Today, I offer my readers the last installment on education and its reform. For those who come here for philosophy and religion, rest assured I will return to such topics in my next post. Be watching for a series of letters on predestination.
This trio of posts on education were prompted by an op-ed I published with The Daily Wire. The article offers a simple but revolutionary proposal for education reform.
Colleges and universities are accredited on the backs of their faculty, on their degrees and academic achievements. But what if the qualifications that secure college and university accreditation instead secured accreditation for individuals scholars, allowing them to offer accredited courses as private-practice professors, thereby opening the door to a host of free market innovations?
The article works through the economic benefits to students and professors alike while exploring free market innovations it opens up. In my first post, I work through ways of making the proposal a reality, and in my second post, I report that one of those ways forward — an interim step involving a failing college — is likely to become a reality as a failing college has reached out to me about the proposal. In that post, I lay bare the details.
In this final post, I look at several features of higher ed (i.e., tenure, liberal arts, and incentive structures), offering some insights on these topics and on how the “Private-Practice” Professor (PPP) proposal can correct current problems.
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The Death and Resurrection of Tenure
Many today have trouble seeing the value of tenure. To onlookers outside the academy, it looks like the higher ed equivalent of union protections for public school teachers — a policy that makes it difficult to fire bad or corrupt teachers. But such was never its purpose.
Historically speaking, tenure was meant to protect free thought and free inquiry — and, by extension, free speech — with an eye toward progress in science, philosophy, religion, et al. Simply put, if we wish research to move forward (progress), unencumbered by prevailing winds of culture, then it’s important that scholars are protected when their research leads them to unpopular conclusions, conclusions that offend prevailing orthodoxies.
Today, however, tenure has morphed into something else entirely. Tenure no longer offers cover to scholars who speak against prevailing orthodoxies. Quite the contrary, to publish conclusions — be they philosophical, scientific, sociological, or otherwise — against the secular orthodoxies of climate change, critical race theory, LGBT+, or other sacred cows is to commit an unpardonable sin, one of the only sins that tenure will not absolve.
I trust the irony is obvious. The very thing that tenure was meant to preserve — free thought that runs contrary to prevailing orthodoxies — is now the one thing tenure does not protect.
Such is the death of tenure. So what of its resurrection?
The PPP proposal offers a means to restoring, not tenure per se, but the original purpose of tenure. The weapons that coerce academics into silence are all held by academic institutions — hiring committees, administrators, DEI departments, and, most ironically, tenure review committees. The threat of free thought is that one might lose his livelihood, plain and simple.
Were scholars able to work as PPPs, this would disarm the opponents of free thought. Having attained his credentials, the PPP is empowered to offer accredited classes in his area of expertise, wholly independent of any institution. He need not varnish his views for a hiring committee, nor fret over future tenure review, nor fear complaints to the administration from students offended by his conclusions. The power to teach and earn a living is his own, secured solely by his credentials, not subject to the whims of any institution that might dislike where free inquiry leads him.
One last point: Rather than this proposal opening the floodgates to PPPs brazenly offending vast swaths of students, the opposite is more likely but not because the PPP is censored. Unlike in the present model, where students and parents choose a school with little to no knowledge of what will be taught, the PPP proposal requires students (and their parents) to handpick professors. The result is transparency. A student or parent need not hire a PPP whose views are too radical or fringe or contrary to their own worldview. Hence, PPPs are more likely than not to attract students or parents of like mind. Whether such transparency inclines more radical or fringe PPPs to self-censor, well, that is for them and the market to decide.
In short, the PPP proposal, while not offering tenure per se, restores the original purpose of tenure while also bringing greater transparency between professor and student (and parents).
A Return to True Liberal Arts
For years, colleges and universities have marketed liberal arts degrees on their utility for securing gainful employment. Like the evolution of tenure, there’s a tremendous irony in this pitch.
The term “liberal art” comes from Aristotle. He defines it in contrast with an enslaved art. The latter is an art that depends on some other end or utility. The art of crafting wagon wheels, for example, depends upon the usefulness of wagons. If wagons become obsolete, so does the art. Contrast this with philosophy, the love of wisdom. The acquisition of wisdom is an inherent good and thus an end in itself. The art is, therefore, free or liberal. For it does not depend on an extrinsic end or utility.
I trust the irony is clear. The sales pitch for the average college or university contains a contradiction: You should study the liberal arts for the sake of some other end. By selling the liberals arts in this way, these schools enslave these arts that are meant to be free. And for this reason, when the economics of a liberal arts degree cease to make sense, so does the pursuit of the liberal arts.
I find this tragic because I am an advocate of the liberal arts — in the true sense. I pursued the study of philosophy and religion, not for the sake of employment, but for the sake of answers, desiring to understand, above all else, the nature of the world, my place within it, and how I should live as a result. And I believe I was right to do so. Such questions should be one’s primary pursuit. For how is one to answer questions about vocation, marriage, and family without understanding man’s place and purpose in the cosmos?
In saying this, however, I am not advocating for liberal arts degrees. I am advocating the study of the liberal arts for their own sake, as ends in themselves. And I believe the PPP proposal opens the door to several ways of advocating for the liberal arts. I’ll name three.
The first is the homeschooling movement. Homeschooling has steadily increased over the decades, and COVID only accelerated that trend. Many within this movement are advocates of classical education, which has a liberal arts bent, emphasizing logic, languages, and classics. I expect that if the PPP proposal were a reality, homeschool families would be amongst the first to hire PPPs, contracting top scholars at affordable rates to teach their more advanced teens the liberal arts.
On the one hand, there is a utility to this, securing college credit for the homeschooler in advance of college should he decide to earn a college degree. Yet, this need not be the case. The affordability of PPPs would enable homeschool families, which care about the liberal arts, to secure top scholars to give their child a top liberal arts education, regardless of whether they plan to send him to college.
Second, I expect the plummeting cost of higher ed under PPPs would give rise to a new body of students, namely, those who take classes simply to learn. Much like the ways podcasters draw followers, I expect that many PPPs would also attract followings. And when the price tag for a class plummets, the likelihood of acquiring students who simply want to learn under that scholar increases. In short, I suspect the proposal would give rise to the true liberal art student.
The third trend is not one I presume likely, but it is one I would like to advocate. While conservatives are understandably suspicious of higher ed institutions and their value, conservatives — as people concerned with conserving the riches of Western civilization — should value the liberal arts. In this light, my hope is this. Were the PPP proposal to become reality, I would like to see conservative businesses and organizations invest in continuing education. That is to say, recognizing the value of the liberal arts, these businesses and organizations invest in their employees and staff being liberally educated by scholars they trust.
With courses dropping to rates as low as $500 per class (see my op-ed), a substantial continuing education fund becomes affordable for a company with conservative values (e.g., $5,000 securing 10 classes). Whether this trend would materialize, I have no idea, but it is a trend that I would like to see. For it would mark a return to the liberal arts in the true sense, the education of people as an end in itself.
Perverted and Restored Incentives
Higher ed was once considered a privilege. One had to earned the right to attend a college or university. This privilege was earned by proving one’s academic aptitude by grades, tests, letters of reference, and more. The candidate was to prove himself worthy to study under experts in the field, like an athlete trying out for a team. Also like an athlete, acceptance into a program did not guarantee completion. Ongoing performance was required, lest he be sent packing.
With the growth of the higher ed machine, however, these incentive structures were perverted. First the G.I. Bill and then government loans made higher ed accessible to middle and lower class families for whom it had previously been out of reach. As college degrees became synonymous with upward economic mobility, the demand increased. Government was there to subsidize the cost, so arose a need for mid-level schools for those who did not make the cut at the elite schools. Yet, these mid-level schools inevitably had smaller endowments, making them tuition driven. Students became customers, and customer dollars were essential to keep the business running. To no surprise, then, as enrollment dries up, we have seen more and more schools lower the bar for entry to keep numbers up while simultaneously raising tuition rates, knowing the government will flip the bill.
Such a shift turns the student into a customer. And the customer is always right. Colleges and universities ceased to be hallowed halls that candidates had to prove themselves to enter. Schools now compete in a marketplace for a diminishing pool of potential consumers, trying to sell them on the “college experience” and pouring resources into facilities aimed at entertaining students rather than educating them. Far from students proving themselves worthy to study under experts, the student-customer now evaluates the teacher, so that the administration can assess how pleased the customer is with his performance. (And any who have seen student evaluations, knows they are little more than popularity contests, offering either gripe about the professors being too difficult or praise for him being entertaining; they have little to do with education.)
So the structures have been inverted — or rather, perverted. Students now claim a “right” to college; colleges now clamor for students; scholars and academics must please the students, striving to earn their attention and approval; and the administration keeps a watchful eye on the faculty, ensuring that the customer is pleased.
The PPP model offers a means of remedying these perverse incentives. Yes, the PPP needs students to make a living, but he is selling only one thing, education in his area of expertise. To study with him is a privilege, not a right. And as the gate keeper of his classroom, he can set his own standards of admission. He has no obligation to take on subpar students nor to retain or pass students who fail to perform. He is there to teach. The student is there to learn. It’s that simple.
The revised arrangement does not guarantee that a PPP never operates from his own perverse incentives, but by removing the institution from the equation, we return to a simplified teacher-student arrangement, allowing the relationship to calibrate with a singular goal, education.