Pilfering the public commons: on-line ‘earning’ scheduled for California Community Colleges
As students, faculty and community groups hasten to bow down at the thrown of the ACCJC to assure continuing accreditation, going so far as to appeal to corporate Senator, Nancy Pelosi of all people or, at worst, surly Senator Diane Feinstein whose husband Richard Blum is the knight in shining armor for the corporatization of higher education. Yes, indeed and meanwhile, the Lumina Foundation, Bill Gates and other reactionary advocacy philanthropists are beginning to launch their new cyber plans.
They of course need accreditation to pull of their plan, their hoax and threats to pull it from community colleges is just that. But what they need is an accredited college that has adopted their surly plans and laid the foundation for their privatization efforts and top-heavy administration.
For you see their real plans are to get rid of faculty, staff and learning in favor of on-line ‘earning’ which appears in the form of Massive Open Online Classes, or MOOC’s as they like to call them.
As a former on-line philosophy professor at Allan Hancock College, I can tell you it is impossible to teach liberal arts on-line, especially when the classes contain hundreds if not thousands of students.
Alas, though the new cyber learning equation is good for Wall Street and stock holders, it will assure that liberal arts gives up the ghost and