Californias Higher-Education Disaster – The Chronicle of Higher Education

…budget cuts caused enrollment in California community colleges to decline by over 400,000 students. That’s more than the total number of undergraduates enrolled in the entire California State University system.

Californias Higher-Education Disaster – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

One of the concerns I have about the way we think about higher education in this country is the question of who it serves.  Popular rhetoric suggests that colleges are there to serve students, and the more business-minded the college administration is, the more likely they are to frame college as a place that serves students as customers, and that emphasizes student outcomes (usually in terms of graduation rates and sometimes subsequent job placement).  As teachers, we’re expected to be motivated to promote student success, and be rewarded by our interactions with students (since we certainly can’t expect to be rewarded financially in keeping with our workload and level of expertise).

Honestly, however, it’s not the individual students that we are serving.  We are serving society.  We are serving the future.  The people who have to live in the world our students create have almost as much stake in educational outcomes as our students.  They may not get the direct benefit of the improved employment opportunities, but the world that we all live in is shaped by the number of educated people, and the quality and intent of that education.  What technologies will be developed, what policies will be made, what new businesses will be created… these things are largely the domain of people with post-secondary education.

So when we get a statistic like an enrollment drop of 400,000 in California, we have to be clear that we are narrowing the idea pool for the future.   It’s not just that we’re serving 400,000 fewer “customers,” we are changing the capacity of our state to innovate.  We are responding to current budget crises by reducing our intellectual resilience as a community.

Marine Debris from 2011 Japan Tsunami

Shortly after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, I mentioned the concern about what would happen as all that stuff moved out into the Pacific.  See video below for a summary of NOAA’s recent work on this issue:

11 Holiday Gift Programs That Benefit Nonprofits and Make the World A Better Place :: 2011 Edition « Nonprofit Tech 2.0 Blog :: A Social Media Guide for Nonprofits

While my favorite shopping option is Buy Nothing Day (followed closely, in at least two senses, by Buy Local Day - I succeeded with both this year), there are often a few people that we wish to get gifts, but we don’t want to burden with ever-more meaningless stuff.

This list has a nice mix of stuff-less-ness and stuff that at least helps someone and means something:

11 Holiday Gift Programs That Benefit Nonprofits and Make the World A Better Place :: 2011 Edition « Nonprofit Tech 2.0 Blog :: A Social Media Guide for Nonprofits.

Pre-OCCUPIED

So much going on with the Occupy movement… I’m afraid all I can manage is a a few quick bytes:

What kind of pie?  OCCUPY!

It has just the right amount of absurd, silly nonsensical-ness to it that it suits this movement well.  In trying to explain why I thought this movement is so important, I realized that Occupy is a bit like the “uncarved block” from Zen teaching.  We don’t know what we’re doing, and we’re okay with it.  More importantly, it is only from this state of “beginner’s mind” that we can ever hope to learn and discover something truly new about how to live in this society.  Or as the Na’vi say:

Lu ngäzìk fwa teya sivi tsngalur a lu li teya.
It is hard to fill a cup which is already full.

Keith Olberman had an important point in his overblown rant about Bloomberg.  With the crackdowns and police brutality in NYC, Oakland, Seattle, Berkeley, and elsewhere, I’m reminded of what Gandhi (purportedly) said:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Not that we’ll win tomorrow, but clearly we’re getting closer.

Green lifestyle choices won’t solve the climate problem | Grist

This article clearly makes the argument that the efforts put into going even greener individually are much less effective than efforts to promote changes at larger systems levels:

Setting an example by doing some simple, logical things to reduce an individual environmental footprint is wonderful. But ultimately, we will not make up, through private spending or lifestyle changes, for the fact that we currently dont invest enough in public goods. Nor will we privately make up for the fact that much of our public spending is directed to the wrong public goods.

via Green lifestyle choices won’t solve the climate problem | Grist.

The one critical argument the author could also have made is the vast imbalance in the purchasing power  and therefore the ability and impact of personal decisions of the 1% compared to the 99%.

Now, I’m not going to start driving or eating corn-fed beef.  I’m still going to try to air dry my clothes whenever the weather and time permits, and tend the worms that eat my food scraps.  Perhaps I should try to get over my guilt when I have to bum a ride, or buy something packaged, but I know the world is still a better place if individuals keep doing the right thing.

Sometimes a little take-out or a plastic tarp gives an activist the personal energy for the big struggle.  The important thing is to continue to support the people who are working for the right things, even if they sometimes can’t maintain every ideal.  So I try to feel good about working with the parents who spend hours in their minivans to drive their kids to a half-dozen activities and lessons every day, because they do also help the more important work at the social level get done.  And I’m not gonna beat myself up for getting a pizza delivered now and again, and I’ll try to keep my guilt-tripping over new electronics purchases to a minimum (after all, we buy and turn over our stuff at a much slower pace than many people I know).  Yes, Gandhi said “be the change you want to see in the world,” but not everyone can be Gandhi all the time (probably not even Gandhi).

The system as it’s currently operating often makes doing the right thing extra difficult, excessively time-consuming, and occasionally dangerous.   It’s the mass movements that can bring about the big shifts we need to transform the culture into something viable for the coming century.

Occupy Gaia!

One example and a beautiful image

of the power and importance of the feminine in the global shift taking place:

OCCUPY! GAIA RISING! – ALEX NOBLE – Occupy!.

And, if we’re thinking global, check out

 

13 Staggering Facts About The Global Super Rich.

Gives a clear perspective on the differences between us 99% and the 1%.