paying it forward

reflexions on my line of work

It was a pretty morning after a dismal, cold, rainy Thursday yesterday. As some of you read last night, I had the privilege of talking with the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs yesterday. The incident I described in detail last night came to mind as I was answering a question about positives and negatives in China; I had thought of those women for months, if not years.

I try to do what I advocate others do so I closed my remarks by welcoming follow on questions or comments through the Institute should I not have gotten to everyone’s questions. Since my email address and contact information was not disseminated, the executive director served as a funnel. I was utterly blown away about forty-five minutes later when he forwarded a thank you note from one of the most prominent journalists in the United States during the 1960s through probably 1985. Anyone who lived here during that period and paid an iota attention to the traditional news networks knew this guy’s name. I certainly did not know him personally but I was floored he could say he ‘learned a lot’ from my lecture and really enjoyed it. Did this feel good? Yes, indeed it still does. His listening to zoom lecture speaks to the people who are members of the Institute way more than it does anything about me—these are life long learners who want to keep learning about the changing world. I imagine they have lots of other things they could be doing but take the opportunity to engage on topics of interest. Pretty cool.

I also am finishing my grading for the adjunct course I have had the privilege to teach at Cornell University’s Wolpe campus since 2012. Aimed originally at Cornell undergraduates for whom an alumnus provided a handsome endowment to groom China practitioners, I have enjoyed each and every seminar because seeing their enthusiasm, debating the questions, listening to them making connections between history and contemporary affairs, and hearing great thinkers come share their experiences with these kids. Of course they are bright; Cornell can select from an incredible pool of applicants. Of course they know a lot less than I would expect because they are third year students rather than seasoned folks who have only studied a single country for twenty-five years. Of course they keep me on my toes but that is what teaching is supposed to do; the old bad jokes about professors and brittle aging notes without updated material are really...old…bad…jokes.

As the semester ends and these kids scatter to the winds, I so passionately hope they keep involved in learning as this journalist mentioned above. As with virtually every single aspect of our lives (contrary to what I really expected, if I am honest, as I had not lived through a pandemic), COVID mucks with learning as much as it wrecks everything else. Yes, we have all seen the horrible drop in math, especially, and other learning for our elementary school kids; it will be tough to recoup those loses. Yes, COVID still plagues us with problems of people not being able to return to class due to outbreaks such as the one we are currently experiencing. All of those consequences are both real and troubling.

What I did not expect was the the interplay of 1. COVID fatigue, 2. COVID inducing a lack of understanding norms, and 3. the already growing doubts about the cost-benefit analysis regarding the soaring costs of education in the United States. Perhaps the third of these items is easiest to discuss because we all know that education forces us to confront the opportunity costs is imposes on the student. If you are spending money in the short term to go to school, you probably are not making much money at that time. Education for generations in the United States was the ticket to a higher standard of living and little real thought went into whether it was worth the investment in time or resources.

With the stagnation of wages, greater automation of some work, greater emphasis on science and math at the same time that most students struggle with those subjects more than ever, and doubts about the staggering debt this creates under the assumption that paying more for an education guarantees it will be a better education, the overall premises about college being the ticket forward became questionable in after the 2008 financial crisis. Even before Donald Trump’s appeal to anti-inellectualism, particularly by casting doubt on science and its methodology, we began seeing high schoolers reconsidering the value of college for their future. Earlier this week, the New York Times actually had a story about a private school in upstate New York participating in a movement to reduce tuition costs as the qualms about so much of college’s value grow.Anemona Harticollis, 'A Sign That Tuition is too High: Some Colleges are Slicing It in Half', New York Times, 14 December 2022 These doubts, along with the exploding mistrust of so many arguments made by experts on anything, fed skepticism that college’s rules and alleged learning outcomes were worth it.

On top of that, however, now fully two years’ worth of students in higher education have seen a radically different college experience, one which challenges us all to scramble in justifying what used to be the norm. Students, like many workers everywhere, question why they have to come to class: can’t online education be as good? This argument cuts both ways as as some students deeply hunger for the experience of learning in a room with others but many ask if the sanctity of their bedrooms with good quality video equipment for zoom calls is sufficient? These latter kids would like to shatter some obnoxious requirements, prefering not to worry about how they dress, whether they show up for class in person, whether they can be multi-tasking as seminar proceeds, and a raft of other traditions where the instructor is front and center. We have been allegedly in an era of ‘student-focused learning’ for quite some time but the COVID experience of students now halfway through a traditional 4 year college experience literally never experienced the old expectations.

And yet students in higher education are fundamentally tired and grumpy just like the rest of society. Not only have our norms shattered but our certainty regarding outcomes is gone. The COVID world allowed us time to see that upheavals are now to be expected all of the time. That is a sweeping claim, I know. However, the tendency polarisation across society on virtually each and every item is hard to find in our history as we see it now. I am sure some of you disagree and that is great; let’s discuss it! My experience is we have lost the skill of discussing much of anything rationally. We go into our corners, decry those who different with us, then shut the door to much effort to learn why the other person sees things differently. We are convinced that because we believe something it is true yet we all have no problem seeing that is not the case when the other person believes something that we know is false. We are good at putting the onus on someone else to be rational while we are not so good about it.

I desperately seek to pay forward life long learning for these Cornellians and anyone else we wants to discuss the world around us. This fall’s seminar was the most challenging undergraduate teaching I have had a Cornell and even for when I taught undergradate fulltime before 1992. I never had so many people who prioritised things so differently from what was in a syllabus. I never had people send me notes at 0300 telling me they did not think they could go to class because the White House wanted them to work during our seminar. None of this was cosmic but evidence is that a shift in higher education is indeed happening in lots of ways for lots of students.

Social media give me a window into what my prior students are doing—and whether they are engaging in continuing learning. One is deeply involved in offering the world a bit of a window on what the heinous regime is doing in Myanmar; I fear he will be busy with that for his entire professional career since there is little evidence the junta wants to relinquish power again. Another is finishing a doctorate with a focus on China. Yet another is putting language skills to use in supporting the U.S. government’s analysis of China. I love hearing what they are up to because it helps me recalibrate my teaching but I let them initiate connections.

What I most desire is that they continue this keen interest in the world for the long haul. This is vital for our society and for the future of education, although I view education as a means rather than an end unto itself. If students choose to pursue higher education at the bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral level, it is indeed quite a commitment. For many the renumeration will be superb but not for all of them. The ability to foster debate and understanding across our society is another consequence invaluable for all.

I do not expect all of them to come out with views coincident with mine. My role is to expose them to many ideas from which each of them develops her or his own thinking and analytical approach. By paying it forward to the next generation, however, we are not only paying a compliment to our society but facilitating expanded knowledge and analyses which is how this country has always thrived and survived. It’s hard to overstate how fundamental this is for the United States to prosper in every way. FIN