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Pres Schill to teach Honors course on what’s wrong with higher education

Thanks to an anonymous reader for forwarding the course description, full text below. President Schill’s own porkalicious contract, which will presumably be #3 on the reading list when it comes to reasons for the increasing cost of college – after faculty pay and guvmint interference – is here:

and, just in case Uncle Phil decides Schill hasn’t done enough to promote Duck sports and has Chuck Lillis fire him, he’s got this insurance clause. Smart:

And here’s the course description, which seems like a pretty good summary of the frustrations of trying to run a university these days:

Professor: Michael H. Schill

HC 410H: Higher Education in the United States: An Introduction to Key Issues and Challenges

2.00 credits

  • CRN 37045: Mondays, 1515-1715 @ REMOTE               

       Higher education today faces an unprecedented set of challenges.  Even before COVID-19, many of the most divisive issues facing our nation were playing themselves out in the ivory tower.  Partisan politics either cast universities as places overrun by the left and inhospitable to freedom of speech or as corporativist entities out to exploit the poor and middle class.  The Black Lives Matter movement added fuel to the critique by suggesting that universities were failing to adequately serve marginalized populations.  Costs rose every year faster than inflation as universities competed for faculty and administrative talent, as students demanded greater levels of services, and as government saddled universities with costly requirements.  State support dropped precipitously and student tuition and debt increased to fill the void.    In 2020, COVID-19 threatened the very underpinnings of many universities by making it difficult or impossible for people to study together in a residential setting.

                This class will survey a number of different forces and issues facing the higher education sector.  We will begin by examining the structure of higher education and some of the changes that have taken place over the past 75 years.  We will then discuss the financing of higher education and how that has affected tuition and increasingly widened the gap between well-funded “elite” institutions and the rest.  As part of this analysis we will discuss the critique of universities as “neoliberal” institutions.  We will then launch into a discussion of a number of issues such as access and affordability, diversity and inclusion, freedom of speech, lagging levels of student achievement, and intercollegiate athletics.

                The class will be in the form of a discussion with only occasional lectures.  Expert guests may join once and a while.  Student participation will be highly valued and grades will be based upon a combination of a final paper, short class presentations, and participation in weekly discussions.

15 Comments

  1. honest Uncle Bernie 03/05/2021

    “once and a while”?

    UO needs to stop cutting corners, hire a good assoc vp or PR flack for President Schill. And a copy editor for the avp.

    Sounds like he might be polishing his cv? As higher ed policy guy?

    • Give me a break 03/09/2021

      Brilliant comment and great deductive reasoning! Pendant of the year award to HUB!

  2. It's Classified 03/05/2021

    Fully remote class, eh? I do hope someone records the lectures so we can audit the class on Youtube.

  3. charlie 03/07/2021

    Stanford deposited undergrad lectures of Leonard Susskind, father of string theory, on-line over a decade ago. For free. The flagship has this guy’s lectures on-line, and demands you pay. Is it now apparent why the WSJ has this damn school at the bottom of the Pac-12 for academic quality??

  4. honest Uncle Bernie 03/07/2021

    And another thing. It’s “gummint” not “guvmint”!

  5. Richard Bohloff 03/08/2021

    Suckers, he’s been teaching us this class for free.

  6. cancel this culture 03/09/2021

    If nobody signs on for the class will it be cancelled? Classes have a minimum – I assume this one would be a minimum of -1?

  7. Just a teacher 03/10/2021

    Students are savvy. Students are as complicated as faculty who are not reducible to a single stance or awareness about issues that affect them. Give them credit and support their individual and collective paths through this maze. They are so important because they vote and they are citizens. Listen to them, and they will teach us what we need to know about teaching and learning. Their ideas and perspective matter more than ours in the long run. Earn their trust and respect. Be humble and confident.

  8. Fishwrapper 03/12/2021

    Will he bring in guest lecturers, like F. King Alexander, as case studies?

    • honest Uncle Gangsta 03/12/2021

      effin’ A, as we used to say! And we have our [redacted for mocking a last name]! Oregon is such a fun place. With college statesmen like this, who needs athletics?

      My only concern is that word of this duo might get around, and we’ll lose them to Harvard or Yale.

  9. XDH 03/12/2021

    Be careful of throwing stones in glass houses UOM. If https://classes.uoregon.edu/ is to be believed, UOM is teaching 14 undergraduate students this current term and 13 registered for next term. I have over 250 currently. Oh, boo hoo for you…

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