And as for the sentence: I’m gunnin’ for Molly Bloom’s record.

Maybe I need to just sit down with a really big sheet of newsprint and draw out some kind of chart of all the economic transactions I see as being associated with higher ed, starting with the ways property taxes pay for primary and secondary education and the gatekeeping functions that income inequalities serve in such circumstances, and moving on to the market-based exchange transactions of cash for tuition, plus the economics of evaluation and the cash that writing programs bring into higher education, and the concerns students might have about the Marxian exchange value versus use value of education, and how much grades are worth, and what the economic value of the subjects you learn in class is versus what the economic value of the stuff you can’t learn from a textbook (time management, networking, group interaction, prioritizing, et cetera), and the economic payoff of different types of degree, at different schools, and in different majors, and how all those circumstances swirl around, influence, and are influenced by the actual work-as-economic-activity that goes on in the day-to-day doings of the writing classroom.

Don’t forget high-stakes standardized testing, which is like a kajillion-dollar-a-year industry; is that what you mean by the “economics of evaluation”? Then there’s the commercial textbook industry to think of as well, and the fact that many departments (including mine) have industry partners that provide internships and scholarships to students, buy computer equipment and software for universities, etc. Whew. You’ve got your work cut out for you, my friend. At CCCC 2003, my advisor from the U of Tennessee, Michael Keene, was part of a panel about high-stakes testing, and his presentation was called “Follow the Money.” I’m sure if you emailed him, he’d give you some information about the unholy alliances between the textbook industry and the standardized test industry.

Your first question about the implications of seeing students as economic beings within the context of higher education is pretty much my reason for doing this dissertation, in that it’s the question I hope to answer. So I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

To explain a little more fully: for the most part, rhetoric and composition has been pretty good in its recent grappling with identity politics. Rhet/comp scholars have done a lot of smart work in examining the concerns race, ethnicity, and gender bring into the writing classroom, and there are the beginnings of an impressive corpus of scholarship on the intersections of sexuality, literacy, and pedagogy, as well. But class, inasmuch as it always bears an economic component, has been thus far mostly neglected in rhet/comp studies except (1) as a look at the economic circumstances of instructors and (2) as an exigency, rationale, or starting point [rather than continuing circumstance] for certain types of pedagogy.

So, in that regard, I’m more interested in those “forces themselves” that you mention, but in understanding students as partly constituting those forces, rather than as being the powerless victims of them. The powerless victims thing seems to be a hallmark of the way that a whole lot of people think about their relationship to the economy, including most rhet/comp scholars vis-a-vis their students. (There’s that Susan Miller quotation I’m always invoking about teachers who think of students as “presexual, prepolitical, preeconomic beings.” Not an attitude I much care for.)

If I understand you correctly, you’re asking how much one might see students as being pushed around by the economic consequences of grading, and I don’t have an easy answer, because all of the transactions associated with higher education feel incredibly complex. Maybe I need to just sit down with a really big sheet of newsprint and draw out some kind of chart of all the economic transactions I see as being associated with higher ed, starting with the ways property taxes pay for primary and secondary education and the gatekeeping functions that income inequalities serve in such circumstances, and moving on to the market-based exchange transactions of cash for tuition, plus the economics of evaluation and the cash that writing programs bring into higher education, and the concerns students might have about the Marxian exchange value versus use value of education, and how much grades are worth, and what the economic value of the subjects you learn in class is versus what the economic value of the stuff you can’t learn from a textbook (time management, networking, group interaction, prioritizing, et cetera), and the economic payoff of different types of degree, at different schools, and in different majors, and how all those circumstances swirl around, influence, and are influenced by the actual work-as-economic-activity that goes on in the day-to-day doings of the writing classroom.

For which I’d be grateful for any feedback on: how do you see those factors as fitting together? Which seem more important, and which seem less important? Which are connected, and which not, in your eyes?

A question that comes to mind, is what are the implications of viewing the students as economic beings in their everyday studies within the university?

If we adopt this view, should we focus on the significance of the economic forces in their influence on the cultural side of education, or should we delve deeper into the economic forces themselves (that make students continuous economic beings) in an effort to find other (perhaps causal) factors of larger significance?

For example, the imperitives to receive good grades can be seen as hindering the reception of the intended cultural message of the course. So, because the students are forced to act as economic beings to satisfy their economic concerns (good grades), they may (and perhaps unintensionally) miss the larger cultural meaning of the course that could contribute to their enhanced personal utility (cultural side).

The implied subquestion being here is, what holds more weight as the main area of focus: how economic skews the cultural, or perhaps some other logic of greater significance (perhaps relating to our understanding of class relationships) arising from the better comprehension of students’ actions as constant economic beings?

Or does the focus on students as economic beings fit best only in localizing the questions to rhetoric and composition, and the larger questions are outside the realm of this specific rhetorical context?