Colleges and universities advertise in the Washington, DC, area a good deal. This is not necessarily a tribute to our passion for learning, since
- Employers can reimburse employees for training that "maintains or improves job skills" for the job then held. The IRS does not count this reimbursement as taxable income.
- Many of us work for government contractors.
- Contractors can bill the government more for the time of an employee with a higher degree than for the time of an employee with a lesser or no degree.
- Some of that billing rate may be passed along to the employee, and in any case the employee becomes more attractive for work at the current employer and its competitors.
Among the media the universities use are the sides of Metrobuses. Today I noticed a bus advertising the University of Maryland Global Campus. After a moment, I understood that this must be a new name for the University of Maryland University College, the school's continuing education arm. A closer look showed wording that confirmed this.
I'm not sure why the school thought it well to use a new name. In this area, University of Maryland University College was well known. I imagine that it was well known on US military bases across the country and the world. One of its alumni, General John Vessey, rose to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I will say one thing for the new version: it took a very little clicking to find the tuition rates at http://umcg.edu. The last time I looked at the University College website, I simply could not find the rate per credit hour.
I taught at UMUC from 1999 to 2009, and I chose to leave just as they were all but eliminating face-to-face classes and developing canned curricula that gave instructors almost no freedom over the content of their courses. When their office was adjacent to the College Park campus, I could wander into the building and touch base with administrators; their new home is a gigantic glass office building in Largo where you'd better have an appointment to get past the guards at the desk. I got paid a pittance to help develop the syllabi that made me replaceable, with each class "developed" in just one three-hour brainstorming session. All classes had to be dumbed-down and geared toward "career readiness," and an administrator with a Ph.D in the arts sneered at me when I argued that literature classes were worthwhile in and of themselves.
ReplyDeleteAt one point they asked me to help develop the English department "mission statement." The direct, humane language we drafted got mangled by multiple bureaucratic wringers and came back drenched in embarrassing corporate jargon.
I don't know why they do anything at UMUC/UMGC anymore, but I do know it's not because they prioritize education.
Do you know The Hall of Uselessness by Simon Leys? The essay "A Fable from Academe" seems apposite here.
DeleteI just went and found the essay. I got a kick out of it, but it imagines a university setting that, while obviously nuts, still has implicit tolerance for whimsy. I loved my time at UMUC, but man, toward the end there, it was like a parody of what someone who has never worked in a big corporation would imagine working in a big corporation is like.
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