I chose to go the George Mason’s School of Public Policy to pursue my PhD for three main reasons 1) it offered a flexible part-time program with many interesting fields of study 2) it was a newer, aggressive school that had attracted many top faculty in recent years (Richard Florida, Francis Fukuyama, Zoltan Acs) and 3) and it was in DC, my wife’s hometown, and a vibrant region of power, technology, and culture that allowed the school and its students and instructors to engage in the policy debates of the day.
In entering a school of public policy I was quickly introduced to the field of economic development and the terms Taylorism and Fordism — terms were meant to convey the scientific management of the industrial process and increased efficiency and economic output. (FORD being an early example with its assembly lines) Many also use the terms to describe a system that capitalizes on mass labor in a negative way.
The Collegiate Way blog has an interesting posting about an article in the Atlantic Monthly by a Professor X titled The Basement of the Ivory Tower. Apparently the article basically explains that many colleges just take in students and keep them in, in order to achieve revenues.
From the article by Professor X:
I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé. (more…)
