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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Deconstruct this!


This is the dustjacket image from the Zemsky et al book. I'll go first. "It is woman of color graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with her eye on the prize. She is trained to make big bucks as a trader on Wall Street. She has an enormous college loan debt because her university said she was its customer, which offered her control over her career path if she would agree to pay tuition for four years. So she did. It seems like a solid contract: an expensive college education in exchange for a high-paying job. "Indeed" she is thinking: "if my degree doesn't me the job I am trained for, I can just hire a lawyer and sue the university for fraud -- and still pay back my college loans."

3 comments:

Odysseus said...

It is a model hired by the university whose image as the ideal $tudent will appear on billboards, matchbook covers (as in "Drive the Big Rigs") and 15-second TV spots to attract the greatest number of customers to hamburger university.

"Have it your way at UT" will be the slogan/ promise and the implication will be that the money will just appear magically. What a deal. No reading required. You can do it online, don't even have to show up. Super size that degree! And would you like ketchup with that graduate certificate? Improve that human's condition.

Center on the needs of that $tudent. Be market $mart, so don't forget the three rules of the marketplace:

1) get the money.
2) get the money.
3) get the money.

And by happy coincidence, these turn out to be the new univer$ity mi$$ion, too. Thank God for
con$ultant$. What a neat package. Gangway for implementation.

yo, duh! said...

"Have it your way" ... Good choice of expression! Let's not let them (or anyone!) turn UT into a link in a rich but junk-food university chain.

MikeP said...

Judging the book by its cover? Seriously?