All over the place? Maybe, maybe not.

I am fumbling toward learning what to and not to say on a public blog. I am, in the end, a highly private person. But I am also a person who realizes that continued existence requires use of interactive information technologies to promote the enhancement of social freedom. I am, in truth, not sure if I will ever be as true as I could be to the title of this blog--which, for any who do not know, refers to my position as a Writing Program Administrator in a university English department--because, frankly, it may weaken what I can do as an advocate for students and our program. If this makes me seem unethical to you, then that is what it makes me seem. What I assure you is that I am trying to promote the enhancement of social freedom, and I am aware that this is a complex, collective, time-consuming, perhaps unsustainable task, but an infinitely worthy one.

OK. That said, I have been thinking about NY state and SUNY as a system, given that the economic situation of both has been--needless to say--in a tough spot lately. A question I have kicked around for two years is this:

I realize that NY state has powerful corporate interests and a powerful bureaucracy. I do not expect the corporate interests to advocate on behalf of the poor. I do expect the bureaucracy to. How well, though, does the bureaucracy advocate on behalf of the poor in NY state? I ask this question self-identifying as a bureaucrat, as a state university faculty member.

I know that my university is on a mission to celebrate itself as advocating on behalf of the poor in its "The Power of SUNY" strategic planning campaign. One of the guiding assumptions of this campaign is that SUNY must accept and participate in what is to be the "entrepreneurial century." In theory, this refers to empowering local communities, businesses, people to use whatever resources they have in enterprising ways--to build knowledge, wealth, etc.

I also want to say that while we know the US, by pretty much all accepted indexes, has among developed nations a wide rich-poor gap (on this linked page on global income inequality, click on the image of the world at the top right hand corner of the page; note how the US's "peer" nations are doing a lot better than we are--and how, say, there is more equitable wealth distribution in petroleum-rich Russia and Nigeria than in the US), the same is true for NY state itself.

Most people know that these are not rosy times for US, or global, higher education in general--and US, or global, public higher education in particular. These are the times of the privatization of the public sphere. Now, if I may digress, I do not want to connect dots so much with this blog. I want to present related snippets of information. And I want to say I want to look into specifically how these are not rosy times for global public higher education--and what the trends are anticipated to be by experts on this subject. So, today, I did some looking around and found what I think is an interesting document presented by an ethical organization. It is, by name and identifying authors, as follows:

Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution

A Report Prepared for the

UNESCO 2009 World Conference on Higher Education

Philip G. Altbach

Liz Reisberg

Laura E. Rumbley

What I am linking to my blog is the executive summary of this report, which I find fascinating.

OK. That's all for now.

Tom