Ryan Gildersleeve
Today, I’m speaking with Ryan Evely Gildersleeve who is associate professor of higher education at Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver.
Q: First off, let’s talk about some of the general trends. How would you describe the trends of higher education now?
A: Money, money, money. Colleges and universities are now commodities and trades. As such, questions need to change and any or all trends must be understood not only in how they might fit within and reinforce this conception of higher education, but also how they challenge it. It’s a strange relationship, certainly. To marketize knowledge and commodify education are in many ways at odds with how we’ve understood the role of the university over time, but it’s here. And with it, new forms of accountability, new demands on performance and new measures of quality. These three trends form a trifecta of imperatives in public and political interest in higher education today. But it also presents new opportunities — and refocuses attentions on some opportunities that have always been there, but were perhaps neglected. In refashioning institutions, we have the chance to determine new purposes and modes of operations. These are values decisions. Our colleges and universities reflect and produce our values as a society. With big data, rapid technology shifts, and globalized capitalism, it’s radical change now. It’s subjecting the university to the market, wholesale — not piecemeal.
It would be a mistake, however, to equate higher education with business. Colleges and universities are not businesses. They are social institutions that perform a social good, as well as bestow private goods onto individuals. The marketization and commodification trend seeks to make money for various people through these social and private goods. But the thing that makes a college or university the powerful and inspiring institution that it is — that’s knowledge. And while capitalist society can find a way to capitalize pretty much anything, that doesn’t necessarily mean the generative activities of knowledge production and dissemination need to be organized as a business. To do so would more than likely truncate knowledge — it would minimize its impact and standardize its form. Part of what makes knowledge such an attractive commodity is its expansiveness, its diversity, its plurality and all the possibilities that follow suit. Rather, the activities of knowledge production and dissemination probably need something less linear, more dynamic, and dare I say, more democratic, than business.
Q: Of these trends, which, do you think, is the most important? The one that people should principally pay attention to?
A: Accountability captures most of the sub-trends through which everyday people in academe have the most opportunity to shape their futures — and the future of higher education. Accountability as an imperative is already here, but what it looks like and how it gets operationalized is still up for grabs. Various states have some tentative plans that are starting to make inroads, although these accountability regimes tend to be short term and tied to specific temporal goals of enrollment or attainment. For example, Colorado’s master plan sets forward a college completion goal of having 66 percent of Coloradans with a degree or certificate by 2025. This is in line with some of the federal government’s ideas around accountability, such as President Obama’s 2020 goal for being the most credentialed country in the world.
