Gainful-Employment Regulations: Coming Soon to a Campus Near You

“It is much easier to say that institutions are failing students, and therefore they and the students they serve are being eliminated from the Title IV program, than it is to admit that the government is failing its citizens by providing them less support to earn the very credential that our leaders assert that will need to succeed in the future.”

The government is failing the people because its industrial policy for the past 20 years has favored the FIRE economy. Now that the FIRE economy has irresposibly blown itself stem to stern, the government needs to stop propping it up and start developing the industrial policy of the 21st century.

Until that develops, we simply won’t know what careerist education will be most financially beneficial to students. So, we may as well educate them for citizenship in floundering state, starting with basic literacy.

quidditas, I assume you meant “blown up itself stem to stern” but I have to say, I like your metaphor as written…

Before everyone gets all fired up over Jones’ opinion piece (which is what it really is) I’d recommend folks make a visit to some folks who’ve actually READ the proposed gainful employment rule. And they have a link to a pretty decent Q&A about the proposal.
http://www.quickanded.com/2010/12/more-gainful-employment-distortions.html

Of course Ms. Jones is going to come out against the gainful employment rule – that’s her job. But I am surprised about how much ink she spent on it. Although I guess obfuscation does take some time when you’re trying to spin something that actually isn’t that complicated. p.s., the gainful employment rule doesn’t have much to do with the Pell shortfall, but it does help Jones’ case if she can spin it into some dark conspiracy. But that’s only if you buy into the conspiracy.

Ms. Jones fails to mention what is motivating these new rules. It’s the fact that for-profit colleges are gaming the financial aid rules to produce huge profits almost entirely from federal tax dollars. These schools inflate their credit hours so students will have access to more federal loans, then the schools jac up their tuition forcing students to pay it with the increased loan money.

When 14 of the 16 publicly traded colleges receive more than 87% of their total revenue from federal tax dollars there is a problem. Especially when a good portion of those tax dollars are lining the pockets of shareholders.

Lastly, Ms. Jones interpretation of the gainful employment regulations being solely based on a graduate’s first salary is a gross over-simplification of the new rules. Why didn’t she provide a link to the rules? Is it because readers might discover that the rules apply, in many cases, to salary levels 5 years after graduation and compare that to the amount of a graduate’s debt they have paid back? These rules are not about how much a college graduate makes in salary, it’s about whether providing huge amounts of debt to students is a net benefit to society when they end up defaulting on it.

True enough. In the case you mention, though, I believe the actual insult was aimed at Burr’s daughter. It was her honor he was protecting, not his own. Today we would consider such chivalrous notions misguided. But what remains is the concept of protecting the weak, rather than merely grabbing all one can for oneself. A biology department chair, for instance, might display this sort of honorable behavior by giving up a faculty line to the chemistry department, even though she has been around longer and has more clout than the chemistry chair, because she perceives that his department’s need is greater.

I like almost everything Prof. Jenkins has to say; indeed we are a culture which has lost its way when it comes to honor.  However, it may be naive to think that politics were once more honorable on any kind of consistent basis; look at the in-fighting between Adams and Jefferson, or the actions of John C. Calhoun, and you see that even at a time when a certain civility and honor were more the norm than now people were nasty as hell to each other in the political arena.  On the other hand, he’s on target with the cya and back biting which goes on at larger colleges.  It happens differently at smaller schools, where it’s more a faculty vs. the administrators and/or board mentality.

Classroom teachers with no job security teach most of the credit-bearing college courses in the USA.  And we treat classroom teachers – with their near-sacred role – as the *bottom* of a hierarchy, placing their livelihoods at the mercy of politics and whimsy.
What a contemptible institution higher education has become.

While we can point out the examples of Adams and Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, Blaine and Cleveland, Andrew Johnson and the Tenure of Office Act, etc., there was a significant portion of the political process focused on getting things done for a collective good. In the current era, it’s about showmanship and appeasing your base rather than the whole. To apply the concept to higher education like Jenkins did is natural.

In addition, I think it is of value to suggest that even if politics has descended to placating the fringe at the expense of the middle, higher education should have a different purpose. I agree with others that abandoning TT faculty for an army of adjuncts has hurt the overall mission of education (this is one thing K-12 is doing right).

But there is a larger picture to be examined here. We often see the act of setting education policy and budgets like Cold War politics: a zero-sum game. It should be less rare that we are doing our duty honorably by seeking what is best for all and not a few. 

My college as a whole will improve because it recently received a large federal science grant, even if my particular government classes do not directly benefit from that gift. Something about a rising tide lifting all ships comes to mind.  

robjenkins, in most credible versions of the events, the duel is the end result of a long bitter history of political conflict, with the specific trigger being the publication of a letter recounting Hamilton’s comments about Burr.  No mention of the daughter.

“Genl. Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared in substance that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of Government. I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.”

http://www.brown.edu/Courses/HI0171/Documents/Articles/Freeman.pdf
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Alexander_Hamilton_and_Aaron_Burr_duel
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/peopleevents/pande17.html

However, in a Gore Vidal novel “Burr” the “despicable opinion” is accusing Burr of incest with his daughter, which footnote 14 here, confirms was just Vidal’s “invention”:
http://www.alexanderhamiltonexhibition.org/about/Freeman%20-%20Duelisas%20Politics.pdf

Wikipedia notes, “Though purely the speculation of author Vidal (albeit after some
consideration of the evidence and probability), this ultimately fictional and unprovable plot device has been repeated as factual on the Internet and in less scholarly works.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_%28novel%29

Even if it were true that Hamilton said such a thing, the most offended party is surely Burr, especially in the context of the statements being part of Hamilton’s campaign against Burr’s campaign for governor of New York and his previous campaigning that cost Burr the Presidency (Burr and Jefferson were tied in the Electoral College so the decision was made by the House). Burr was Vice-President at the time of the duel.

Honor was historically about the powerful protecting their image, regardless of the facts.

On September 30, 1938 the Prime Minister of Great Britain Neville Chamberlain showed the true nature of honor.  He described his sellout to Hitler at Munich as “peace with honour.” Thus honor was decisively linked with cowardice, duplicity, betrayal, deception, delusion and treason, as millions cheered instead of jeered.

In 1924, H.L. Mencken wrote, “The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”

robjenkins, please note that my objection is to your use of the word “honor”.  I think it would be better to use a phrase like “self-sacrifice and selflessness to protect the weak” to describe the behavior that you desire.  Behavior that some demonstrated when the “Titanic” sank, in circumstances where they was a very clear and simple cultural rule to follow, “Women and children first”, and a clear possibility that failure to follow it would be a public source of shame. 

The problem in life is that the Chemistry Chair is probably just scamming you. You should only give up your faculty line to hire Marie Curie in 1898 or give it to Physics so they could get Einstein in 1905 or provide a suitable home for the refugee physicist Marietta Blau in 1938.

Though some might suggest that such actions would actual count as “enlightened self-interest” assuming you have bosses that appreciate wisdom and a lack of pettiness. Others might point out that you are sacrificing an adjunct in your own field to benefit those from another field, another country and that they don’t even speak English. Others might suggest that the phrase “self-sacrifice and selflessness to protect the long-term interests of the nation as a whole” would be a better description and goal.

In 1962, it is John Wayne using his rifle to shoot Liberty in the back. In “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” the shot is timed to make it appear that Jimmy Stewart killed Liberty in a shoot out.  As a result of this killing Stewart goes on to great political success. Eventually Stewart learns the truth. A newspaper report is told the truth, but doesn’t publish it because:

“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

What is honor?

So Gore Vidal made all that up, huh? What a bitter disappointment.

I understand your objection to the use of the term, but I think it’s based on an antiquated definition. In modern parlance, would you say that “to do the honorable thing” means fighting a duel?

Rob

robjenkins, but then I have seen too many old movies and read too many old novels.

But I see that even in 2011, it has the connotation of a form of political suicide, as in resigning from office when caught.

“State GOP Chairman: Weiner Should Do ‘Honorable Thing’ And Resign”
 
http://www.capitaltonight.com/2011/06/state-gop-chairman-weiner-should-do-honorable-thing-and-resign/

Note that “Honorable Thing” was qualified with “Resign”, almost as if the earlier meaning might still hold sway.

“For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men,” 
– Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”

And Brutus at the end does fall on his sword (actually runs on to it, close enough).  So in the end he does “do the honorable thing”.

“Caesar, now be still:
I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.”

girl37, you wrote,”What’s wrong with you?” I guess it is seeking to see language used correctly and providing examples and logic to support my view (yes, I do make grammatical and other errors along the way).  And in particular, I was answering the author’s very own question.  At the time, 1 hour ago, that the author raised the question he didn’t seem to think I was “derailing” things. On the surface your “derailing” claim seems odd given that it was 6 hours ago that  3224243 posted. 

But you do nicely illustrate the dubious usages that “honor” and “honorable” are put to, now and in the past.  You nicely illustrate your contempt for Shakespeare, Emerson and the rest who raise questions about “honor” and “honorable”.  You nicely illustrate your intolerance towards divergent views and your tyrannical viewpoint that the traditional concept of “honor” helped enforce.  You aid the enemies of freedom and liberty. You aid the champions of oppression, exploitation, censorship, exclusion and silencing. 

Bravo! ;-)

This reminds me of the old joke:
Why are the politics so nasty in academia?
Because the stakes are so low.

Academics will fiercely fight over the smallest bit of resources and, most of all, ego.

I think part of the problem is the tenure system.

Academics can get away with being petty, mean, nasty, and selfish because there usually is no great consequence of such behavior.  They have tenure.

Replace tenure with a renewable 5-year review and contract based on performance, and we would see the civility and “honor” return to academia.

girl37, I see that in my posts in this thread that I have referenced Shakespeare, Emerson and . . . Death.  Reminiscent of the title of a thesis that I mentioned earlier. Is this what perturbed you?  Should I have gone with Milton?  Used a few lines from Lucifer? ;-)

I notice that you still haven’t discussed the actual article or the other posts.

I’m curious, bscmath78, whether you work in academia and, if so, in what capacity.  Thanks.

If anyone knows the origin of this adage (not an old joke), I would be happy to hear it. I have heard it attributed to Mark Twain, Woodrow Wilson, Jesse Unruh (CA legislative leader), Lionel Trilling, and several others.

I would suggest, Landrum–in fact, I sort of did suggest–that honor is the larger umbrella, under which fall ethics, honesty, integrity, and a host of other virtues.

Rob

Thanks, C19 colleagues.

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