mention and trying to get it published in The Atlantic? I think it might be worth a shot since it is something that needs to attention.

My reply

Thanks, that is a good idea.

I guess I’m surprised that The Atlantic doesn’t take a strong stand on these issues. James Fallows is one of the contributors to “Declining by Degrees – Higher Education at Risk” published in 2005. The issues I brought up are made clear in essays in that book like “Caveat Lector: Unexamined Assumptions about Quality in Higher Education” by Jay Matthews, “How Undergraduate Education Became College Lite – and a Personal Apology by Murray Sperber” and “This Little Student Went to Market” by David Kirp. Just given those titles by experienced observers and practitioners of higher education in a book with a Foreword by Tom Wolfe and a contribution by James Fallows, should make one think that it may not be true that “a college degree is a college education.”

Though I haven’t published anything, I do give some details and explanations on my blog. I hope you have time to look and even comment. Thanks again”