Re-thinking post-secondary

As even the American folks who read this may be aware, students in nearby Quebec have been protesting for several months because the provincial government proposed raising their tuition – already the lowest in the country – by about $700 over the course of several years.

I haven’t been following it that closely, because I find it embarrassing. But we noticed a poster in our neighbourhood advertising the leaders of the student unions (two out of three of whom, by the way, attended expensive private schools throughout their primary and secondary educations) speaking in Ottawa and started chatting about it.

I mean, okay – if someone had offered me free tuition, I would have taken them up on it… or would I? Repaying our combined $90,000 of debt has kind of sucked (although we collectively earned four degrees – two Bachelor’s and two Masters – out of it). But those degrees allowed us to get careers in our fields that we love (okay, mine’s tangentially related, but I definitely apply the skills I learned, if not the factual knowledge). And to be fair, we could have graduated with less debt if we had worked more (Eric) or travelled less (me). Going into debt allowed us access to the funds we needed at the time.

If my tuition had been free, would my education have been as valuable? Would my classes have been (even more) full of people who didn’t want to learn about critical thinking and complex systems analysis, but figured that they needed a degree to get a job? How would the university bring in revenue for paying teachers, subscribing to journals, building infrastructure?

I think that access to debt is more logical than free tuition. Of course, I don’t mean that tuition should balloon and we end up paying crazy amounts like they do in the states – I think it’s amazing that our government puts a priority on post-secondary education an subsidizes it as much as they do. But I think that if you value post-secondary education, you should be willing to shell out for it to ensure that the quality is maintained. Going into debt is borrowing from your future income. Once you’ve graduated and found a job, you can pay for your degree.

The rebuttal to this, of course, is that a university degree no longer guarantees a job. I completely agree, but guess what? That isn’t what a university degree is meant to do. A BA in Philosophy should by no means be a ticket to a job (unless you want to become a philosopher, and if you know anyone that’s hiring those, call me!). But if you want post-secondary education that will prepare you for a job, you should probably do a college degree (NB – in Canada, college would be the equivalent of a community college in the US, I think – more practical, hands-on learning as opposed to esoteric bull sessions about Kant).

Our jerk parents accidentally sold us a bill of goods in this respect, because for their generation, a university degree was rare enough that it was a valued indicator to employers that you were a relatively competent person, and so it often did get you a job despite offering little to no practical skills. But by the time we got there, everyone else’s parents had told them the exact same thing, and so your BA? Useless.

Employers, of course, now expect a university degree for every position, but why is that? Is it just because everyone has them, or is it because our secondary educations are missing some essential skill? Maybe we should be taking a harder look at what kids are learning in high school, and if that bar could be raised. I certainly can’t ever remember being challenged in high school (except socially).

Really, most people getting a university degree wouldn’t need to (and might not want to bother) if it weren’t for the expectation that everyone have one. I think that a lot of people would be better off doing a college degree, especially if they know what job they want to go into. But now the same cycle is occurring with Masters degrees, and eventually I suppose we’ll all be Doctors. When will the acronym madness end?!

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Poor Economics – Points for Puns, always

Poor Economics, a book that looks at some of the problems of being poor, and what kind of policies or interventions would be useful in addressing those issues. The book was really interesting and easy to grasp for even a non-economist (albeit someone who lives with a professional one, so maybe that colours my judgement a little).

One thing I really liked was that the authors didn’t pull out that sad old hierarchy of needs crap, and recognized that the poor, in every country, are just like the wealthy – they have competing desires, they seek pleasure in their lives, they want distraction. This is a personal beef of mine, because I feel like every time someone brings it up, you can be certain that this same person is the one ranting that once they saw someone buy organic vegetables with food stamps, like all poor people should be subsisting off of dented cans and no-name kraft dinner.

Okay, back to the book. My favourite chapter was the one on health care, because I found the authors’ research fascinating. One of the questions they ask at the outset of the book is why the poor miss out on free life-saving immunizations but pay for drugs that they do not need. I’m too lazy to summarize the whole thing for you, so you should probably go read the book.

I give this book a big old Gatsby hug.

Also, I’ve just realised that I write the worst book reviews in the world.

The Rebel Sell, reviewed

As the list of books on my life list grows longer, I’ve decided to stop listing them on that page and instead, make a category for them so that people can filter my posts by books, if so inclined. I won’t actually review all of them, because I’m far too lazy, but I wanted to for this one.

#26 – The Rebel Sell – Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter

I’ve been meaning to read the Rebel Sell for years – I saw it at my university bookstore ages ago, and liked the cover art (yup, that’s how I choose books). I thought it sounded interesting – why the culture can’t be jammed, reads the by-line, and I’m a sucker for counter-counter-culture lit.

Unfortunately, it was a pretty disappointing read. It’s not that the authors’ points aren’t valid – democracy and governance are important; what’s cool will quickly become mainstream, pushing cool ever-further – it’s just that I don’t know anyone who fits the mould of the supposed “counter-cultural activist” against whom this book is one long polemic. They rail incessantly against Naomi Klein, deep ecologists, and Marxist-anarchists, as though anyone with a remotely left political lean thinks that we should smash a Starbucks and then high-tail it to our self-sufficient anarcho-commune.

However, having spent 5 years in an environmental studies program, I can assure you that 99% of those supposed crazy hippy students were actually reasonable people, who felt that the best way to foster real change in society was through education, legislation, and market-based measures (plus, yes, the occasional drum circle, obviously).

In short, they created the world’s biggest straw man and then spent several chapters taking it apart with the most self-righteous tone they could muster.

I also felt some uneasiness at some of the particular wording, such as suggesting that criminals should be “put down,” and asserting that pre-feminist social norms were there “for women’s own good.”

The central thesis is mainly that in relentlessly pursuing an “alternative” culture, people (activists? hippies? it’s unclear as to what real-life group, exactly, this book is targeting) are just creating another market and continuing to consume. If one wants to create change (within the system only, thanks) than the best way to go about it is to work on incremental, policy-based change. In ignoring this “boring” work in favour of “fun” things like protests and drugs, people are just acting detrimentally to their own causes.

Like I said, my main problem is that the authors make sweeping statements about who exactly is doing this – including, for example, “environmentalists,” “feminists,” and “human rights activists;” they’re completely ignoring all the members of those groups who are doing exactly the kind of incremental work that they advocate in favour of attacking a very small fringe.

They also have a terrible habit of arguing against outdated and often discredited work in each of these fields, from Edward Abbey’s “the Monkey Wrench Gang” and early Gloria Steinem to Marx and Freud (I mean, even Gloria Steinem’s discredited early Gloria Steinem in some respects already – get with the program, guys!).

At the end of the day, I think that what I really didn’t like about this book is that the authors set out to mock and belittle a bunch of (largely imagined) people who care about the world. They spent 300 pages reveling in how they are so much smarter than people who buy organic vegetables because they know that nothing will change ever, and I really hate that attitude.

I thereby give Rebel Sell a well-deserved Gatsby slobber and zero cookies (a Gatsby hug and 11 oatmeal raisins being the highest attainable score).