"Ivory Tower" is very good and the best thing that I know of to date on this subject.
But. It is the tip of a Mount Everest of an iceberg. It is by no means exhaustive.
For example, "Ivory Tower" does not consider the alternative models of higher education that work elsewhere. This is an abysmal crack in the middle of this otherwise A+ contemporary piece of documentary investigative journalism.
For starters, why not consider the viable alternative models of higher education -- their traditions & place within their own indigenous cultures -- in Europe? And what the USA can learn from them? Europe is, after all, the taproot of US higher education. For at least a decade now there's been a wave of young Americans who come to Europe for affordable, excellent higher education. Reverse immigration -- is this not tragic? Why the myopia in "Ivory Tower" which suggests this crisis is only a US problem or only has a US solution? On one level this documentary is like the "World Series" in US baseball --which pretty much excludes the rest of the world.
That said, this is otherwise an excellent news piece about a deeply troubled, divided time in US Higher Education. There's almost a percolating Civil War. For "Ivory Tower" is also about the larger crisis in US social mobility. Plus suggests an institutional crisis in teachers' failure to deal with this problem in conjunction with their students -- since they together are the front line soldiers in this struggle.
The film's frustration is satisfying. It honestly exposes a problem that will not go away because of solutions proposed by the US government (local or national) or by the utopianism of digital technology.
The solution is somehow with The People -- as the Cooper Union segment ironically shows. Yet The People are oddly passive. Why? "Ivory Tower" is right. The USA's higher education system is either being deeply restructured to favor an economic elite or America is witnessing the destruction of the older, GI-Bill, democratic model of the dynamic engine of college education & social mobility.
Yet in "Ivory Tower" are the key fissures even identified? This is more of a cry, a frantic waving for help. And you can't tell if the troubled figure is waving or drowning.
What & where are the tools needed to fix US higher education? And "education" meaning what? Do Americans themselves fundamentally believe in intellectual education or practical training? Why is there such a profound lack of agreed-upon national levels for skills and knowledge? Why in effect are so many "nonprofit" universities dysfunctional, profit-making corporations? Why the blood-sucking banks living off of student loans and ex-students' careers ruined, stifled, threatened because of the student loan Sword of Damocles? Does this problem exist because, at heart, the USA is deeply anti-intellectual? Because other values rate higher? Like success or money or privilege and pleasure? What now? Thank you.
But. It is the tip of a Mount Everest of an iceberg. It is by no means exhaustive.
For example, "Ivory Tower" does not consider the alternative models of higher education that work elsewhere. This is an abysmal crack in the middle of this otherwise A+ contemporary piece of documentary investigative journalism.
For starters, why not consider the viable alternative models of higher education -- their traditions & place within their own indigenous cultures -- in Europe? And what the USA can learn from them? Europe is, after all, the taproot of US higher education. For at least a decade now there's been a wave of young Americans who come to Europe for affordable, excellent higher education. Reverse immigration -- is this not tragic? Why the myopia in "Ivory Tower" which suggests this crisis is only a US problem or only has a US solution? On one level this documentary is like the "World Series" in US baseball --which pretty much excludes the rest of the world.
That said, this is otherwise an excellent news piece about a deeply troubled, divided time in US Higher Education. There's almost a percolating Civil War. For "Ivory Tower" is also about the larger crisis in US social mobility. Plus suggests an institutional crisis in teachers' failure to deal with this problem in conjunction with their students -- since they together are the front line soldiers in this struggle.
The film's frustration is satisfying. It honestly exposes a problem that will not go away because of solutions proposed by the US government (local or national) or by the utopianism of digital technology.
The solution is somehow with The People -- as the Cooper Union segment ironically shows. Yet The People are oddly passive. Why? "Ivory Tower" is right. The USA's higher education system is either being deeply restructured to favor an economic elite or America is witnessing the destruction of the older, GI-Bill, democratic model of the dynamic engine of college education & social mobility.
Yet in "Ivory Tower" are the key fissures even identified? This is more of a cry, a frantic waving for help. And you can't tell if the troubled figure is waving or drowning.
What & where are the tools needed to fix US higher education? And "education" meaning what? Do Americans themselves fundamentally believe in intellectual education or practical training? Why is there such a profound lack of agreed-upon national levels for skills and knowledge? Why in effect are so many "nonprofit" universities dysfunctional, profit-making corporations? Why the blood-sucking banks living off of student loans and ex-students' careers ruined, stifled, threatened because of the student loan Sword of Damocles? Does this problem exist because, at heart, the USA is deeply anti-intellectual? Because other values rate higher? Like success or money or privilege and pleasure? What now? Thank you.