I’m a bit late to this discussion, however, as I move into my second year of my PhD program in Leadership and Change, I’m intrigued about the rhizome topic. My interest lies both in the learning aspect and, by extension (by roots and shoots) how thinking rhizomatically can/might influence how we lead in industry. So, that’s my focus as I research, write, and unpack the idea that this may be a different lens through which to view leadership. I’m coining it as “rhizomatic leadership”, have bought the domain (isn’t that the first step??), and am incorporating the theory into how I narrow down my studies into my dissertation. All that being said, I am so very grateful for posts like yours, Dave’s, Mary Ann Reilly’s and am thirsty to learn/assimilate more. Perhaps we can chat at some point? Thank you thank you! Cheers.

And some people say that these companies’ tendencies to enclose online education is the inherent fault of online education; but you argue that it’s a symptom of what’s happening to education as a whole. Yes?

For many people, the web is a television with convenient ways to order consumer goods and keep in touch with friends and family. We need to create a paradigm where the eager sharing we see in hallway conversations on campus takes place online. Everyone has gotten hooked into long, involved conversations about pedagogy in hallways before, even more so than into conversations about family, which tend to be one-on-one. I frankly haven’t seen a good online space for that kind of activity.

It’s intriguing to sit back and say yeah but. As much as I enjoy possibilities, there are those realities that make you stop and think.

Apparently in Australian higher education the uptake of networked life is lower than expected. And in the bigger picture, a teeny-tiny portion of the population actually engages in the engaging-ways -of –online, we (whatever we are) have come to believe are so transformative. Reality is the overwhelming majority people consume the Web and now think in terms of consuming education.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.12060/full

I’m not surprised. Are you?

There are reasons then to resist and rebel, and to politicize not just what’s going on in higher education but as Lanier reminds us, the dismantling of a desirable livelihood with livable wages.

Karin, neoliberalism may be a touchy term, but it’s an overt economic and social paradigm, not a fairy tale. Your presentation of “market forces” as simply a collective of individual decisions, free of political agenda or underlying profit motive, is disingenuous. Neoliberalism is a political position just as my own preference for “public” solutions (though not actually institutional, as you’d see if were to look through the post/slides) is a political position. You’ve embodied neoliberalism nicely here, actually: far better than bickering over a Foucault vs. Chomsky vs. Thatcher interpretation.

We can disagree on politics. We can discuss what kind of values and solutions are a way forward for education – for instance, I agree with your points on MOOCs. I also think networks will continue to bleed beyond the enclosure of what I see as technosolutionism and for-profit solutions for education. I even think those networks might be far better options than institutionalized education as we’ve known it. But we’d probably have a far better conversation about all this if you read beyond your own apparent trigger words and didn’t caricature others’ positions, especially with “people like you” statements.

To be clear, I’m not actually “in an institution” in the sense that you appear hostile to. I haven’t been part of the decision-making process you refer to. I am long-networked, a freelancer and a grad student, lucky enough currently to have federal funding, but quite familiar with uncertainty, thank you. I also teach sessionally within my own faculty…or did, before the most recent budget cuts.

I am good at what I do, in the “Me Inc” sense where networks and neoliberalism overlap. But education is my field and my interest, so my income still comes largely from institutions, though on a contract basis. There is some freedom to that position, but be wary of over-romanticizing it: the precariat is a winner-take-all game.

And that conflicts with what I happen to believe education should be. Which is what this post is actually about – trying to find ways to keep some semblance of the values of public education and the idea that we have a society, not just a clot of individuals – alive, in spite of the failures of institutions and the direct undermining of them by positions like yours.

The resulting discontent and feeling of being trapped led to a widespread push for change, which neither type of institution adapted to – the for-growth institutions least of all because it is more buffered. So governments took a short-cut, and enter the for-profit option. Sorry, but if you become a barrier, people will go around you.

For-profits are not the right answer, but the easy one – I’m not here to excuse governments for making that choice.

MOOCs are an expression of personal preference that the for-growth institutions (universities, school districts) have utterly failed to satisfy. If there were no internet today, this would be expressing itself some other way.

Neoliberalism is a fairy tale that people in institutions have told themselves to excuse their own lack of responsiveness. I’m afraid, if you are looking for an enemy, it has been yourself – allowing household income to become fully dependent on institutionally-imposed dictatorship over people’s lives.

Welcome to the world of uncertainty that most of your funders – taxpayers – live in. And the corresponding freedom :-)

published in 1997, huh? the idea that none of this is new but rather was visible 15-20 years ago, especially regarding the corporatism, bites. my own culpability in turning a blind eye, writ large.