Monday 24 October 2011

A Corporate-Culture Anthropologist Speaks Out Against Anthropology

This is truly wrong-headed. Anthropologist J. Harper has decided that Florida's governor, Rick Scott (pictured below) is fundamentally correct when he avers that in Florida anthropologists are superfluous and educational expenditures to support their tutelage is a waste. Dr. Harper sees the discipline in the way of a dysfunctional family, and the prospects for gainful employment as less than hope-inspiring. 
     I believe that anthropologist Harper is being ruled by the belief that an education is a means to an end—i.e. a jobalthough she does allow that anthropology is intrinsically valuable as a course of study.  I'm very concerned by her frank assessment, since it means that the university is once more becoming the 'playground' of the elite, and that not only can't the rest of us afford to continue to attend, but also that at the end of the day it's throwing good money after bad, since the jobs aren't there when we come out.
     For all sorts of reasons I have a suspicion that this day and age will be looked back on as a watershed moment in the history of the Middle Class. I see the current situation in education, of which Dr. Harper writes so bluntly, as evidence of a return to a kind of feudalisminvolving the widespread occurrence of indentured servitudeas one after another of today's Middle-Class university students are forced to work for years after their degrees to repay their feudal lords, the banks. 
Governor Scott of Florida

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