You might think that I am a person who would pass over an article about $4,000 suits in the New York Times, but you would be wrong. Because the thing is, this article has a hell of a lot to say about higher education, I think, at least from my perspective.
Two things stood out to me. First, this passage.
When I learned about Frew, I assumed he was some rich designer in an atelier on Madison Avenue. That’s what Frew hopes to be one day, but for now the 33-year-old Jamaican immigrant works out of his ground-floor apartment near Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, and makes around $50,000 a year. His former living room consists of one large table piled with bolts of cloth and a form with a half-made suit. As Frew sewed a jacket, he explained how he customizes every aspect of its design — the width of the lapel, the number and size of the pockets — for each client. What makes a bespoke suit unique, he said, is that it’s the result of skills that only a trained hand can perform. Modern technology cannot create anything comparable.
As I watched Frew work, it became glaringly obvious why he is not rich. Like a 17th-century craftsman, he has no economy of scale. It takes Frew about 75 hours to make a suit — he averages about two per month — and he has no employees. A large part of his revenue is used to pay off his material expenses, and because his labor is so demanding, he relies on an outside salesman, who requires commissions. (Frew can’t even afford to make a suit for himself. When we met, he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.) While he hopes to one day hire full-time assistant tailors and rent a Manhattan showroom, he knows it will be a huge challenge to get there.
A couple of things about the above. First: Maybe it’s ok to make $50K a year if you’re doing something you believe in. That ain’t exactly poor, folks. Now, I’m willing to admit that in NYC it’s probably dangerously close to not being middle-class – I mean, I get the whole cost of living thing – but still: one will not die if one makes $50K a year, even in NYC, whatever the NYT might indicate. I will also note that it would be utterly ridiculous to wear a suit while one would be sewing suits. (See: Project Runway. Who the fuck is decked out in a suit while doing the hard labor of sewing? Nobody, because it would be completely uncomfortable. So that is a dumb comment on the part of the author, talking about the guy wearing shorts and a t-shirt. But then, he’s a poor black immigrant who cannot wear a $4,000 suit, and we all should note that, regardless of his comfort in doing his job.)
But the phrase “no economy of scale” sure did stand out to me and ring a giant bell in my head. And then I glanced back up at the preceding paragraph (the joys of reading on paper rather than electronically: you can return to a thing you otherwise would have glossed over), and I noted the following: “he explained how he customizes every aspect of its design” and then, “Modern technology cannot create anything comparable.”
Does this sound familiar to any of y’all? ‘Cause it sure does to me. Wearing non-fancy clothes to do heavy lifting? Check. Customizing every aspect of the design for the individual? Um, check. That is, in fact, the entire pedagogical premise behind “active learning” in the classroom. The inability of modern technology to create the particular product that Frew is selling? Um, YES. Look, I’ve taught online, and I have many students who’ve taken courses online, although not all of them have done so with me. They and I will tell you that it is not the same fucking thing as doing it face to face. So the question then becomes, does a $4 suit do the same thing that a $4,000 suit does?
Not, can it “work”? Sure it can. Just like a suit bought used from the Salvation Army can work for, say, an MLA interview. It looks like a suit. It doesn’t fit as well, and it’s not designed to do the best ever for you, but it’s fine, right? There may be stains, and sure, it might smell funny. But the price is right. Close to free, even. Beggars can’t be choosers. But is it the Platonic essence of suitness? No, surely not.
Now, you might say, do you really need the Platonic essence of suitness? Perhaps not. But isn’t the very problem that some people have the privilege of getting a real fucking suit, and going on their interviews in it, while others are left with the “close to free” option?
Now, maybe that’s fine, when we’re talking about suits. Maybe it’s fair to talk about the finest suits as a luxury item, that not all people can or should have access to. Are we willing to say that same thing about education? Some people surely are. I’m not one of those people.
Now, you might be saying, “But you are presenting a false dichotomy, Dr. Crazy! It’s not a bespoke suit vs. a Salvation Army one! You can get a suit that is decent and that is mass-produced! Think Macy’s! Think Ann Taylor!” To that, I say this:
Greenfield’s factory makes custom suits, which are known in the business as made-to-measure. Customers can go to a third-party boutique, like J. Press, to pick a fabric and be measured. The cloth and measurements are then sent to Brooklyn, where patterns are created, fabric cut and then sent through the production line of cutters and tailors. Just as Adam Smith described in “The Wealth of Nations,” there are huge efficiency gains when one complex process is broken down into constituent parts and each worker specializes in one thing. At Greenfield, one worker sews pockets all day long, and another focuses entirely on joining front and back jacket pieces. The labor involved in each suit’s construction is about 10 hours. The suits Greenfield makes typically retail at around $2,000.
Even with all those efficiency advantages, Greenfield isn’t without its difficulties. Demand has fallen just as the cost of raw materials has gone up. Manufacturers in China, where a suit can be made in about 30 minutes at a cost well below $100, are driving up the price of wool, which increases the prices of fancier fabrics too. A few decades ago, there were thousands of clothing factories in New York. Now Greenfield’s is one of only a handful left. He and his sons, Tod and Jay, who run the business with him, say there are several ways they could have made more money, but their two best bets are selling their building to a residential housing developer or moving their manufacturing operation to Asia.
Sentimentality aside, Greenfield told me that he has not even considered moving. Suiting is an apprenticeship business, and new employees learn their craft by watching the many people who have worked there for years. If they started over, they could never replicate that institutional knowledge. At the end of the day, he said, their only competitive advantage is that knowledge.
And then:
When I spoke to Frew, Rowland and the Greenfields, they talked about how there is now a large difference between what is monetizable and what is actually valuable. One of the defining attributes of capitalism is that the market determines what succeeds even if it means that the Kardashian Kollection might bring in more money than all the bespoke suits in the world.
So you see? Here are the problems: 1) value is not equal to price; 2) our business, the business of learning, just like the business of making a quality suits, relies on an apprenticeship system, because you can’t really learn how to do it without doing it while other people watch over you; 3) having a product available, i.e., the Kardashian Kollection, basically sets it up that people without certain kinds of resources will buy crap rather than saving up for something that isn’t crap.
The future of quality higher education is not MOOCs, just as the future of quality suits is not the Salvation Motherfucking Army. The future of quality higher education is not “increased online offerings,” just as the future of quality suits is not buying a fucking suit online from a department store. Sure, those are “options.” Whatever. Do you think that’s all the options that your kids deserve? Do you think that’s all the options that you deserve? Really?
Reassigned Time 2.0 
Hoo-YAH! Well spoken …er, written.. Crazy! Well done!
Nice analogy! Good job!
Nothing to add here; this is excellent.
I think there’s probably a range of online learning options, as well.
excellent
Thank you. This is terrific.
If I hadn’t just posted on the CSU English department ad that everyone is writing about, I would have linked to this post instead.
Thanks again.
Very apt analogy. I’ve increasingly found myself referring to my courses as “hand-crafted” or “artisanal,” in trying to describe how what I do is different from, and more valuable than, the pre-packaged sorts of courses, often straight from a publisher (or, yes, a MOOC) that many administrators seem to be favoring these days. I usually come down to emphasizing that, in my classes, the same person who created the assignments and activities monitors and grades them, and revises them, in small and large ways, each semester (and sometimes even mid-semester) to better guide the particular group of students who are taking this course and this institution toward developing the skills they need to develop. There is, indeed, a very close analogy to the process of measuring, fitting, and adjusting that goes into making a bespoke suit.
Like Kris, I think that this kind of teaching can also be done online. However, it’s labor-intensive, and doesn’t at all conform to the MOOC model as I understand it (if nothing else, the “massive” part means that the professor can only get a limited sense of what’s going on with the students). Some parts of MOOCs might provide useful materials for building a more tailored online course, but that’s true of TED talks and youtube videos and a bunch of other things. Real teaching goes well beyond creating an online textbook with a bunch of multimedia bells and whistles and some student-to-student interactive capabilities. As far as I can tell, that’s what most MOOCs are.
For me, this analogy highlights a dangerous possibility: “most people” will never be able to afford a bespoke suit, and will need a suit long before they could possibly save up the money for a bespoke one–and will therefore go to the Salvation Army or a department store, depending on their needs and budget….in fact, I would say I doubt many people even consider the bespoke option when buying a suit. I would be deeply concerned if education went the same way, a way that’s highlighted by Contingent Cassandra’s “artisanal” and “hand-crafted” terminology–bespoke, artisanal, and hand-crafted are reserved in our society _already_ for the very few. If we sell higher ed using the same terms, then, I think, more and more people will decide they can’t afford/don’t deserve face-to-face higher ed, and will feel even more justified for looking for a lower quality version (the Sally Ann version, if you will), than they already do–after all, if there’s no way you can afford an elite product like a bespoke suit, if face-to-face education starts being sold as bespoke education, will more people actually buy it? I’m not suggesting that this is a good thing–Dr. Crazy’s analogy is excellent, and makes sense to all of us–but just that putting education in the same class as other elite products perhaps isn’t a good way of arguing that it should be available to everyone.
Just like rich motherfuckers are never gonna buy their suits at the Salvation Army–or even The Men’s Wearhouse–and are gonna keep bespoke suitmakers in business, rich motherfuckers are never gonna send their kiddes to college on-line and are gonna keep bespoke higher education in business.
Oh, and BTW:
And then I glanced back up at the preceding paragraph (the joys of reading on paper rather than electronically: you can return to a thing you otherwise would have glossed over)
You know how you scroll down to read along a Web page on-line? Pro-Tip: You can scroll back up if you want!
PREACH.
@ Kris – I actually do think that “online” can be done well. I am not the person to do it (I finally have admitted to myself, but I think that this also has a lot to do with my 4/4 teaching load, but also probably with my disposition), but I do believe that the medium has possibilities and that it can be effective. My point in this post was less about “online courses in general” than it was about the way that online education is being and has been implemented in this country. It’s sold as a solution to the labor problem in higher education, the space and utilities costs at universities, etc. The result of not treating it with any sort of seriousness is that many online courses (perhaps not all, but I’d be inclined to say most) ARE NOT doing the work that they are capable of doing, and, further, there is little likelihood that they will improve because there is not adequate support to make them great. If we think of online education as an “easy” solution, it’s not a solution at all. (In this, I think I’m in total agreement with Cassandra.)
@Canuck Down South – yep, that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? And as a first-generation college student myself, I HATE that fact. One of the things that I said in my interview for this job, one of the things that was totally no-bullshit and not trying to sell myself to my future colleagues, was that I really wanted to teach this student population because this is the student population that I was. I think that it’s disgusting that “you people” – in other words, me, my people – wouldn’t have access to this version of education. I guess that’s actually why I think that the analogy that I made isn’t actually terrible or something that gives ammunition to the haters. Right now, I don’t think most people from backgrounds that I’m from realize the ways in which they are being shortchanged. I know that my cousins and half-brothers don’t get it. An education *isn’t* a luxury item. It’s a *necessity.* “Selling” it as a luxury item is exactly the thing that’s disgusting. Creating “classes” of education is exactly the thing that is disgusting. My point is that ALL higher education should be the bespoke version. (I know, I’m a pollyanna and an idealist.) Or at the very least the Macy’s version (which, let’s note, an education at my university probably is). You know what first generation college students understand? The cliche that you can’t get something for nothing. And you know what? That’s not the message that they’re getting.
@CPP – well, sure, you CAN. I was just saying that I’m a whole lot less likely to scroll back up, or to page back on an e-reader, electronically. On paper, all I’ve got to do is move my eyes. I’m lazy, yo. It’s nice to just have to move your eyes back up, no hands required 🙂 (I have an e-reader – I use it for things I don’t need to pay attention to; as for the internet, it’s a break from my “real” reading, so I also don’t attend to it in the same way.)
Amen, sister.
Ex-garmento turned lit professor LOVES this!
I’ve been thinking about this metaphor a lot, and especially the question of whether everyone gets or can get a “bespoke” education. Maybe the metaphor here for what we (at regional state schools offer) isn’t a bespoke suit or an off-the-rack Macy’s suit, but the affordable full-service experience that a good, small-town suit shop offers.
That is, you can go into a menswear store in many towns and buy an off-the-rack suit that costs no more than what you’d pay at Macy’s, but you get an experienced salesman (or even the owner) who will make you try on six or eight, scrutinize you closely in them, give you a professional opinion on what looks best on you–and then hem the pants and the sleeves or whatever to make the best off-the-rack option even better.
It’s not bespoke, but it’s not one-size-fits-all, either: you wind up looking your best, at a relatively affordable price, through the personal attention and engagement of a professional.
[…] you missed her post from earlier this week, I’ll show you a preview and encourage you to go read the whole post over at her place. First of all, she writes: You might think that I am a person who would pass over an article […]
I like Flavia’s comparison. I’m coming at trying to offer at least somewhat-tailored education in a 4/4 non-TT R2 situation from a different background than Dr. Crazy, since not only I but my parents went to fairly fancy colleges (though my grandparents did not; 3 of 4 of them had two-year degrees leading to professional certification, and two did that from blue-collar backgrounds; the other was the daughter of a doctor who died young, leaving his family in somewhat perilous financial circumstances). When I design projects for my own students, I’m often trying to replicate to the degree I can the experience I had doing independent work in my junior and senior years, with one-on-one advising. That’s not entirely possible, and I have to admit I’ve cut back a bit, partly in response to my own exhaustion. But I’m also feeling some external pressure to embrace the idea that our students aren’t “ready” for work quite as independent, or as individualized, as I was at the same age/stage. I don’t think that’s true. They definitely have less time to spend (which argues for shorter products), but I still think they’re capable of doing, and getting a lot out of, such projects, and I try to find ways to give them the experience without utterly exhausting myself.
However, there’s absolutely no way to “scale up” even further assignments that require regular, substantive consultation/feedback at multiple stages of a project that is designed to push students out of their (and to some extent my) comfort zone(s), and, as a result, to elicit often-idiosyncratic responses. I’m already really pushing it by trying to do this as part of 4/4 load (instead of the 2/3 or 3/3 the professional associations say I should have, given that all my sections are writing-intensive, or the 2/2 I had when teaching somewhat-similar courses at my graduate institution — an R1 pretty similar to my undergrad one). And my department is relying more and more on recently-hired adjuncts and other contingents to teach the class, and is experiencing pressure to offer more sections online. Both facts are, I think, contributing to the “don’t try to do too much” pressure.
My school is probably already Macy’s: pretty big, with options that can work quite well for most customers (though I hate using that word for students, but here it is an analogy, not a direct description), especially those willing to take some time to get to know the best, most discerning salespeople and/or find the tailor tucked away in some corner. It’s also pretty open to the shopper who wants to grab and go (stopping to pay first, please), with little one-on-one contact; the results of such forays are mixed. There might also be the equivalent of a few menswear shops tucked away within the larger edifice, here and there, in the guise of some of the smaller departments. And at least on the online side, there’s pressure to become the equivalent of an outlet store, offering a mass-produced product, with only low-paid help that has very little control over the larger structures within which they work. Another key feature of the outlet store is that, in a quest to be able to advertise “quality,” it is embracing more and more standardization, which can leave both students and professors feeling like cogs, or cattle (but probably works for others; the outlet store can be great if you know exactly what you need, and just happen to match a standard size, and look good in a commonly-available cut). This standardization will, I hope, make it hard for online learning programs to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. If so, that may be the salvation of those of us who prefer to be tailors, or at least experienced haberdashers, online or off.
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[…] Crazy wrote a post that illustrates, using a particularly apt metaphor, my own thoughts on MOOCs: “How Much is a $4,000 Suit Worth? Maybe As Much As a $4,000 Semester.” She summarizes an article about a bespoke suit maker, then […]
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