I see more and more scholars offering online seminars for a fee. Sometimes for a relatively low price (e.g. here https://hcommons.social/@medievalists/112236157667793040), sometimes for 800 to 1000 Euros. This seems to be especially common in the Anglo-Saxon world. I find this highly problematical and, frankly, unethical.
Who is the target audience? Who should pay for it? Students of these academics? Who hope to get better grades by participating?
Although I understand that academics are under pressure and are looking for alternative sources of income: This cannot be the answer!
Education should be free and available to all! What do you think?
The Southern strategy was the lever used in the US used by the GOP; Reagan (and Thatcher) were water carriers for far right wealth, they are templates of sorts. Debt laden higher education was deployed in the UK and Australia.
It’s a package in mainstream economics: privatization, deregulation, consolidation, austerity, debt burdened working people.
@easysociology@sociology@academicchatter@academicsunite
Education has already the target conflict of “learning to learn something” versus “learning to get some useful certificate” (which often might enable access to further levels of qualifications), which is already a hard conflict.
Trivial to see, that putting that into another commercial tradeoff can only improve things. Sorry, my sarcasm spills over today.