Our two best principles instructors have their main job at our community college. The will not teach with us full time because we pay less.
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Mperelman at csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2015 4:12 PM To: raghu Cc: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Fwd: Don't cave on debt-free college Yeah, I agree with you that if it's an assumption that community college = low quality, that assumption is problematic. I think the elephant in the room is that the gap between community college tuition and four year college tuition isn't justified by "higher quality" of the latter. I think that it's a bit like Levis jeans - you're paying a lot for the name, the material and the stitching isn't so different. In the case with which I'm most familiar - the University of Illinois - many of the classes that are taught to freshman and sophomores at community colleges by "adjuncts" are substantially taught at the U of I by teaching assistants. Nothing against teaching assistants - I was one, for many years - but to say that someone should pay much more to be taught by a teaching assistant rather than by adjunct faculty seems something of a bait-and-switch. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org<http://www.justforeignpolicy.org> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 5:51 PM, raghu <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Robert Naiman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I think this raises legitimate concerns but I don't think the answer to those concerns is to oppose Obama's proposal outright. I think the answer is to insist that the standards for the program should be as good as the first two years at the flagship state university. Isn't that sort of assumed? Take this quote from the article: "In my opinion, TN Promise is a perfect example for taking money away from high quality education (UofM, in this case), and use the extra funds to invest in low quality education (community colleges)." It screams elitism to me to equate "community college" with "low quality". I mean what is the basis for this judgment? The article does say that community colleges use a higher proportion of adjunct teachers, but while there are lots of things wrong with relying on adjunct labor, are we really arguing here that adjunct teachers = inferior education? Now I can understand someone from say, Harvard, making this kind of argument, but the University of Memphis?? -raghu.
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