a crisis of competence: SAVING THE HUMANITIES

[alice wellintown]

Education remains the only investment not subject to the law of
diminishing returns, although in the last decade the cost of a college
education in the usa has risen 110% while the value has risen only
45%, in the recent recession here, the so-called great recession, a
college degree provided protection against unemployment and many of
the other traumas that the less educated suffered and continue to
suffer.
The occupy movement called much attention to the debt burden college
grads were suffering under;  the debt that folks have taken on, much
of it leveraged out of an underwater property, needs to be
de-leveraged and this is happening, but the cost, and the student loan
default rates tell us a story of the cost and argue some Krugmann
solution, but fail to address the larger issues, issues that wont be
inflated  away, such as the party like a rock star campus life that
puts education behind the extension of youth for the privledged, the
cheating, the failure of education to argue its value beyond the
pragmatics of emplyment... The Atlantic had an excellent article in
the sinking middle class (not a phrase I think we should continue to
use, and perhaps Marx is making a come back of sorts because these
terms, middle class and so on, are useless) that describes the current
plutonomy in America and why a BA or BS is what a high school diploma
used to buy in terms of economic status, so the social ills that once
plauged the poor and un-educated--those without a high school diploma,
are now a spreading contagion in class that holds the high school
diploma, so more and more education is the key. what kind of education
is a question and for white males who have been working in housing and
in othe good paying skilled jobs that have been off-shored,
out-sourced, or simply eliminated,  govt jobs for example, the problem
is perhaps as pressing as the black and latino male non high school
graduate population. Another class are the Vets; what to do with our
sons and daughters who are now returning to the job market with no
skills that seem to matter. The females, who have faired well in the
great recession, in part because they continue to add jobs in health
care and education, two fields where males have made zero progress,
are getting degreees and will be better positioned. so, education is
the key, but how can we pay for it is the problem.  we can reduce the
cost. we can not outsource and off shore or increase productivity.
these are no solutions. we are still attracting foreign students with
money to burn at the ivy schools and secon tiers. we are still selling
the small classroom, low ratio of student to prof at the traditional
humanities colleges and special schools like reed college etc., but
what of the average dude who would prefer to hammer nails and learns
standing up? This is where Dewey may serve us again. We need a
pragmatic approach. The trade off, the humanities, is a bastardized
Dewey. Besides, the economy is not in need of industrial arts. but an
education must close that gap between cost and value; this can be don
without tossing the humanities to the winds. And it is up to the
humanities folks to push back on the Snovian two cultures devide. how
music is math. how language is essential to all fields and how
knowledge of linguistics improves computer skill.
see Baumols cost disease;
 the educator salary needs to move still higher because she can not
live in the city where she teaches; to attract the best and brightest,
we need not pay wall street bonus or obscene salries, but they must be
raised and this must be done at the entry to first 5 years level. the
pensions and health care must be kept. but the debate has been about
why teaches have them rather than why everyone else does not have
these essential compensations.