Dr D’Angelo’s hidden chord (three utopias?)
In this article we attempt to envision what utopian higher education could be given the realities that currently shape students’ experiences. Postsecondary education is fraught with admissions that favor those with social, cultural, and economic capital; with course enrollment, class size, and instructor accessibility governed by bureaucratic labyrinths and austerity measures; and with major and career selection constrained by looming student debt. As higher education perpetually reproduces social stratification and increasingly mimics corporate practices, it is imperative to ask who and what higher education is for. Why do we continue to engage in it? Are there ways to salvage it from within, or does it require demolishing, clearing the rubble, and building from scratch? Can a utopian version of higher education exist at all if wider social relations endure? Using speculative fiction, this piece grapples with re-envisioning higher education as students’ daily lives, and the world at large, remain within the confines of capitalist realism.