I have written a lot of blogs that some may have considered offensive or controversial, but I have to say this is one of the hardest posts I have ever made. I don’t believe you will consider this post controversial per se, as I’m trying to report on a trend and not promote one, but I am struggling with this particular blog.
Like many in higher education, I follow Jeff Selingo’s work. As an author, reporter, and connector for our sector, Jeff’s work is always succinct but poignant. Last week, Selingo shared a (personal) tweet which proved to be a catalyst for a longer thread from some of the hundreds of academics who follow him. The tweet was largely about the lack of trust moving all directions between students, staff, faculty, and administration around covid-19, coming back in the Fall, and safety. But one element really stuck out.
You should know that I’m not an easy person to surprise, especially when it comes to the human condition. A natural cynic, I am usually convinced that people will do whatever is easiest, simplest, or in their own best interest nine times out of ten. I know, I know…
But the tweet from Kieran Matthews – see image – (Executive Director & Principal Investigator, COACHE Project at Harvard GSE) used a term that I was not prepared for.
Boomer Eraser.
In honesty, I was not surprised by the messages that lead up to nor the messages that followed his tweet. How are schools, faculty, or staff supposed to trust that students will practice good behaviors in the Fall if they return to schools? The short and honest answer is they can’t.
We’ve already seen surges of students (from early teens to college students) exhibit no care whatsoever for the pandemic context that could have deathly repercussions on hundreds of thousands of people and families. Stories of students flocking to open bars, gathering at beaches, and having dance parties throughout the coronavirus crisis have been widespread. But to hear humans from the younger generation describe the virus as a “weeding out” mechanism for humans in an older generation…wow.
In all transparency, and perhaps the most controversial part of this post, I do believe that a large percentage of faculty have not done much to earn students trust over the years. Please hear me – I am not saying that all faculty or administrators are “bad,” but there is definitely a group of academic people who have lorded power and control over students over the decades. Whether discussing student well-being or sometimes (sadly) the notion of learning itself, academics can certainly be seen as quite unreasonable. This game of perception-determines-reality has existed in higher ed for generations.
I can remember sitting in my first (and last) Women’s Studies class at UNC as the professor opened the experience by telling us that no males could get higher than a ‘C’ in the course. What several of us assumed to be an object lesson of some sort proved to be legitimate as the end of the first hour did not find her taking back her words nor addressing the unfairness. And while I dropped the class, I did have a male peer who stayed in for another week, sure that the ‘C’ policy for guys would be dropped. It wasn’t.
I can remember getting into a verbal altercation with a professor who failed my final paper because I argued the position that racism had been around long before the United States and for using Biblical references to speak about the Jews being enslaved by Egypt as an illustration of man’s need to always seek an “us-over-them” context. The Dean of the College refused to hear my case as there was complete and total trust in the professors to do “right” by students. Trust? Hmmm.
But in all honesty, my two examples here are tame compared to some. In my position as a professor and administrator I have heard faculty, from their self-perceived “righteous” side of the equation, explain how they destroyed some student psychologically or emotionally, in the name of teaching them “a lesson.” I have been privy to lawsuits from students who felt unfaired upon, wronged, unjustly marked, and more while schools hunkered down and brought in top lawyers to argue academic freedom, ineptitude on the part of the student, and beyond. I have dozens of stories from my own personal history where I came home and said to my wife, “why on Earth does that man / woman even want to teach students?” As someone who has worked to understand the academic literature’s promotion of the whole-student and the need students have for care and even nurturing, I do not believe it is overly controversial to say that higher education has destroyed some lives along the way.
Why do I tell you any of this?
Because I can see why some students would not be particularly worrisome about colleges or universities losing some of these faculty. Is the reasoning incredibly harsh and over the top? Death as a penalty for being seemingly unreasonable? Obviously that is too far. But with the stereotype of the angry-young-man around for a reason, I can believe it. Add to that the absolute myopic focus on self by many, many young people, and it seems that covid-19 is a recipe for generational disaster.
And that recipe is seasoned by other factors, too. Unfortunately, the great professors out there (and there is a percentage of them to be sure) cannot erase the pain and suffering caused by other professors nor by the other dysfunctions of higher ed. As Scott Galloway reports, the cost of college has gone up 1400% in 40 years, turning a degree into a potentially life-harming prospect, especially if it turns out not to be a good fit for someone part-way through. At the same time, there are students who are legitimately in the wrong wanting some kind of special treatment, who come away angry or inappropriately frustrated. Then there is straight-up culture. The American context is not like many Asian cultures where elders are revered and to be taken care of. Youth is seen as a time to sow oats, to learn what is liked or disliked, and to figure out what one wants to do in life, while not being weighted down by obligations (such as family).
But to hear it put so blatantly and so callously…I had to dig in just a bit.
Immediately, I ran across a Newsweek article from this past March where they used a few terms to describe the messaging: Boomer Eraser and Boomer Remover. The piece is not a higher education piece, seeing the issue as solely generational and/or cultural. (Please note that there is crude language throughout the interactions shown in the article.) But the messaging war represented even in this one piece is angry rhetroic at its most callous. Take this single example as a decent representation:
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Millennials and Gen Z: dying from depression, homelessness, nonliving wages, mass shootings, poor healthcare, etc
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Boomers: Walk it off, snowflakes.
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Millennials and Gen Z: *calls coronavirus Boomer Remover*
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Boomers: NOW LISTEN HERE YOU LITTLE #$%@…
But it’s one thing to see this play out on Twitter or Facebook. It will be another thing entirely to see it play out on a college campus, won’t it? Whether intentional (bordering on homicidal) or not, should faculty or staff who find themselves in an at-risk category trust that students are doing everything appropriate to ensure safety? No reasonable person can say ‘yes’ to that question. If students hated learning online partially, if not mostly due to missing out on the “college experience,” then why would they simply move to campus and adopt a shelter-in-place context in a dorm or apartment, with the only difference being they can mask up and go to class?
Whether for work (55-70% of college students work while in school depending on the study) or for socializing, students just don’t live a shelter-in-place kind of life. The typical on-campus cafeteria alone would see as much possibility for transferring a virus as a nightclub. But as much as faculty, administrations, and even some parents want students to go to college to learn, most students are there for a myriad of much more complex reasons. The degree might be the icing on the cake, but working, socializing, dating, partying, and more are at the top of the student pyramid. So even if students are not callously trying to harm older staff or faculty, they are likely not doing much to actively ensure the safety of those people either.
The point of all this? Well, I still stand by the notion that schools should likely remain online in the Fall and likely the Spring, based on what we know and understand about covid-19 and as of this writing. We’ve all seen Presidents on both sides of the debate taking both actions. We even see a few Presidents who happen to be medical doctors yet who are in opposition on what should happen. One says it would suggest incompetence of the institution to stay closed whereas another says it would be reckless and negligent to open back up. Some institutions are using mathematical models of the spread of the disease to help make decisions but most seem to be making the decision based on either revenue numbers or some kind of political reasoning. Some are opening while preparing for thousands of community members to be sick, even creating infirmaries again, while others are saying that safety is indeed priority one (and not just for students, but for employees too).
But there is another point here. One that is far less treatable than the first. Just as our country seems to be in a constant “us vs them” context, seeing everything from ideology to entertainment to choice of car as a reason to polarize, it certainly feels like higher education is a microcosm of that same context. Just as most Americans struggle to trust one another, it seems that most people affiliated with a college or university, from students to parents to faculty to administrators, struggle to trust one another. Is it explainable? Sure. We could probably see panel after panel explain the intricacies of why there is so little trust from any constituent group to any other constituent group.
In my opinion, the key though, is not to explain how we got here as much as to use that thinking as a solution generator to fix the problem. How can come together and find common ground? How can we seek solutions that help every constituent not only succeed, but thrive? How can we handle people holistically instead of looking at a person as a sole thing (customer, learner, payer, decider, controller, etc.)?
That may be an even more important topic to tackle, beyond the virus that will likely impact us for another 12-months or so. Because the lack of trust and the lack of a willingness to see everyone in the process thrive will live on long after covid-19.
Good luck and good learning.