Cantor’s “Make Life Work” speech Tuesday was more about repackaging than rethinking. He put forward one actually excellent idea, for which I give him credit. He proposed that colleges be required to make public data revealing employment and earning patterns among their graduates. Universities fear this to death, for reasons that education expert Kevin Carey explained in an article in the journal I edit, Democracy, as it could ultimately lead to a reduction in tuition costs.
and because it subverts ideals necessary for democracy, namely an informed populace capable of autonomous critical reasoning and of comprehending relationships among disparate bits of information. Cantor’s proposal suggests that education is only instrumental. There would be no art, no music, no. poetry in Cantor’s schools.