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The purported demographic crisis is being used around the country to fundamentally remake higher education. For example, this is the main argument being advanced by Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature seeking to radically reshape the University of Wisconsin system. This plan calls for the significant expansion of online education, regionalization of the comprehensive campuses, increased campus specialization and program consolidation and elimination, among other long-standing priorities.

The current context of higher education provides fertile ground for the uncritical acceptance of the demographic cliff. Higher education enrollments have declined since reaching historic highs in 2010. And decades of political decisions have made higher education tuition-driven, one state budget cycle at a time. We are vulnerable to the demographic cliff framing because of the politically imposed financial crunch in which we exist. Enrollments dictate everything we do.

the demographic cliff is an austerity-driven narrative that assumes that public funding will never—and should never—come back

Programs must be eliminated, online education must be expanded and, if necessary, even entire campuses must be closed. Higher education must be agile because tax increases are off the table, even as stock markets reach new highs and the income and wealth of the highest earners skyrockets. The interests of corporations and the wealthy will dictate public policy.

official population and education data—which come with no political assumptions, narrative or products for sale—show a slowly increasing population, including higher education enrollments, in the coming years.

demographic cliff is a manufactured crisis

takes advantage of a tuition-dependent higher education system to implement even greater austerity while imposing an education policy agenda that could never be adopted through normal political means

The scores of fourth- and eighth-graders on reading tests have climbed steadily since the 1990s, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But those of 12th-graders have fallen. Just 37 percent of high-school seniors graduate with “proficiency” in reading, meaning they can read a text for both its literal and its inferential meanings.

While those with bachelor’s and graduate degrees maintained the highest levels of literacy overall, those groups also experienced the steepest declines. Just 31 percent of college graduates were considered proficient readers in 2003, by that test’s definition, down from 40 percent in 1992.

“We quickly realized that unless you actually assign a grade for the out-of-class component, students just won’t do it,”

“Harvard students are really not that different in terms of how they behave. They’re bright, they’re academically more gifted,” she says. But they’re also “incredibly good at figuring out how to do exactly what they need to do to get the grade. They’re incredibly strategic. And I think that’s really true of students everywhere.”

turns the classroom into a social-learning environment

“We have young people who are coming away from high school with a very sort of test-driven training — I won’t call it education — training in reading.”

Teaching students how to read in college feels “remedial” to many professors

Faculty members are trained in their disciplines. “They don’t want to be reading teachers. I don’t think it’s a lack of motivation,” says Columbia’s Doris Perin. “They don’t feel they have the training.” Nor do they want to “infantilize” students by teaching basic comprehension skills, she says.

Tie reading to a grade: Quizzes and assigned journals, which can determine about 20 percent of the final grade, can double or even triple reading compliance — but rote formats that seem to exist for their own sake can encourage skimming or feel punitive.“Do away with the obvious justifications for not doing the reading,” says Naomi Baron, at American U. “If you summarize everything that’s in the reading, why should students do it?”Ask students to make arguments, compare, and contrast — higher- order skills than factual recall.Using different media is fine, but maintain rigor. “You can do critical reading of anything that has essentially an academic argument in it,” says David Jolliffe, at the U. of Arkansas. Video and audio, in fact, may sometimes be better than textbooks — what he calls “predigested food.”Explicitly tie out-of-class reading to in-class instruction, going over points of confusion and connecting lessons and texts to each other.Teach reading skills. “Hundreds” of strategies exist, all of which make “explicit the processes that proficient readers use without thinking about it,” says Doris Perin, at Columbia.

“A lot of faculty members, myself included, are saying, If they’re not doing the reading, we can get unhappy, we can get angry,” she says. “Or we can do something about it.”

remote teaching directives are rooted in the assumption that faculty are equally positioned to carry them out

The dual delivery model—in which some students in a course come to class and others work remotely using pre-recorded or other asynchronous course material—is already part of a number of university plans for the fall, even though it requires vastly more work than either in-person or remote courses alone. The failure to accommodate faculty who are not well positioned to transform their courses from in-person to remote teaching—or some combination of the two— will actively exacerbate existing inequalities, marking a step backward for equity.

Neoliberal democracy is characterized by competitive individualism and centres on the individual advocacy of ostensibly equal citizens through their vote with no common social or political goals. By extension, group identity and collective advocacy are delegitimized as undemocratic attempts to gain more of a say than those involved would otherwise have as individuals.

Portraying people as atomized individuals allows social problems to be framed as individual failures

faculty are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as competitors who must maintain a constant level of productivity and act as entrepreneurs to sell ideas to potential investors in the form of external funding agencies or private commercial interests. Rather than freedom of enquiry, faculty research is increasingly monitored through performance metrics. Academic governance is being replaced by corporate governance models while faculty and faculty associations are no longer being respected for the integral role they play in the governance process, but are instead considered to be a stakeholder akin to alumni associations or capital investors.

treats structural and pedagogical barriers as minor individual technical or administrative problems that the instructor can overcome simply by watching more Zoom webinars and practising better self-care.

In neoliberal thought, education is merely pursued by individuals who want to invest in skills and credentials that will increase their value in the labour market.

A guiding principle of neoliberal thought is that citizens should interact as formal equals, without regard for the substantive inequalities between us. This formal equality makes it difficult to articulate needs that arise from historical injustices, for instance, as marginalized groups are seen merely as stakeholders with views equally valuable to those of other stakeholders. In the neoliberal university, this notion of formal equality can be seen, among other things, in the use of standards and assessments, such as teaching evaluations, that have been shown to be biased against instructors from marginalized groups, and in the disproportionate amount of care and service work that falls to these faculty members.

Instead of discussing better Zoom learning techniques, we should collectively ask what teaching in the COVID-19 era would look like if universities valued education and research as essential public goods.

while there are still some advocates for the democratic potential of online teaching, there are strong criticisms that pedagogies rooted in well-established understandings of education as a collective, immersive, and empowering experience, through which students learn how to deliberate, collaborate, and interrogate established norms, cannot simply be transferred online

Humans learn through narrative, context, empathy, debate, and shared experiences. We are able to open ourselves up enough to ask difficult questions and allow ourselves to be challenged only when we are able to see the humanity in others and when our own humanity is recognized by others. This kind of active learning (as opposed to the passive reception of information) requires the trust, collectivity, and understanding of divergent experiences built through regular synchronous meetings in a shared physical space. This is hindered when classroom interaction is mediated through disembodied video images and temporally delayed chat functions.

When teaching is reduced to content delivery, faculty become interchangeable, which raises additional questions about academic freedom. Suggestions have already been made that the workload problem brought on by remote teaching would be mitigated if faculty simply taught existing online courses designed by others. It does not take complex modelling to imagine a new normal in which an undergraduate degree consists solely of downloading and memorizing cookie-cutter course material uploaded by people with no expertise in the area who are administering ten other courses simultaneously. 

when teaching is reduced to content delivery, intellectual property takes on additional importance. It is illegal to record and distribute lectures or other course material without the instructor’s permission, but universities seem reluctant to confirm that they will not have the right to use the content faculty post online. For instance, if a contract faculty member spends countless hours designing a remote course for the summer semester and then is laid off in the fall, can the university still use their recorded lectures and other material in the fall? Can the university use this recorded lecture material to continue teaching these courses if faculty are on strike (as happened in the UK in 2018)? What precedents are being set? 

Students’ exposure to a range of rigorous thought is also endangered, since it is much easier for students to record and distribute course content when faculty post it online. Some websites are already using the move to remote teaching as an opportunity to urge students to call out and shame faculty they deem to be “liberal” or “left” by reposting their course material. To avoid this, faculty are likely to self-censor, choosing material they feel is safer. Course material will become more generic, which will diminish the quality of students’ education.

In neoliberal thought, the public sphere is severely diminished, and the role of the university in the public sphere—and as a public sphere unto itself—is treated as unnecessary. The principle that enquiry and debate are public goods in and of themselves, regardless of their outcome or impact, is devalued, as is the notion that a society’s self-knowledge and self-criticism are crucial to democracy, societal improvement, and the pursuit of the good life. Expert opinion is devalued, and research is desirable only when it translates into gains for the private sector, essentially treating universities as vehicles to channel public funding into private research and development. 

The free and broad pursuit—and critique—of knowledge is arguably even more important in times of crisis and rapid social change.

Policies that advance neoliberal ideals have long been justified—and opposition to them discredited—using Margaret Thatcher’s famous line that “there is no alternative.” This notion is reproduced in universities framing their responses to COVID-19 as a fait accompli—the inevitable result of unfortunate circumstances. Yet the neoliberal assumptions that underpin these responses illustrate that choices are being made and force us to ask whether the emergency we face necessitates this exact response.

The notion that faculty can simply move their courses online—or teach them simultaneously online and in person—is rooted in the assumption that educating involves merely delivering information to students, which can be done just as easily online as it can be in person. There are many well-developed online courses, yet all but the most ardent enthusiasts concede that the format works better for some subjects and some students

Emergencies matter. Far from occasions that justify suspending our principles, the way that we handle the extra-ordinary, the unexpected, sends a message about what we truly value. While COVID-19 may seem exceptional, university responses to this crisis are hardly a departure from the neoliberal norm, and university administrations are already making plans to extend online teaching after it dissipates. We must be careful not to send the message that the neoliberal university and the worldview that underpins it are acceptable.

Taking “stack” just means keeping a list of people who wish to participate—offer a question or comment—during the Q & A. Rather than anxiously waving your hand around and wondering if you’ll be called on, if you would like to participate, signal to me in some way (a gesture, a dance move, a traditional hand-in-the-air, meaningful eye contact, etc.) and I will add you to the list. However, we’re not just going to take stack, we are going to take progressive stack in an effort to foreground voices that are typically silenced in dominant culture. According to Justine and Zoë, two self-identified transwomen who were active in the movement, progressive stack means that “if you self-identify as trans, queer, a person of color, female, or as a member of any marginalized group you’re given priority on the list of people who want to speak – the stack. The most oppressed get to speak first.” As I take stack, I will also do my best to bump marginalized voices and those who haven’t yet had a chance to participate to the top.

As with any tool that confronts the effects of privilege and power head-on, the Progressive Stack makes some people uncomfortable

In a complete social and historical vacuum, level-playing-field equality is an excellent proposition. But in the actual lived world of our history, experiences, and interactions the idea of treating everyone uniformly “regardless of gender” or without “seeing color” simply strengthens already-entrenched inequalities

As the increasing number of targeted online harassment campaigns has shown us, once a concept or issue has traveled through the right-wing Outrage-Distortion Complex, there is little hope of reclaiming rational discussion. It’s been permanently stained. One might dismiss the frothing lamentations of white-genocide-via-classroom-pedagogy that bubble up from a subreddit, but the insidious trope of “reverse racism” has put its thumb on the scale enough to have distorted the conversation around the Progressive Stack

because the Progressive Stack calls attention to existing structures of inequality by replacing them with another structure entirely, it forces those of us who identify as white (and, particularly, male) to confront the ways in which we have been complicit in maintaining inequality

When you’re accustomed to privilege, even the suggestion of equality will feel like oppression

google “progressive stack.” Almost every result you get will take you to the fever swamps of right-wing Reddit and warmed-over piles of gamergate droppings. The common denominator is that “Progressive Stack” is simply anti-white “racism” dressed in fancy intellectual clothes

Giving up power, it turns out, is hard for some people. Especially when that power has been historically-constructed to be so pervasive as to render it unquestioned and indeed unseen in its hegemonic sway. Pierre Bourdieu calls this symbolic power: “For symbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it”

It means there will be times when people who are not accustomed to their identity being a source of discomfort and exclusion will have to learn–in a managed and intentional space–what that feels like.

there will be friction and messiness and uncomfortable adjustments, because any education worth the name involves friction and messiness and uncomfortable adjustments

Most things that people want to learn do not resemble language, golf or chess, but rather a game in which the generalist has an advantage. A hostile learning environment

Seemingly inefficient things are productive: expanding your horizons, giving yourself time, switching professions. 

early specialisation is a good idea if you want to become successful in certain fields, sports or professions. In fact, in some cases, it’s the only option. Take chess, for example: if you don’t start early, you won’t stand a chance at glory.

learning chess is not a good model for learning other things. Epstein explains this using the work of psychologist Robin Hogarth, who makes the distinction between friendly (kind) and unfriendly or hostile (wicked) learning environments.

In a friendly learning environment, such as chess, the rules are clear, the information is complete (all pieces are visible on the board), and you can (ultimately) determine the quality of every move. In other words, the feedback loop

friendly learning environments are the exception. The world is not as clear-cut as golf or chess. So early specialisation is often a bad idea. 

In hostile learning environments without repetitive patterns, mastery is much harder to achieve. The feedback loop is insidious. Unlike chess, experience does not necessarily make you better. You may stick with the wrong approach because you’re convinced it’s the right one. 

The better a teacher scored on their own subject (i.e., the higher the grades their students got in that subject), the more mediocre students’ scores were across the complete programme (all modules). The explanation? Those teachers gave their students rigidly defined education, purely focused on passing exams. The students passed their tests with high marks – and rated their teachers highly in surveys – but would fail later on. 

In learning environments without repetitive patterns, where cause and effect are not always clear, early specialisation and spending countless hours does not guarantee success. Quite the opposite, Epstein argues. Generalists have the advantage: they have a wider range of experiences and a greater ability to associate and improvise. (The world has more in common with jazz than classical music, Epstein explains in a chapter on music.)

Many modern professions aren’t so much about applying specific solutions than they are about recognising the nature of a problem, and only then coming up with an approach. That becomes possible when you learn to see analogies with other fields, according to psychologist Dedre Gentner, who has made this subject her life’s work.

Another advantage generalists and late specialists have is more concrete: you are more likely to pick a suitable study, sport or profession if you first orient yourself broadly before you make a choice.

Greater enjoyment of the game is one of the benefits associated with late specialisation, along with fewer injuries and more creativity.

which child, teenager or person in their 20s knows what they will be doing for the rest of their lives?

Persevering along a chosen path can also lead to other problems: frustrations about failure. If practice makes perfect, why am I not a genius? In a critical review,

The tricky thing about generalist long-term thinking versus specialist short-term thinking is that the latter produces faster and more visible results.

specialising in short-term success gets in the way of long-term success. This also applies to education.

(Another example: the on-going worry about whether or not students’ degree choices are "labour market relevant".)

Teachers who taught more broadly – who did not teach students readymade "prescribed lessons” but instilled "principles" – were not rated as highly in their own subject, but had the most sustainable effect on learning. However, this was not reflected in the results. These teachers were awarded – logically but tragically – lower ratings by their students.

the 10,000 hour gang has considerable power with their message "quitters never win, winners never quit".Epstein’s more wholesome message seems weak and boring in comparison. Some things are simply not meant for everyone, doubt is understandable and even meaningful, you can give up and change your choice of work, sports or hobby, and an early lead can actually be a structural disadvantage. 

"Don’t feel behind." Don’t worry if others seem to be moving faster, harder or better. Winners often quit.

the relationship between political values and voting behaviour. While the traditional ‘left-right’ value dimension which focuses on economic justice and power barely distinguishes Leave and Remain voters, there are much larger differences according to ‘cultural’ values which relate to issues of authority, tolerance, and the rule of law.

This suggests that there is something specific about the experience of higher education which produces more liberal values. This appears to be something which is independent of the subject of study

A more fruitful line of enquiry is to seek a deeper understanding of the connections between education and values: to understand how education liberalises