Who is on "our" side?

[Martin Eisenstadt]

I think that people sometimes need to get organized to fight what is wrong.

"Well, have we a ram among the sheep?"

There are different ways of organizing.  Other than the great Glen S. McGhee and his FHEAP, I'm not aware of any formal public organizations that deal specifically with our issues.  

Frankly I wonder how many people even understand our issues.  People in education seem to be afflicted with socialist conformist syndrome, and people who aren't so afflicted tend not to be in education too long.  

I don't know that Libertarians are particularly on track either.  Half of them are "social" libertarians, meaning they are essentially either gay or pot smokers (or gay pot smokers), single issue self-interest types.  Of the economic libertarians half of them are Ron Paul types who want to talk all day about Tri-laterals and the Federal Reserve, and don't know or care about practical free market higher education issues.  (As if higher education could ever be called practical.)  And don't get me wrong, I like Ron Paul thematically (less government is good), it's just the implementation that tends to go awry.  

When Spellings was running the DoEd she tried without success to get the cartel to install some "accountability" into the process, such as measures of learning/teaching outcome success.  So although the regime change obviously put that on the back burner, clearly there are some people in the uppermost regions of higher education who understand the notion that for accreditation to be justified it has to mean something.  

If accreditation is going to stand for "quality" you need to be able to measure the quality.  If it's just going to be protectionist thugs beating up on newcomers and cut rate competitors it is less than worthless and needs to go.  

I do see that message in other contexts.  For example, the National Right to Work Foundation is fighting against union goons and forced unionism in the workplace.  But everyone has to work, not everyone has to start up a college.  I see a limited market for members, and an economically outclassed one at that.  Guerilla warfare?  Unless the Organians shame everyone into peace the options seem limited.