Ive worked out how neoliberalism forces bureaucratization of existence: one of the effects of neoliberal attacks on universities, is the rising number of students in university (the ratio of students to profs/TAs goes up). I think it is fair to say, that the larger a population is, intensifies pressures to bureaucratic modes of teaching/grading the student population. So people are reduced to their student numbers. It is incredibly difficult to stand out in a 400 student class and this is reflected in how testing occurs (i.e. it is easier to assume that everyone falls in the mean of the normal curve, instead of acknowledging the existence of positive outliers who stand out, and negative outliers who need extra assistance. If a first year class was only say 40 students, then it would be easier to recognize positive/negative outliers. But 400 students, its much more difficult to recognize these issues) https://youtube/watch?v=AHiAZGlImMs So for example, when I was a TA, the testing was all multiple-choice tests. This might demonstrate factual knowledge, but it is difficult to tell from a multiple-choice exam whether people can apply their knowledge (i.e. think clearly). But given the size of the class, it made a lot of sense (no TA labour is necessary, just plug it into the reader.). So I had a split opinion on this approach, on the one hand, it made my life easier (i.e. as a grad student with limited time) but as a TA, I thought people were being shortchanged. (of course, had the exam had an essay component, that would probably mean that I would have had less time to evaluate their essay assignments, because there is a fixed amount of time Im supposed to spend on grading as a TA......) (It is also my experience that my First Year University class was an experience of bureaucratic existence that I hadnt really experienced up to that point, i.e. the class sizes in my private school from Junior HS to HS was really low. In contrast, in First Year, I was reduced to simply being a student number (especially if the person grading it, was not the same person who was guiding the tutorial class). However, as I moved up the academic ladder, there was a sharp drop in the number of students, so it became less bureaucratic and more face-to-face. So by the time I got into grad school, I pretty much knew (almost) all the other graduate students (the exception[s] were the people who were almost finished their Ph.d. who were often not around). So there is some sort of transition from bureaucratic organization (in First Year) to a community of scholars. The objective of academic neoliberalism is to universalize the bureaucratic experiences of first year undergrad into graduate school (e.g. incentives to increase the size of the graduate populations). So the more people experience their communities as bureaucratic environments, the more powerless they will feel.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:21:25 +0000
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