http://www.law21.ca/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=Comments+on+Articles+%28RSS2%29&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.law21.ca%2F2008%2F05%2F27%2Fdont-blame-the-recession%2F%23comment-&seed_title=Don%26%238217%3Bt+blame+the+recession Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:14:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://www.law21.ca/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked&feed=Comments+on+Articles+%28RSS2%29&seed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.law21.ca%2F2008%2F05%2F27%2Fdont-blame-the-recession%2F%23comment-123&seed_title=Don%26%238217%3Bt+blame+the+recession/comment-page-1/#comment-123 Anne Wed, 28 May 2008 13:06:41 +0000 http://jordanfurlong.wordpress.com/?p=155#comment-123 What’s true in journalism and the law goes in spades for higher education: the adoption of the “business model” (which, as you’ll notice, doesn’t work all that well in business) is generally blamed for the decline in the standards, ethics, and vision of universities, and, don’t get me wrong, it’s clearly implicated. However, the deeper reason is that education itself is devalued. When a college or uni puts “recruitment and retention” at the top of its list of priorities, and simultaneously allows teaching facilities (classrooms, libraries, study areas, support resources) to deteriorate; when it trumpets innovation and “connectivity” while isolating and demoralising its faculty; when it focuses on money-spinning programmes and allows students to build up lifelong levels of debt: then you know that education is not valued. Administration may blame hard economic times, or argue that tough economic choices must be made, but it’s false economy (and possibly false advertising) to court high-profile researchers who do almost no teaching while advertising one’s institution as a place of learning. It’s not how an institution behaves when money is flush that determines its character; instead, it’s how it reacts when resources are scarce that reveals its nature. Surely, when money is tight we reserve it for what really matters; and that suggests that if we let our best people go then we are either suffering from a failure of imagination, or showing our true colours. What’s true in journalism and the law goes in spades for higher education: the adoption of the “business model” (which, as you’ll notice, doesn’t work all that well in business) is generally blamed for the decline in the standards, ethics, and vision of universities, and, don’t get me wrong, it’s clearly implicated. However, the deeper reason is that education itself is devalued. When a college or uni puts “recruitment and retention” at the top of its list of priorities, and simultaneously allows teaching facilities (classrooms, libraries, study areas, support resources) to deteriorate; when it trumpets innovation and “connectivity” while isolating and demoralising its faculty; when it focuses on money-spinning programmes and allows students to build up lifelong levels of debt: then you know that education is not valued. Administration may blame hard economic times, or argue that tough economic choices must be made, but it’s false economy (and possibly false advertising) to court high-profile researchers who do almost no teaching while advertising one’s institution as a place of learning. It’s not how an institution behaves when money is flush that determines its character; instead, it’s how it reacts when resources are scarce that reveals its nature. Surely, when money is tight we reserve it for what really matters; and that suggests that if we let our best people go then we are either suffering from a failure of imagination, or showing our true colours.

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