The Political Shift Of Academia Into The Conscious Of A Corporate

In September of 2015, Harper’s Magazine published William Deresiewicz’s essay The Neoliberal Arts: How colleges have sold their soul to the market. In this essay, Deresiewicz discusses how colleges have changed their mindset over the last century and how the world’s new neoliberal thinking has changed higher education for the worse.

A college education is valuable and its quality is of the highest importance to most Americans. In his essay, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students,” Mark Edmundson utilizes ethos, pathos, and logos to effectively deliver his argument that the current educational system, especially in college, revolves around consumerism which in turn has negatively impacted students, teachers, and universities in general. However, although Edmundson presents an overall logically sound argument, there are few instances throughout the article that may hinder the reliability of his claims to the audience.

Higher education in modern day America has become a debated topic, with some saying that it is not worth it due to the debt it leaves upon leaving, and some saying that it opens opportunities that surpass the results of obtaining one. A resulting view from this conflict is that certain forms of education aren’t as beneficial as others. A primary example of one of these less valuable educations is the study of Liberal Arts. Author Sanford J. Ungar discredits this view in his article The New Liberal Arts where he discusses the many misconceptions that have come to form this interpretation. To convince the reader of these misunderstandings, Ungar uses the appeals of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, with heavy appeal to logic (Logos) over the other two. Each misconception uses and focuses on more of one appeal than others, and by doing this, he is very successful in influencing the reader into considering that these misunderstandings are present.

Every higher institution of learning has their own set of myths and history. Some of them may be vaguely true and some may be highly influential. The history of the institution may have a negative effect on those who look to apply or be a part of the institution. The history of a place sets the epitome of future enrollees. Some of the ghosts that haunt any college may have an extremely negative impact on how they are viewed today. This negative perception of the university can lead to strong economic deficits. Throughout trying to combat negative concepts that are thrust upon an institution, they have resolved issues of ethics, violence and, to most importantly, boost cohesion and moral.

Published in Harper's Magazine’s September 1997 issue, Mark Edmundson’s essay, “On the Uses of Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students,” presents a very personal argument for an apparent crisis in liberal education–the lack of passion in students. According to Edmundson, a professor at the University of Virginia, “liberal-arts education is as ineffective as it is now…[because] university culture, like American culture writ large, is, to put it crudely, ever more devoted to consumption and entertainment, to the using and using up of goods and images” (723). He believes that consumer culture is responsible for students’ dispassionate attitude towards his class because they view liberal education as a paid service or product that should cater to their wishes. Further, he writes that universities feed into consumer culture, maintaining a “relationship with students [that] has a solicitous, nearly servile tone” (725). In this way, Edmundson lays out the reasons for why he thinks liberal education is failing.

Andrew Delbanco wrote the essay “A college education: What is its purpose?” as a positive opinion on the purpose of college in a time he called “A period of wrenching change, buffeted by forces-globalization, economic instability, the information technology revolution, the increasingly evident inadequacy of K12 education, and perhaps most important, the collapse of consensus about what students should know.”(2) Deblanco uses quality logos in this paragraph and appeals to the audience’s logic. He uses current world factors and problems that help the audience connect

At the beginning of this article he states “colleges and universities are primarily vehicles for the preservation, development and transmission of our intellectual culture (scientific, humanistic and artistic).” He then goes on to explain that we expect colleges and universities to provide

Mark Edmundson, the author of “On the Uses of a Liberal Education”, is an English teacher at the University of Virginia who expresses his concerns about the trajectory of the universities and colleges in America. Edmundson depicts how college students today have “little fire, little passion to be found,” towards their classes (4). In an effort to find the source of this lack of passion, Edmundson describes contacting other professors about this issue while refining his own ideas. Ultimately, Edmundson comes to a conclusion. He believes that the consumer mindset of college students has hindered American universities as a whole. My target audience is my professor, Professor Chezik. Looking closely at his wording, formation of sentences, and idea structure, one can see a recurring theme throughout Edmundson’s essay. Edmundson uses fragments, specifically at the beginning of his paragraphs, to start his point, pose counter arguments, and to have a poetic refrain.

The faculty is entrenched in their ways, and change causes ambiguity and uncertainty. Moreover, the faculty in the organization feel uncertain about the new concepts presented by Dr. Ball to the deans altering their salaries and evaluations (Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 31). The proposed changes create competition and unrest among the faculty and will shatter the business-as-usual campus conduct and job security. The dean's and faculty are grasping at the symbolic frame, defending their beloved academic lifestyle (Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 248). The secondary problem in this case is support from the deans of the incentive program that will restore Weston University prestigious reputation as set by the board and developed by the president.

Unfortunately, notwithstanding poet Louisa Fletcher's desire to start over, colleges and universities in the United States will not at any time soon access the Land of Beginning Again. Those institutions must enact meaningful change transitions from where they exist today, and there is much change that is needed. To wit, innovator and strategic management consultant Fred Buining asserts that higher education is in the "eye of the hurricane," which means that leaders, scholars, and educators are not doing enough to meet the challenges they face. Buining suggests that there is "no critical mass" in terms of the changes that are needed in higher education. Moreover, he believes that while today's student in colleges and universities are getting younger the professors and instructors are getting older, issues like cultural diversity and commercialization threaten institutions of higher learning. This paper reviews and critiques scholarly sources that address issues of diversity and commercialization on college and university campuses. Thesis: colleges and universities are in many respects becoming very much like corporations, and this is truly the wrong direction for higher education

America’s education system has been in a state of distress for the past decade, but garnished headlines recently as the student loan debt crisis reached over a trillion dollars. In conjunction with that, tuition is no longer the only obstacle a student faces when considering their future. As generations come and go, universities have slowly, but surely, been angling their education in a way to favor profit over knowledge. Because of the new direction higher education models are taking, Magdalena Kay questions her readers, “is there a problem with students, with teachers, with administrators, or maybe

In “Is Diogenes on your Campus?” Karen Bleeker states that Community colleges must prize integrity to reinforce the behaviors of the honest students. First of all, studies shows that this widespread problem and one that may be accelerating. Both objective studies of academic dishonesty and anecdotal evidence from professors and administrators seem to show that students are cheating more often that in the past. If this continues, not only will the integrity of the academic process be threatened, but we will be raising a generation of students who think such behavior is normal. In addition, allowing such cheating to continue hurts and angers honest students. They choose not to cheat for a variety

In Simon Young’s essay “Universities, Governments and Industry: Can the Essential Nature of Universities Survive the Drive to Commercialize?” Young implies many universities increase their focus on commercializing rather than focusing to increase a higher branch of learning for university students. Throughout the essay Young voices his concern for this issue through the use of statistics, concrete facts, research and by acknowledging the issue Young is able to inform his readers about the increase rate of commercialization from universities which he believes is a universities purpose. Young notes 40 years of his life were spent at Universities and this allows the gain of credibility. Young’s audience are members of psychiatry and

In addition to a strong appeal of ethos, the article has a strong appeal to pathos. Rather than referring to the students as just students, they say “what are we doing to our students?” By using the word “our” the reader is led to believe that the students are their own children. This evokes reader with a sense of concern and responsibility over them. The reader views the issue at hand to be their fault and that it is their responsibility to change the system. While the use of pathos and ethos are able successfully persuade the audience, the use of logos lacks rhetorical appeal.

But through reading Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society, I realized how McDonaldization and its ideals of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control have revolutionized the university system.