Is higher education really student-centered?

Not actually about online teaching/learning. But, triggered by reading about an experience that one of our team members went through .....

To a large extent, the whole academic enterprise has become a system of exploitation. At research universities, the tenured and the tenure-track can't be bothered with teaching and, therefore, these research universities lure a whole bunch of instructors for the lower division courses by offering them graduate assistantships. Rarely does any university do a full-disclosure that most of those aspiring doctoral or masters students will find academic jobs. After all, getting a Phd from Harvard is one thing; getting a Phd from some Podunk university is a totally different thing.

I am simply amazed that this system continues on, and gains strength.

Instead of addressing this point of departure, students and faculty get distracted with negotiating better compensation for these graduate assistants. I don't mean to suggest that compensation is not an issue. It is. But, negotiating a better compensation without doing anything about the very issues that trigger the need for graduate assistants in the first place is to merely "paint a lipstick on a pig"

So, from that very moment on, we have a system that intentionally graduates way more masters and Phds than it will ever need. which means that we then run into situations where for every academic job opening we get gazillion applications, and we also have a huge army of highly qualified but unemployed people who are willing to carry on as adjunct instructors. And this then leads to the temptation to abuse adjuncts ....

I have run into quite a few people who now regret ever having gone on to graduate school, and for a PhD .... their comments are typically along the lines of "if only I had known that getting a job will be this difficult", or "if only I had known how little academic jobs pay" ....

Universities do a fantastic job of glorifying the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake--but the ones who glorify them are the ones with safe and secure jobs.

We do this in our own world here at WOU--we tell students how wonderful liberal education is, without ever telling them anything about the reality of the employment world where a liberal education diploma from WOU might not even get them a job at McDonald's .....

Which is why I suppose I warn students that they are screwed. Yes, I actually use these very words. And then follow it up with how they might prepare themselves. I warn them about how they are screwed because while it is a great idea that man doesn't live by bread alone, well, when that bread isn't there, it gets to be a horrible existence. (I am fortunate that I haven't experienced it myself) furthermore, I do not want to prepare students for that kind of a horrible existence where they have to wonder where their daily bread will come from after getting into a debt of more than 20,000 dollars for a diploma that won't get them any job.

I wrote an op-ed about some of these issues; the editor titled it "Does U.S. oversell college?, which wasn't much liked at least according to one response piece that was published in the same paper!

Our ultimate bottom line is the betterment of our students at every level of higher ed. If we don't do that, and instead we screw up their lives, well, ....