PIERS MORGAN: Woke destruction of a great educator should terrify us

As far as I know, the 1st amendment still exists. So it needs a valid litigation to remind citizens it's worth protecting.

SGT (Join to see) This kind of change in higher education institutions is causing me to seriously consider retirement. I've been at Western Governors University for 10 years and Indiana University before that. The beauty of working for Western Governors is two-fold: first, I work remotely - from home - and don't have to worry about the "politics" of the faculty hallway, and secondly, with 130,000 active students worldwide we have so many students who are truly interested in learning rather than "just getting my degree." Granted, our students are older (average age at graduation is 37) and 80% of them work full-time in addition to a full load of classes, but I can see a difference in their philosophies compared to the younger, more privileged students at IU. My students at IU were far more affluent but not as free-thinking as my current students. Most of the IU students came to school with their parents' views, not even understanding the underlying paradigms of them; they simply regurgitated what they had heard at home.
So what is causing me to consider retirement, especially since my students are more free-thinkers? It's because WGU was established 25 years ago based on a business model rather than an academic model. And, as with all businesses, more concern goes to the bottom line than to the client. We are besieged with requirements coming from upper-level management, most of whom have a business background rather than an academic one. As a result, what we educators feel is the mainstay of what we do - providing a quality education - is not seen as important by management. For them, it's the numbers. How many can we graduate this year? How can we squeeze more students (read tuition fees) into the already heavy caseloads of our faculty? And I am becoming disillusioned.

Thank you for the information!