Ivory Tower Page #3

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In this moment

of declining state support,

students who can pay full,

out-of-state tuition

without seeking financial aid

are very important for the university.

You've got to cater to these

out-of-state, less-studious students,

who want to party.

We know how to party!

We all know how to party!

Students from

out-of-state picked a school

because of the social life.

Big-time athletics,

the really big Greek system,

increasing numbers

of luxury condominium-style living.

But that has consequences

for everybody else.

The Vue is like one of these

privatized living complexes.

They have these pool parties

every so often,

where everyone just goes

and gets wasted or high or whatever,

and then they just start

these fights in the pool.

ASU! ASU! ASU!

ASU students

romanticize staying

at this "private apartment complex"

where you hang out

by the pool and smoke cigars,

When ideally you should be

focusing on your schooling

and actually getting a diploma.

36% of the kids in our study say

they studied less than

five hours per week,

less than an hour a day.

Full-time college students.

Half the kids in our study said

they didn't have a single class

where they wrote more than 20 pages.

We are confronting

a situation in this country

where, for large numbers of students,

they are not doing much

of anything academically.

There's a lot of distractions here,

and there's no one holding your hand.

Some people,

they're not ready for the college level.

They fail classes,

or they withdraw, drop classes

midway through the semester

because they're not

doing so good in them.

And they get discouraged

by the fourth year,

and they drop out

or they just don't

have the motivation to continue.

I mentor freshmen.

You try to give them tips.

You try to give them a way

to study more efficiently.

You try to give them ways

to do their homework in a better method.

You know, it's really easy

to fall back into that trap.

Keep the mindset

that you've got to graduate,

you've got to do good in college

to be successful. Right?

That mindset.

Many of these actors

in higher education

do not have a fundamental interest

in promoting academic rigor

and student learning.

They're focused on something else.

Faculty today are increasingly rewarded

in terms of promotion,

tenure, compensation

by their research

productivity and scholarship.

A focus on teaching can get in the way

of one's research and scholarship.

And when these institutions

assess one's teaching,

they typically do it

with course evaluations.

At the end of the class, students are

given a consumer satisfaction survey,

"How much did you like the class?"

"Would you recommend

this class to a friend?"

You're incentivizing

faculty not to be rigorous

but to be actually lenient with grades,

because the only measure that the

institutions are paying attention to is,

"Are the students happy as consumers?"

At the same time,

the number of full-time faculty

in this country is in sharp decline,

being replaced

by part-time adjunct instructors.

Many of them have limited resources

for focusing on

rigorous academic instruction.

Institutions invest in these other things,

thinking simply as a business.

But these organizations are non-profits.

They're accountable to the public.

They're accountable

to fulfilling their mission.

It's perfectly

appropriate that we shine a strong light

on America's colleges and universities,

and that we demand better of them.

We should be outraged

by the abuses and the distortions.

But we do not want to erase the

history of higher education and say,

"These places are not about

"the formation of character

or self-discovery."

There are some colleges that have tried

to go to the far end of the spectrum

in terms of the intensity

of the experience.

For instance, Deep Springs College,

where students

make a two-year commitment

to, in effect, drop out of the world.

The mission

of Deep Springs College

is to provide a free education

to young men in preparation

for lives of service to humanity.

That's accomplished through

what are called the three pillars.

And those are self-governance

and academics and labor.

We live in this small community.

And we spend half of our time in class

and spend the other half of our time

working either on the ranch

or in some way for the community.

In committee meetings

throughout the week

we exercise self-governance,

which is basically

taking responsibility for the community.

We choose what classes

we're going to take together.

We have

Political Theory After Marx,

Critical Theory

and the Frankfurt School, Nietzsche.

I think there will be

something incredibly rewarding

about going in-depth

onto one school

of thought very intensely.

Through this education

we are, like, putting ourselves

through a grinder of some sort.

I cared so little

for the idea of going to college.

It was kind of like Deep Springs

or nothing.

It's a place that demands of you

pretty constantly.

And I like that.

Because I think

if I'd gone to another college

I would become really self-absorbed

and narcissistic.

The main attraction

of Deep Springs for me

was self-governance,

having to compromise with people,

And having to put myself

in other people's positions.

And I don't think

that's something natural for us.

I think that that has to be taught.

It has to be the result of an education.

The college

classroom is perhaps

the best rehearsal space for democracy.

Students learn to speak with civility,

listen to one another with respect,

and most of all,

they learn that you can actually

walk into a room with one point of view

and walk out with another.

Hegel is saying you need to have

a common identity as citizens

because it creates

the bonds of affection.

We are not simply sons or brothers,

students or doctors, but also citizens.

Like, why are we talking

about the state at all?

Expression of the individual

through the state, I don't feel that.

That's because

you're treated like a person already.

What's being defined as personhood

has previously been

exactly the mode in which we have kept,

you know, entire races of people

outside of the state,

so I agree with you in the sense,

why are we talking about the state

when, like, its definition of personhood

isn't good enough here?

But you recognize

that Hegel can be read against

that argument very effectively?

Right, yeah, I agree.

But sometimes I think the best way

to bring Hegel into the new day

is to transgress him.

Students actually

have a lot to learn from each other.

But what I think of

as the most transformative events

are, really, at the end of the day,

one-on-one experiences

with a teacher who looks you in the eye.

I had a shitty

public school experience. Right?

Like, saw lots of racism,

lots of sexism, got beat up, got in fights.

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