Para-academia is the future

As universities keep imploding...

Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863

Note: since writing this post, I’ve announced that I’m launching my own para-academic organization, along with co-founders Shannon Nangle and Ryan Artrip. Check it out.

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What’s going on in higher ed right now sucks. Period full stop. I know it because I see it. I used to be part of it and most of my friends are still there. I hear stories about budget cuts, program closures, unbridled censorship, and edtechification all the time. It’s terrible.

So I hope what I’m about to say isn’t insensitive. The truth is that it’s going to be a long time before the intellectual life that used to be sustained by academia returns in any recognizable form. I don’t want to paint an uncomplicated picture of the past, but things were once much better than they are now. There was a glorious but historically anomalous moment whose tail end I caught as an undergrad. I also don’t want to be a doomsayer, but the premise of this post is that the situation won’t improve any time soon.

Since I quit the tenure track earlier this year, I’ve been looking for ways to ply my trade beyond traditional settings. In doing so, I’ve realized that para-academia is more than a blip on the radar. Para-academia is the term I use to describe organizations that provide university-style programming beyond traditional academic settings. Their market is adults seeking edification, fulfillment, and, for many, a community to call their own.

In the 1990s, my mom took political science courses at a community college. She already had a B.A., but she wanted to keep learning without enrolling in grad school. Today, she might check out The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research instead.

There are a lot of organizations like BISR. I’m affiliated with the Acid Horizon Research Commons and Weirdosphere. Like them, most para-academic schools have a well-defined area of focus: other examples include Morbid Anatomy and The School for Poetic Computation. Some, like The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, used to be part of an accredited institution. Some were established by well-known scholars while others have basically no cred.

All things considered, we’re likely to see more para-academic schools emerge as time goes on, especially those focused on the humanities. Here’s why.

1. Supply and demand. The US overproduces social science and humanities PhDs relative to demand — that is, demand from degree-seeking students. If this year has taught me anything, it’s that plenty of people want to learn about anti-racist philosophies of love, compulsory heterosexuality, and other decidedly academish topics in settings that give them a taste of the college experience (unlike, say, Reddit or TikTok). All the better if they don’t have to take finals.

2. What technology taketh away, it giveth. Technology is strip-mining the humanities one curriculum redesign at a time. But since humanities education rarely has to involve more than absorbing media and communicating with other people, it’s a good fit for nontraditional environments, like Zoom or the back room of a bar. In other words, tech reduces the overhead that’s long been part of the rationale for universities’ massive budgets. These days, it’s not hard to run humanities programs as effective startups.

3. People need friends. The “shadow pandemic” of loneliness isn’t going anywhere. Para-academia provides a container for friendship that may not be as robust as the mythic American Undergrad Experience — which is less common in practice than the stereotype would have it — but can still do the trick. I’ve experienced this myself, and it’s really nice.

The most problematic aspect of all of this, as far as I’m concerned, has to do with the politics of privatization. As a private sector phenomenon (I include charitable orgs in the private sector), para-academia forces us to think about higher ed’s putative obligation to produce not just employable workers, but citizens who recognize themselves as citizens, that is, as weavers of our shared social fabric. Right now, we’re watching that fabric disintegrate in real time, and I’d hate to come across as cheering on something linked to its demise, howsoever indirectly.

But I don’t think the politics are that simple. And even if they were, they’d still be awfully abstract, miles away from what the day-to-day is like for those most affected by the present chaos. In my wildest dreams, tuition is free and work for professors is abundant and richly rewarded, underwritten by policies that enshrine widespread belief in the value of higher ed. As it is, we’re further away from that vision than we’ve ever been, at least in my lifetime.

At this point, I’d rather fight for a viable model of education where intrinsically-motivated students can learn from professors who aren’t fighting terrible working conditions at every turn. Yes, para-ac faculty are, in general, no less precariously employed or better paid than they’d be as adjuncts. But the nontraditional path can give you more freedom and dignity. If you’ve been in the adjunct trenches, you know how much that means.

I have more to say about para-academia, but this is as solid an introduction as I can muster for now. [Edit: here’s a follow-up: “What Is Para-Academia?”]. I’m watching this phenomenon closely; it’s a small reason for hope in these difficult times.

Happy new semester, everyone.