entangled spaces

WHY COOPER UNION MATTERS

Since the 1980s, universities have responded to the pressures of economy by increasingly commercializing themselves, selling their educations as a product. That education has faltered as a result of this is evident all around us. The discourse has become one of investment: Exorbitant loans are justified on the grounds of the value of the product they purport to put out—namely, students that generate income (which then, in theory, enables them to pay off their educational debt). This model keeps education squarely in the place of an instrument within a distinctly capitalist frame, and it has far-reaching consequences. It has already shaped the way schools prioritize disciplinary weight inside the curriculum so that humanities and arts budgets have dwindled to almost nothing. It has limited the nature of discussions in the classroom and the priorities of the students so that it has become commonplace for students to demand higher grades for mediocre work, because of an over-concern with their own marketability once they pass through the institution’s walls. The difference, at Cooper Union, is that because education is regarded as a higher good and not exclusively as a marketable product, the learning process is able to move outside of a solely capitalist frame. An all-scholarship school makes other kinds of thought possible because of the freedom it allows for thinking and learning to roam outside of mere supply and demand, investment and product.

Excerpt of text by Litia Perta

Via LW: http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/why-cooper-union-matters/