Annotated Bibliography, extended article

Bailey, T. et al. For-Profit Higher Education and Community Colleges, National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, Stanford University, School of Education, Stanford, CA.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/ncpi/documents/pdfs/forprofitandcc.pdf

This article makes a distinction between Public, Community, and for-profit educational institutions in order to weigh the pluses and minuses of each type of institution. I feel it is relevant to my project because within the University Heights section of Newark itself, there exists all three types of institutions; thus I think this article will be interesting to compare my data to at the close of my project. Although I do not plan on making distinctions in my project between the three types of institutions, some of the information found in this article I can definitely reflect upon in fitting my discussion into a specific historic, political, and socio-economic context.

The article is well researched, providing case-study evidence to support its claims. Despite this, I am critical of the entire premise of the article, which claims that for-profit universities are inherently more “evil” than other types of higher education because they put more competitive pressure on public and community institutions, and shift the focus of education from real learning to making students educational consumers. Although, in this sense, for-profit may be worse than other higher institution types, ALL universities and colleges are crunched economically right now due to cuts in funding, and believe it or not, all institutions of higher learning have making money on their agendas, whether public or private (in my opinion).

The authors also argue that community colleges “educate” while for-profits “train”, another claim I disagree with. The neoliberal policies in place at this historic moment of “McDonaldization” (as Mancrine points out) make even elementary and secondary education based solely upon drilling, training and testing rather than really educating (NCLB!). This mentality pervades not just for-profit institutions, but also public and private institutions. While I think this article is relevant in some respects, I also disagree with some of its fundamental arguments and think that rather than apply their ideas strictly to for-profit institutions, they should apply they to all three types of institutions broadly.

Higher Education in Newark

Brainstorming for my Community Inquiry Project topic has led me to the point where I have realized that I am interested in learning about the historical events that led to the construction of the city of Newark, including what specific forces played a role in that constuction. I am interested in how Newark looks structurally and how the city is laid out spacially, in order to evaluate the effects that structure may have on urban youth.

If the topic seems vague, (which after reading that paragraph I too am a bit confused) I can elaborate. I started off by thinking about the higher institutions that exist in Newark, including Essex County College, Rutgers University, The Seton Hall University School of Law, The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). I found a great article by CHEN, the Council for Higher Education in Newark, which provides extensive information as to the economic impact of these institutions on the city. I am interested in uncovering the issues that CHEN does not discuss (mainly because these issues would not serve the agenda of CHEN as an institution itself); how the surrounding areas and even the city of Newark itself may suffer as a result of these higher institutions. I will have to do research in to the history of the area, and I also plan on doing a walking tour of the University Heights area as well as the surrounding area outside of University Heights to assess the situation myself via a photo analysis. Here is a map of the area.

Some important questions that I would like to address:

-How has the growth of university on-campus housing (particularly NJIT and Rutgers) and renovation of surrounding apartments changed the demographics as well as the local businesses, restaurants, etc. in the surrounding areas?

-Do these changes mean that the area is necessarily safer or a "better" place for urban youth to inhabit, if, in fact, they even live in these parts of the city?

-How do urban youth and the local communities personally feel about these institutions, and do they consider these institutions and the students that go to them to be a part of their community?

-How has the introduction of these institutions into the community changed local life, modes of transportation, housing prices, etc. in the University Heights areas? Has there been a movement of people out of the area in order to make room for and accomodate to the incoming students?

I think this is a good start, although there are many questions that I have and I am not sure if I will be able to find the answers to them...thus the process of doing research.