after reading about the current protests across the University of California system, and the ongoing commercialization and corporatization of higher education (as exemplified by top-down hierarchical decision-making practices focused on the "bottom-line" and the domination of managerial speak in bureaucratic rhetoric on education, such as: "efficiency", "results", "return on investment", and so on) - and considering my own research on the precarity of work in contemporary liquid modernity (especially in the creative industries, but evidently across all industry sectors), I'd like to share a few thoughts on the end or possibly a new beginning of the university.
as mentioned, the inspiration for these concerns comes from recent publications documenting the transformation of the university around the world, as exemplified in the US by:
- a gradual decline in the number of tenure-track jobs (and an increase of adjunct, parttime, visiting, and otherwise contingent positions);
- the ongoing marketization/commodification of knowledge and innovation produced by universities exclusive to companies, including closed-access corporate publishers (as opposed to actually making that knowledge available to all people, which the university increasingly does not do);
- increasing investments in e-learning (in effect "virtualizing" teachers), financial markets (making budgets of universities contingent on market fluctuations, see for example the endowment problems at all US universities that manage such funds), and sports facilities (intended to boost revenues from ticket sales, merchandising, and corporate sponsorships);
- a shift in thinking about education from teaching critical thinking to offering industry-driven or "work-ready" skills (preparing students for a labor market that is increasingly precarious, contingent, atypical, and uncertain).
although my university - Indiana University - has a long and proud tradition of protecting the faculty and students against much of these influences, recent years have seen an acceleration of the aforementioned trends: huge building projects (of up to $ 1 billion dollars), tenure-track hiring freezes (but plenty of openings for adjunct and visiting lines), and increasing pressure on us to provide students with e-learning facilities and "practical" skills that help them in the "real world" (where what is "real" is defined by mainstream segments of industry).
all of these trends boost the corporate and commercial orientation of the university (which trend in turn gets reinforced as one-third of US college presidents in fact serve on the boards of corporations).
i do not consider the role of corporations or commerce a problem per se (one could argue that the current proliferation of academic knowledge mainly through and perhaps due to the internet is encouraging), but if that orientation does not come with specific caveats, protections, checks and balances, the university as we know it becomes just another factory workplace - not a place for independent and critical reflection; a place that teaches people to make up their own minds.
now let me assure you: i am not a socialist or communist, nor a fascist or capitalist (if anything, i am radically opposed to anything that comes even close to TINA-thinking).
i am, however, concerned about the growing threats to the foundational values of the university - especially academic freedom and faculty governance - that compelled me to come to the US to work there in the first place.
optimist as I am, I'm looking for evidence for a new beginning...
some further links that offer food for thought:
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
essay on Digital Labor and education by Michelle Glaros (Dakota State University)
EduFactory
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But shouldn't academic institutes be more market oriented?
Most students go to universities in order to get better tools to get into the work market.
Universities can undergo the same process corporates in America are going, only that here you cannot give them a rescue pack and there is no Chinese competitor that will buy you.
The whole economy had changed and changing its business model and the academy is no exception.
I don't know enough, though I wish I did, about university trends outside of the U.S. If this sort of thing is happening in comparable places (countries with similar amounts of internet access, similar types of participatory practices, similar economic concerns, and similar social issues), then we have something going on that's much bigger than the social revolution taking place within our borders. If it's happening elsewhere too, what we have is a critical mass: a call for universities to reinvent themselves to meet the new needs of a new populace, academic and otherwise.
thx Omer and Jenna for your comments. Omer, I am not opposed to universities adopting some best practices of businesses: management that is accountable, less Ivory Tower-attitudes and more allegiance to the consumer (students), a stronger rooting in local communities (esp. in college towns) through for example service-learning classes.
but... corporations are not necessarily benevolent (the current economic crisis is an excellent example of this). I'd advocate a delicate and morally responsible balance - which is now being toppled.
Jenna, this is indeed (although it takes different shapes and sizes) going on elsewhere. in the UK, a points-based rating system imposed by state means departments and schools that do not "produce" (degrees, output) get closed; in Australia schools and departments are forced to churn out more numbers of grads in disciplines that apparently provide "high-level skills" that allow Australia to compete on the global market (as determined, of course, by corporations dominating those markets) while at the same time being cut in funding; in my home country practically all research gets determined by (full) professors who have/get/give each other access to external funding. that does not mean this research is not good or not valuable, but it begs the question what kind of research does not get done anymore.
the market is not a neutral agent in transforming institutional practices - it skews towards consensus. And consensus is, as the late Richard Rorty reminded us, generally never the best or only way to go about doing things...
Omer--I disagree with many of my education school collegues who fight against any form of competion (and sometimes, I fear, fostering mediocrity under the mantle of equity).
But I completely disagree that just because competition is good for markets and industry it is good for education. As we have seen with a decade of republican influence in education, you can't turn knowledge into a commodity, which is necessary for market-based compeition to work. The commodification of knowledge into test scores has been disastrous for education. Schools were already doing a fine job doing what they could to raise test scores once they started publishing them in local papers in the 1980s. The addition of new sanctions in 2001 under NCLB allowed massive distortions of that economy, the successful marketing of obviously terribly practices such as computer-based test prep (as "tutoring") for struggling schools. I can't believe that universities want to go the same route given the lack of evidence of value from NCLB and the many negative consequences. Perhaps the push is coming from publishers or other forces who can distort the rules in their favor by owning texts, test prep, and tests?
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