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What I learned from for-profit education

It was the second week of UNIV 101: University of Phoenix New Student Orientation, and Dr. U. was talking about goals.

“What is goals?” she asked in her melodious Polish accent. There were four of us in UNIV 101, me and Ty and Rob and Junior, and no one seemed quite sure what to make of the question. Thus far there had been little evidence of Socratic irony or indirection holding a prominent place in the pedagogical toolkit here at Phoenix, so if Dr. U. was asking what is goals? then the answer was almost certainly somewhere in the…

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is an associate editor of Harper’s Magazine. His last article for the magazine, “Supernumerary,” appeared in the March issue. His first novel will be published next year by Tin House Books

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