A few years ago, I was given a Teacher of the Year award at Spelman College. Two years later, they slung me out for being a bad teacher. That's a problem with Spelman in that it values appearance over substance. In fact, currently it values substance not at all.
But it gave me the opportunity, at 55 years old, to explore the job market. I thought my future would be in high school at that point since they are always crying about the inability to find qualified hires. That turned out, in fact, to be by far the hardest interview to get as schools are not interested in paying the premium for people whose educations demonstrate actual knowledge of their subject.
I did get a few college interviews, at places from from UC San Diego to Harvard, one of which mercifully turned into a job offer. But while I was making the rounds, I argued to every institution I spoke with that if what you propose to do going forward into the future is to make people travel a great distance and set up house in a new area just to put them in a big room with 300 other people and talk at them, online learning will destroy you. You need to either (a) start thinking now about how to move your teaching online, or (b) start thinking now about how to add value to the in person experience that makes the inconvenience and expense worthwhile. Given that I had been working in project-based instruction since 1998, I tried to sell myself as option b.
Nobody wanted option b.
Everyone thought they could just continue on as they have been into the indefinite future.
The coronavirus has been a major eyeopener. Having no choice but to move their operations online, suddenly everyone is discovering that they really don't do that much that requires in person meetings, except maybe exams.I also have some thoughts about the lack of need for those.
Doesn't do me any good. In a few weeks, I'll turn 62. Finding a job at that age is completely impossible.
I really wanted that job at Harvard. That would have been a wonderful thing to wave in Spelman's face.
In addition to what you do once you get them there, there is also a recognition of the inequities of getting them there in the first place.
"What is the core mission of higher education? That’s the question we need to ask right now. In my view, the answer is simple: As educators, we strive to create opportunities for as many students as possible to discover and develop their talents, and to use those talents to make a difference in the world.
"By that measure, our current model falls short. Elite colleges talk about helping our students flourish in society, but our tuition prices leave many of them drowning in debt—or unable to enroll in the first place. We talk about creating opportunities for students, but we measure our success based on selectivity, which is little more than a celebration of the number of students we exclude from the elite-campus experience. We talk about preparing students for careers after graduation, but a 2014 Gallup survey found that only 11 percent of business leaders believed “college graduates have the skills and competencies that their workplaces need.” We talk about creating diverse campuses, but, as recent admissions scandals have made painfully clear, our admissions processes overwhelmingly favor the privileged few."
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