The United States of Corpoarte America?

It is said that our founding fathers did not trust corporations. They believed that corporations evolved to serve the state. These days, however, the state seems to serve the corporations. More and more policy makers, at all levels including in education, are actually wearing logos of their corporate sponsors, as they are keenly seen through by an educated citizenry capable of pointing to the self-serving ways of corporate America in action.

Susan Lopez of the City College of San Francisco is a representative of such a citizenry. A few weeks ago, I re-printed here her well-written report on the state of noncredit adult ed in this once-great golden state of California. She has since produed a more accessible PowerPoint show about the same issue. Click here to open her new PowerPoint show entitled "Crushing Adult Education."

Today, I would like to once again invite you to listen to this fighter rant and roar in her latest article copied below.

Viva the NCCCR, whatever that is...

How do you pronounce that? No Crap, indeed!!  NCCCRP is AACC's  (American Association of Community Colleges) research arm and they are reprinting an excellent 2005 artlcle that was never needed as much as it is today. I marvel that there is actually someone in a national organization who has not been bought and paid for. 

Dr. Beebe, the co-author and now president of San Diego Community College District's Continuing Education, needs to do an updated version of this great article because we need to see additional scholarly articles like his that DO NOT SAY:

Scaling blah Completion blah Performance blah Acceleration blah Accountable blah Momentum blah Excess Credits blah Cohort blah Pathways blah Efficiency

How the completionists have poisoned all those words! The whole Lumina-Gates crank-em-out pseudo-scholarly outpouring is getting tiresome, with so-called research that is cut-and-paste---the kind where they write the conclusion of the study first, then do the study to supposedly back it up.

No. Stop the creaming and let's educate all kinds of people for a lifetime. Is that so hard? You aren't fooling us and you aren't fooling Dr. Beebe. We did this for decades and we can do it again and even better, if we reject false leadership.

So with no further ado, here is the refreshing antidote to CEO (Crank Em Out), thanks to the National Community College Council for Research and Planning!! Maybe these folks are our way out of this morass or at least they have some members of the resistance on board. Bless their unbought, seditious, courageous hearts! There is a ray of sunshine, no less.

http://www.ncccrp.org/images/CCJBeebeWalleriArticleFinal.pdf

By the way, the FACCC weekly report makes it sound as though there was a switcheroo on the enrollment priorities thing, going back to the SSTF---creating an incentive to state a fake goal upon admission. Minutes have not yet been posted but if you were at Consultation Council, please reply if you are able to shed light.

Meanwhile, if you are still with me, I heard an interview this week with Warren Buffett in which he said he planned to donate billions to the Gates Foundation upon his death. I mean, doesn't the Gates Foundation already HAVE billions? The Gates Foundation is a major privatization agent, and with this kind of money, we may not need a federal government. Its money will make money. They aren’t required to keep their money under the mattress or give all their capital away until they are broke. Many foundations are indeed set up to operate in perpetuity. In perpetuity: forever. Wow. Endowed foundations in the US currently hold $600 BILLION in their piggy banks. (The CA State Budget is a mere $91 billion; they could fix us up pretty nicely.) Some have said they should spend more of that during these dark times in order to help this country out. But they are only required to spend 5% of their assets annually. If the money they hold can make enough through investments, that including any additional donations, they can offset their spending each year, they can indeed operate forever, doling out money to Jeb Bush and Eli Broad. They can target their 5% to the kinds of educational and other efforts that they believe will ultimately benefit Microsoft and other multinational corporations. And it's not only the Gates Foundation but other foundations that are heavily influencing policy development and implementation now. The Lumina Foundation with its strong student loan connections is shaping the new WASC accreditation standards and is heavily subsidizing their development.

I guess when it has BOTH Gates' and Buffett's billions, we can just let the tax exempt cousin of Microsoft (Gates Foundation) run the US. With foundation money flowing freely to their lobbying partners, I don't know where we will find the political will to bring the influence of foundations/corporations into proper balance with that of other stakeholders like our students and us.

"Like our students and us" is grammatical by the way, in that usage. I know you worried that I was slipping and I appreciate your concern.

 Susan