Is It Possible To Survive Modern Higher Education?
Is this really college ... or more of a culling process than it's ever been?
It's a mild, bright Thursday afternoon in Buffalo in the fall. I've finished up some life stuff by about 1:00, lots of phone calls and wrestling with the interwebs, and decided to come up to the Central Park Grill, three blocks from my house on Buffalo's Main Street, a bar I've frequented off and on for over thirty-five years. I like to tell friends it's my other living room; even more than that, it's a safe, accepting venue for a transgender woman like myself, a bar with one paramount house rule: Respect.
Happily, I find that Amanda, one of the most wonderful people on the planet and a truly good friend, is tending bar. Amanda is one of those women (born female, for one thing) who don't let a lot of people know how intelligent she is. There's a lot to her, cognitively, emotionally -- and, not least of all, visually, but she only shows her deeper self to a few people. (I consider myself very fortunate to be one of them. I would choose an afternoon just hanging out with Amanda over an all-expenses-paid ride on Blue Origin.)
So I settled, we chatted, she brought me a draft, I tried all my favorite ploys to keep her at my end of the bar, relented when we saw business picking up. (The Grill, a.k.a. CPG, has a healthy lunchtime trade especially in their wings.) Watching Amanda work with people is better than the best television; she becomes all grace and feistiness, and jokes fly back and forth, but rarely have I seen someone push too far with her. (We're all friends there, and practically everyone knows where the line is.) And she looks after everyone in the bar, both bartending and waitressing. Girl works hard for the money.
And she's attending the University of Buffalo, in a very high-tech program, with not too much more to go before graduating.
(And she works at another bar on the weekends. I couldn't do it, and here she's been keeping this up for more than three years now.)
When she came back my way, I waited till she could grab a bite of her lunch in a corner of the back counter. Then I asked, “If you were reading a really interesting article right now, say about something important to you, what would it be about?”
“Hmm,” she said. “I think it would be about scheduling things that I need for my course work at times that I can't make it, because I have bills to pay so I can't not work.”
I nodded. (Been there, did that.) “Talking about labs and lectures?”
“Yup, exactly,” she said. “UB just doesn't seem geared to the adult learner, especially working adults.”
Bang. I pretty much ask Amanda for my next newsletter, and she thinks less than five seconds and has it. I love the woman.
“So that's probably jamming up graduation,” I suggest.
“It's not making it easier,” she says, then scoots back to the front to take care of take-out customers.
She'll graduate, I'm sure of it. I'm definitely her cheerleader when it comes to that.
But I also know the way her program's been structured at UB does favor students who have more time, and more flexible schedules. In short, students from more affluent families, at home and overseas, get more support from those families all during their college careers -- and even after, to get themselves set up. But for every student with such cushioning in this country, there must be five working students whose schedules are constrained by the need to support themselves. (And even a family sometimes. That's where part of my student loan went; I doubt I'll ever be done paying it off, the way things are going.)
Now, this is going to come as a big so what?to some people. But the difficulties being posed to a significant number of working students in this country, along with the apparently ongoing admissions scandal, the absurdly high price tag on higher education right now, the student loan debt mess which is verging on a crisis, and the proliferation of predatory learning purveyors, all reflect the problems of an institution-cum-industry whose practices have gone unquestioned and Tunchecked for far too long.
The whole machine turns on a well-greased axle of money and privilege, as it has for centuries. We still believe that higher education is the key to success in American life. Even there, a lot can depend on which course of study you pick. I've even gotten a two-year degree from a community college, just in time to have most of the skills I'd worked to acquire be outmoded by the then new computer-assisted drawing tech. And I won't even get started on my Master's in Mental Health Counseling. (That's another of my newsletters -- feel free to check my archive.)
As far back as the 60s, students have insisted on a greater say in how colleges are run. But there is always pushback, from college administrators, older alumni, the board of directors, politicians, lobbyists, all seeking to preserve the college's prestige, its “optics.” And ever since the 60s, many older schools especially have adopted a patriarchal attitude to much public opposition to everything from financial practices to accreditation of school and faculty.
And yes, scheduling of academic activities crucial to the student's passing certain courses. Colleges always have dozens of acres of parking -- UB certainly does. Wouldn't you think that after huge outlays (and environmental damage) in order to accommodate students' vehicles, the institution wouldn't work just as hard to accommodate working students in their scheduling? After all, these aren't the (largely imaginary) good old days when Pops at the malt shop would let Junior come in late for work so as to attend his chemistry lectures. It is a more complicated world, and malt shops don't pay students' bills any longer. (They've been supplanted by cyber cafés anyway.)
Amanda's so close to her degree. I hope she's not totally burned out by the end. (She mentioned feeling that way recently.) There needs to be change in the whole university system.
But that's like climate change. We've actually known about it for more than a century. But knowing is not enough: the time for real action is almost overdue.