Jeb Bush pushing caste-based online college education; international goals & Arne Duncan connection

[HiPointDem]

Randy Best and the Bush Family have a long and profitable history to celebrate during this Holiday Season. Best has been a longtime supporter of the Bush political dynasty in Texas, and the Bushes have been generous in sharing insider knowledge with Randy on education initiatives that Best then exploited to get fabulously wealthy. In turn, Best became a Bush Pioneer (the $100,000 Club), connections became even more solidified, and today Randy appears poised to become Jeb Bush's enabler in the rush to push college for the non-privileged online.

In an extravagant display of chutzpah yesterday, Bush and Best published an op-ed in Bloomberg immodestly entitled, "Online Classes Mean No Dorm, Gym, or Debt." On full display is the thinking of the 21st Century efficiency zealots aimed to do less for more, while protecting the privileges of those who already have them. Randy and Jeb would push all the students who must work or borrow to go to college online, a marginalized and isolated virtual learning world "well-suited to the needs of an increasing number of learners, extending access and allowing students to both work and study..."

These modern day social efficiency engineers see huge savings for the already cash-starved budgets of state colleges and universities, up to "a 30 percent to 50 percent cost savings for the Web-based approach." Read their lips: no new taxes. The other aspect of the bottom line is the one that feels more solid in Randy's and Jeb's wallets: there are dollars more numerous than the leaves of the Amazon in the online schooling business, they have concluded. And those who collect those billions will keep alive the real knowledge factories like Wellesley and Harvard, where real knowledge is created and transmitted in real, rather than simulated, ways.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/12/jeb-bush-and-randy-best-team-to-promote.html


Best started a new for-profit edu-venture for teacher preparation, the American College of Education (ACE), sometime before 2005, & the Bush connection was very helpful to that venture. Other former Bushies like Rod Paige & Margaret Spelling are also important to this story. Also Arne Duncan:

This is where our Secretary, Call-me-Arne Duncan, becomes important in the ACE story. Early in 2006, Duncan made a deal with ACE to drum up business for the Lyon-inspired Masters degrees in both C&I and Ed Leadership. CPS would pay a portion of CPS teacher tuition for the programs, while offering classroom space to run the classes. Thus, Chicago teachers, hungry for a raise and professional development, would become the guinea pigs in experiment to replace teacher education with the methodological fundamentalism and social conservatism of the Texas ed gang....

When ACE officials met with Texas regulators last fall, they produced a document titled "The Big 'To Do' List." It outlines the company's plans to expand, including offering a full bachelor's degree program. Then comes an expansion "in all 50 states" and a broadening of ACE into other subjects, from engineering to law.

The final step on "The Big 'To Do' List," the only item in bold print: "Expand everything internationally."

[AldoLeopold]

1. I knew an admissions counselor who worked

for the University of Phoenix and in his own words:

"Its all c**p, but its a living."

[HiPointDem]

2. Nothing personal because your acquaintance isn't unique, but too many people willing

to make "a living" selling crap & lies.

I wonder how big a percentage of people know that their "living" is mostly crap and lies and do it anyway.

[AldoLeopold]

3. Lol, why would I take that personally?

[HiPointDem]

4. i didn't know if the person was a friend. just trying to avoid offense.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

5. I took the majority of my college courses online from the local college...

Sure as hell beat dragging my ass to class every day.

[fasttense]

6. There are some course requirements that work out better on line.

But the college environment can't be beat for getting like minded people together to discuss and dissect ideas and theories. Interacting with fellow students is part of the educational experience. I could see some of the course work being done online but not the whole degree.

I think neocons like the idea of allowing the poor and middle class to do all their college on line because it would keep those pesky students from getting together and protesting. Just another way to keep the poor and middle class apart and prevent them from organizing.

I'm sure keeping poor and middle class students from organizing is the part Arne Duncan, the bushes and Texas RepubliCONS love the most.

[HiPointDem]

7. "it would keep those pesky students from getting together and protesting." good catch.

anything that keeps the peons isolated and disorganized is good for capital. large worksites, schools, churches & the like can all be good sites for organizing. thus the effort to break them into small pieces, spread them out across the country & the world, make no piece integral to the process of capital accumulation, so that each can be shut down if necessary.

[HiPointDem]

8. kick