What Happens to Higher Education?

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that the economic shake-up is already effecting higher education. Boston University, for example--along with a number of other large institutions--have begun to limit or freeze hiring. Among those that are still hiring, more institutions are pushing for adjunct faculty and phasing out tenured positions. It's worth noting though, as the article suggests, that those few schools with giant endowments, etc. will likely clean-up if the situation gets worse, and that the economic problems could lead to greater enrollment in colleges, as jobs become scarce.

So the idea is that Harvard will poach qualified faculty from poorer institutions, which will be employing poorly paid adjunct faculty (who have no job security) to cover a larger pool of incoming students that will increasingly be composed of those in the upper classes. That's the direction it's headed.

What this means for those in graduate school (like me) is that jobs will potentially be scarce and won't pay well. All of that said, if the economy really starts to tank, the take-away may well be that higher education will look an awful lot like the rest of the country, which only makes sense given the corporatization of our university systems. This is an area in which I think Barack Obama could, and will, do a lot of good. I think he, unlike the GOP, recognizes the importance of maintaining American supremacy in higher education. As many of our other industries have been eclipsed by the rest of the world, the universities in the United States remain the place to 'do business'. That has to continue.