Today, we walk among the ruins of an institution that once had a larger purpose. It’s not clear what role universities should play in society, and to what or to whom they are accountable, other than their corporate interests.
—Johann N. Neem, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, March 22, 2022
American colleges and universities have become corporatized like their nominally non-profit healthcare cousins. So, no . . . tuition will not be going down. Since the 1980s, educational and medical institutions gradually relinquished their public service mission in order to run their operations “like a business.”
Patients became healthcare consumers. Students became individualized learners. Doctors became healthcare providers. Professors became contingent instructors. The Public became The Market.
Leaving aside healthcare for the moment (which I wrote about here, here, and here), consider the corporatization of education. It’s the sad story of an institution dedicated to knowledge creation devolving into an expensive job-training operation. Corporatization has been great for Big Business and for college presidents. When college becomes a site for job preparation, American businesses reduce their costs considerably. Rather than operating in-house training programs for new employees (a cost), corporations endow university programs targeted toward their needs (a tax-deductible benefit). Corporations, through their funded programs, shape course offerings and college majors. Their recruiters arrive on campus every spring for a few weeks of interviewing; they identify the high performers and scoop them up.
Academia in the United States has never been an ivory tower; close collaborations between academic experts and the US defense sector have been well-documented. But the hollowing-out of academia through the devaluing of liberal arts, the promotion of skills-based rather than discipline-based college majors, and the ascent of college administrators have reduced the scope of scholarly pursuits once central to the university.
Nicolaus Mills highlights the conjunction between the expansion of university bureaucracies and corporatization:
The administrators who occupy the highest ranks in . . . university bureaucracies are those who have professionally benefited the most from corporatization. . . . A new, permanent administrative class now dominates higher education. At the top are the college and university presidents who earn a million dollars or more and serve on numerous corporate boards . . . .
A still bigger change in how higher education is managed lies in its growing number of administrators. . . . Administrators have become a greater presence in college and universities while faculty have been in decline.
Back in the day, we had a Dean of Students, a Dean of the Liberal Arts College, and a Dean of the School of Medicine. We’re way beyond that now. Current job listings include: Assistant Dean of Student Assistance and Support Services and Associate Dean of Social Emotional Learning and Culture. And don’t get me started on Distance Learning. These are the university middlemen and middlewomen, the so-called baby deans, administrators, and content specialists. They don’t teach or do research. They manage students, harangue faculty, and suck up resources.
The middlemen, baby deans, administrators, and Distance Learning “specialists” justify their existence by implementing “policies” that are determined by what the other colleges are doing and by perceived market demand. Programs are shaped by how they will be marketed and how they will be staffed.
Market forces are acknowledged and responded to by administrators, but they are also revered by many university presidents and politicians. This is another reason why critical inquiry and the transmission of knowledge increasingly are pushed into the background.
Law Professor Paul Campos considers how higher education has become a political football:
I do think it’s worth emphasizing in this context that the politics of higher education are by their nature inescapable, especially under current conditions.
Specifically, the idea that the fundamental function of the university is to preserve, extend, and transmit cultural knowledge while teaching young people to think critically is itself a contested political position. Plenty of people in American culture and politics, mainly on the right but some on the left as well, don’t support this, because they believe that independent critical thinking is either bad in itself — this belief is the essence of reactionary politics of all stripes — or should give way to more pressing priorities.
Our corporate masters care about rankings and credentials; they fit with the corporate ladder worldview. A degree from a “selective” college enhances an individual’s reputation and legitimizes hierarchical advancement, whether or not a person is talented, disciplined, or knowledgeable. When I was a vulnerable Assistant Professor, a prominent (tenured, white, male) Stanford University professor assured me, “Good work is rewarded.” Bullshit. That’s the meritocracy myth. The reality is much messier, frequently nasty, and overtly political.
The corporate citizen (not to mention, a tuition-paying parent) sees college in terms of material payoffs. Accumulating credits for a degree is a step toward accumulating lucrative life outcomes. In school, students-as-consumers face unwanted requirements that may be tangential to future rewards, and many are unhappy. So the corporatized university seeks to sweeten the deal in various ways. They provide campus amenities, encourage “gamification” of online courses, and upgrade technology and multimedia classrooms. None of this supports or improves teaching. It does beg the question: do higher education leaders know what education is?
History instructor Jonathan Wilson observes:
I’ve watched supposed experts and consultants trumpet “disruptive” solutions that . . . seem to be based on a conviction that learning is fundamentally unpleasant and teaching is a basically cruel thing to do to someone, rather than on the conviction that education as such is profoundly enriching and freeing, if we can just manage to do it reasonably well.
In focusing on the instrumentalities of education, Americans have lost sight of its true value. What does it mean—and why is it good—to be an educated person? It’s a cliche to say that education broadens your horizons. But it’s true.
With study, engagement, and curiosity, you can learn about nature, yourself, and the world. At its best, college is the opportunity to step out of the rush of daily life for a time to read, to reflect, and to understand. Then you realize, that no matter how much you study and learn, there is always more to explore. The great thing about the university is the guidance of scholars—mentors who open the doors to intellectual discovery. Then you leave the classroom, knowing how to continue your education on your own. For the rest of your life.
Universities are factories of human knowledge. They’re also monuments to individual ignorance. We know an incredible amount, but I know only a tiny bit. College puts students in classrooms with researchers who are acutely aware of all they don’t know. . . .[and] a humble awareness of the limits of knowledge is their first step toward discovering a little more.
To overcome careerism and knowingness and instill in students a desire to learn, schools and parents need to convince students (and perhaps themselves) that college has more to offer than job training. You’re a worker for only part of your life; you’re a human being, a creature with a powerful brain, throughout it.
American universities can stop backsliding and refocus on a two-fold public mission: educating democratic citizens and advancing human knowledge. All that is needed is the political will to reconsider our national priorities and change incentive structures. Progress follows from opening up, not shutting down.
The end is not inevitable and . . . universities can reassert their centrality to the American liberal democratic project. . . . With public funding and ingenuity, maybe we can make quality higher education acesible to foster new ways to sustain scholarly communities and produce knowledge. The future is not fixed. We must be creative because the dominant narrative makes us forget that other futures are possible.
A phoenix rises from the ashes.
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Notes:
Paul Campos, Contemporary Higher Education and its Enemies
Jonathan Malesic, The Key to Success in College is so Simple, it’s Almost Never Mentioned.
Nicolaus Mills, The Corporatization of Higher Education
Johann N. Neem, The University in Ruins.
David Schultz, The Rise and Coming Demise of the Corporate University
Jonathan Wilson, Do Higher Education’s Leaders Know what Education is?
Florida is a prime example of the need of the rich to keep the workers "under-educated". But the COST of higher education is the root of the problem. Most students who WANT to explore what they don't know can't afford to do this...it has become a LUXURY that only the elite can afford. And those who CAN afford it do not want the majority of the citizenry to be able to do it. This is because NEW ideas are a threat to their world view and domination of the rich. It is sadly becoming the accepted norm.
It is so sad! Everything in this country has become McDonaldized. Very predictable and boring!