Wednesday, September 14, 2016

‘Starving the Beast’: A provocative look at the push to commodify higher education - Stephanie Merry, Washington Post

Should higher education be a profitable commodity or a public good? That’s the central question in the documentary “Starving the Beast.” Filmmaker Steve Mims turns his camera on the complicated battle over public universities and comes up with a movie that might be dry, but also feels necessary. “This is one of the country’s most important and least understood fights,” a narrator warns, and you can see why it’s so hard to grasp. The movie’s sprawling narrative requires significant mental energy just to tease out the knotty mess of interrelated causes and effects. https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/starving-the-beast-a-provocative-look-at-the-push-to-commodify-higher-education/2016/09/01/01bc5bea-6eeb-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html