Briefs (Page 15)

| Serfs of Academe | Given the parlous state of academic publishing—with Stanford University Press nearly shutting down and all but a few presses ordered to turn profits or else—it should perhaps come as no surprise that one of the best recent books on the contemporary university was instead self-published on Amazon. [Note: Our latest book, Honors of Inequality, would never have been published by a university press. The book explores the neoliberal origins of higher education as a field of study — a history that the scholars of higher education, who control what gets published by university presses, prefer their colleagues in other disciplines and the public not know.]Continue Reading

| U.S. National | “Free College” in Historical Perspective | Also, “free college proposals” today may unwittingly limit student choice if the tuition buy downs are limited to selected institutional categories, such as public colleges and two-year community colleges. [Note: Ah, his point is in the final line. As I argue in _Honors of Inequality_, the federal student loan system exists today largely as an obscene federal subsidy for private, nonprofit institutions to educate the students who “merit” higher education at the expense of “needy” college-goers. “Free [public] college” from the states is the greatest threat to this federal subsidy.]Continue Reading