Arguments against education and universities

The students, faculty and staff protesting fee hikes, enrollment cuts, and layoffs are correct that these measures will worsen the conditions under which they teach, study and work. Anyone who attends a college or university today is familiar with the constant increases in cost, pressure, competition, and all the stress that goes with school and studying. However, in the numerous calls for walkouts, strikes and occupations, two reasons are given for this: a lack of participation and an education policy on the wrong track because economic interests take priority.

So a few arguments about what the education system has to do with economic interests and why it is a mistake to want to have a say in this education system.

New generations for the state:

The education and university system have an unpleasant mission: through selection by means of tests and grades, they ensure the selection process by which the majority of the young are excluded from the better paying occupations! This decides who may pursue which education path. Education and university degrees are conditions for entrance into the competition for the better and worse jobs. Because the California economy lives on the fact that most jobs demand a lot of effort and are badly paid, nothing more is intended for most people than menial labor or a “career” at McDonalds or a mall.

One gets to experience in school what it means to serve as a resource of the economy and its management: the education system is established for the needs of national profit-making and is adapted to its circumstances. There are expansions of education when a growing need for graduates is identified, and admissions are restricted when there are more than enough of them. The state establishes schools and universities to produce the requirements in the next generation for their future use by employers and the state – its functionality is the purpose of the whole thing. This can be seen in the way that the imparting of knowledge is organized:

What does one learn in school?

The nature of teaching and learning in school corresponds to the purpose of the selection process. The curriculum ties the imparting of knowledge in school to a given time frame: this is tough luck for slower learners. The material is not explained until everyone has understood it, but the teacher can take only as long as the time allotted for it. After that, a performance assessment is set, and it decides who gets what grade. Someone who is “unsatisfactory,” thus who has not yet grasped the stuff, does not for instance get more lessons, but has to worry about moving ahead. If the bad grades accumulate along with the gaps in knowledge, then the imparting of knowledge is discontinued! School thus produces huge numbers of graduates who can barely read, but anyhow dont have to be able to read more than instructions and pay slips. Students who get little or no extra help at home, who speak other languages than English, who need more time to grasp the snippets of knowledge offered: these students sooner or later fall victim to the intentionally increased stresses of education. So an equal treatment of students with equal circumstances doesn't make sense. It wont bring the desired result: to determine their lives according to the needs of the state -- and that is done by means of success and failures in school!

The University – rising fees and competition are a kick in the butt!

Because education is dependent on the needs which the state has identified, it is suitably adapted. Increased fees also serve as a selection tool: they are imposed to make attendance at the university more expensive for many, no longer affordable for some, and the number of graduates is to be controlled and the entire university cheapened in this way. Students who acquire mountains of debt in order to pay for their education will think twice before investing in their “human capital.” Higher tuition should enforce greater performance, shorter periods of study, in short, “greater economic effectiveness” in studying. Students who have to pay a lot of money for their studies, the state calculates, have the right orientation, are “motivated,” study more cheaply and faster, and move on at an earlier age into work or unemployment. The same is true of faculty: professors are to be treated like any other workers in the capitalist market economy, namely as people who perform their duties only when put under pressure, and money is clearly the most attractive kind of pressure.

Education policy and democratic participation

It is thus the purpose of education policy to sort the next generation into winners and losers. Students are therefore also not consulted in making decisions about education policies. The state makes its selection criteria dependent on neither the conceptions of those whom it wants to exclude from access to the better paid occupations, nor on its candidates for the elite. What then is “participation” about? The new generation is allowed to attest that it not only does in the university what it has to if it wants to advance, but that it also wants this; that one loves the state education system so much that one is committed to its success. For this purpose, the policy is happy to concede means and committees – the rulers like this form of protest because it shows a positive attitude towards the education system.