Medieval Dignity, Modern Education (Part VI)

The Data of Dignity and Education

In this Foucauldian world of power and metrics, we are pitted against one another in accordance to the neoliberal principles of competition.[56] According to Peck and Tickell, neoliberals have an almost religious “commitment to the extensions of markets and the logics of competitiveness.”[57] Competition is seen as the primary virtue among individuals, corporations, and governments.[58] The model of the market has been extended to all domains and activities in human life, including education and dignity.[59]

To be competitive in the market, one needs metrics to evaluate how well one is performing; thus, individuals, corporations, and governments are in the constant pursuit of “data assemblage and the infrastructures and systems of measurement.”[60] Metrics – whether a scholar’s research impact factor, student evaluation scores, or the size of a university’s endowment – are the very mechanism by which competition is evaluated, affording differentiation among actors and illustrating inequalities among them.[61] But since there is no normative consensus about what constitutes dignity, what is measured and how it is measured is essentially an arbitrary decision by those in power.

One of the consequences of this neoliberal paradigm is to introduce practices and values to the university which has led to underfunded humanities departments, an overcrowded job market, and pressure to publish no matter how trivial the topic.[62] Those disciplines that are amendable to a standardization of metrics, like the STEM fields (science, technology engineering, and mathematics) thrive in such an environment, whereas those fields of knowledge that do not, such as the humanities and arts, suffer. Another consequence of the neoliberal paradigm is the rise in number of adjunct faculty at universities with the number of “core faculty” members, those with tenure, declining and graying.[63] Humanities programs are not as robust as they were in the past because fewer faculty are permanently invested in them. Another result from this paradigm is faculty having to devote more time to committee work, meetings, technology, and other bureaucratic tasks not related to teaching or research.[64] Thus, not only faculty have to do more with less but have to do it in a way that can be measured and evaluated in a standardized metric suitable for administrative consumption.

The federal government’s “college scorecard” is illustrative of the neoliberal approach to university education. The scorecard highlights three metrics: the rate of graduation, the average annual cost, and the “salary after attending” (ten years after entering university).[65] Regardless of the problems of ascertaining whether these metrics can accurately reflect reality, the message is clear: a university education is to make money.[66] Certainly financial considerations are reasonable, especially given the rising costs of a university education; however, there are non-monetary values that a university education can offer, such as friendship, civic education, and liberal learning.[67] The danger of the college scorecard is that it influences the behavior not only of administrators, faculty, and staff but also parents, and most importantly, students. Both education and dignity have been transformed into a type of monetary data where your worth is what your wealth is.

In this world defined by the data and money, students are motivated by fear, anxious of being left behind in this winner-take-all world.[68] Formed by a childhood of constant test-taking, scheduled activities, and technological surveillance, today’s students respond to this fear by accumulating achievement upon achievement in an effort to steel themselves against the uncertainty of their future.[69] To be left behind in the globalized economy is to be one of life’s losers. Hence, the constant need and continual efforts for external affirmation – whether in social media, academic achievements, or social status – to validate their choices, career paths, and even spouses.

Because of the competitive demands of the globalized economy, students see themselves as customers of the university and are often treated as such by administrators, staff, and faculty.[70] The university no longer offers academic knowledge but a social experience.[71] With the commodification of the classroom where the student is viewed as a customer, a culture of assessment and technology has been advanced in teaching. Students are continually assessed in quantitative metrics to confirm they are learning and technology is pushed in pedagogy because it accommodates students’ wants in flexible class schedules and their inclinations to use it.[72] Faculty are required to assign assessment, which often they have no input in creating, in their classrooms and write reports afterwards to demonstrate that their students are learning, and are incentivized by administrators with course release-time, monetary compensation, and performance evaluation to incorporate technology into the classroom.[73] Thus, the commodification of the classroom ensures teaching is conducted in standardized, measurable units suitable for technological consumption.

The quality of education is defined by the quantitative measurement of student learning, retention, and postgraduate salaries rather than a student’s character and reflections about life. This numerical assignment and valuing of reality has the illusion of being objective and transparent.[74] This power of data, its apparent objectivity, is particularly attractive to democratic societies, where, according to Tocqueville, individuals believe that everyone has an equal right to understand reality for him- or herself.[75] In democratic societies, each individual relies upon his or her own judgment to make decisions and reduces everything to its practical or utilitarian value: to “accept tradition only as a means of information, and existing facts only as lesson to be used in doing otherwise and doing better.”[76] But because everyone is equal to one another in democratic society, no one is certain that his or her judgment is better than anyone else’s, ultimately yielding a consensus dominated by the majority.

Data is the crystallization of democratic judgment because nobody can object to it: it is objective, transparent, and universally accessible. Data therefore is employed to evaluate university access, faculty scholarship, student learning, and other educational functions. But the assumptions behind the creation and reception of data require examination, for data is a type of scientism, an ideology that assumes the fact-value distinction where facts are derived only from the scientific-technological method and values are products of only subjective prejudice.[77] On the one hand, knowledge is restricted to realities that conform to the scientific-technological method because this process is objective, valid, and universal; on the other hand, any realities outside of this method are seen as illegitimate forms of knowledge because they are unscientific. The use of data by universities, teachers, and students is to de-legitimate a whole set of experiences and knowledge that cannot be standardized or quantified in a pre-given way.

Conclusion

In the modern world, dignity is a type of data. While one may speak about how the value of human rights affords dignity, it is really the amount of wealth and type of accreditations we have that determine our self-respect and self-worth, particularly in a democratic and neoliberal society.[78] We are defined by data that is externally validated, a project made easier with readily-available informational technology that supports social media, electronic communication, and self-monitoring devices. The early modern project of dominating nature to provide us our sense of dignity has transformed itself into a domination of ourselves for technological, standardized ends as determined by those in power. Education consequently is a mastery of material to climb the social hierarchy in the neoliberal market. Dignity is no longer to have power just over nature but over other human beings, too.

Thus, we live in a world of unequals, of unequal dignity and education, although some would claim a minimal amount of dignity in human rights is required for society to function.[79] For a medieval person, this world of unequals is mitigated by the Christian promise of the availability that any person can find friendship in God in the practice of faith, hope, and charity. Educational attainment is neither necessary nor sufficient to become closer to God. But for the modern person, the acquisition of the right educational accreditations, which usually requires wealth, is both necessary and sufficient to be part of the “cognitive elite” in today’s society.[80]

The transformation of university education from the medieval liberal arts with its values of ratio and intellectus to the modern curriculum of data and science coincided with a transformation in the understanding of human dignity. Whereas the medievals primarily see dignity residing in our relationship with God, the moderns view dignity as our ability to exploit nature. While the benefits of modern science and data analytics have been tremendous for individuals and society, the absence of a normative consensus haunts our contemporary existence. Even when we find refuge in data, we discover that data by itself reveals nothing about the true, the beautiful, and the good. Whether we can recover the medieval spirit for today, as Pieper attempted, or whether it is even desirable, remains an open question. But it is a question to consider seriously, for, as much as we have gained from modern science and data, we still feel adrift and alone in a world absent of God.

Notes

[56] Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Lectures on the Will to Know: Lectures at the Collège de France 1970-1971 and Oedipal Knowledge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Pierre Dardot and Christian Lavel. The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society (London: Verso, 2013), 4.

[57] Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, “Neoliberalizing Space,” in Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe, Neil Brenner and Niki Theodore, eds. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 33-57.

[58] David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 65.

[59] Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 31.

[60] David Beer, Metric Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 14-22; also see Jerry Z. Muller, The Tyranny of Metrics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

[61] This is particularly notable in the ranking of universities. See Craig Totterow and James Evans, “Reconciling the Small Effect of Ranking on University Performance with the Transformational Cost of Conformity,” in The University Under Pressure, Elizabeth Popp Berman and Catherine Paradeise, eds. (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2016), 265-301.

For more about faculty impact factor, see Peter Weingart, “Impact of Bibliometrics upon the Science System: Inadvertent Consequences,” Scientometrics 62.1 (2005): 117-31; Christian Fleck, “Impact Factor Fetishism,” European Journal of Sociology 54.2 (2013): 327-56.

[62] Anthony Kronman, Education’s Ends: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Mark Taylor, Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities (New York: Knopf, 2010). For criticism, see Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Trepanier, Why the Humanities Matter Today; Marina Warner, “Diary,” London Review of Books September 11, 2014. Available at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/marina-warner/diary; Ron Srigley, “Dear Parents: Everything You Needed to Know About Your Son’s and Daughter’s University But You Don’t,” The Los Angeles Review of Books December 9, 2015. Available at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dear-parents-everything-you-need-to-know-about-your-son-and-daughters-university-but-dont/#!

[63] Finkelstein et al., The Faculty Factor, 94-96, 137-38, 174-81, 198-99, 206-16.

[64] Ibid., 341-65. For some of the problems about teaching in an environment that expects standardization, see Lee Trepanier, ed. The Socratic Method Today: Student-Centered and Transformative Teaching in Political Science (London: Routledge, 2017) and The College Lecture Today: An Interdisciplinary Defense for the Contemporary University (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019).

[65] Jonathan Rothwell, “Understanding the College Scorecard,” Brooking Institute September 28, 2015. Available at https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/understanding-the-college-scorecard/.

[66] Ibid. For criticism, see Nicholas Tampio, “College Rating and the Idea of the Liberal Arts,” JSTOR Daily July 8, 2015. Available at https://daily.jstor.org/college-ratings-idea-liberal-arts/.

[67] William Zumeta, David W. Brenman, Patricia M. Callahn, Joni E. Finney, Financing American Higher Education in the Era of Globalization (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2012); Joel Best and Eric Best, The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014); Charlie Eaton, “Still Public: State Universities and America’s New Student-Debt Coalitions,” PS: Political Science & Politics 50.2 (2017): 408-12.

[68] Daniel Brook, The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All-America (New York: Times Books, 2007); Ron Srigley, “Dear Parents,”; Benoit Denizet-Lewis, “Why are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety,” New York Times October 11, 2017. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html; Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (New York: Penguin, 2018); Lee Trepanier, “Why Students Don’t Suffer,” in Suffering and the Intelligence of Love in the Teaching Life: In light and Darkness, Sean Steel and Amber Homeiuk, eds. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 159-82.

[69] David Brooks “The Organizational Kid,” The Atlantic April 2001. Available at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-kid/302164/; William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (New York: Free Press, 2014).

[70] Bok, Universities in the Marketplace; Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2016); Louise Bunce, Amy Baird, Siân E. Jones, “The Student-as-Consumer Approach in Higher Education and its Effect on Academic Performance,” Studies in Higher Education 40.11 (2017): 1958-78.

[71] Ben Ansell and Jane Gingrich, “Mismatch: University’s Education and Labor Market Institutions,” PS: Political Science & Politics 50.2 (2017): 423-25; Lukas Graf and Justin W. Powell, “How Employer Interests and Investments Shape Advanced Skill Formation,” PS: Political Science & Politics 50.2 (2017): 418-22.

[72] John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (New York: Basic Books, 2008); Lee Trepanier, Technology, Science, and Democracy (Cedar City: Southern Utah University Press, 2008).

[73] Linda Suskie, “Why Are We Assessing?” Inside Higher Ed October 26, 2010. Available at https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/10/26/why-are-we-assessing; Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt, Excellent Online Instructor Strategies for Professional Development (Hoboken: Wiley, 2011).

[74] Luciano Floridi, The 4^th Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Beer, Metric Power, Cathy N. Davidson, The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

[75] Lee Trepanier, “Tocqueville, Weber, and Democracy: The Condition of Equality and the Possibility of Charisma in America,” in Political Rhetoric and Leadership in Democracy, Lee Trepanier, ed. (Cedar City: Southern Utah University Press, 2011), 22-48.

[76] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 2, Phillips Bradley, trans. (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990), 3.

[77] Lee Trepanier, “The Recovery of Science in Eric Voegelin’s Thought,” in Technology, Science, and Democracy, Lee Trepanier, ed. (Cedar City: Southern Utah University Press, 2008), 44-54.

[78] For more about the universality of human rights and its validity in the modern world, see Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013); Macon Boczek, “A Response to Professor Walsh.”

[79] For liberal society, see John Rawls, The Law of People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Joshua Cohen,“Minimalism about Human Rights: The Most We Can Hope For?” Journal of Political Philosophy 12.2 (2004): 90–213; Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); James Nickel, Making Sense of Human Rights (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

[80] The term “cognitive elite” comes from Charles Murray and Richard J. Hernstein, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994).