FHEAP goes to Washington, D.C.

Florida Higher Education Accountability Project

FHEAP goes to Washington, D.C.

The Capitol Building, on the hill.

The Quest begins (Oct 2004).

The Cannon Building on the Hill

McGhee in his lobbyist togs outside Representative Boyds office.

Outside Cannon, as you get off the subway

The LaRouche PAC for Kerry (!) during Flu Vaccine scandal

US Dept of Ed, 1990K street, front entrance

Well hidden, with no signs!

This was as far as I got. Seventh floor lobby.

You might make out the image of a white shirted guard just below the left hand seal. What was odd was that the reception desk was manned by another guard as well. I think that, ever since some fanatics fly a jet liner into the Pentagon, that the whole town has gone over the edge.

Anyway, I signed the register "Reform" under the purpose of visit, sat down, and started rattling off names from my phone list to see who was in. Bonnie, from NACIQI, wasn't in. The next person must have panicked, I think it was Carol Griffiths, and had me thrown out by the uniformed guards. (Funny, she seemed so nice on the phone. She was even the one that suggested I focus on faculty credentials!)

For the next 20 minutes in the ground floor lobby I ran through my roster, calling on my cell phone, but no one would answer. They even sent a guard down from the seventh floor, and he waited until I left the building before going back up stairs! Outside, I started talking to staff visiting from Atlanta, who would tell me nothing. I went back to Congressman Boyd's office, trying to get an appointment through his LA, but DOE just blew him off as well. Apparently, Boyd has no clout with DOE.

Sphere No. 6 (1963-1965) by Arnaldo Pomodoro

This last is just up the street from the Capitol, across from the Smithsonian, and it summed up my whole experience of Washington DC: a glittering, shiny sphere on the outside, but completely HOLLOW on the inside, with gears meshing and total ugliness deep within it. “Sphere No. 6,” (1963-1965) by Arnaldo Pomodoro (b. 1926), located in Hirshhorn Park.

This sculpture beautifully captures my entire experience. In fact, throughout my subsequent work over the years in Max Weber's bureaucratic theory, Pareto, Michels, and especially Gramsci and Foucault, this sculpture continues to resonate with me. The manifest contradition between the outward presentation and the inner reality of higher ed in America, and its bureaucratic infrastructure, continues to fascinate me. I call it the "accountability gap" in higher education.

So, this is the story of my abortive visit with these folks that are the federal agency that (supposedly) watches over the accrediting agencies (like SACS) to make sure they follow Sec 496 regulations of the US Higher Education Act (HEA 1992) But they don't.

The reason for this is simple: both SACS and the feds want to keep all the funds flowing smoothly and copiously to the educational institutions -- so they are all in it together. Without these funds (Pell and Perkins grants and all the guaranteed student loans) students would just be unemployed workers, so these funds serve a very important function by creating a reserve work force OUT of the job market. UPenn Prof Ivar Berg said it best, I think: colleges are just aging vats.