Poor Walmart; you are constantly the higher education punching bag. In a recent article in The Atlantic about the current health of higher education, the sound bite of the article came from Karen Arnold, associate professor at the Educational Leadership and Higher Education Department at Boston College.
“We are creating Walmarts of higher education—convenient, cheap, and second-rate.”
Leading up to this delightfully quotable quote, the author of the article went over the all the things wrong with higher education; reduced funding, programs and degrees being cut, focusing on graduation rates, reducing requirements, MOOCs, and adjuncts teaching everything. After Dr. Arnold’s came Steven Ward, sociology professor at Western Connecticut State University and his soundbite , “Ward calls it the ‘McDonaldization’ of universities and colleges, ‘where you produce more things, but they’re not as good.’”
To start; all of these issues stated in this article are legitimate and are concerning to everyone in higher education. This article, because it is published at The Atlantic probably has had one hundred times more readers than the most popular articles at The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed. allowing it to be far more influential than those higher education specific sites. The most ho-hum aspect of the article is that it states nothing new; higher education writers have been discussing these issues for years; so we have a good summary of the current state of higher ed with two zingers, Walmart and McDonaldization.
One aspect that Walmart and higher education have in common is a large pool of part-time employees. Employees at Walmart have been trying to unionize for a long time but for the most part have been unable to. Adjunct faculty all around the country would like to unionize but much like Walmart, have been unable to. I am surprised that the article did not go over this, the most interesting point of comparison (I will not go into the money aspect of unionization or more full-time employees; that would be another article).
Going back to Dr. Arnold’s, I will comment on the quote about Walmart, “convenient, cheap, and second-rate.”
First, what is bad about convenient? Just wondering. Is it better that you go to college 1000-miles away or go to your local college even though you live in Arizona or Arkansas? Obviously the better colleges and universities are other places (this argument can be repeated in 44 other states). Also, online is widely available and convenient; is online equivalent to Walmart? The complication that arises with online is that although it is convenient, motivation and persistence are extremely difficult for even the brightest of students.
Second cheap; does she mean inexpensive or products that are cheaply made? Or both? Inexpensive products are not a bad thing; any family on a budget will attest to this. Cheaply made...well true, there are countless products at Walmart that are cheaply made but I am wonder how the future state of higher education is going to be cheap?
Maybe Dr. Arnold means that future Higher Ed education products will be cheap; poor curriculum and adjuncts teaching every class. As far as adjuncts teaching I have only had wonderful experiences with adjuncts and the quality offered by these hardworking professionals is not second-rate to a tenured professor. Now if a tenured professor is teaching a doctoral class close or in their speciality then quality will be off the charts, but most of the time when we are talking about full or part-time instructors we are discussing undergraduate education. In many people’s opinions adjuncts and tenured instructors provide the same quality and either way you want to argue there is no actual research to back-up your position besides opinion ( it is hotly argued that adjuncts might offer better quality for undergraduate education). As far as curriculum goes, that is up to the instructor teaching the course; if a college or university trusts the instructor to teach at their institution then they are trusting that the curriculum is top notch.
And finally second-rate; second-rate to what? Everything is second rate to Harvard and Stanford; the majority of institutions are considered second-rate to Michigan and Florida; many institutions would be considered second rate to Arizona and Ohio State. The ‘tiered-system’ of higher ed can go on and on down to the bottom; but what is bottom? Do you want to call out what schools you (whoever you are) might think are second-rate? Is the University of Massachusetts-Boston second rate because its overall graduation rate is 38%? Is Bunker Hill Community College second-rate because its graduation rate is 11%?
Finally I will circle back to the quote from Dr. Ward, and the ‘McDonaldization’ of universities and colleges, ‘where you produce more things, but they’re not as good.’” I would be wary of calling institutions second rate or the products that they produce not as good because by doing this you are calling the students, the faculty, and the community that supports the students and faculty, second rate and not as good.
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