Recently found a quote via the internet blog and twitter six (actually two) degrees of separation, "When colleges and universities become a market, there is no incentive to teach what customers would rather not know" in an online article by Tressie Cottom on the Slate site December 3rd 2013.The article gets down to this statement after talking about a case of a lecturer at a college in the United States of America being reprimanded by the college under its anti-discrimination policy as three students had felt uncomfortable during a discussion about structural racism. Putting aside for a moment the surrounding conversation around race, racism and college administration, capitalist market forces and education agendas, it sums up a very simple debate about the future of higher learning in that simple statement. Universities are faced with balancing real market demands of what adults want to know with what we as adult members of a society think people need to know and need to discuss.
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