Four ways banks have ruined higher education

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:41:00 +0000

  Like many others, I’m a passionate alumnus of my post-secondary institutions. I care deeply about preserving the rich culture of learning and community-building that fundamentally shaped my life. Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that drastic changes are being made to American college and university life -- changes that are fundamentally altering the ecology of higher education in this country and undercutting the very mission of the college experience as we know it.

A growing culture of reform has turned the campus quad away from preparing students for citizenship -- that combination of “intelligence plus character” the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. once famously described. In its place, we now have campus environments that hold certain aspects of student life hostage to corporate interests, molding students into consumers at the same time the voices and opinions of the student body are increasingly silenced. As a result, higher education, often noted as the best insurance policy toward social mobility, is now no such thing (at least good insurance policies pay their claims).

Salon.com > Noah S. Bernstein

Four ways banks have ruined higher education