Monday, July 19, 2010

"People haven't gotten really mad--that annoys me."

In an effort to improve blogging sustainability, I continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Last week, BSC's assistant director of alumni relations sent a query email re: what faculty are reading this summer. Here's the skinny....

ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac....I'm mentoring Mike Gálvez's ATP grant project, which is to make a documentary film while driving across the USA. Kerouac grew up in Lowell, and this classic captures some of the crazy maddening bliss of an extended road trip...We're reading all of these books together, and then talk about them on iChat (me on the Cape, him on the Road)...

DEKALOG 1: ON 'THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS' edited by Mette Hjort.... Mike's film springboards off of THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS (2003), a superb collaboration between two Danish directors: Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier--von Trier sets up a series of "obstructions" to push Leth forward as a filmmaker and as a human being. This thoughtful collection makes us go back to the film again and again...

DOGME UNCUT: LARS VON TRIER, THOMAS VINTERBERG, AND THE GANG THAT TOOK ON HOLLYWOOD by Jack Stevenson....Lars von Trier was principal instigator behind the Dogme95 film movement whose attempts to jump-start creativity through constraint quickly translated beyond Denmark and into something of a global contra-Hollywood strategy. Nothing says "student filmmaking" quite as succinctly as "creativity through constraint," right?...

LARS VON TRIER: INTERVIEWS edited by Jan Lumholdt....This collection allows us to see von Trier wrestling with ways to attack film form and style in thoughtful and direct ways. Sample banter: "Q. What are your comments on the reactions [your thesis film] has brought? A: Well, they've hardly been good enough, because people haven't gotten really mad. That annoys me. But we'll just have to hope that that happens a little later."...

~bpi

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

(Formerly Lutheran) College, Inc.

I'd kept the link to the Frontline special College, Inc. in my inbox for several months, hoping to eventually get back to it this summer. Last night was the night--and a little extra surfing brought the issue into even sharper focus. The program looks at the rising phenomenon of for-profit colleges and universities, the significant debt load with which it burdens its students (much higher than even non-profit private schools, much less non-profit publics), and the inordinate default ratios such loans are generating...



As a Gustie grad (Class of '91, yee haw, etc.) it's particularly interesting to me to see how ELCA-related schools have been affected by the changing landscape brought on by recession & educational for-profit speculation. Readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education have been able to monitor the death throes of Dana College, outside Omaha. A little surfing brought a new stunner to me: Waldorf College in Forest City, IA was sold to a for-profit last year...

Some background: My grandmother Lois still lives in Forest City, and my late grandfather Wilfer worked at Waldorf for several years as a custodian. From my first day as a professor, I thought about how his work at college had laid the foundation for my own. So Waldorf has a soft spot in my heart...

One of the things education speculators look for is existing accreditation, so that they can buy into legitimacy (and have a pipeline to those all-important federal student loans). The failure of such a transfer means the end of Dana College. Waldorf College continues, but is now much closer in spirit to the University of Phoenix than it is to Gustavus Adophus College, I'm afraid.

My hope is to see my grandmother this fall (long overdue), and maybe I will have a chance to get a first-hand sense of what's happening at Waldorf. If any of you have ties with any of these schools, and/or have first or second-hand experience with for-profit higher education, I'd love to hear about it...