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Disability awareness has increased in recent decades, along with a growing academic field dedicated to it. Partly this is due to the concerns of a large aging baby boomer population. Disability advocacy groups are becoming increasingly vocal. Yet despite incremental advancements in affordances and civil also rights, the specter of normalcy persists. In many areas of life –– from employment and housing to education and medical care –– bias, discrimination, and uneasiness can negatively impact people with disabilities.

Even though no longer uniformly cast as outsiders, many with disabilities entering “ableist” society do so at a price. Social awkwardness or a reluctance to engage someone with a disability remain commonplace. This type of misunderstanding can lead to stereotyping, with the assumption that a person in a wheelchair wants or needs assistance. There can be a lot of confusion when it comes to certain conditions, such as when a speech difference is construed as a cognitive deficit. Furthermore, people with disabilities are sometimes accused of exploiting their disabilities for unfair advantages.

Let’s face it. Majorities tend to view the world from their own perspective, expecting others to conform. This impulse is particularly strong in the U.S., where citizens cling to their rugged individualism. In one of the most competitive countries in the world, failures are more likely to be attributed to individual shortcomings than to any systematic problem. The result has been a distorted view of variances of many types, physical and mental abilities prominent among them. In what often is termed the “medical model” of disability, impairments are seen as illnesses in need of treatment or “cure.” Because the model only focuses on functional differences, it can reduce the person to a diagnosis, while “constructing disability” as a problem.

In the disability community, activists and scholars argue that a condition only becomes a disability when it is conceptualized as one. In its place, they advocate a “social model” of disability, focusing on accommodations, universal design, and inclusive attitudes. People with disabilities can, with the appropriate affordances, found a company like Apple Computer (Steve Jobs), conduct an orchestra (Itzhak Perlman), become poet laureate (Maya Angelou), or President of the United States (Franklin Roosevelt). Continue reading “Disability and the Politics of Cure”

Yet another backlash against student diversity was discussed this past week in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In this case the assault came against pandemic-era inclusive teaching measures designed to mitigate the risk of student disconnection and failure –– methods such as group work, deadline flexibility, enhanced faculty interaction, and Universal Design for Learning. However, critics argue that these measures have led to a lax academic environment and decreased student motivation. What is needed, the critics assert, are stricter and more difficult courses to force students back in line.

In an article, “Why ‘Calls for a ‘Return to Rigor’ Are Wrong,” Chronicle columnist Kevin Gannon counters this perspective, contending that a simple increase in workload, tougher grading, and heightened standards do not equate to academic rigor.

He argues that these conventional methods often serve as a veneer for practices that raise barriers to student success, rather than tearing them down.  Critics of the pandemic-era teaching efforts often focus on metrics such as the volume of reading per week, the number of writing assignments, or the duration to complete an academic program. According to them, these have fallen far too low. In essence, they attribute “rigor” to logistical challenges in course delivery. However, Gannon emphasizes that higher education needn’t be prohibitive, and introducing practices that stifle student motivation and engagement is counterproductive. Continue reading “The Backlash Against Inclusive Teaching”

It’s called the “paper ceiling” –– the barriers for skilled job seekers who lack a bachelor’s degree. Amid the brouhaha in recent years over admissions scams and student debt, a new line of attack is emerging against higher education. This one is being described as an ontological threat in that it questions the existence and value of college itself, while accusing the system of perpetuating multiple forms of inequity. Of course, higher education often has found itself a political football in the past. What makes this time different is its critique of qualities universities typically have seen as their strength.

Everyone knows it’s been a tough few years for higher education. Even before the pandemic, colleges and universities were seeing public opinion souring over rising costs, political correctness, and faculty misbehavior –– causing more than a few students and their families to start doubting the value of degree. With enrollments dropping during the “great disruption” at a pace not seen for half a century, concurrent changes in the American workplace have rendered college degrees unnecessary for a growing number of high wage jobs. Yet many employers require four-year credentials anyway, in what some observers see as an antiquated habit and a cover for discrimination.

The numbers are deceptively simple – that 75% of new jobs insist on a bachelor’s degree, while only 40% of potential applicants have one.[1] According the advocacy group Opportunity@Work, employers mistakenly equate college completion with work aptitude, while disregarding self-acquired knowledge or non-academic experience.  The group asserts that the nation’s undervalued workforce “has developed valuable skills through community college, certificate programs, military service, or on-the-job learning, rather than through a bachelors degree. Workers with experience, skills, and diverse perspectives are held back by silent barrier.” As a consequence, over 50% of the American skilled workforce has been under employed and underpaid.[2]  More concerning still is that such discrimination is unevenly distributed. Within a 70-million worker cohort of what are termed STARs  (Skilled Through Alternative Routes) employees, one finds 61% of Black workers, 55% of Hispanic/Latinos, and 61 of veterans.[3]  

Continue reading “The New Case Against College”