Critical Commentary on The "Professional Society of Academics"

In July 2013, Shawn Warren released “A New Tender for the Higher Education Social Contract”, which discussed Shawn Warren’s philosophy concerning the current “status quo” of higher education and his alternative proposal of a “Professional Society”.

While I have heard of his ideas before while I was teaching at community college, I’m now seriously engaging with them. A company that I’ve been doing consulting work for, Gitcoin, wanted to start a “mentorship” program to allow programmers to teach other programmers. I thought that the PSA system might be able to provide some guidance to the program. So I decided to read Shawn Warren’s paper deeply and write some commentary.

The Argument

According to Shawn Warren, higher education is composed of a “triad” of actors:

• Finance (in charge of providing the funds to pay for the ‘service’ and keep higher education going)
• Service (in charge of providing the higher education ‘service’)
• Representation (in charge of representing the interests of ‘service’ providers)

This ‘triad’ worked…for a time…

• The role of “Finance” had traditionally been fulfilled by state and national governments. As long as governments keeps spending more and more money to keep the system functioning, all is well. But when governments implement austerity or reallocate resources to other sectors, higher education collapses. Higher education lives and dies on the whims of politicians.
• The role of “Service” had traditionally been fulfilled by institutions (colleges and universities), who are in charge of managing academia (the college instructors and researchers). But institutions, serving as middlepeople, have their own interests and desires that may be separate from that of the academia that they manage. As a result of this disconnect of interests, institutions fund services that are unrelated or semi-related to “higher education” (examples: sport franchises, administration, health and food services, recreation, alumni foundations). This drives up the costs of service, which needs to be paid for: either by governments or through tuition increases.
• The role of “Representation” is traditionally been fulfilled by unions, who represents the interests of academia in their arguments against institutions and governments. However, globalization, outsourcing, virtual classrooms, and MOOCs (Massively Open Online Classes) has generally weakened the roles of unions.

Students, perhaps considered one of the primary consumers of the ‘service’ of higher education, actually plays a limited role in this triad, and exists solely as a person who contracts the services of the middlepeople. The relationship between students and teachers are as follows:

• A teacher signs up with the institution.
• Students contacts the institution and requests for instruction.
• The institution connects the students with the teacher.
• Students pay tuition to the institution.
• The institution pays the teacher a salary.

Note that the institutions are not really necessary to establish the connection between the teacher and the student. We can eliminate the middlepeople altogether and change the relationship:

• A student wants to establish a direct relationship with a qualified teacher (“mentorship”, “tutoring”, “consulting”, etc.).
• Student finds a qualified teacher who is willing to provide a direct relationship.
• The student pays tuition to the teacher.

There is just one catch to this modified relationship, as Shawn Warren discussed:

Unlike professional proscriptions, under the triad social contract it is not illegal for a PhD in philosophy to refer to himself as an academic, hang a shingle outside the walls of an accredited institution and contribute to the higher education of society by offering expertise to the public for a fee.

It is just illegal to do so for credit, the one thing of market value and a pure social construct like professional licensure or institutional accreditation.

Even if the student has personally verified the teacher’s CV/resume, and even if the teacher is doing a good job, even if the student have learned something important…it all means nothing if there’s no certificate at the end to verify that you have done it to a prospective employer.

Higher education does not promise mere “knowledge” to students. It provides something more valuable - a piece of paper that easily demonstrates to employers that you have gained knowledge, making you more employable in the marketplace.

But who is best qualified to give out that piece of paper (credential)? According to the current triad model, it is the institution who gets the power of accreditation, and it uses that power to certify certain academics…giving them the power to teach courses that enable students to receive credentials.

But who are best qualified to decide who is an academic? Only other academics! As Shawn wrote:

1) all aspects of pedagogy, curriculum and evaluation can only be formulated by those experts that possess the relevant contributory knowledge

2) academics not only possess and ply this knowledge but generate it through research

This positions them to be at least among the best qualified to develop, approve and apply the accreditation and credential functions of higher education. …

This is as it should be given the subject is education, for which standards and regulation are necessarily a matter of consensus authority. That is to say any group of academics, including members of a new professional society, can form a regulatory service in accreditation and credential standards and approval. After all, legitimate opposition to such a group can only come from other expert academic opinion.

In other words, we can bypass the institution entirely, and instead place accreditation in the hands of a “professional society” that represents the consensus of academia. The professional society can decide who is best qualified to hand out credentials, by evaluating academics’ competence and teaching ability. The institution does not need to regulate academia - academia can self-regulate itself.

And thus, we have a new proposed triad of higher education - the PSA Model.

• Finance - the “students” of higher education will pay for the services of “higher education” directly to service providers.
• Service - academia will sell their ‘services’ directly to students, and compete against each other in a free market
• Representation - the Professional Society of Academics, in charge of representing service providers in their conflict between themselves and between students

The Professional Society of Academics (or PSA) can take charge of all the roles that the institution has previously been in charge of, while shedding the unnecessary services that do not directly relate to higher education. The removal of these “unnecessary services” could lead to immense cost savings…making higher education more affordable.

In addition, by removing the institution (the middlepeople) from the picture, the academics would be able to capture more of the “value” of the higher education services they provide. This can directly translate to higher pay (making academia a more rewarding career path).

So that’s the idea anyway.

(As an aside: Institutions would still play a valuable role in the PSA model though, but it would not be via accredition. Instead, institutions would sell valuable services to the students and academics, serving as a “vendor” to the system. For example, an institution could sell access to support staff and facilities to academics, enabling them to teach effectively.)

Criticism

There’s the implementation details that has to be taken into account:

• How do you create and organize the PSA?
• How do you get students to trust the PSA would provide proper oversight over instructors?
• How do you prevent the PSA from engaging in “mission drift”, slowly grabbing more power for themselves, and turning into yet another institution?

These questions are important and will take some time to answer.

But my main concern is whether the main role of the PSA (to provide accreditation) may even be necessary. As Shawn pointed out, learning can take place outside of any framework (the current triad or the PSA model). A certificate merely prove that you have learned it.

But people may not care about that proof. If there is no need for proof, then there is no need for a PSA…and academics can simply deal with students directly.

For example, when I signed up for Gitcoin’s mentorship program, Gitcoin never asked me for any certificate proving that I could actually “mentor” any of the programming subjects that I signed up for. It is assumed that I actually knew the stuff that I claimed to knew. It is expected that I wouldn’t lie, because prospective students can do background checks and interviews to make sure I’m not lying. If I say that I know C++, but I can’t answer basic questions about C++, students have the right to be suspicious.

In most of the professional world, it is also assumed that I know the stuff I claimed to know - I am expected to create my own resume to demonstrate my expertise, and most employers trust this resume as being a somewhat accurate indicator of my knowledge - only doing background checks and interviews to make sure I’m not lying on it.

Mere “knowledge”, of course, is not enough to secure a mentorship gig or get hired by a company - students and employers rely on additional information (samples of prior work, references, etc.) before making a decision. This additional information, of course, can also be provided by an academic setting. But this is separate from the credential.

Of course, there are places where you can expect people to demand proof of knowledge - such as the medical industry. In places where regulatory constraints or informal expectations require people to be certified by an external agency, I could see the PSA role serving as a viable alternative to traditional academia. However, for many other industries, where certification is not required, the PSA may not be necessary.

This appears to be the case in the industry I’m in - programming. There are many programmers who have received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (and thus, has a formal credential in programming). But there are also other types of programmers:

• programmers who have “self-taught” themselves programming
• programmers who have received Bachelor’s degrees in other fields before transitioning to programming
• programmers who have attended bootcamps specifically designed to teach programming (but lacks formal accreditation)

The fact that these programmers are able to be gainfully employed, with or without a credential in programming, is telling.

Therefore, it is unlikely that the PSA model could work for Gitcoin’s mentorship program. I do think it’s a worthy model to explore though, and may be more applicable to other industries. I thank Shawn Warren for writing up an alternative approach to academia and for demonstrating a possible approach to reforming higher education.