i think chomsky makes some good points here, but a student-run university is something i wouldn't go a mile near. i'm imagining credits for basketball tryouts, and televised nerd stonings. there's this sort of naive optimism that underlies so much of leftist thinking that only makes sense after the society has already changed. maybe things seemed better in the 60s - i can't say - but this kind of thing, nowadays, would be horrifically oppressive and lead to a rapid deterioration of education.
i'm also far more of an individualist than the average leftist. i find anarchism is often an intellectual position that syndicalist style socialists take, out of various historical reasons. people that actually feel and live and breathe anarchism are far rarer.
i'd rather do away with professors altogether by expelling them purely to research. i don't know where this idea that research and teaching ought to be connected comes from, but i think it really ought to be separated. why do we have our brightest minds teaching simple ideas to teenagers? why not just literally give them lobotomies and lock them up in cages?
the problems i had going through school were primarily related to my inability to work well in groups, and my anxiety in social situations. about the only worthwhile thing i learned in high school was that i understand things better reading them out of a book by myself in my bedroom than i do by wasting my time sitting in a classroom. i was told that i would be better suited for the university system because of that greater emphasis on independent learning and critical thought. what i found was the exact opposite, for a few reasons.
the first was profs that would grade you based on attendance. there's two levels to this. the first are the ones that actually make it a part of the grading scheme. so, you get 10 or 15% for just showing up. i'd argue that's preposterous on it's face. but what i found was that i couldn't show up for various reasons that the school wouldn't recognize as valid, and if i did i'd start yelling at people. so, i'd instantly forfeit a tenth or more of the grade. sometimes, i could ace the rest of the course material and get a decent mark. other times, an A became a B or a C because of it, or a B became as low as a D.
and they say it's to inflate the grade? it didn't inflate mine. rather, the insistence on participation marks is the primary reason i'm not teaching right now. rather, it's to enforce discipline in scheduling. i didn't fully get that at the time, but i do now. and in the sense that i'm a bad worker/slave, i suppose i got the marks i deserved.
why didn't i want to participate? because the students were terrible elitists. i didn't have fancy clothes or expensive shoes, and didn't really care to drop out for a year to save up to buy them. worse, they were culturally dead. i never thought for a minute, growing up, that i'd walk into a university classroom and learn that the most pressing topic of discussion amongst the students in the room was the tv show 'friends'. so, we're talking about people that follow cultural norms and are slaves to fashion trends. free thinkers? far from it. i remember trying to start a discussion about rachmaninov with somebody that identified themselves as liking music and just getting stared right through, as though i was talking some other language. this person wanted to talk about some awful, boring "indie rock" music and was just confused by my absolute disinterest. it was incredibly disillusioning. i simply didn't have anything in common with anybody to the point where i found it difficult to even be in the same room with them.
so, i didn't go to class, and i don't regret that. what i regret is maintaining the delusion that i had a future in the school system. i wish i would have given up sooner and not wasted so much time with it.
this was part of the reason i switched into math. i thought if there was anywhere to avoid pop culture, that would be it. but it wasn't any better. about the only person i was able to get along with was a mildly autistic kid from russia that could barely speak english. he just didn't know anything about american culture. i found that refreshing.
i can't honestly think the hippies would have been much better, despite what noam is saying. so, is there any hope of building democratic institutions, with the culture the way it is? i don't see it...
the second problem was profs that would give you bullshit grades for not showing up. we like to think of the system as relatively objective, but that kind of garbage is still fairly common. i'd say i lost close to a full grade point to participation marks, and more than that from profs entering in fraudulent marks. but i didn't start challenging (and winning) those kinds of cases for far too long....
the second was that the issue cycles itself around. depression from not fitting in or being able to relate works it's way into other aspects of your life. not going to class to avoid the social part of it becomes not caring enough to bother doing homework. then, there's the profs that teach things that aren't in the text in order to catch the students that don't show up, out of some kind of sadistic pleasure.
what i would have wanted, myself, would be to take the professor right out of the situation. no gods, no masters. i'd rather see standardized curricula that are basically just course notes. the way i'd conceive of the process working is that the notes and assignments are handed out to the students at the beginning of the semester and it's the students' responsibility to do it on their own, and then be tested at the end. no need for classes. *no need to pay the prof*. some people do like the socialization for whatever reason; an internet forum combined with voluntary discussion groups could give them what they want without excluding those that despise that sort of thing for whatever reason they despise it.
that's actually an anarchist perspective, rather than a syndicalist one.
another thing i found was that the average teaching assistant is quite literally an absolute moron. something that bugged the hell out of me was when they'd "correct" various grammatical "errors", which were almost always entirely arbitrary because they didn't like your argument and were looking for an excuse to mark it down. you'd get all kinds of grade biases. that was more when i was studying law. when i was studying math, and later comp sci, the tas were often unable to follow any argument that wasn't in the solution sheet. i'd continually have to take it to the prof to get it marked right...
the conclusion i've come to is that the schools are being forced to hire unqualified students because there are too many positions. but the diploma mill nature of most modern universities ensures there's a surplus of labour.
it's a catastrophe, really.
there was actually one comp sci course where the ta's solution sheet was so bad that i felt the need to rewrite it and post the corrections on my website. worse, the ta taught the course. and it was, like, $1200...for that sum, we couldn't even get a valid solution sheet or a prof that knew what he was talking about...
(link apparently lost)