[.ca] Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis (ISBN 0802091822)

Update on Ivory Tower Blues:
This is a comment from one of the authors of Ivory Tower Blues about the two reviews posted on this web site. Jason Wray's comments about typos are out of date. Because of the media attention we received while the book was being written, it was rushed into print and unfortunately the editors overlooked several things. We apologize to readers of this first printing (but we are only talking about a dozen typos in a 251-page, 80,000-word, book). The book is now into its third printing and the typos have been corrected. Mordy's review takes us to task for our writing style, but he fails to mention that a university press published the book. He seems to be unaware that it is common to use a larger vocabulary in university press books than is the case in pop books, and that a more complex writing style is customary. We wrote the book to be as reader friendly as possible while maintaining its academic integrity. For this we do not apologize.

Ugly truth, ugly proofreading:
Ivory Tower Blues is a timely, important look at our sliding University system. While the language is at times dense and academic (appropriate for its authors, of course), the message is straightforward and alarming. I have seen much of the problems discussed here throughout my education, and I sincerely wish I could have read this back when I was still in high school. This should be recommended to all students, and certainly discussed; it would be an insult to the material for this book to be held up as a high truth to be learned from only one side or merely skimmed over by intended readers. That having been said, I think this book needs to be revised a little. I was disappointed to have been wrapped up in a passage only to get derailed by a missing word or a misspelling (the sort you find in a word processor, where it is a word, just not the right one).

The corporatization of school and marketization of social values...:
Indeed this book is very timely, it goes on to show that the wisdom of "going to university" is not a guarantee of a better life. Indeed, people are so desperate for a higher standard of living they are driving down wages and the worth of degrees, creating the new "low hanging fruit". Mr. Cote, talks about grade inflation and passing students in highschool classes who shouldn't have made (the marks) to go to university. But the problem goes deeper then that. The marketization of university and the fear of kids being stuck in a low paying job forever and not being able to live the kind of life their parents did. Then there is 'disengagement' and disillusionment which ultimately stems from the poor school and/or home environment many kids are raised in these days and the knowledge that their futures are increasingly evaporating as world economies change. Then add on top of that all the distractions of consumerist culture eating away at the time for 'education' (read: work). I think many academics are missing the real problem: People are spending half their lives being educated and stressed the hell out for no reward (money/incentives) and then they are dumped into an unstable local (canadian) labour market that has to compete against the global labour market. Thre reader is to be advised that the book could have been written better, but it's by an academic so it's to be expected. A lot of his points are clear while others are wrapped in jargon that does more to obscure then clarify. He also panders to critics who don't see a need to be alarmed when for certain, but with the globalization of markets North america is feeling severe outflows of capital into global labour markets, which means lower standard of living at home for all but the most educated, well employed, and richest among us. I'm reminded of Oswald Spengler in Decline of the west (from wikipedia:) "To Spengler, Culture is synonymous with religious creativeness. Every great Culture begins with a religious trend that arises in the countryside, is carried through to the cultural cities, and ends in the materialism in the world-cities. Spengler described the process by which Enlightenment rationalism undermines and destroys itself, passing from unlimited optimism to unqualified skepticism. The Cartesian self-centered rationalism leads to schools of thought that do not cognize outside of their own constructed worlds, ignoring actual every-day life experience. It applies criticism to its own artificial world until it exhausts itself in meaninglessness. In reaction to the educated elites, the masses give rise to the Second Religiousness, which manifests as deeply suspicious of academia and science. The Second Religiousness appears as a harbinger of the decline of mature Civilization into an ahistorical state. The Second Religiousness occurs concurrently with Caesarism, the final political constitution of Late Civilization. Both the Second Religiousness and Caesarism demonstrate the lack of youthful strength or creativity that the Early Culture once possessed. The Second Religiousness is simply a rehashing of the original religious trend of the Culture." Needless to say Canadian society is in upheaval, a small country of only 30 million trying to compete against enormous behemoths will leave much of the population at large in jobs that are increasingly insecure, as fundamentalist free market values penetrate every aspect of culture.