Higher ed looking a lot like the US auto industry in the 90s/00s. Snap managerial decisions, uncoordinated downsizing, excessive reliance on tech, no solution to labor impasse, wild rebranding. Big difference is no federal bailout waiting in the wings. - ThreadSky

quinnslobodian.com • 98 days ago

Higher ed looking a lot like the US auto industry in the 90s/00s. Snap managerial decisions, uncoordinated downsizing, excessive reliance on tech, no solution to labor impasse, wild rebranding. Big difference is no federal bailout waiting in the wings.

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bentarnoff.com•98 days ago

Excited for academia to enter its "PT Cruiser" Era

mchrislow.bsky.social•98 days ago

Efficiency! So much efficiency!

quinnslobodian.com•98 days ago

Fiduciary responsibility so much fiduciary responsibility

mchrislow.bsky.social•98 days ago

When I wake up in the morning, I think carefully about how I’m bringing value to our shareholders and trustees!

totoroandscience.bsky.social•97 days ago

In the context of rapidly expanding AI and a dire need for ethical training in their fields about this technology, what could go wrong if we pare back educational resources?

bibliatech.bsky.social•96 days ago

*runs shrieking and gibbering through the streets*

totoroandscience.bsky.social•96 days ago

Not sure if you mean me or you. I have a kid in college right now, and it gives me hope that so much of the coursework includes how to manage AI ethically. Stripping away resources from education means teachers and professors spend more time procuring paper for copiers than designing good curriculum

totoroandscience.bsky.social•96 days ago

I don’t say this as a hypothetical, by the way. I had a first career in education and after stark budget cuts we didn’t have enough paper and I remember running IEP legal documents on the backside of used paper.

bibliatech.bsky.social•96 days ago

Oh definitely me, but there's plenty of shrieking to go around. I work in a public library and have the 'AI will end your job' conversion at least once a day. It's so frustrating

totoroandscience.bsky.social•96 days ago

I’m a librarian’s kid so I know I have some bias, but libraries are the backbone of most educated societies. I find it hard to believe AI could ever truly take the place of a library or librarians outside of dystopian sci-fi. Kudos and thanks!

rigbythedog.bsky.social•97 days ago

Holy shit it’s so bad right now and only getting worse.

commiedharma.bsky.social•96 days ago

how has that not been the case for more than a decade and half? Since the University Of California system abandoned the Master Plan and started doing debt swaps to keep their bond rating up? Since the near universal adoption of RMC as a management structure?

commiedharma.bsky.social•96 days ago

2009

drchrisdeutsch.bsky.social•97 days ago

What a world

zingherpolisci.bsky.social•98 days ago

yeah, but what if i told my administration is gonna use generative AI to revolutionize education by breaking down traditional disciplinary silos and disrupt classroom instruction?

michaelrosino.bsky.social•98 days ago

Word salad you can make a meal of right there 👏👏👏

healeyparera.bsky.social•97 days ago

But no SUV to (short-sightedly) stabilize profits, postpone doom, and rescue profit margins.

parhee.bsky.social•97 days ago

International students and a plethora of vanity Masters programs. This seemed the way at Columbia.

healeyparera.bsky.social•97 days ago

Yup, international students, vanity MAs, and to a degree business schools and even law and medical schools may play the SUV role here...

henrysnow.bsky.social•97 days ago

maybe AI until the bubble bursts... like SUVs, an overhyped development that we'll suffer for having infested too much in. though I did love the trashed 90s Chevy Blazer I drove in high school

quinnslobodian.com•97 days ago

Both energy hogs too

quinnslobodian.com•97 days ago

Unless this is…a business school

jdryan08.bsky.social•97 days ago

The terminal MA very much the SUV in this scenario.

big-steppa.bsky.social•97 days ago

Now imagine if they didn’t bail out GMC or Ford…

The world would be a lot quieter

And safer

bginchi.bsky.social•98 days ago

Yes, but state appropriations a huge part of this, too.

And it also depends which sector of higher ed you're talking about. Plenty of distance between the haves and have-nots.

quinnslobodian.com•98 days ago

Analogue to GFC 2008 is Covid 2020 when uni admin made a ton of unprecedented executive decisions—freezing or canceling hires, suspending retirement contributions, radically changing service delivery to student-customers. They felt the heft and saw the glint of the restructuring sword…

quinnslobodian.com•98 days ago

In 1965 nothing was more permanent than Chevrolet and Ford, no job more secure. Just since the election, Tesla’s market cap has risen more than TWICE the value of both of these automakers combined. Nothing is immune to disruption/destruction.

ericweinberger.bsky.social•98 days ago

Financialization of university finances... I was in the Harvard prez office in 2008 when a Civil War historian had to understand what were credit default swaps and how to unwind them. (Because her predecessor was Larry Summers who instituted the swaps.)

rigbythedog.bsky.social•97 days ago

Drew Faust

tomsugrue.bsky.social•97 days ago

A better analogy might be the print media. Decentralized. The smallest, locally-focused, and undercapitalized go down first. Lots of denial and institutional inertia. Plus uncoordinated downsizing, no solution to labor impasse, wild rebranding, and no federal bailout waiting in the wings.

quinnslobodian.com•97 days ago

Also in that there’s no real replacement for the incumbents, just a loss of part of public sphere replaced by a slurry of AI slop and advertisements.

mel-med-larson.bsky.social•98 days ago

Quite the opposite

jeffmanuel.bsky.social•97 days ago

The best way to think about adjunctification is that it’s higher ed’s version of the 2-tier labor contracts the UAW and other unions accepted from this era.

mininghistory.bsky.social•98 days ago

I guess one difference is that there doesn't appear to be a thriving and rapidly expanding higher ed sector anywhere overseas.

mininghistory.bsky.social•98 days ago

The damage is self-inflicted

bibliatech.bsky.social•96 days ago

Sorry to say, public libraries are following this trend as well

wishda.bsky.social•97 days ago

If NIH/NSF grants and student loans go away, it will get much worse very quickly.

conorforgot.bsky.social•97 days ago

I do think one pertinent difference here is that the higher Ed labor movement is currently resurgent, as opposed to a relatively weak auto labor movement in the '90s. Looking at the pace of grad and other higher Ed workers (eg SAPs at UC, etc), the terrain of struggle in think will be bw 1/

conorforgot.bsky.social•97 days ago

financialization from the top and democratic control from below, with an outstanding question of whether tenured faculty ally themselves with workers or with admin

quinnslobodian.com•97 days ago

It is inspiring for sure but unionization drives could paradoxically accelerate this process as they disrupt the exploitation on which the current business model relies

ericweinberger.bsky.social•97 days ago

And now we find they can be conveniently blamed for suspension of academic programs - an escalation.

quinnslobodian.com•97 days ago

Exactly

conorforgot.bsky.social•97 days ago

I think whether that's the case is a question (like in all things) of whether managers or workers have more power. As we've seen at BU, the university will respond to improvements in working conditions with attempts at intense austerity. It remains to be seen whether in that specific case 1/

conorforgot.bsky.social•97 days ago

The union has the power to beat back that attempt, but as in other notable examples - UC and UW come most clearly to kind - a powerful union has the ability to directly respond to job cuts etc via contract enforcement, direct action, & political action relatively unavailable 2/

conorforgot.bsky.social•97 days ago

To an unorganized workplace which will eventually face austerity measures. It's no guarantee of success, but I do see an interesting difference between the struggle of faculty to (thru shared governance) bend the university to their collective will vs the nascent success of labor militancy to do so

notadcconsultant.bsky.social•97 days ago

The deep pockets of the school choice movement (DeVos,Heritage, Bradley, Walton….) has been spending big bucks to spread chaos for decades. Their goal is to force their religious ideology onto our kids. There’s not a GOP politician who isn’t dependent on them for $$$$… they’ll toe the line.

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