Market Matters

As long as consumers collude with providers, what they consume will be certification, not education...Autumn of the Humanities, TCSDaily.com, Uriah Kriegel

Uriah Kriegel, a professor of philosophy at the universities of Sydney and Arizona, shows that even a philosopher might be able to balance a checkbook. Why do responsible parties (parents, guardians, trust funds) willingly pay for the children under their protection to waste four years acquiring a degree with no employment prospects other than as a possible adjunct instructor? And why in a field in which, for students, as Dr. Kriegel puts it, "the only rationalization they can make of their need to sit in classrooms for four years is the prize at the end of the road: the practical dividends of holding a BA, preferably from a top university..."?

The piece of paper is worth more than the education. The piece of paper is the product purchased, not the field of study. Students and their parents are willing to put up with anything so long as they get that degree. They know employers care less about what the student read than that he or she finished the course. For faculty faced with market pressure on students like this, it's become an opportunity to teach whatever bias, prejudice, or political thesis they can slip in under a course description. There may come a day, however, when a group of Fortune 500 CEO's announces that BA's in the humanities are not worth the paper they're printed on. Count on parents, guardians and students to disappear from the halls of humanities departments when that occurs. Market matters.

Luther