Where is the space for education?

Many competing factors are now affecting how students think about higher education. One primary factor is the use of a business model for education – highlighting profit, patents, commercial investments, and the use of market competition, for example – appears to have become commonplace. Boards of education and university presidents now include a high number of business executives and corporate employees. This model has had some negative effects on traditional institutions of teaching and learning in higher education – including disintegration of tenured positions, over-emphasis on efficiency and standardization, and the marketing of education as a commodity to “student-consumers” who view a degree, not an education, as the goal. Other factors affecting students’ attitudes and expectations in school include the changing uses of technology for teaching and learning, budget cuts, suppressed enrollments, the increasingly fast-paced flow of information and a sense that planning for a particular career may be an outdated notion. So what, then, is the place of education today?