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What we have is an economy disinvesting its own workforce from the bottom up in
the name of efficiency, cost cutting measures, and productivity—but in the end
we’re all just fodder for profit-driven system that depends up the exploitation
of the many for the wealth of the few.
Groom, Ganley and Beasley-Murray are all proponents of using new technologies
inside and outside the classroom, but for them, and unlike for Kamenetz, those
technologies are just tools to be used towards humanistic ends, not ends in
themselves (as Groom puts it, “I don’t believe in technology, I believe in
people”).
I am nervous about the economic focus of all this,
many of the critiques layeredd are fair. Universities do have a monopo’y on
accreditatio, they are crazy expensive, and are often not preparing us for the
face of our moment, and some none at all when it comes to think about these
because there’s a bunch of public money floating around in it, and everybody
wants some of it
There has to be a way for people to organize and share freely and openly through a series of trust networks that aren't necessarily mediated by institutions. But given so many of the demands of accreditation, and the current expectations for the system as it currently operates, given the choice between grief (a public, subsidized higher ed option) and nothing (the rise of privatized workforce factories), I'll take grief every time. But all the while continuing to work towards the idea that there can and will be another way outside of this debilitating binary we are working through right now.