Sunday, February 10, 2013
This Blog is about the choices families make about higher education despite their financial situations. The article used in class really focuses on the behind the scenes decisions that universities make in favor of private investors. At the end of the day no matter who controls the price of tuition and the means that families get the money, the most important factor is the fact that students are going to school no matter what. I want to focus on the thought process of families and the fear and other factors that drives them to make risky financial decisions in the name of higher education. Once one can conclude what is the cause of such drive then one can figure out how this crude higher education cycle has lasted so long.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think the focus on "fear" is really interesting. You can do a lot with that if you start by understanding where it comes from. Though it is an older book, I strongly recommend you look at Barbara Ehrenreich's "Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class" (1990), which should be at the library, as it really helps to understand that "fear" as class anxiety. I think that the "fear" she describes has only gotten worse as the social safety net has been dismantled over the past 20 years -- most especially with higher education. Along these lines, you should also consider what for-profit marketers in our two videos called the "pain funnel" or "fear funnel," by which they play on the anxieties and fears of potential students to get them to enroll. A student talked about that in his paper last term, and you might benefit from looking at his site:
ReplyDeletehttp://jordi201college.blogspot.com/
He did a very good project, but he did not focus on the "fear" you describe, which could have made for a much more interesting project. If you look at the way that for-profit colleges manipulate fears of the lower-class never rising or the fears of middle-class people falling, especially to get them to go to college for irrational reasons rather than based on a logical economic calculation, you will produce a fascinating paper. You could also start with the for-profits, where that manipulation is most manifest, and then look more generally at the higher education industrial complex to see the ways that this happens more broadly. I'd be glad to talk to you about this further, but please start by looking at Ehrenreich's book since I think it will help you tremendously.