Summary Notes on "The Future of the Faculty in the Digital Diploma Mill," by D. Noble, Academe, AAUP, September-October 2001, pp. 27-32.

 

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 9/26/01

 

"Since I began chronicling the impact of distance education on the academic community more than four years ago, events have confirmed the concerns and followed the course outlined in my original manifesto and elaborated in later articles. Nearly all post-secondary institutions have climbed aboard the digital bandwagon in search of new revenues and in fear for their piece of higher education turf, only to discover the hard way that the bloom is already off the rose. At the same time... they have secured taxpayer subsidy of their online efforts... In addition, university administrators have learned that the technology of online education... provides a way to their managerial advantage. Meanwhile, faculty resistance to this restructuring... has increased and gained coherence and confidence."

 

"As more colleges and universities have moved into the realm of commercial online education... the distinction between non-profit and for-profit institutions bas blurred to the vanishing point.

... Unanticipated costs associated with the development of online capability... have belatedly given even most ardent enthusiasts pause. ... Facing an uncertain future, the intrepid academic and industrial entrepreneurs of online education are turning to the taxpayer to bail them out. ... After several years of lobbying by venders, universities, and trade associations, the ... White House secured the cooperation of the military in creating an artificial market for distance education at taxpayer expense. ... Together, the armed services... are now underwriting a radical restructuring of the higher education industry, at the expense of the professorate.”

 

"Judging by the effects of similar military programs upon other industries, the defense department distance-education program will have far-reaching consequences for higher education. ... As the world's leader in on-the-job, the U.S. military has... developed and perfected a vast array of training techniques and technologies, many of which subsequently have been adopted by the civilian education system. ... This is the model of education that will now be imposed upon higher education by way of the defense department distance-education program. ... That such military standardization might entail abandonment or relaxation of academic standards is also readily acknowledged. ... In short, the military presence will magnify, at taxpayer expense, the untoward impact that commercial distance education is already having on institutions of higher education."

 

"Whether financially remunerative or not... the development of online education is nevertheless enabling administrators to restructure their institutions and labor relations to their managerial advantage. ... In his decidedly commercial ethos, administrators are predictably trying to win the cooperation of faculty by offering them a piece of the action. ..."

 

"... Of course, not everyone is buying the new model of higher education.

 

... Apparently, some members of Congress representing the interests of black constituents view distance education as a degraded form of education and have insisted that their constituents receive the genuine article instead.

 

... At the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, some of the elite are also recognizing that distance education represents but a shadow of a genuine education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently announced that it is planning to put all of its course material on Web sites for free Internet distribution. ... There are the benefits of a coveted degree and career-making connections, but there is also the quality education that comes from direct contact with fine teachers. ..." 

 

"The increasing and maturing resistance to distance education on the part of faculty organizations is another sign of growing sophistication. ... In August 2000 a potentially historical meeting was held at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC. Called by the National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest, an advocacy organization co-founded by the author and others in 1983 to fight against the corporation of higher education, it brought together the leaders of the most progressive faculty unions in the United States and Canada. ... Faculty organizations... are recognizing that their struggle is part of a larger effort to preserve and enhance public higher education. ... Decades after academic divested itself of classified research on behalf of the national security state on the grounds that performing such research conflicted with the free and open exchange of ideas, the academy has adopted practices on behalf of private corporations that have the very same corrosive consequences. ... The participants resolved to try to reaffirm those ideals and to strive to recapture the ideological, rhetorical, and political initiative and the moral high ground in the debates about higher education in order to reinvigorate a noncommercial conception of higher education..."

 

[Readers who are interested in this article are encouraged to read the original paper in its entirety. Other summary notes on faculty reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]