young people receive the same message everyday and everywhere: Go for the money...students are directed towards business even as their school lives are characterized by 'busyness'...
Russell Jacoby (_Dogmatic Wisdom_) offers historian-philosopher Henry Adams' 19th century account of a student informing him that a degree from Harvard is 'worth money to me'...
education has been shaped by needs of capital and expansion has sustained dominant order...working people have long demanded access to education and expansion has offered opportunities for many previously denied them...latter indicate democratization in social struggles over education...
many students do not get exposed to material that goes beyond the mildly critical...denial of tenure, increased classloads, and adjunctism are among mitigating factors...
educrats refer to 'non-traditional' students (women, minorities, over 24 yrs of age, part-time)...more likely to be enrolled as commuters and at commmunity colleges, overall college experience for many of these students is 'impoverished' when compared to 'traditional' ones...
much classroom/course 'narrative' works against the way that 'postmodern' students learn - rapid-fire cutting & editing, sound bites, disassociation from one image to next, channel surfing...it's not just the school of Beavis & Butthead on TV teaching that education sucks (past tense for B&B or is it in reruns?)...
primary/secondary school teachers with already overloaded schedules and work responsibilities are offered pre-packaged 'curricula in a box' that can come to take precedence over teacher/student originated activities...
community college student in FL can now complete most of associate (2 yr) degree through 'distance learning' (one study that I'm aware of concluded that television courses were more of a convenience for many students rather than necessity)...
humanities & 'soft' social sciences denigrated in general education scheme...school I teach at reduced 6 hrs of each to 6 hrs of former and 3 of latter or vice-versa...
Michael Hoover (who, for better or worse, took seriously Rudi Dutschke's call for a 'long march through the institutions')