David Noble article in the Monthly Review

David Noble's Digital Diploma Mills is now out, published by Monthly Review Press. The March 2002 edition of the Monthly Review has an article adapted from the book at http://www.monthlyreview.org/0302noble.htm .

 

Although the article is highly critical of distance education, I must say I agree with Dr. Noble. I find the "commodification of education" and the blurring of the distinction between "education" and "training" disturbing. I expect that it will generate an interesting debate here if a lot of forum members read it.

Thanks for the link.

Regards.
TommyK

 

The odious David Noble and his miserable book have been much discussed on this forum. Here is a sampling:

• 
  David Noble: Digital Diploma Mills
  
  John Bear vs David Noble (this one is about a proposed boxing match between The Bear and Noble)
  
  DL critic gets his comeuppance (I'm still laughing about this one)
  
  The Future of the Faculty in the Digital Diploma Mill

 

Thanks for those links too. I admit I hadn't followed the threads about Dr. Noble. (I generally stick to questions about Regents/Excelsior and IT). OTOH, I'd also never read anything BY Dr. Noble and I am disturbed by a lot of the same stuff he is.

Regards.
TommyK

 

Some of what he's written about technology-as-religion has been recommended to me in other, non-DE circles; another popular thinker along these lines is Wendell Berry, who also happens to be less of a stuffed shirt (in addition to being an anti-technology guru, Berry is an ecologist and internationally renowned poet).

For my part, I think David Noble takes himself too seriously to be a serious critic; for example, the Monthly Review article reads like a papal encyclical without the implicit religious humility. He also has a nasty habit of thinking purely in labels and categories without attempting to apply organic-relational substrata to his arguments; and since he's basically making social arguments to begin with, this means he tends to talk about "ought" (Plato's Forms) when he could more productively be discussing "is."


Cheers,

 

Now that I'm following those threads, I realize that I ought not to have called him Dr. Noble.

But is there a difference between education and training?

TommyK
NC State 43 MSU 39 10:45 to go

 

I'd say yes, to the extent that there is a difference between literature and novels; training is education in applied subjects, but doesn't usually include education in abstract subjects (for example: studying poetry is education; but to write good poetry you have to be trained, or train yourself).


Cheers,

 

Michigan State just lost by 11 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and I gotta listen to this?

Just kidding. Let's keep up the good work (You and I and John and Noble, particularly).

TommyK

 

From Dr. David Noble: “Any effort to offer quality in education must therefore presuppose a substantial and sustained investment in educational labor, whatever the medium of instruction.”

The problem I have with Noble is that I find him insincere; a standpatter who opposes DL, not because of what it does to education, but because of what it does to his profession. I don’t fault him for defending his profession, but the fact is that DL is changing his profession whether he likes it or not. He may have some good reasons why the professorate should oppose DL because of how it affects the standing of professors within their institutions, but his reasons don’t have really anything to do with education (especially as he defines the term), so students and administrators should not necessarily be alarmed by the changes that DL is forcing upon the higher education landscape. Judging by the quotation above, if DL necessitated the hiring of more professors, or the elevation of their salaries, Noble would have no problem with it at all.

Noble has some company in his ivory tower, but probably not the company he wants. I am reminded of professional military officers, commanding land and sea forces, who opposed the doctrine of air power--at least in part because they thought it would marginalize their role in warfare. They are long gone. I also am reminded of those who oppose globalization, feminism, and environmentalism. They may have reason for doing so, but these are facets of modern life whether anyone likes them or not.

What it boils down to is Noble does not like DL because of how it is changing the role of the professor in the process of education. It is clear from everything that he has written on the subject of DL that this is so. What bothers me is that he sometimes tries to frame his dissent in terms that students should find alarming, if those terms were true. Consider the following quotation from the excerpt:

“Education is the exact opposite of training in that it entails not the disassociation but the utter integration of knowledge and the self, in a word, self-knowledge. Here knowledge is defined by and, in turn, helps to define, the self. Knowledge and the knowledgeable person are basically inseparable.”

Presumably Noble is trying to make the case that DL cannot accomplish this, but that traditional education can and does accomplish this on a regular basis. On what planet does this happen? How can a professor even tell if this is or is not happening for his students? If it’s not happening, can he change something about his instruction to make it happen?

I also find it amazing that a professor of history could suggest that education--the process of acquiring self-knowledge, to use Noble’s definition--can only happen on campus. How is it that self-knowledge can only be achieved as a result of interpersonal relationships between student and teacher, and parenthetically, as Noble puts it, between student and student (can’t let ourselves be too student conscious now, can we?), when even the traditional university experience will be but a drop in the bucket to the overall experience of most students. If Noble thinks that DL places too much emphasis on technology, I think he places too much emphasis on it, too. The technology is no more important than the campus.

Noble’s writing is meant to shock students into thinking that a professor can offer them something in person that no one else can. While it is clear that he is trying to shock students, it is also clear that he is trying to pander to the professional aspirations of his fellow professors. In so doing, he makes enigmatic arguments that will be regarded, in certain academic circles, as “scholarly achievement,” to use the words of the editors of the Monthly Review. I remain unimpressed.

Tracy Gies<><

 

"Education is the exact opposite of training"?! Is Noble out of his blessed mind? If all I wanted was self-knowledge, I'd skip college and go to a Buddhist monastery.



Cheers,

 

I coulda said it better (put pissing and moaning in it, etc.) but dammit that quote resonated with me.

And (and I know I'm not supposed to start a sentence with a conjunction (much less a preposition (which I didn't) ) ) I'm a big fan of distance education. Where's Lawrie when we need him?

God bless us, everyone.
TommyK

 

In my opinion, David Noble's critique of DL is an exercise in professorial self-interest dressed in Marxian drag. Despite his billing as an authority in "technology studies", he tells us that his real purpose is to turn our attention from technology to political economy.

Unfortunately, he doesn't bother to tell us what is so sobering about past experiences with DL.

Instead, he defines some of his terms, in an orthodox Marxist manner.

This is the familiar 'humanistic' Marxist critique, where capitalism is condemned for diverting people from being romanticism's self-absorbed artists, into social beings who must cooperate with others. But personally, I often find that I best realize my own inner self by cooperating with others and by taking account of their wishes.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with the training/education distinction. If I want to accomplish something for my own inner reasons alone and to please no one but myself, I will still need training in the techniques necessary.

I might define education as a sort of meta-training. A process that goes beyond the transmission of technique, to learning the underlying principles necessary to permit improvisation and the invention of new technique.

I still don't understand how Noble's distinction works. Suppose that I am educated in engineering to the extent that I am not just following techniques by rote but am creatively exercising my understanding of physical principles. Then does my education collapse back into mere training as soon as I take a job at an engineering firm and apply my education to one of their projects rather than following my own inner muse?

[QUOTEEducation is a process that necessarily entails an interpersonal (not merely interactive) relationship between people—student and teacher (and student and student) that aims at individual and collective self-knowledge...

It is a sign of our current confusion about education that we must be reminded of this obvious fact: that the relationship between people is central to the educational experience. [/QUOTE]
I think that Noble as just trashed the University of London External Programme, as well as all other examination based programs. If a student is sent a syllabus and expected to learn on his/her own, and then examined on the results of that process, then apparently by Noble's definition education can't have occurred, no matter what competencies are demonstrated. Apparently the events of one's life, from on-the-job experience though personal study, *can't* be educational. And they can't be for purely a-priori reasons.

This also raises the question of what sort of "interpersonal (not merely interactive) relationships" are necessary for education to take place. Why isn't an exchange of one's ideas with others by use of communications media, from exchange of correspondence and telephone conversations, to e-mail and even realtime video-conferencing, enough? What isn't happening here that Noble thinks is definitive of education?

In other words, it's dialectical. It's also seen squarely from the professor's point of view. Real education only occurs when the professor gets what he wants. If a student learns through independent study, that learning can't be educational because no transformational changes have occurred in any professors. This is what makes any education outside of a university tutorial relationship impossible on Noble's model. Education becomes dependent on the inner transformations occurring within professors. The focus has clearly shifted from student to faculty.

And the subject matter drops out entirely in this pop-psychological version.

Unfortunately, when I take a calculus class, I want to learn the necessary techniques to solve the assigned problem sets, and to learn the deeper principles involved so that I can improvise when presented with new applications. I might even have philosophical interest in what calculus can tell me about the nature of abstract change itself.

But I'm NOT interested in falling in love with my professor or in having sex with him. (Sorry professors, it's your loss.)

The personal relationship with the professor is secondary. What I really want is a better grasp of the subject matter.

It is a fundamental fact of human life that we all have desires, but few of us can meet all of our desires by ourselves. We need the assistance of others. The way that we get strangers to help us meet our needs, when those strangers have unmet needs of their own, is by helping others meet their desires in return. It is this reciprocity that is the heart and soul of the market system. We sell our goods and services in order to get the goods and services that we desire.

Far from being dehumanizing, the market is probably the single largest force for social cooperation among strangers. It's why we go to work every day. It's why the clerk is behind the counter at Starbucks when there are so many other things that she would rather be doing. It's the glue that binds society together. It's why we don't spend all day gazing at our navels.

And it is why there are universities that hire professors. The point isn't to provide ivory towers in which professors can realize their inner selves, it is to meet the needs of their students and of the wider community that pays for the university. Professors get what they want only if they are attentive to what others want.

The gloves are finally off and the whole critique devolves from abstract principle into simply being a faculty labor issue.

Professors like Noble, particularly those in the humanities, are concerned that teaching won't be as much fun if they have to pay too much attention to what students want to learn rather than what they want to teach. Students want practical job-oriented courses. Many of the professors want to teach Marxism and postmodern social criticism.

Noble sees his teaching as part of his own process of self-realization. As such, his teaching must be an expression of his own inner self. He's a romantic, and he sees professors as being akin to romanticism's vision of the artist. The idea that what he teaches should be determined in any way by the desires of his students or by the needs of the community, by the market in other words, is simply capitalist exploitation.
Of course, the biggest question for Degreeinfo is begged. What has any of this stuff got to do with distance education? Apart from some vague remarks about personal relationships, Noble hasn't really told us why he thinks DL won't work.

But it isn't hard to figure out what his beef is. DL is aimed directly at working adults. These are people who don't approach the university as acolytes. They aren't mystified or awed by the process as an 18-year-old might be. They aren't motivated by the kind of adolescent alienation that finds Marxist (and latterly postmodernist) social criticism so captivating. They want practical courses with clear applications. But sadly, the kinds of programs that meet adult students' needs have little need for professors like David Noble.

Of course, denying educational opportunities to working adults won't really improve Noble's situation either...

 

Certainly the last place I would go to find self-knowledge would be the college campus. Noble doesn't articulate exactly how the professor and the campus work together to help anyone achieve this knowledge.

Ironically, when those who don't already know themselves pretty well go to college, they often drop out and go to work, only to return to college several years later, except that this time they stay until they earn a degree. Hmmmmm.

Tracy<><

 

Hi, Tracy. I certainly agree with you regarding Noble.

I really doubt that Noble can see the distinction between arguing an issue on its merits and arguing from self interest. Everything collapses into the mush of political rhetoric. I'm sure that he sees himelf as totally sincere

Is DL really responsible for that? Or are these changes coming about because of the fact that more adults are continuing their educations, and because of the fact that more students of all ages are enrolling in practical and technical subjects? As far as I can see, all those on-campus night-school MBA programs and all the computer programs are there to serve the market, just as DL is. Professors in those subjects also have syllabi full of material that they have to cover, and can't just produce stream-of-conciousness lectures or engage in Socratic dialogues.

I find it amazing as well. What I find even more amazing is that some very intelligent people in the academic world take Noble very seriously.

So do I. When I read this stuff, I get an "emperor's new clothes" feeling. There is very little there, but the crowd still applauds.

But I disagree with you about one thing. Noble isn't trying to shock students. He doesn't even notice students, and in turn few students even know or care who he is. He is writing to an audience of his peers, often politically-left professors in the humanities and the social sciences, enunciating the misgivings they feel at the increasingly vocational and market-oriented focus of much of higher education. And he gives expression to their frustration as professors gradually cease to be a kind of secular priesthood and become something more like a service industry.

 

Bill,

I suspect that you are right about how Noble views himself. It is clear that his peers view him in a similar fashion, if they consider his work "scholarly." (Personally, I find Noble extremely glib, which I always thought was the opposite of scholarly.)

I agree with you that DL is not responsible for the changes to Noble's profession. DL has come about more as result of changes in society. Adult students don't necessarily need the mentorship of a professor (assuming that traditional students who *may* need it will even get it.)

In reality, I agree that students are irrelevant to Noble. His main concern is for his profession, not for education, and certainly not for students. The reason he addresses students at all is to try to give his argument some credibility among those outside the professorate.

Tracy<><

 

Some of the same arrogance and elitism seems to be expressed in Philip Altbach’s article The Rise of the Pseudouniversity. Altbach takes aim in particular at Jones International, Univ. of Phoenix, and Cardean Univ., but he says explicitly that the issue of for-profit vs. non-profit is not the critical factor. The question of distance vs. contact education is also not central. He raises the training vs. education issue mentioned above, and plainly states that these institutions are not universities -- they are “pseudouniversities” offering specialized training in high-demand fields (management, business, IT, teacher training, and educational administration). Altbach suggests that these institutions should remain accredited, but that they should stop calling themselves “universities” and should stop calling their qualifications “degrees” (but rather “certificates of competencies” or something similar).

A key aspect of the agenda here may be revealed by the following sentence:

• Professors – often, but not always, with long-term or permanent appointments – have been at the heart of the university, exercising control over the curriculum, the admission of students, and the awarding of degrees.

In a follow-up article (“Pseudo U.”: How Bad is the “U”?) Daniel Levy notes that this is a slippery slope -- few of the public and private institutions legally called “universities” today meet the lofty ideals of the ivory tower suggested by Altbach. The following statement is also relevant:

• Whom must we protect from what? Recent empirical work in the United States strongly indicates that students and faculty at for-profits do not feel deceived but instead are quite satisfied. It is hard to imagine that many enter the University of Phoenix anticipating a classical university education—or that employers hire them anticipating that they have gotten a University of California–like education.

 

Like that Men's Sexuality class that visited the sex club?

 

Touché