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Part II response



>From Harry with Love:

Did I miss something?  Perhaps prior to reading David Noble's Digital
Diploma Mills Part II, I was a little biased because of our class's
recent Noble-bashing tendencies.  Maybe this class's criticism of Mr.
Noble discouraged me from taking a stance on his side.  Maybe, like
Hannah proclaimed herself yesterday, I am naive.  On the other hand,
maybe I have problems with Part II because it genuinely sucks.  I think
Noble is criticizing the wrong people for the wrong reasons.  He's just
wrong, I think.

Noble says that with the "commercialization of research," university
faculty "became instead producers of commodities for their employer."
My question to Noble is: "instead" of WHAT?  What is the difference
between "commercial" universities that sell courses online and the ones
that don't?  Both kinds of universities are selling a
commodity--education--which is created/interpreted by faculty.  What has
changed?  My point here is that education in the past has always been a
commodity.  Teachers have always "produced" this commodity for
universities to sell.

Furthermore, Noble fails to cite several relevant facts throughout his
work.  The lack of these facts distorts the view of the uncritical
reader.  Clearly he is not familiar with the financial situation of
public educational institutions in California (Harvey Mudd College in
Claremont --where he teaches--is hardly an example of a California
public University).  Digital Diplomas increase the enrollment size of
these schools (thus increasing income) without hiring new faculty.  This
is a much needed financial boost.  If Noble wants to save the
"integrity" of the UC system, he should try to talk California's
anti-education politicians and their ignorant pawn-like taxpayers into
increasing taxes.  Good luck.  Having graduated from UCB
(non-digitally), I can tell you that room 307 in Manning looks like a
multinational company's executive board meeting room in comparison to
the average classroom at Berkeley.  Most of the good classrooms at UCB
are in the business school and life sciences building, which are both
heavily funded by "nonacademic forces," as Noble calls them.

Additionally, I question Noble's use of the word "integrity."  He says
that faculty will decrease the integrity of their teaching if the
universities own the teachers' copyright privileges.  Horse shit.  If
faculty are teaching to "create" copyrighted knowledge--which is, on a
side note, not entirely unlike jazz musicians "creating" jazz songs from
someone else's chord progressions--then what kind of integrity do the
teachers have in the first place?  In my book, having integrity as a
teacher includes the desire to disperse knowledge to the masses.
Distance education, according to Neuman, provides opportunity for those
who cannot learn otherwise.  Furthermore, using distance technology,
students have more control over their pace and style of learning (Neuman
106).  This increases the integrity of the education in my humble
opinion.

And in closing, let me just allude to Hannah's spiel: teachers will
never get replaced so long as going off to college, partying, and
getting drunk remain such an attraction to 18 year olds.