Group items tagged

When we view faculty as labor and students as customers, we do not see magic; we see expenses and revenue on a profit-and-loss sheet. We would be better off selling tickets to a magic show.

When we present the university as a corporation, the faculty as labor, and the students as customers, we lose sight of our core mission of teaching and learning. Just as the corporate analogy distracts, the customer analogy detracts. Presenting the student as a customer rather than as a partner in learning is condescending at best. It is a short-run view that focuses on interactions with students as a series of financial transactions rather than a network of human relationships. When we view education as consumption, administrators are forced to side either with faculty at the expense of the students or with students at the expense of the faculty. When our focus is on learning as a form of development, we can spend our energy on finding ways to support the creativity and growth of both partners in this relationship.

But the reality is that those of us who labor in academe range from part-time work-study students to outsourced janitors and food-service workers, to campus police, librarians, doctors, legal counsel, and a myriad of student counselors, among others. Many of the working conditions that affect professors also affect the rest of us. Much more is to be gained by seeing the conditions we have in common than by painting a picture of faculty as uniquely oppressed. Building bridges between faculty and administration is a necessary step in creating a campus culture that values teaching and learning and that is oriented toward the success of both students and faculty.

He leads off the book with a discussion of the effect of Google’s “personalization” feature on the ranking of search results. This feature uses 54 signals (what browser version you’re using, your prior searches, geographic location, and so on) to customize search results for each user.

“increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.”

Bottom line: Holy moley, Google does filter the news. You really need to go beyond the first few search results if you want to get a relatively well-rounded view of the news.