'Dirty Money?'

By Colleen Flaherty. That’s how Jane McEldowney Jensen, associate professor of education and Ph.D. cohort director at the University of Kentucky, summed up the tone of the papers presented Wednesday during a session called “Higher Education’s Walk of Shame: Dirty Money, Dirty Morals and Loss of Intimacy” at the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference.
Indeed, the picture painted was grim. Papers had such preliminary titles as “Selling an Unknown Future: Risk, Debt and Failure” and "The University as a ‘House of Cards,’ ” and speakers used words such as “unsustainable” and “precarity.” They criticized administrators and policy-makers as out-of-touch conspirators in the problem of mounting student debt load, which now tops $1 trillion, and expressed conflicted opinions about the value of higher education as it is perceived by many today. Read more...