It is clear that when thousands demonstrate over a prolonged period
dramatic changes can be made. People have wrought changes
in the past, and they will continue to do so.
Dr. DuBois, the great Negro historian, wrote in his "Farewell Message":
"Always
human beings will live and progress to greater,
broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in
this
truth because the great end comes slowly;
because time is long..." We should proceed calmly and with optimism—our actions tempered always by our perception of reality.
But we haven't examined higher education as part of the establishment. Like the establishment that students of the 1960s talked about as something not to trust. The trustees, endowment managers, trustees, foundation presidents, accreditors, bankers, bond raters, CEOs and CFOs who make the decisions that affect how higher ed operates and who at the same time work to make consumers, workers, and activists invisible.
To say we cannot trust US higher
education administrators and business leaders may sound passe, or
something that only extremists of the Left or Right might say, but it
isn't, and more folks are seeing that.
Examining US higher education
needs to be assessed more deeply (like Craig Steven Wilder, Davarian Baldwin, and Gary Roth have done) and more comprehensively (like Marc Bousquet), and it needs to be explained to the People. It's something few have endeavored, because it isn't
profitable, not even for tenure in some cases.
Without our own sustainable business model, the Higher Education Inquirer will continue writing (and prompt others to write) stories significant to workers and consumers, the folks who deserve to be enlightened and who deserve to tell their stories.
And as long as we can, the Higher Education Inquirer will ask the Establishment for answers that only they know, something few others are willing to do.
