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It all feels very precarious right now.
As someone who is not teaching this semester and has no institutional role, I can only watch what is happening in higher education as it -- like the rest of society -- is roiled by the effects of the novel coronavirus. I am a bystander.
But as a bystander, I feel as though I can maybe see things with some clarity. I do not have to act in the moment to mitigate an ongoing disruption. I can observe and note and think.
In the immediate aftermath of the election of Donald Trump in 2016, I wrote a post, a sort of marker for myself in which I declared, “We’re going to need our institutions.” I believe robust institutions are vehicles for guarding against our individually selfish natures. If there is something larger than ourselves that we belong to, we are protected even when we may wobble individually.
This week is revealing the truth of that prediction. I wish I could claim some kind of clairvoyance, but the reality is that I’d been witnessing (and experiencing) the problem of declining institutions for quite some time. President Trump felt like an additional threat because he’d made it clear that he had little belief in or need for institutions during his campaign.
His actions over the last three-plus years have shown that one of the institutions he had little time for was the presidency itself. President Trump’s address in the Oval Office, meant to calm Wall Street jitters, instead resulted in yet another plunge. Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, reportedly the people responsible for the substance and language of the statement, are rank amateurs at governing, just like their boss. This is what it means to abandon an institution.
While there’s little doubt that Donald Trump has degraded our institutions while in office, it’s important to note that this trend did not start with him. A President Trump is only elected if people have already lost faith. Indeed, at the time of his election, two-thirds of voters did not think that Donald Trump had the temperament or qualifications to be president. Twenty percent of those voted for him anyway.
The crisis is revealing the precariousness of our institutions, including our higher education institutions, and how damaging it is to live under an endless “do more with less” ethos. What I am seeing is reports of institutions that are clearly not positioned to navigate what’s coming with as few lasting negative ramifications as possible. They are simply too fragile and are now at risk for breaking.
This is all despite the dedicated work of the individuals inside of those institutions doing their best to salvage some learning out of what is going to be an incredibly disruptive event. My Twitter feed filled with instructors, librarians and learning designers is pulsing with information and guidance to help transition to working online.
But of course it is ridiculous to believe that we can make such a sudden shift with any kind of broad success no matter everyone’s best efforts. It’s a fantasy to believe otherwise.
It’s not unlike the fantasy that we could continue to run our public higher education institutions effectively with a majority contingent workforce. That crisis was much slower in unfolding, but it has been every bit as disruptive. We can pretend that we’ve managed it, but that doesn’t make it true.
What are we doing for students who depend on the room and board they already paid for for their food and shelter? Will they get a refund? A credit? How many of our hand-to-mouth institutions could even do such a thing without risking their own existence? I hope that our higher ed institutions are able to act in ways that fundamentally serve our students during this time, but I fear they are too degraded to do so, even if they desire it.
Right now, I am seeing far too many stories of individuals trying to manage as best they can, rather than institutions bringing us together.
The election of Donald Trump revealed the existing loss of faith in institutions.
The novel coronavirus has revealed how bad things can get when we fail to maintain the institutions themselves. I have to believe that some institutions aren’t going to survive.
On the other hand, maybe this is a wake-up call for us to band together to reinvigorate these institutions.
Who knows which is more likely? That’s not a prediction I’m prepared to make.
