UPDATE II: Marc Bousquet follows up his critique of Marc C. Taylor on The Valve.
UPDATE: Apparently everyone is hastening to announce the end of the university as we know it (will we feel fine?)
Interesting review from NY Review of Books:
Since the financial meltdown began to accelerate last summer, the world has changed utterly for colleges and universities just as it has for everyone who had not been stashing cash under the mattress. Along with failing banks, auto manufacturers, and insurance companies, universities have been making headlines—especially those whose gigantic endowments (Harvard’s was approaching $40 billion before the crash) have sharply declined. Last year, politicians and pundits were complaining about the unseemly wealth of such institutions. This year, alumni are getting e-mails from beleaguered presidents assuring them that Alma Mater will somehow ride out the storm.
Read the rest.
One wonders what would have happened if the US government did not give all the monies to Investment Houses, and instead paid off every student loan in America, investing in persons who supposedly believed in the system, and feeding monies to banks that way. It may have been a different world.
It’s called Socialism, I’ve been there and I kind of liked it…
Yes. But if the government did it as an emergency measure, as a kind of incalculable Saturnalia, instead of as a big, constant moma-bear hug, just think of the difference in economy.
Taylor’s article was um…misguided and out of touch at best. Here is an interesting response, one I’m inclined to agree with, for the most part:
http://howtheuniversityworks.com/wordpress/archives/196
Constant momma-bear hug is good when you are unemployed and sick, you know? I say America learns from Soviet mistakes and Swedish achievements and become a socialist country already.
Shahar, Taylor’s piece is pretentious bullshit, I think, thanks for the link, I agree with Bousquet’s version of the crisis.
Yes, but do constant mama-bear hugs create unemployed and sick baby-bears? You know, when mama hugs you for reason x, reason x can become a preoccupation. And when the baby-bears of a country become far more heterogenous (Sweden, less than 5% of pop), who gets hugs becomes highly politicized, and necessarily culturally imbued.
How about everyone gets a hug? What is wrong with that?
Some people are a little smelly, especially if they’re hairy and eat a lot of fish like bears, that’s what.
Good point, Carl, I withdraw my proposal of comprehensive hugging.
But hugging Jesus loves odiferous, hirsute, fish-eating fellows. I believe just after he said,
“Blessed are the cheese makers” he said, “I shall make you fish-eaters of men”
Kevin, you’re reading Jesus’ words too literally, I think he clearly meant in include all the dairy-makers…
You made me watch the scene again. Wonderful.