So asks Oso Raro, one of my favorite new bloggers, in a meditation on the academic life as labor, vocation, and practice.

Oso Raro writes,

Well, Mary, we might not be working at the looms, but have you been to a modern university lately? Most public R1s and R2s are proverbial knowledge factories. Tell me what kind of personal interaction and guidance can happen in a lecture of 500 or 1000 students? Or even in "small" seminars of 30 people? If this is not the mass production of brains, I don't know what is. Even the private colleges and universities that attempt to foster individual relationships between students and faculty through low faculty-student ratios suffer from the increasing consumer-driven attitudes of students and parents which attempt (and depressingly often succeed) in turning professors into overeducated shop girls.

If you haven't yet visited Oso Raro's blog Slaves of Academe, you're missing out. Be sure to catch up on the reading in the archives.