The Education Conflation

TRANSACTION. Supplier. Consumer. Product. Price.

It all seems so simple. Someone makes something, someone buys it from them, everyone goes home happy. Sure, market terminology can't cover all human interaction, and shouldn't be asked to--but where there's a money purchase involved, there's bound to be a product. And usually everybody involved knows what the heck it is.

I spent $6,011 last year on a product I can't describe. I don't mean that in a surly, "I'm not learning anything" kind of way (I am) and I don't even mean it in a pontificating, "What is the value to society" kind of way (who cares)--but in a purely descriptive, non-pejorative sense, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be getting for that money.

Let me explain.

There are really two traditional schools of thought as to what a university should offer to society: the "knowledge transmission" version and the "knowledge factory". In other words, a university will supply pedagogy or research, and often it dabbles in both. So far as the undergraduate is concerned--with the exception of the occasional lab assistant and so on--the research is moot, simply because we don't carry it out, profs usually don't tell us about it, and we don't benefit from the growth in human knowledge very much more than the average person outside the university does. What does that leave for us? Pedagogy.

But we all sort of know that that's not the only thing we're getting out here. So what does the university sell to an undergraduate, really? There are two answers, one cynical and one idealistic, perhaps, and both are correct: it sells teaching, and it sells a diploma. We can call these two products education and accreditation, the separate tasks of cause people to know things and to know how to do things on the one hand and collect information about people's skills and provide that information to employers on the other. I think both are important--you couldn't very well have a complex, globalized, knowledge-based, 21st-century-Web-2.0-blah-de-blah-blah-bloo economy if people didn't keep learning after high school--and as much as we may hate the notion, the diploma/GPA/honour roll/whatever acts as a valuable lubricant in the economy by helping employers find the best of the best without having to spent that much time or money trying to evaluate them. It lowers, in other words, the transaction cost of finding the best man (woman) for the job. What's more, it's worthwhile for a bright young student to be able to pay to get "certified" in order to differentiate himself from his dumber/less educated/less talented peers. So both these products are socially valuable, and it may be that to get both at once is a bargain.

But I begin to think they entail fundamentally divergent production processes--in other words, the task of educating and the task of evaluating have different and contradictory requirements--and that they should perhaps be carried out separately. It seems to me they have been conflated mostly in order to solve a problem of motivation, and their conflation obscures that problem and its obvious, though perhaps unpalatable, solution.

We Are The Centaurs of Our Forbidden Forest

Over the last nine months (Nine!), we've seen our fair share of emotional rants, poetic waxings, and good-god funlovable pith. 
We've inexplicably synthesized our thoughts, feelings, and influences, somehow spat them into a small taupe box, and seen them take new life in this space, growing like the little plant we all wished we knew how to take care of. Fact is however, this little experiment of ours is not just any plant, but more like the chia pet who grows not up, but in all furry directions. 

And this chia pet is turning 100.

This particular silly passage marks Dessert Ticket's ascension into the blogosphere's century club. Despite traditional responsibilities such as family, friends, lovers, and work up the wazoo, we've managed to keep our little buddy from going brown and brittle. 

Huzzah.

There are countless times we could have been, should have been, doing more important things, but instead, each and every one of us has chosen to spend at least some time here, where our internet boxes are in sync.

We should all be proud of ourselves, and continue spinning our own twisted brands of science like it ain't no thang, cause it actually is a thang. And quite a thang at that.

And that's what makes it sweet.

Us here at DT HQ love the ability to open the same page every day and see something new, something unique, something consistently fascinating, and we love all 19 (19!) of you others for that.

And to the reader dude from Cleveland--rock on. Go visit the Hall of Fame for us.

We're doing great, team; keep up the inspirational blither.

"Consistency is the Hobgoblin of little minds" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thank you for your continued support of Dessert Tickets, 

Love to All God's Chilluns, 

ICGYABL and Bernice.

From Whence We Came

We're all tired, overworked, busy, chinese, arborist mountain men, sleeping on a train to godknowswhere, or cleaning up after children (and some i forgot), yet something has remained solid amongst our faithful - the oncoming urgency of our glorious reunion.
We forget it is soon - at some point, frank, icgyatbl, myself, the kid, a special appearance from terry, fiver, and the others whom i dont remember to mention, just to keep it exciting, are going to be back marauding our fair country once again.

Let freedom ring, and the countdown begin.