Pulling this series of quotes from an interview between Ross Douthat and Christopher Rufo. I was listening as a means of trying to understand the justification for all the pain being wrought upon the educational bureaucracy. This is such an ideologically driven take on what a government bureaucracy is and how it functions that I don’t know where to start with common ground or compromise.

It’s the worst sort of cavalier slash and burn policymaking:

Rufo: Here’s the problem, though: It’s very easy to cut external contracts. It’s very difficult to change the culture of an institution and the permanent bureaucracy of that institution. I know for a fact that at the Department of Education, replacing the management within the building does not really replace the broader culture… I just think that there has to be a kind of binary choice, agency by agency. Can this agency be reformed or can this agency only be abolished or dismantled to the maximum extent permissible by law? I think the Department of Education is then in the latter camp. I think the F.B.I. could maybe be reformed. Other agencies can be perhaps reformed. But the Department of Education in my view is beyond reform. You have to spin off, liquidate, terminate and abolish to the furthest extent you can by law. All while maintaining your political viability and your statutory compliance for those things that are essential, required by law, and that are politically popular. You always want to maintain the popularity, but can you take those things away ——… Conservatives cannot fully compete for education grants, or university-level research programs. No, conservatives can’t do any of those things.So we have to figure out what we can do. Where can we have leverage? Where can we take over or recapture an institution? And if we can’t do those things, then what do we have to shut down? Shutting things down is actually a very effective strategy.

I don’t know what sort of objective standard you use to ascertain the level of “wokeness” for any bureaucratic agency. The general gist under the current administration seems to be how quick they are to implement structural change that favors the incumbent president–jurisprudence or constitutionality be damned…

Good policy-making is NEVER a binary choice. It is always a sequence of calculated, often provisional, frequently complicated series of balancing acts that requires an informed perspective on national history, the law, the current cultural moment, and domain expertise of the subject matter (e.g. education, law enforcement, national defense, energy, land management). You can’t summarize the bureaucracy’s value and operation in a pithy Tiktok video, podcast interview, or scintillating video essay–it takes decades of usually quite and monotonous work to see a positive social transformation. That is partially what is so gut-wrenching about what I am seeing happen to the Department of Education–and the federal bureaucracy more generally–I may not always agree with our bureaucratic leaders, but to see the centuries of institutional knowledge and domain expertise demolished with glee or a shrug fills me with dread.

This is a fun and thought provoking profile of a small college. How are these institutions going to survive? Uncommon College has some thoughts.

Is there something uncommon happening at Unity Environmental University?

Colleges that fail often fail because they attempt to appeal to everyone. In so doing, they appeal to no one because they cannot sell themselves as having any distinction. They will continue to spend themselves into infamy by trying to satisfy every possible interest. Eventually, adding programming and offering discounts on tuition catches up to you. In the past decade, Unity took a hard look at itself and decided it was good at two things: environmental programs and online education. They decided that those were the only two things they were going to do.

Hello there.

What

My name is Nicolas Babarskis and this site serves as a public journal of my thinking on colleges and universities. I have 14 years of experience working in postsecondary education settings, primarily in student support services, and for the last 3 years I have been pursuing a PhD in Higher Adult and Lifelong Education from Michigan State University.

Most of my writing topics of interest are associated with how bureaucracy, rationalization, and broader socio-political dynamics influence college or university behavior. So if you are a fan of social theory, education policy, and organizational behavior, this might be site worth following.

Why

Why keep a public journal? Accountability.

I find that I write more sharply and with more focus if I know that someone else may engage with it. As a doctoral student I spend large portions of my day in my own head and at some point I need to put those ideas to paper, whether for a class assignment or for the furtherance of research projects. Posting here is a means of transforming some of that head material into “paper” material.

How

I plan to post at least once a week on a postsecondary education topic. Sometimes it may be as simple as a quote from another author, or it could be a more extensive reflection on a particular theory, research method, or scholarly discourse I’m contending with.

So What

I’m a U.S. citizen and I believe our educational institutions are a major organ that sustains and promotes our liberal ideals of representative democracy. I think about colleges and universities because I also think a lot about the state of U.S. civic institutions and what their health might mean for civil rights and collective prosperity.

A pluralistic society is difficult to sustain without our diverse ecosystem of educational institutions. Colleges and universities also play an important role in the prosperity of our nation through the original research they provide. They contribute to our cultural landscape through the psychological and social development they cultivate in their participants. If you too think that colleges and universities are important on the national or global stage then this might be a place to think with me about how we ensure their health and flourishing.