decasia: critique of academic culture

Stanley Fish argues directly against an instrumentalist view of higher education: I have argued that higher education, properly understood, is distinguished by the absence of a direct and designed relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world. This is a very old idea that has received periodic re-formulations. Here is a statement by [...]

Last month I read in the New York Times that, as the costs of college rise and rise again, “college may become unaffordable for most in U.S.” That struck me as a wretched situation. It’s probably also false. What’s actually happening, according to another article a few weeks later, is that applications to expensive private [...]