The neoliberalization of education is having profoundly harmful effects on the lives of
individuals and society. Neoliberalism represents a shift away from the post-war social democratic notion of universal „citizenship‟
rights/identities toward a system of individual consumer rights/identities. In education, neoliberal reforms have exposed state provision
to privatization and marketization, and the ideology of the „new managerialism‟ and its belief in „business‟ management practices.
As Whitty (2000) argues, these developments have been fostered by the belief that the private-sector approach is superior to that traditionally
adopted in the public sector - requiring public-sector institutions to operate more like those in the private sector, and encouraging
private (individual/family) decision making in place of political and professional judgments.
These changes have made the provision
of education services more unequal and selective, intensifying „racial‟, „gendered‟ and class-based hierarchies as a consequence (Whitty
et al. 1998). Young people have become increasingly treated as „human capital‟ in need of training for paid work rather than a broad-based
critical pedagogy. These policies have been accompanied by cuts in public spending and a discourse of antagonism to local democracy,
the public sector, workers and unions. A corollary of this has been more resources being directed into the more expensive mixed economy
of provision and the erosion of education workers‟ conditions of service (Lewis et al. 2009.
For global impacts of neoliberalism on
education see Hill 2009a, b; Hill and Kumar 2009; Hill and Rosskam 2009). In sum, the English education system has been increasingly
impoverished over the last 30 years with detrimental consequences for democracy, equity and workers‟ rights. In this paper we explore
the dimensions of and potential resistances to this disenchanting status quo. We begin by outlining the drivers behind the privatization
and marketization of education services before then detailing the impact of these changes on the education system (and, as a consequence,
society) in England and Wales. This latter section largely focuses on developments within the higher education (HE) sector.
We argue
that changes imposed in the name of „efficiency‟ are leading to the increasing production of uncritical thinkers compliant to the needs
of the market, where people are treated as mere „human capital‟ prepared for „jobs‟ and where there are increasingly fewer spaces for
providing/allowing for the provision of broad-based learning and critical awareness. In setting out an appreciation of these developments
we draw on the work of Stefan Sullivan (2002) and his thesis on the enduring appeal of Marxism for understanding developments in postindustrial
British society – in particular, the tendency towards banality – and means of resisting these. Setting the context – the drivers behind
the privatization and marketization of education Private sector involvement in education services now includes selling services to educational
institutions (e.g. cleaning, catering and security), school inspection and student loans, and managing and owning schools and related
facilities. Increasingly, schools are being taken out of local democratic control through, for instance, the privately-sponsored academies
contracted to take over „failing schools‟. Whilst public- sector unions fought to achieve a Best Value Code of Practice requiring contractors
to match the protected rates of transferring staff for newly recruited staff, this does not apply to academies (nor colleges and universities)
as they do not have public-sector status but rather are deemed to be publicly-funded private bodies (Lewis et al. 2009).
Moreover, as Wrigley states in reference to the academies: The sponsor has almost absolute power: appointing the headteacher and
… other staff; and determining who will be on its board of governors, the nature of the curriculum, the design of any new buildings,
and which young people to include or exclude. (Wrigley 2009: 47) Education is being de-democratised and education workers‟ rights and
securities eroded. The education workforce has become increasingly casualized and there has been decreased autonomy over the curriculum,
pedagogy and assessment. These developments have been accompanied by increases in levels of report writing, testing, accountability,
monitoring and surveillance both by in-house local management and by government external agencies.
Public service morale and standards
of provision have declined. The experience for students has been larger classes and a lowering
of standards, such as less contact time with staff (Lewis et al. 2009). The intensification of work (School Teachers‟ Review Body 2002,
UNESCO 2004b, TUC 2000, Health and Safety Executive 2000) and more accountability under neoliberalization are having hugely detrimental
effects on teachers and pupils/students.
Since 1979 the real autonomy of state education structures in England has diminished substantially
as a result of increased surveillance and control mechanisms that include: compulsory and nationally monitored externally set assessments
for pupils/students and trainee teachers; publication of performance league tables; a policy emphasis on „naming and shaming‟; the closing
or privatizing of „failing‟ schools and local education authorities (school districts); and merit pay and performance-related pay systems
for teachers, usually dependent on student performance in tests (Jeffrey and Woods 1998).
This drive toward performance improvement
places enormous pressures on teachers and pupils/students.
Teacher disaffection, stress-related illness and early retirement have led to a recruitment crisis. The consequences in terms of
lowered morale of schoolteachers and lecturers between 1992 and today are clearly measurable. In 1992, only 10 per cent of teachers
and lecturers thought that they had to „work at high speed all or most of the time‟ compared to 18 per cent for other occupations. By
the end of the decade, this position was reversed (33 per cent against 25 per cent) with teachers and lecturers experiencing a hefty
rise in stress. Over the same period, the proportion of teachers who were „dissatisfied with their job‟ more than doubled, from 6 per
cent to 13 per cent (Beckmann and Cooper 2004), with „teachers … driven to burnout‟ (Whitty 1997: 305). Since the 1988 Education Reform
Act, England has worked to/ with a centralized School curriculum leading to a loss of professional autonomy which reflects, in part,
the deprofessionalization of a vocation that has lost both autonomy and collegiality (Beckmann and Cooper 2004). Schools have become
„places where management authority, rather than collegial culture, establishes the ethos and purpose of the school‟ (Jones 2003: 161).
The culture of the „new managerialism‟ in education entails complementary and increasing control by management bodies. Intensified
formal assessments require teachers to produce detailed and prescriptive „learning aims and outcomes‟. This managerial approach has
direct implications for the work of educators. There is no attempt here to balance issues of professional autonomy with issues of control.
„Trust‟ in a teacher‟s professionalism is displaced by a requirement to meet specified performance standards (Alexiadou 2001: 429).
Alongside deprofessionalization is the loss of critical thought within a performance culture (Ball 1999, Mahoney and Hextall 2000, Boxley
2003, Hill, 2007).
School principals have become increasingly focused on short-term economic objectives, failing to acknowledge the
role of education in promoting a caring, cohesive, democratic society, built on notions of „citizenship‟ where „critical participation
and dissent‟ are viewed as desirable (Bottery 2000: 79). In the curriculum, „skills development‟ at universities has surged in importance,
to the detriment of the development of critical thought. The rights of education workers to influence the education debate through their
representative unions have also been eroded under neoliberalism by the removal of their bargaining rights (Lewis et al. 2009).
School
head teachers now have unprecedented levels of authority handed down to them by a government that has weakened almost every other vestige
of local democratic choice that parents or elected politicians once enjoyed. Even though there is a consensus from all mainstream political
groups that head teachers need to enjoy greater freedoms to manage, it is difficult to imagine what those might be or precisely which
freedoms they are lacking. The most pernicious powers in the eyes of many rank-and-file teachers are those whereby the head teacher
has simultaneous control over statutory performance management systems as well as an increasingly variegated pay structure. It has become
more than it could possibly be worth for an employee to challenge the status quo inside a modern school for fear of being overlooked
for annual or additional pay progression. Thus, complicity in many school regimes is often bought rather than earned. Indeed, debate
and discussion under certain regimes can be deemed insubordination worthy of disciplinary action (Lewis et al. 2009). In June 2009,
the six-year Nuffield review of 14-19 education was published. The report raised serious concerns about the ideology driving British
education – in particular, it questioned the prominence in education policy given to a performance-management perspective drawn from
business:
„The consumer or client replaces the learner. The curriculum is delivered. Aims are spelt out in terms of targets. Audits (based
on performance indictors) measure success defined in terms of hitting the targets. … As the language of performance and management
has advanced, so we have proportionately lost a language of education which recognises the intrinsic value of pursuing certain sorts
of question … of seeking understanding [and] of exploring through literature and the arts what it means to be human‟. (Cited in Mansell
2009: 5 – emphasis in original) Whilst preparation for work was acknowledged as an important purpose of education by the review team,
they also emphasised: … intellectual development, practical capability, community participation and a sense of social justice, self
awareness, and … a sense of „moral seriousness‟. Education, it says, has an essentially „moral purpose‟: to help young people to
develop as human beings. (Mansell 2009: 5)
The present school system is seen to fail to achieve these ambitions because the performance management agenda reduces the school experience
to narrow performance outcomes (essentially, test and exam success) rather than the means by which these are achieved (how young people
engage with the learning process). A key driver of these developments is the global neoliberalization agenda intent on freeing up trade
in services, such as education and health, as goods. The main global mechanism for this is the General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The GATS covers four modes of supply of services, including education:
Mode 1: provision of services from abroad - for example, through distance education via the internet (cross-border supply);
Mode 2: provision of services to foreign students (consumption abroad);
Mode 3: establishment in a country of foreign education service providers - for example, to set up schools and other institutions
(commercial presence);
Mode 4: movement of workers between countries to provide educational services (movement of natural persons).
Under GATS‟ rules, WTO members decide which services they will open to foreign competition, under which modes of supply and subject
to which limitations (if any). There is also an exclusion clause for „services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority‟ which
are outside the scope of the GATS. However, the GATS goes on to define such a service as one „supplied neither on a commercial basis
nor in competition with one or more service suppliers‟ (Lewis et al. 2009).
This could imply that where public and private sectors co-exist,
as they do in most countries, public services are covered by the agreement. Some argue that public institutions requiring the payment
of fees could be deemed to be engaging in „commercial activity‟ and would thus fall outside the GATS exception. Though the WTO and member
governments say there is no intention to apply GATS to public education and health services (WTO 2003), the distinction between public
and private services is becoming increasingly blurred. In strict legal terms, only when a service is provided entirely by the government
does it unambiguously fall outside the rules of GATS. This could make countries vulnerable to pressure in current and future GATS‟ negotiations
to open up areas of the state education system.
Once a country commits itself to opening a service to foreign competition it is almost
impossible to reverse this. Where a municipality, or a local or national government, wants to take back into public ownership a service
that has been privatized and opened to competition under the GATS or a similar free trade agreement, this is almost impossible to do
(Lewis et al. 2009). Other drivers of the global neoliberal project include regional and bilateral trade agreements such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) and the European Union (EU).
The World Bank and the
OECD are also significant bodies in promoting the liberalized education agenda. They are supported by national and international business
organizations such as the International Chamber of Commerce, the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors in the
United Kingdom, the European Round Table of leading multinational companies and the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the
Americas (PREAL) which comprises public and private organizations. At the same time, there is opposition to free trade in services from
trade unions, political parties, civil society groups and some governments.
These recently combined to force the withdrawal, at least temporarily, of the so-called „Bolkestein Directive‟, the EU‟s draft Services
Directive seeking to open up trade in services. The draft Directive sought to expose almost all services to market-based competition.
Though public education services were specifically excluded, the draft Directive would have applied to „peripheral‟ services supplied
to schools and, like the GATS, was unclear where the line between public and private services would be drawn. Under the „country of
origin‟ principle, a company providing services would follow the rules and laws of the country in which it was based or „established‟
rather than the country in which the service was provided. A US education multinational, for example, could „establish‟ itself in, say,
Latvia, simply by registering its presence there. It would then be able to trade in the rest of the EU while conforming only to Latvian
law on matters such as health and safety, employees‟ rights or environmental protection. Latvia, not the country where the service was
provided, would be expected to send inspectors to ensure compliance with its laws.
Critics say the draft Directive would encourage „social
dumping‟ since companies would have an incentive to opt for establishment in the least regulated EU member state requiring the lowest
standards (Lewis et al. 2009).
In primary and secondary education, in the first three modes of supply, the EU has committed itself not
to impose or maintain restrictions which are inconsistent with GATS‟ rules covering participation in the market by foreign-service suppliers.
In the United Kingdom, unlike some other EU members, there are no notified „limitations on market access‟. Thus, UK primary and secondary
education „markets‟ appear to be open to foreign suppliers.
WTO members committing themselves to opening up primary and secondary education
through GATS (as the EU has) must actually show any limitation on access for foreign suppliers which may then be open to challenge through
the WTO‟s disputes procedure. The UK (via the EU) also has no limitations on the national treatment provision of the GATS regarding
primary and secondary education.
Under this GATS‟ rule, member states must acknowledge any limitation in the treatment of foreign suppliers
that puts them in a less favorable position than domestic counterparts. For example, Edison schools (based in the United States) must
be alerted to any differences in the way it is treated compared with UK education services suppliers if it enters the UK schools market.
Only in Mode 4 supply, the „presence of natural persons‟ from another country, does some limitation regarding foreign primary and secondary
education suppliers possibly apply. Mode 4 is „unbound‟ for EU primary and secondary education, meaning that the EU has made no commitment
to open its market or keep it as open as it was when the GATS came into force in 1995. If Edison schools wanted to set up operations
in the UK, the company would have to use UK employees, as immigration rules would still apply. It is unlikely that US teachers could
just be flown to work in Edison UK schools. However, by the same token, no clear barrier to US teachers being jetted into Edison UK
schools is established on the basis of the EU‟s GATS‟ commitments (Lewis et al. 2009).
It might appear from this account that the UK (via the EU) has a more or less open-door policy regarding the foreign supply of primary
and secondary education services. This, however, is misleading. Section 5 of the EU‟s Schedule of Commitments for education services
under GATS indicates that, in relation to education, the EU is referring to „privately funded education services‟. This suggests that
the only education services under threat from the GATS are independent and private schools.
They are in the „education market‟ so must
take the consequences and face competing foreign providers. However, once again, the GATS‟ language is cleverly crafted. The Schedule
does not pinpoint private education „institutions‟ but privately-funded „services‟. It is not the case that a whole education institution
has to be a for-profit outfit for the GATS to apply. Any of its constituent services – e.g. teaching, cleaning, school meals, the school
library - could fall under the GATS if private capital is involved. Furthermore, private operators in school improvement, equal opportunities
and recruitment, and other school services previously supplied by the local education authority, may also fall under the GATS. One could
argue that these services are still „publicly funded‟, even though education businesses like Nord Anglia and school meals providers
like Initial Services are delivering the service (Lewis et al. 2009). Several points are relevant here. First, the argument assumes
that „public‟ money remains „public‟, even when transferred to a for-profit private-service provider. However, it could be argued that,
once the contract is signed to deliver frontline teaching, school management or improvement services, the „public money‟ undergoes transformation
into private capital. Second, in the academies, specialist schools and in some education action zones, private finance forms an element
of start-up capital. The foundational significance of private capital is even clearer in the case of schools built under the Private
A Finance Initiative (PFI), where money to build a school is raised at commercial rates in the money markets by private companies. In
all these cases, private involvement opens up schools or, at minimum, educational services to the GATS.
Third, under the Education Act
2002, school-governing bodies can set themselves up as companies. They then have the power to invest in other companies. Furthermore,
school companies can merge to form „federations‟ to gain economies of scale, thereby increasing profit-making capacity. In September
2002, David Miliband (then Schools Minister) indicated that business leaders running school federations did not need teaching qualifications
(Kelly 2002). Schools can enter into deals with private outfits and can sell educational services to other schools. Finally, under the
2002 Act, around 1000 schools are to be given the freedom to vary the curriculum and change teachers‟ pay and conditions. These powers
result from the new „earned autonomy‟ status that top-performing schools can gain. This gives private sector operators some control
over staff costs through manipulating teachers‟ contracts of employment. Overall, the 2002 Act provides a regulatory framework for the
business takeover of schools, and hence also for the application of GATS throughout the school system. Of course, the Government can
still argue that the school system is „publicly funded‟ but, in instances of outsourcing, the PFI and strategic partnerships with companies,
public finance is transfigured into private capital. Sponsorship by companies involves injections of corporate cash. Through these mechanisms,
schools are exposed to the GATS and school workers to a reduction in their social and economic securities (Lewis et al. 2009).
In the next section, we consider the effects of parallel developments in education on the HE sector in England and Wales and, as
a corollary, on society.
Privatization, marketization and the new managerialism, and their effects on HE and social relations In the UK over the last 30 years
we have experienced the continuing displacement of critical understanding in the realm of education by managerial information. Moore
(2009) states that the British government, in aiming for the „complete internationalization of its labour market‟, is: …deploying higher
education to create an army of employable subjects/citizens who are proselytised as having the skills [to] be able to participate effectively
in the increasingly privatised global chains of commodity production and services. (Moore 2009: 243)
Neither the broader concern of the perilous state of the UK‟s economy nor the continuing inequalities along the dividing lines of
class, „gender‟, „ability‟ and „race‟ are brought into the picture by the British government. Instead, the country‟s unsatisfactory
productivity level is represented as a failure of training and education (Leitch Review 2006). The insecurity and limited measurability
of the globalised playing field have inspired governments to shift responsibility for workers‟ welfare to workers themselves, by way
of the explicit creation of educational environments aimed at training workers towards a new genre of individual employability or entrepreneurialism
of the self, which in effect allows ongoing retrenchment of the welfare state. (Moore 2009: 265) Moore (2009) notes that genuine knowledge
and critical thought are not the desired outcomes of the deployment of HE to generate „employables‟ which would be a commendable ambition.
She refers to Wrigley‟s (2007) observation that capitalism requires workers that are ‘not wise enough to know what is really going on’
(Wrigley 2007, cited in Moore 2009: 244 – emphasis in original). This process is driven by the notion of „employability‟ which is suitably
kept vague and empty but is also clearly excluding groups of people (Moore 2009) and prescribes processes of „normalisation‟ that adapt
people‟s subjectivities to the shifting shapes of the mantra of „market demands‟.
One set of tools for the micro-management of this reductionist and despiriting process is the obsession with so-called „skills‟.
This myth of transferable skills lies behind the rise of managers as the new Jacobins. They promote the basic category error of conflating
such fundamentally different activities as education and training and seek to reduce the status of the former to the latter. If any
readers do doubt their innate difference then think about the different parental responses that would accompany a child‟s announcement
upon returning home to announce that they had received either sex education or sex training at school. Training is undoubtedly an important
part of any advanced economy, but the overwhelming supremacy of its terms in education today is steadily eroding away any basis from
which the managerial approach can be criticised. If we all accept that we‟re trainees rather than educated people then the path to power
of the managerial cadres is unobstructed. (Taylor 2003a: 8) Moore (2009) pointed out that in order to train people in the so-called
transferable „skills‟ a specifically opportune pedagogical approach was suggested by the Pedagogy for Employability Group (2006). This
is an approach that operates at an even deeper level of manipulation of the individual‟s subjectivity towards the creation of a market-prostituting
and authority-opportunistic personality. People are forced to partake actively in managing to increase their individualised and decontextualised
„human capital‟ in the rhetoric of the 2003 European Employment Task Force Report that allows nation states to externalise their responsibilities
towards their citizens even more. As Moore (2009) correctly observes: ... it is workers, or potential workers, who are given the most
responsibility in this division of labour, and their rights seem to stop at voluntary education schemes which require renumeration.
Colonisation of the everyday lives of workers is clearly occurring in this scenario, as workers are expected to embrace their own alienation
from their work, and are told that the project of self-employability must become part of their subjectivities and self worth. (Moore
2009: 260)
This was Nietzsche‟s nightmare vision, a context in which people in themselves are constituted as and come to see themselves as „minimal
values‟. [M]ankind [sic] will be able to find its best meaning as a machine in the service of this economy - as a tremendous clockwork,
composed of ever smaller, ever most subtle adapted gears. (Nietzsche 1968: 463) Neoliberalization is making provision of services more
unequal and selective rather than universal.
This is intensifying „race‟-, „gender‟- and class-based hierarchies, reflected in formally or informally tiered systems of schooling.
In less „developed‟ countries, services are available mainly to middle-class or wealthier families. In developed countries, the quality
and type of schooling is increasingly stratified.
Neoliberalization is further profoundly eroding workers‟ securities and their wellbeing. Hobsbawn (1994) remarked already, over fifteen
years ago, that in Britain the bottom fifth of workers were even worse off in comparison to the rest of the workforce than they were
100 years before. There further occurred a problematic shift away from universal citizenship rights and identities based on the provision
of services toward a system of individual consumer rights and identities: [New] Labour‟s version of „rights‟ thus becomes transformed
to construct an outer frame of „community‟ expectations and supposed needs rather than an outer frame that allows for alternative personalities/types
of individuals. (Moore 2009: 253)
According to Leitner et al. (2007), neoliberalism replaces the concept of „common good‟ and the state‟s responsibility for public
welfare with the monadic vision of an „entrepreneurial individual‟ whose sole mission and determination is to aim to „succeed‟ within
increasingly competitive markets. Therefore neoliberal policies are concerned with: ... supply-side innovation and competitiveness;
decentralization, devolution, and attrition of political governance, deregulation and privatization of industry, land and public services
[including schools]; and replacing welfare with „workfarist‟ social policies ... . A neoliberal subjectivity has emerged that normalizes
the logic of individualism and entrepreneurialism, equating individual freedom with self-interested choices, making individuals responsible
for their own well-being, and redefining citizens as consumers and clients. (Leitner et al. 2007: 1-2) In this context, public services
such as education, health and prisons are being, or have been, transformed into „tradable commodities‟ (Sandel 2009). These transformations
are undertaken and overseen by so-called „new‟ managerialists and the implications for HE are profoundly destructive both for the workers
within and their students.
British universities are succumbing to a tsunami of rampant managerialism that has already devastated morale in such other public-sector
institutions as the BBC and the National Health Service which are now riddled with one-dimensional managerialist thought. (Taylor 2003b:
1) Managerialism represents a fragmented vision of being, empty of ethical dimensions and only informed by materialism, opportunism
and industrialism, thereby excluding non-countable, non-measurable qualities and other forms of relating, evaluating and being. It is
a reductionist opportunism that pays for those who „play the game‟ and as such managerialism is subserving any predominant ideology
- in this context, capitalism – by complementing it on a practical level. The manager serving the banker or the fascist, depending on
which regime is currently in power. Managerialism only follows instrumental rationales that lead sadly to an increasing stupidification
of HE in England and Wales, generating „a climate where inherent banality is used as a defence against rational critique‟ (Taylor 2003b:
1). George Scialabba (in Reisz 2009) expressed concern about the threat that the tradition of the politically-engaged public intellectual
is under. To him the „subjection of university life, and the rest of professional life, to the disciplines of the market‟ (Scialabba
in Reisz 2009: 48) are generating this problem.
When universities have to market themselves, their facilities and their activities, in competition with other universities, to potential
funders envisioned as „educational investors‟, and to potential students envisioned as „educational consumers‟, then the result is going
to be just what we see in the corporate world: top-heavy management structures, armed with the idiotic ideology of „management science‟,
continually fretting about „productivity‟ and demanding measurable results from their „personnel‟. (Scialabba in Reisz 2009: 48)
This development has been a long time coming as already, back in 1996, Davies noted: British higher education policy now turns solely
on the enforced internalisation of managerial control mechanisms. Their intention is to displace universalising intellectual comportment
by task-orientated technocratic procedures through behavioural conditioning; to make the experience of thinking and learning the sterilized
aggregate of specified technical norms. (Davies 1996: 23)
Teaching and research in this context are being redefined in increasingly mechanical and representational ways.
Given this early acknowledgement and warning, one is puzzled that such tendencies and accompanying practices have not been more widely
problematized and resisted. This is especially shocking when one looks at examples of managerial inefficiency and misguidedness in UK‟s
HE sector as well as management failings in a practical sense (especially in their own terms of so-called „auditing‟ - see Baker and
May 2002, Charlton and Andras 2002a, 2002b in Taylor 2003a). Taylor offers one interesting answer to this wonderment and presents also
some of its most dramatic consequences:
The inability of managerialism to provide demonstrable evidence of its own success leads to an attempt to make everything part of
its frame. Its hitherto successful strategy seems to be that if it is in a state of constant movement no one will notice its fatal flaw
(as if in a glass-topped carriage the naked emperor hurtles past too quickly for his nudity to be proved). This produces an educational
variant of the economic theory known as Gresham's law which states that bad money drives out good. Thus, the number of First Class degrees
awarded by universities is used as a performance measurement in university league tables, yet politicians disingenuously express indignation
if anyone has the temerity to highlight the subsequently perfectly logical market-driven tendency of universities to increase their
number of Firsts to improve their marketability. As A-Level students have recently found out to their cost, „quality‟ becomes an actuarial
category to be manipulated rather than actually achieved. (Taylor 2003a: 6)
Under the heading „Now is the age of the discontented‟, Frank Furedi discusses the impact of consumer culture on HE. The „consumer
model of education‟ implies the generation of a „consumerist ethos‟ on university campuses that has student surveys as their vanguard.
However, instead of really facilitating a more democratic and quality enriched process of studying, „what surveys tend to indicate is
how well customers‟ expectations are managed rather than the quality of academic life‟ (Furedi 2009: 32). The human interaction between
student and tutor has been perverted by the injection of an element of artifice into the „learning process‟ – i.e. since the introduction
of student fees, attaining a degree becomes the product of a market interaction rather than creativity and critical dialogue. Increasingly,
university managers strive to give the student, now reconfigured as a „customer‟, „satisfaction‟ rather than an intellectually challenging
academic experience: Courses … are modified and made customer friendly [alongside] … the promotion of a culture of complaint … . The
internalisation of this culture by universities has created an environment where managing the expectations of students takes priority
over intellectually challenging them. … In the end, the culture of complaint undermines the unique potential for academic collaboration
and dialogue and heightens the sense of conflict of interest. (Furedi 2009: 35)
Apart from integrating and transforming, managerialism survives, as already indicated, via constant shape-shifting. Fisher illustrates
this obsession with the example of so-called „restructuring‟: ... the school has been restructured on several occasions, pervaded by
the language of „enterprise‟, „customer focus‟ and the „needs of industry‟ and, in common with other British HE institutions, characterised
by new forms of surveillance and control, exemplified by the teaching quality assessment (QAA) [now a two strikes and Hefce is in exercise
papertrail - see the Times Higher Education, 10th September 2009, p.13] and the research assessment exercise (RAE) [now the even cruder
and more opportunistic research excellence framework (REF)]. This regime of new managerialism with its emphasis upon costs, budgets
and targets, its links to ideas of „hard‟ Human Resource Management and its unitarist perspective on the employment relationship has
been embraced by the most senior managers of the Business School and the university. (Fisher 2007: 505) Institutions of higher education
are under increasing pressure to be more „efficient‟ and to do more with fewer resources. A so-called „New Labour‟ slogan „Less is more‟
epitomizes this state of affairs. As less staff have to work through thicker layers of audit-bureaucracies and then have to work with
larger cohorts of students while also being urged to be research active, the work-load levels become excessive and, as Broadbent (2006)
observed in the context of the discipline of law:
There is some evidence to suggest that, for example, law schools evidence a male macho culture (Cownie, 2004), in which it becomes
difficult to admit to being unable to cope with the pressures, as this may be taken as a sign of weakness (Henkel, 2000). The observable
response to the widely acknowledged (for example Henkel, 2000; Rolfe, 2002; Morley, 2003) increases in workload amongst many colleagues
has been akin to that of Boxer, the shire horse, in George Orwell‟s Animal Farm, whose mantra was „I will work harder‟. The trouble
is, we know what happened to Boxer in the end. (Broadbent 2006: 1)
As state funding and contributions to institutions decrease, competition for sparse resources and funds increase among and within
institutions. Higher education processes and practices are in response to such competitive reductionism compared with those in business
(Callan and Finney 1997). In response to continuing and intensifying pressure to find their own resources, institutions of higher education
frequently engage in highly problematic and often unethical partnerships with businesses, thereby transforming themselves into and being
run like businesses themselves (Fairweather 1988). „The relocation of higher education in the discourse of commerce has also been significant
in bringing about shifts in the way in which universities both see [themselves] and are seen (Scott 2001)‟ (Broadbent 2006: 1).
Taylor observed a complete conflation of academic and business values in the language used and so-called „qualities‟ searched for
in job advertisements for HE positions (Taylor 2003a). This problematic shift in the language of academia turned „students‟ into „customers‟
or „key-stakeholders‟. This is not just a game of words but impacts on the relationship between tutors and their students profoundly:
„... the customer model‟s implicit assumption of a conflict of interest between client and service provider inexorably erodes the relationship
of trust between teacher and student on which academic enterprise is founded‟ (Furedi 2009: 33). The importance of the shift in language
is important to emphasize and attack – note several HE institutions substituted the term „induction-week‟ with „welcome week‟ in 2009,
while Taylor applies a similar technique by referring to Time Higher Education as the UK‟s higher education trade magazine (Taylor 2003b).
Taylor (2003a) also points to another practical consequence of the spread of managerial language – i.e. a diminution of substantive
political discourse grounded in ethical values. „The dominant language of the Academy now disproportionately resides in management meetings
replete with the cabalistic incantations of PowerPoint presentations consisting of one part alliteration to two parts bullet point‟
(Taylor 2003b:1). Genuine communication and critical engagement are avoided at all cost in this corporate context as:
Managerialism produces manipulative communication. Communication produced by managerialist elites is inherently one-dimensional because
it is skewed in favour of whichever section of the managerialist elite is driving that communicative system. (Louw 2001: 100)
Driven by the ever present „imperative of auditing‟, league tables, performance indicators and „increasing bureaucratisation‟:
Academic staff are forced to devote considerable energy and time to pointless bureaucratic exercises. Many departments charged with
bringing in money end up reducing the resources they devote to teaching, research and the pursuit of scholarship. (Furedi 2009: 35)
This culture of auditing and inspecting kills creativity and reflection in favour of performance targets and constructed performance
indicators (McLaughlin and Muncie 2006), and they are, after all, more or less an „institutional process of lying‟, a collection of
paper trails that are „legitimised‟ and „sanctified‟ by managerial platitudes whereby „Ultimately unjustifiable and illogical parallels
between dissimilar concepts and values are sustained by mere repetition …‟ (Taylor 2003b: 3).
Apart from the mind-numbing stupidity of generating paper trails (and thereby destroying many trees in turn), existing inequalities
appear to be reinforced as:
Micro-level analysis of the effects of the audit and evaluative state seem to suggest that hegemonic masculinities and gendered power
relations are being reinforced by the emphasis on competition, targets, audit trails and performance (Morley 2003)‟. (Fisher 2007: 508)
Taylor (2003b) calls the working environments for HE academics in the UK „conditions for anti-educational behaviour by academics‟
generated by „bureaucratic/managerial structures [that] create a distance from ethical concerns‟ and in which „procedural answers are
given to ethical questions‟ (Taylor 2003b : 3). Such an unreflective, non-ethical context is especially problematic in terms of under-resourced
research environments in which systematic 'encouragements' to engage in funded research become increasingly commonplace and ruthless,
amounting often to not much more than a mere 'pimping' of academics and their work and resistance to such day-to-day practices is sadly
very rare. It is unsurprising, given this educationally deprived and depraved environment for students, that “Students are felt to have
become more vocationally and instrumentally orientated and less interested in the substance of the subject they are studying (Rolfe,
2002)‟ (Broadbent 2006: 1).
While the labourers in HE are more and more forced to prostitute their „hearts and minds‟ for external funding, students are increasingly
selling their bodies in an attempt to cope with rising university tuition fees and lack of maintenance grants. Milne, writing in 2006,
points out that: University tuition fees, first introduced in 1998 at £1,000 a year, have risen to £3,000 this year at all but a few
universities. The average student loan at graduation last year was £8,948, but NatWest Bank said that once private debt was factored
in, students now in their first year could expect to graduate with liabilities of more than £14,700. ... Dr Ron Roberts, a health psychologist
who was the lead author of the study, said: „Our figures represent a 50% increase in the prevalence rates for student prostitution since
2000. ... [G]iven the increasing financial problems experienced by students, this is in line with what we would predict‟. (Milne 2006:
1)
This pressure to prostitute while being „pimped‟ without consenting, and within the confines of the forthcoming REF in order to receive
funding in a competitive environment, obviously runs counter to ethical values as well as any spirit of socio-political purpose towards
society. In this climate of bidding and hunting for external funding, Mike Presdee, who sadly died in 2009, had expressed his fears
in respect of his discipline, criminology. He believed criminology was losing its critical edge and that criminologists were moving
more and more towards uncontentious research: Academics are witnessing a shift in emphasis from their role as critic and conscience
of society to that of service provider where the state has become a client ... . The amount of contract research academics are doing
is increasing. Contract research legally binds academics to provide information to clients or stakeholders. As such it is capable of
restricting academic freedom. If academic criminological research shies away from critiquing the role of the state for fear of losing
future government contracts; if it becomes little more than information gathering, used to formulate government policy, then we academics
are at risk of becoming co-conspirators in the policing of knowledge. (Presdee, cited in Utley 1998: 1) An „academic capitalist knowledge
and learning regime‟ has emerged, replacing an ideology of a „public good knowledge‟ (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). In this context of
the commodification of culture, Louw (2001) refers back to the insights of the Frankfurt School whereby: The audience is, in effect,
„cretinized‟. Instead of participating in an active dialogue, commodified culture immerses people into one-dimensional, „affirmative
culture‟, where they are offered a pre-arranged „false‟ reconciliation of social contradictions, that is reconciliations serving the
interests of the hegemonically dominant. (Louw 2001: 97) McLaren also underlined the importance of addressing commodification: The whole
process of commodification should be more central in discussions and practices of pedagogy. These commodities, these reifications, are
not illusions but objective social processes. Commodification regulates our social lives. (McLaren 2006: 279) McLaren goes on to refer
to Paula Allman‟s work which provides a „bodily‟ reading of Freire‟s ideas: ‘…dialogue enables us to experience the alternative or certain
aspects of it for a period of time and in a specific context.’ The structure of society resides in the structure of experience. We carry
this in our musculature, in our gestures, our emotions, in our dreams and desires. Our subjectivities are commodified. (McLaren 2006:
279 – emphasis in original) In such a context, „intellectuals ..., including those with oppositional ideas, are forced to sell their
skills to the culture industry‟ (Louw 2001: 97). On a broader level, one can observe a decline in the quality of work within HE and
of HE students who are, as mentioned earlier and in other work by two of the authors (Beckmann and Cooper 2004, 2005), moulded into
uncritical but „skilled‟ and „docile‟ bodies. Matching these developments in HE in England and Wales are the UK‟s A-level assessments
which also stay clear from intellectual and critical engagement. According to one think tank „exam modules have created a “learn and
forget culture” - which it likens to using a sat-nav rather than map-reading skills‟ (Sellgren 2009: 1). Unsurprisingly, the think-tank‟s
researchers found that „academics reported today‟s students as having inferior reasoning skills to those who started courses in the
1990s. They complained of “high maintenance” students who sought constant advice‟ (Sellgren 2009: 1)
The corporatization of universities leads to an increase in management of sparse resources which translates into an attempt to minimize
the costs of an already under-resourced system. Meanwhile, management is focussed on maximizing revenue. Frequently, especially in the
so-called „New Universities‟, a genuine research environment is substituted by the pretence of a „research culture‟ (no or rarely sabbaticals,
no or limited conference funding) but there is no less pressure to publish, to bid for research funding and to attend research seminars
of dubious relevance in the context of a lack of time for reflection.
Support for research is minimal and resented in some quarters. For most academics, the „real business‟, and in fact the most relentless
pressure of the academic job, is to survive heavy teaching loads and an emerging 24/7 working environment where managers and students
expect them to be constantly „on call‟. (Fisher 2007: 505)
Educational missions are sacrificed in the name of increasing efficiency (Levin 2001), very much like the steps taken to „rationalise‟
a National Health Service that is already totally under-resourced and that runs counter to its former mission to improve health and
save lives. HE entrepreneurialism with regards to research is leading to a narrowing of academic freedom - e.g. what is regarded as
fundable and what is considered permissible to be published under funding agreements (Mendoza 2007). However, given the fact that a
lot of these developments are pushed through under the mantra of competing in the new information economy, these implications are totally
counterproductive as „Any attempt to block ... creativity will undermine the information economy itself. In essence, communicative openness
becomes necessary for economic growth‟ (Louw 2001: 103). Yet market-conformism continues to be favoured over academic creativity:
Arguably genuine creativity has been the greatest victim of new regulation, as more rule-bound and quota-driven forms of competitiveness
are superimposed on an already competitive profession. It would appear that universities have become „enterprises‟ to be managed by
business principles, not by collegiality. (Fisher 2007: 508)
The way in which research opportunities offered to workers in the HE industrial complex were structured via the RAE (and equally
likely under the revamped REF) further fostered academic competitiveness and substantively reinforced patriarchal hierarchies by being
a highly „gendered‟ exercise whereby, in effect, so-called „females‟ were in receipt of less research grants than so-called „males‟
(Wellcome Trust 1997, cited in Fisher 2007: 506). Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) and Slaughter and Leslie (1997) offer many additional
fitting examples to illustrate and problematize the consequences and implications of „academic capitalism‟ (e.g. the commodification
of knowledge and the notion of students as consumers of knowledge whereby their tuition revenue must be maximized). „Students are not
only consumers, they are also casualties of a perverse production process. They therefore become casualties of history‟ (McLaren 2006:
278).
The intensity stakes of this „casualty‟-status of students is, however, threatened to rise even further as:
The Confederation of British Industry said students should bear the brunt of a proposed funding overhaul to deal with a growing crisis
in university finance. Under the plans, they face a triple blow of increased loan interest, fewer grants and higher tuition fees. One
figure mooted is for annual tuition fees to rise to £5,000. (Curtis 2009: 1)
It is abundantly clear, therefore, that, due to its increasing exposure to neoliberalization, changes in the education system in
England and Wales have had profoundly harmful implications for teachers, pupils/students and the society we live in. Education services
are becoming increasingly „Americanized‟ through policies and processes based on privatization and marketization, and the imposition
of managerialism. As a consequence, education provision has become more unequal and selective, with the intensification of „racial‟,
„gendered‟ and class-based hierarchies, reflected in tiered systems of education with differential experiences and outcomes. As Hirtt
observes, contradictory elements driving the neoliberalization of education – „to adapt education to the needs of business and at the
same time reduce state expenditure on education‟ - are resolved by the polarization of the labour market. Thus, from an economic point
of view, it is no longer necessary to provide high-level education and general knowledge to all future workers.
It is now possible and even highly recommendable to have a more polarized education system … . [E]ducation should not try to transmit
a broad common culture to the majority of future workers, but instead it should teach them some basic, general skills. (Hirtt 2004:
446).
In other words, manual and service workers are treated as „human capital‟ and receive cheaper, inferior, transferable-skills education
and knowledge, in contrast to the elite workers, who receive more expensive, superior education. Thus, the outcome of neoliberalization
is a more hierarchical school system that militates against the principles of equity and social justice. At the same time, neoliberalization
is eroding workers‟ pay, rights and securities; promoting individual consumer rights and identities over solidaristic social relations;
and militating against critical thought and, as a consequence, democracy.
Alongside evidence of increasing uncertainty for the many in contemporary times – in Britain, confirmed by the existence of increasingly
unhappy childhoods, poverty, widening social inequalities and growing community tensions (Cooper 2008, Wilkinson and Pickett 2009) and
globally, by ecological destruction, disease pandemics, ethnic genocide and war – these developments in education in England are testament
to the harmful effects of neoliberalism and the inability of free-market capitalism to deliver universal wellbeing. They are also testament
to the enduring appeal of Marxist thought and its utility in the 21st Century for understanding how neoliberal free-market societies
continue to generate barriers to freedom by privileging individualist consumerist values over human values and, thereby, distract attention
away from the need for more solidaristic forms of social relations.
The enduring appeal of Marxist thought and its relevance for contemporary times
Marxism owes much to Feuerbach‟s philosophical critique – something Marx considered to be the wellspring of socialism – and his belief
that modernity breeds egoism and an intolerance of „the other‟ (an argument that continues to be presented today by Bauman and others).
Feuerbach‟s theory of alienation and his belief in the need for humanity to rediscover community remains a central concern today. Feuerbach
argued that this rediscovery – or more specifically, the rediscovery of „love‟ - was something that the modern law prevented:
The law condemns; the heart has compassion even on the sinner. Law affirms me only as an abstract being – love, as a real being.
Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man, the law only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am worthless, the law holds
the man in bondage … love makes him free. (Cited in Sullivan 2002: 12)
For Feuerbach, love represented „the true ontological proof of an existence of an object apart from our mind‟ (cited in Sullivan
2002: 13) and which could only be cultivated „in community‟.
The community of man with man [sic] is the first principle and criterion of truth and generality. The certainty of the existence
of other things apart from me. That which I alone perceive I doubt; only that which the other also perceives is certain. (Cited in Sullivan
2002: 12)
Feuerbach‟s aim was to present a secular perspective on the meaning of life which replaced the divine notion of „God‟ with the idea
of „love in community‟.
Over the last 30 years in Britain, deindustrialisation, welfare retrenchment and the centralisation of political power has been responsible
for a breakdown in interdependence and, with this, a decline in empathy (love) for others. This decline in empathy led to „popular‟
electoral support for political projects favouring less solidaristic social policies (including competition between schools) - weakening
the efficacy of the state to manage social tensions through social welfare measures. Instead, governments are increasingly turning to
legalistic authoritarian sanctions – e.g. school exclusions and asbos - in response to what were previously seen as young people‟s welfare
concerns – i.e. learning difficulties and lack of leisure opportunities (Cooper 2008).
Whilst Marx rejected Feuerbach‟s notion of „love‟ in his own critique of capitalist social relations – he found it too vague and
emotional for his purpose and focused instead on „labour‟ – it can be argued that it remains pertinent to contemporary times. However,
equally significant to the present – a time where paid work and consumption are held up as the key human virtues – is Marx‟s concept
of alienation from our labour (which he believed should be a vehicle for our self realisation) and his ideas on the corrosive effects
of materialism (where the accumulation of private belongings replaces all other sensibilities). For Marx, we had become separated from
our humanity by exploitation and consumerism. „Marx laments the collective human soul that has gone astray, a soul seduced by material
wealth and the gratification of egoistic needs‟ (Sullivan 2002: 17-18). The task is, therefore, to rediscover our humanity. Whilst this
analysis remains insightful and appealing, there remains within Marxist thinking the equally enduring conundrum about how we arrive
at an alternative, more humane, social system.
Whilst it is absolutely crucial to acknowledge and problematise the brutal experiments of the twentieth century conducted in the
name of Marxism, western
Marxists sought to retrieve crucial elements of Marx‟s legacy by appealing to his humanistic philosophy and critique of alienation
as this helps us understand inherent immanent violences of rationalization/new managerialism. At the heart of this attempted recovery
was the work of the Frankfurt school – exemplified in the ideas of Gyorgi Lukács on „reification‟ (which suggests we have become distanced
from meaning in our lives) and Max Horkheimer on the „end of reason‟ (where reason has been used to legitimise mass destruction and
systematic genocide). For the Frankfurt school, the „Enlightenment‟ had become „reduced to a paradigm of domination‟ (Sullivan 2002:
45). The Frankfurt school sought to broaden the debate on alienation by focusing less on economic determinism (alienation at work) and
more on the cultural consequences of capitalism (alienation at play). Our desires are increasingly being shaped by the culture industry
and what Marcuse described as the production of „false needs‟. Moreover, our ability to realise this has become increasingly obscured
„by the persistent propagation of a myth, namely that liberty is synonymous with the vacuous choice between various brands and gadgets‟
(Sullivan 2002: 49).
For Marcuse, the culprit of advanced capitalism is no longer class antagonisms or belching smokestacks of the Industrial Revolution;
it is rather the psychologically destructive illusions of freedom created by the culture industry. For the critical theorist, whose
job it is to expose this illusion, it nonetheless proved difficult to problematize an exit: „If the individuals are satisfied to the
point of happiness with the goods and services handed down to them by the administration, why should they insist on different institutions
for a different production of different goods and vices?‟ [Marcuse 1968]. ... In short, if no one feels alienated, how can one have
a revolution? (Sullivan 2002: 49-50) Sullivan addresses this impasse by focusing inter alia on the banality of the situation and the
cultural and spiritual alienation it produces.
What’s to be done? Exposing illusions of ‘freedom’ Sullivan reminds us of how Marx distinguished between having and being, and the
corrosive impact of materialistic desires. „Private property has made us stupid and partial, that an object is only ours when we have
it, when it exists for us as capital or when it is directly eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., in short utilized in some way‟ [Marx
1966].
Instead, we realize our true human potential not through the possession of material objects, but through productive, creative
activity, through the expression of our unique individuality by which we achieve recognition and spiritual satisfaction. (Sullivan 2002:
56-57) Exposing this reality would, Marx believed, generate the anger and outrage necessary for the oppressed to forge a plan of action
for social change. Aside from its tendency to perpetuate social injustice, the dehumanising effects of capitalism also contain the seeds
of social transformation (Sullivan 2002). It is essential for us to retain this fundamental tenet of Marxism – i.e. „the potential for
self-empowerment among the masses, based on the conviction that they can bring about change‟ (Sullivan 2002: 75).
Key to such a transformation
is education or (more specifically) an education that facilitates self-awareness of the structural determinants of oppression and social
injustice, and the formation of a cohesive political strategy for social change. Through education, Marx believed that the proletariat
would come to realise the way capitalism distorted „the communication and exchange of authentic qualities‟ (Sullivan 2002: 142), and
that this would lead to political action for social change and the emergence of human relationships free from the corrupting influence
of „commodity fetishism‟ (Sullivan 2002: 142).
As this paper demonstrates, commodity fetishism has increasingly infiltrated public services
in Britain. For three decades, public services have been subjected to increasing deregulation and market incentives in the belief that
markets are the best mechanism for achieving the public good. As Michael Sandel states, since the 1980s we have seen: … the expansion
of markets and market values into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. We‟ve seen, for example, the proliferation
of for profit schools, hospitals and prisons; the outsourcing of war to private military contractors. We‟ve seen the eclipse of public
police forces by private security firms, especially in the US and the UK where the number of private guards is more than twice the number
of public police officers. (Sandel 2009: 5)
This development has led to what Sullivan (following Lukács) describes as „the perversion of value‟ (Sullivan 2002: 143).
[T]he perversion of value is the symptom of a trend by which economic relations replace social relations, and the intrinsic value
of goods is replaced by their external commodity value. Under capitalism, „Everything ceases to be valuable for itself or by virtue
of its inner (e.g., artistic, ethical) value; a thing has value only as a ware bought and sold on the market‟. (Sullivan 2002: 143)
As we have seen, this development has been evident throughout the British public sector and particularly the English education system.
As Sullivan infers, placing services which earlier defied commodification (such as education) within a business context „lends itself
easily to the language of prostitution and debasement because the violated value of the woman, her inner sanctum, is a powerful image
of the debasement of value in general‟ (Sullivan 2002: 143). The intrinsic value of education – the love of learning and critical debate
in a safe, mutually-respectful environment – has been debased. However, despite its contamination, education remains central to any
political strategy for social transformation. More specifically, as Sullivan remarks, Marx saw possibilities for generating, through
education, creators rather than consumers which would, thereby, challenge the force of consumer society.
By becoming creators rather than consumers, … the more able we are to affirm our own identity. In that respect alone, education is
the best weapon against the patronizing cynicism of the advertising industry, one that assumes that its target audience can only expand
its personal identity by association with consumer products. That aspect of Marxist cultural theory is still relevant. (Sullivan 2002:
149)
As Sullivan argues, social change rests on the belief that humans can develop themselves sufficiently to create their own authentic
worlds counter to the commodified extensions of their identity. It also rests on the need to resist the influence of market values over
the public sphere – particularly in education for „education allows us to create ourselves‟ (Sullivan 2002: 158). We need, therefore,
to build political support for a state- subsidised education system geared to fostering human emancipation, love and compassion rather
than merely serving the interests of commerce. Such support needs to build on the platform of successful struggles such as the campaign
of non-compliance with Home Office guidance on monitoring the employment and education of non-EU nationals (initiated via the email
listing of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control and later endorsed by UCU Congress) – a directive that has
generated an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust in universities, including visits by anti-terror police seeking out „(Muslim) students
whose work shows signs of “radicalisation”‟ (Singleton et al. 2009: 27) – or that by students at a recent knowledge-transfer conference
demanding „an end to the close relationship between universities and business‟ (Fearn 2009: 12).
Conclusions: reconstructing education
The problematic commercialization of the cultural and public sphere alongside the increasing corporatization/managerialization of
education has destroyed the very basis of democracy in Britain as spaces for dialogical communication and for the generation and articulation
of alternative opinions and options are lost. The dogma of performativity borne out of managerialism only fosters opportunism and manipulation
instead of genuine critical engagement, creativity and authentic communication.
In response to this development, Kahn and Kellner (2007)
argue the need to reconstruct education: Education, at its best, provides the symbolic and cultural capital that empowers people to
survive and prosper in an increasingly complex and changing world, and the resources to produce a more cooperative, democratic, egalitarian
and just society. (Kahn and Kellner 2007: 440) Louw (2001) refers to Garnham‟s 1986 work in suggesting that the market allocation of
cultural (and in effect material) resources, together with the destruction of a public service media, was threatening forms of „public
communication‟ that are fundamental to democracy.
Yet we stubbornly believe that the chants of „there is no alternative‟ must be challenged for they offer as a fait accompli something
about which progressive leftists should remain defiant - namely, the triumph of capitalism and its political bedfellow, neo-liberalism,
which have worked together to naturalize suffering, undermine collective struggle, and obliterate hope. (McLaren 2006: 125)
This article has demonstrated that the neoliberalization and managerialization of education reinforces inequalities within countries;
reduces the quality of education; is detrimental to democracy; decreases workers‟ pay, rights and conditions, not least by the managerialist
excesses and surveillance that result in the deprofessionalisation and intensification of education workers‟ work/lives, and increases
stress, anxiety and alienation. From Taylor‟s point of view, „non-academic managerial vandals; former academics who have crossed over
to the managerial dark side, and supinely acquiescent academics‟ (Taylor 2003b: 1) are responsible for this disgraceful state of affairs.
Taylor suggests that UK academics have been so far predominantly morally myopic and/or complicit in the „managerial complex‟ and he
adds: An unwillingness to question fundamentally the intellectual credibility of both the dogma and its proponents lies behind the ability
of managerialism to superimpose itself on the professional standards of not just academics, but also such groups as over-managed doctors
(see Loughlin and Seedhouse, 2002). (Taylor 2003b: 2)
The dogma and practices of the new managerialism have to be seriously challenged as the framework of corporationalism is entirely
inadequate for processes of pedagogy. As Furedi argues: ... one of the most distinct and significant dimensions of academic and intellectual
activity is that it does not often give customers what they want. Academic dialogue and instruction does not provide the customer with
a clearly defined product. It does not seek to offer what the customer wants, but attempts to provide what the student needs. That is
why forcing universities to prove themselves to their customers fundamentally contradicts the ethos of academic education. (Furedi 2009:
33)
We should not therefore become complicit in this attempt, as Furedi (2009) states, to culturally transform the meaning of a university
student into a customer that merely consumes education as a commodity that has to represent „value for money‟. For, as Taylor states:
The spread of managerialism within higher education provides a particularly vivid example of the „Emperor's got no clothes‟ type of
collective psychosis that can be achieved by the strategic use of inherently banal but nevertheless extremely destructive concepts.
The fact that professional academics, trained to deconstruct and reflect upon the ways in which power is exercised, have failed to call
managerialism‟s bluff is particularly worrying and again cause for concern. (Taylor 2003a: 2) One possibility to resist this „psychosis‟
is, therefore, active engagement in deconstruction, thereby revealing the banalities and veiled destructiveness of managerial accounts.
„Critical revolutionary pedagogy, for me, adopts a perspective that knowledge is praxis; it is transforming action‟ (McLaren 2006: 125).
This transformative potential of critical revolutionary pedagogy is also crucial for the future labourers in what has been left over
of academia. A whole generation of young academics has grown up aping their elders‟ collaborationist attitudes and averring their commitment
to meaningless managerial concepts whilst potentially powerful bodies within the university sector have chosen the path of least resistance
and most eventual harm. The roots of academic barbarianism lie in our own actions: so does the solution. (Taylor 2003b: 5) For Taylor,
„Academics and former academics now in management positions need to seek common cause in the protection of education from parasitical
operators‟ (Taylor 2003b: 5). One strategy of resistance lies, thus, in the day-to-day practice of pointing to linguistic slippages
- e.g. „customer‟ instead of „student‟, as well as stupidifying notions such as „remind me to “action” this‟! - and to question diverse
initiatives on the basis of their own managerial/budgetary terms. Taylor offers another set of helpful questions:
What are the qualifications of those who are redefining the professional status of academics? What is the exact meaning behind glib-sounding
managerial phrases? What is the contribution of university operators to the bottom-line profitability of a university? What are the
implications of standardised matrices for professional discretion and real learning? (Taylor 2003b: 6) In contrast to mainstream opportunism
and the anti-educationalist trends that have emerged, Kahn and Kellner (2007), referring to Hammer and Kellner‟s 2001 work, suggest
that „Teachers and students ... need to develop new pedagogies and modes of learning for new information and multimedia environments
(Hammer & Kellner, 2001)‟ (Kahn and Kellner 2007: 442). They argue the need to democratise and reconstruct education in ways: … envisaged
by Dewey, Freire and Illich, where education is seen as a dialogical, democraticizing and experimental practice. New information technologies
acting along the lines of Illich‟s conceptions of „webs of learning‟ and „tools for conviviality‟ (1971, 1973) encourage the sort of
experimental and collaborative projects proposed by Dewey (1997), and can also involve the more dialogical and non-authoritarian relations
between students and teachers that Freire envisaged (1972, 1998b). (Kahn and Kellner 2007: 442) Especially important here is Taylor‟s
warning: For those elsewhere in Europe who have not yet felt the full effects of managerialism, failure to heed and resist the warning
signs may exact a heavy cost in future. Perhaps there is ground for optimism in the fact that the demise of the „heavy touch‟ QAA regime
was hastened by the decision of the academic board of the London School of Economics to withdraw from it and that, significantly, „all
five of the senior academics who led the LSE revolt had non-British backgrounds‟ (Wolf, 2003: 13). (Taylor 2003b: 7)
Australia's tertiary education system is large, complex, and poorly regulated. Its
government funding sources, governance structures and annual reporting requirements lack
transparency and are inconsistent between and within jurisdictions. Distorted government
priorities and discredited ideological fixations have created a dysfunctional system that
devalues the work of academics and professional staff while imposing ever higher burdens on
students to pay more for less.
These statements and
others like them reinforce a widely held perception that the Coalition is
focused solely on higher education's economic contribution to the nation. At the same time
as it has raised its expectations of commercial outcomes from higher education, it has imposed
a wide range of additional funding cuts to teaching and research.
It is therefore clear that it is not the Federal Government that will primarily bear the
burden of its tertiary education ambitions. That burden will continue to fall squarely upon
Australian academics, students and professional staff. The ways governance and funding are
currently structured virtually guarantees such an outcome.
However, the overall contribution to the higher education system from the Federal Government
has halved over the last thirty years, from
around 80% to less than 40% . It has been able to do this by clawing back a much higher
proportion of universities' teaching costs from domestic students. Most of this transfer of the
cost burden to students has happened under the Coalition.
Even though total government funding for the higher education system grew 114% in real terms
since 1989, increasing from
$5.6 billion to $12 billion in 2018-19 , the number of domestic students in the system grew
by 165%, increasing from around 410,000 in 1989 to 1,087,850
in 2019 .
Allocated funding for higher education in the 2019‒2020 Federal Budget was $17.7
billion. But again, this included funding of $5.8 billion for HECS-HELP loans. Therefore,
actual government funding was only $11.9 billion out of total revenue for the higher education
system of $36.73 billion for that financial year. In other words, less than a third of the
system's total revenue was provided by the Commonwealth that year, yet it continues to behave
as though its contribution is far higher.
The combination of reduced revenue from domestic tuition fees due to government funding cuts
and from international students due to COVID has inevitably forced all of Australia's public
universities to cut expenditure over the last twelve months.
By late March 2020, however, cost savings in the core functions of teaching and research
were being sought by university executives, even though the full financial implications of the
pandemic were still far from clear.
Because labour costs have sat at around 57% of total university expenditure for the last
decade, they are always at the top of managerial priorities for cost-cutting, rather than
their own inflated wages or
latest pet projects . Executives have imposed early retirement and redundancies on
thousands of staff with little or no consultation. Many more casual and contracted staff have
been laid off or had their positions terminated at the end of their contracts. All the
indications from university executives are that
many more jobs are on the chopping block .
Universities made at least
17,000 full-time equivalent positions redundant in 2020 . This constitutes around 13% of
the total tertiary workforce. However, given that around half of that workforce
is employed casually or on contract , and has been for at least a decade, the total job
losses probably translate to around 50-60,000 in total. In other words, these job cuts need to
be grasped in the context of the massive casualisation of university teaching and
administration over the last few decades.
According to Universities Australia (UA), there was
130,000 full-time equivalent staff directly employed in the system in 2017 . However, like
the universities themselves, UA is unwilling to publicly acknowledge the number of casuals
working in the system. In 2018, there were
94,500 people employed on a casual basis at Australian universities . It would seem
reasonable on that basis to conclude that as many as half of all casuals have either totally
lost any work they had, or have had their work hours significantly reduced. However, most
universities steadfastly refuse to make employee headcount data public, so the data we do have
is inaccurate.
This has been borne out by a recent study of Victorian public university job losses in 2020
published by accounting professors James Guthrie and Brendan O'Connell. They have found that
even in Victoria, where universities are obligated to publish their casual workforce figures,
universities used inconsistent terminology and different techniques for recording their
staffing numbers at the end of 2020 . One estimate
from early May that 7,500 university employees in Victoria lost their jobs in 2020 is
therefore almost certainly an underestimate. Guthrie and O'Connell also found that universities
are using accounting losses to justify reducing employment.
The release of twenty-one university annual reports over the last few weeks strongly
reinforces their observations. UTS professor John Howard argues that the figures reported in
these annual reports raise
serious questions about the extent to which the financial crisis of the tertiary system
has been exaggerated . He points out that all but one of these universities recorded cash
surpluses, which averaged around 3% of total revenue. However, eight of them posted deficits
after they included 'non-cash' expenses such as depreciation, amortisation and changes in
investment valuations: none of these categories of 'expenses' constitute tangible revenue
losses. The bulk of university 'losses' were in decreased returns on investments (around $600
million) and the depreciation of assets, which totalled more than $1.4 billion.
Howard also points out that Australian universities had accessible cash or cash equivalent
reserves of
$4.6 billion at the beginning of the pandemic . Their own estimates indicate revenue losses
in 2020-21 of $3.8 billion. In other words, most of Australia's public universities have ample
financial assets at their disposal to offset any short- to medium-term loss of revenue.
Depreciation, amortisation and finance costs have seen the most significant growth in
'expenses' over the last decade. According to Deloitte, this category of expenses has seen the
highest growth, at
7.5% as a year-on-year average . Universities' adoption of accrual accounting has enabled
them to write off the value of fixed assets more quickly to inflate their expense claims every
year. These inflated expenses are used as an excuse to sack staff and cut programs. Howard
argues that if public universities did not use this business accounting convention, none
of the twenty-one universities he studied would have recorded any earnings deficit in 2020
.
It should therefore be clear that the main problem public universities face is not a lack of
revenue, or a lack of disposable assets to ride through a crisis. Their main problem is a lack
of transparency and accountability at the executive level which has enabled them to misallocate
financial resources, together with a corporate governance regime that has empowered executives
to behave in this fashion. These two issues need to be front and centre of reform of the
Australian higher education system.
Dr Adam Lucas is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
at the University of Wollongong. Adam's contemporary research focuses on energy policy
responses to anthropogenic climate change and obstacles to a sustainable energy
transition.
The corporatization of Australia's public universities has been driven by government
funding cuts and regressive changes to how universities are governed. The rationale for
corporatization was that it would encourage universities to become more entrepreneurial by
turning vice-chancellors into CEOs and governing bodies into corporate boards. The resulting
hybrid has been very successful at promoting university 'brands' to international students but
has utterly failed to maintain a supportive and collegial work environment for staff and
students on university campuses.
While it is indisputable that most Australian universities have experienced huge
growth in international student revenues over the last decade, the billions of dollars in
'operating surpluses' that have flowed through the system during this time have not been
invested in expanding and developing academic workforces, or
lowering staff-student ratios , or increasing teaching and learning support for students.
Instead, those responsible for making these decisions have
spent billions of dollars on construction and marketing programs that laud their
institutions' world-class status (usually in the techno-sciences), while systematically
degrading the working conditions of academic and professional staff and the quality of
education received by students.
Resources critical to the performance of a wide range of tasks and initiatives are regularly
withheld for no good reason. Hiring freezes and the imposition of annual staff performance
assessments further contribute to the general atmosphere of fear and anxiety promoted by senior
management, who never appear to have the same performance metrics applied to them. Student and
staff services that had previously been free or subsidized have been monetized and privatized.
Professional services and expertise that could easily be sourced 'in-house' are routinely
outsourced to external consultants.
Few of these negative trends are captured in the metrics senior management regularly deploy
to spruik the virtues of their universities to students, parents and potential donors.
Preoccupied with 'cost recovery', 'performance metrics' and 'efficiency dividends', senior
managers and executives have reconstructed staff and students as revenue-generators who are
surplus to requirements if not producing financial surpluses and/or 'measurable outcomes' that
contribute to improved university rankings. International league tables, performance
monitoring, teaching and research excellence awards, and all the other 'metrics of excellence'
with which university executives and managers are currently obsessed are means to these
ends.
These legislative changes have been primarily motivated by a long-held belief within the
Coalition and certain elements of the Labor Party that universities should be run like
corporations. Those who have embraced this belief are convinced that business and industry
provide the best models for university governance because they always perform better than
public sector institutions.
Following the Dawkins reforms of Australia's higher education system in the early 1990s,
this item of faith has been progressively embedded in all of the administrative and managerial
functions of universities. As successive state and federal governments have continued to reduce
funding to the system they have sought to graft an increasingly Frankensteinian model of
'corporate governance' onto Australia's public universities.
For example, in 2012 the NSW Coalition Government inserted specific clauses in the
enabling
NSW legislation concerning university governance and finances which specify that appointed
members require financial and management experience, while those sub-clauses specifying
requirements for tertiary, professional and community experience have been removed. Similar
changes to university acts were made by the
WA Coalition Government in 2016 .
In a public corporation, the executive is accountable to shareholders and the board of
directors. Poor performance is questioned, and senior executives and managers can be removed if
the board or shareholders are unhappy with that performance. However, unlike corporate boards,
which are answerable to their shareholders, and to some extent, the public as 'clients' or
'consumers' of their goods and services, the accountability of university governing bodies is
effectively restricted to financial issues.
The auditors-general of each state and territory are empowered to annually scrutinize the
financial
accounts of all universities under their jurisdiction . Even so, it is highly unusual for
them to call universities to account for anything other than minor infringements of accounting
rules and standards. They have rarely shown any willingness to delve deeply into university
finances under their jurisdiction, despite some clear cases of
maladministration, mismanagement and even corruption . There is no evidence that any audits
have ever uncovered wrongdoing, conflicts of interest, or incidents of malfeasance, even though
we know from our own colleagues in administrative positions at multiple universities that such
behaviour is not at all uncommon.
Universities, therefore, have the worst of both worlds as far as their governance is
concerned. Staff and students have little or no say over how priorities are set and strategies
are pursued. They are subject to the whims of management, who generally regard academics as an
obstacle to the efficient running of 'their' universities, and who have no legitimate
contributions to make as far as they are concerned. They rarely admit to having made mistakes
or demonstrate any willingness to learn from them.
To illustrate this point, in the wake of COVID, it would make sense to proportionally cut
back on staffing and resources in those areas that had the highest proportions of international
students, and those related to their support and recruitment. However, there is no evidence
from any decisions made to date by university executives that these disciplines or activities
have borne the brunt of 'cost savings'. On the contrary, even prior to the current pandemic,
the arts, humanities and social sciences have been targeted for job cuts, including
non-replacement of tenured academics that have retired or resigned. In most of these instances,
the financial cases for these cuts have been based on decisions that have little or no evidence
to support them.
Many academics and students feel that senior managers target disciplines in these fields
because those who work and study in them are willing to speak out against management and
executive excesses. Critical thinking, teaching and research is deemed by university leaders to
be acceptable within those contexts,
but not when reflexively applied to their decision-making .
All of the distorted priorities that universities manifest today are an outcome of the
inappropriate and dysfunctional corporate governance and reporting models that successive
governments have imposed on universities throughout the country over many years. It is
noteworthy that Coalition governments throughout the country have made successive changes to
university acts that have the clear intention of disenfranchising staff and students from any
meaningful input into university governance.
It should be abundantly clear from all this that the existing legislation concerning
university governance is deeply flawed. It is an obstacle to better university governance and
degrades the value and quality of education for our young people and the next generation of
professionals. It also devalues the work of academic and professional staff and demonstrates no
capacity for critical self-reflection. It is therefore completely inadequate to the task of
confronting the enormous challenges that humanity faces in the twenty-first century.
We need to start a national conversation about the kinds of changes that are needed to bring
about genuine reform of Australia's higher education system. A good start would be to focus on
the ways in which university governing bodies are organized and constituted, with a particular
focus on how and why different categories of members are selected and represented.
Democratic accountability and transparency should be embedded in every new process and
structure.
Dr Adam Lucas is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social
Sciences at the University of Wollongong. Adam's contemporary research focuses on energy
policy responses to anthropogenic climate change and obstacles to a sustainable energy
transition.
In 2015, you wrote extensively about your concerns over neoliberalism in academia, calling
it the worst threat to education. You wrote: "In order to offset the lack of public funding,
administrators have raised tuition with students becoming the primary consumers and
debt-holders. Institutions have entered into research partnerships with industry shifting the
pursuit of truth to the pursuit of profits." To accelerate this "molting," they have "
hired a larger and larger number of short-term, part-time adjuncts ."
This has created large armies of transient and disposable workers who "are in no position to
challenge the university's practices or agitate for "democratic rather than monetary
goals."
Yes, neoliberalism is hegemonic. It affects all minority communities...
In the Spectator article linked -- thank you b and all -- Kimball quotes a canny friend
who said "I'd rather be ruled by the Chinese than the Yale faculty". Yes, I thought, that is
how the west is now.
I am a teacher in Australia's oldest university whose new vice-chancellor (CEO) is a pure
technocrat without academic background or a PhD.
This is the strange norm now: grey neoliberal managers are rushed into areas that require
specialists in order to 'streamline' or 'set up structures of accountability' or simply
hollow out the joint. This guy sees 'tech' as the answer, so will accelerate the pedagogical
catastrophe taking place across the world (Zoom-'teaching') whose implications are dystopian,
psychologically alienating and frankly depressing.
He is the Yale faculty at the local level; Blinken is the Yale faculty on the diplomatic
stage: a recognisable and familiar type of manager from no particular background whose career
is made leap-frogging from bureaucratisation process to bureaucratisation process.
He berates the Chinese thinking that they are the old faculty resisting the newspeak of
neoliberal managerialism, an empty meaningless feedback loop of tickboxing. The 'rules-based
order' is some imaginary thing produced in the mind of grey men to obscure their
self-aggrandisement in a vacuum; zero time has been invested in any thought about it. The
'Biden-Doctrine' is a vacuum of intellectual reflection. In short, Blinken simply doesn't
care about his job, he just cares about ticking a box on his CV as he sets himself up for the
promotion/next job. Where once we had career specialists dedicated to the actual job (like
Chas Freeman) now the whole world is run by these empty people. The consequences are very
depressing.
University administrators need not have doctoral or other academic achievements. What is
needed, in any enterprise, is the commitment to the health and to prosperity of that
enterprise.
In America, they promoted men who promised lower taxes and easier money. Men with dubious
loyalty to the long term health and well being of that country or her population. The results
is there for the world to see. Same in Italy; Mr. Berlusconi would promise to cut taxes, and
would omit to also mention that he would also cut state services. And foolish plebians would
vote for him.
When the late Mr. Khomeini came to power in Iran, one of his observations was that he
could not find enough men with integrity to put them in executive positions.
I would like to respectfully suggest to try to preserve what you can but do not try to be
a lean department or program. Maintain the "fat" so that you van save as much of the
scholarly muscle as you can when the cutting times come.
Also, reach out to the public and the alumni and ask for whatever help you can obtain. Use
Kung-Fu approaches, never attack directly. Keep trying to find alternative careers for your
older or newer faculties. Take any and all positive action and try to preserve Learning and
Scholarship for the future generations.
The late Joseph Stalin observed: "Cadres decide everything."
May be you cannot stop this, but you can delay and dlelay and derail, thus buying time for
people to adjust to their new circumstances.
That would be Mark Scott as Vice Chancellor of the University of Sydney? What a decline
from when Enoch Powell was Professor of Greek at Sydney. I greatly admire Powell's scholarly
work on Herodotus and his edition of Thucydides (one of my set texts when I was at Oxford).
How much of that work did he do at Sydney?
This is about neoliberlization of education. Early over-specialization essentially is
detrimental to professional development. this is clearlly a neoliberal approach -- to get ready
cogs into the machinery that does not reuare any additional trianing to be productive and save on
training.
Like Knuth said on a different potic "Premature optimization is the root of al evil"
Why has it taken so long for professional-services firms in the U.S. to adopt a bespoke
graduate-degree approach (
"Employers Customize Business Degrees," Business News, March 5)?
The former president of the University of Limerick, Edward Walsh, was way ahead of the game
in this regard. Dr. Walsh arguably created a new norm in Irish third-level education back in
the early 1970s, from the university's modest beginnings in the "White House" as the building
was and is still known, to a now very impressive campus with a proud record of innovation in
education and excellence in research and scholarship. Dr. Walsh customized our degrees to match
the requirements of Irish companies and industry.
My bespoke electronics-production degree was customized because the electronics industry in
Ireland at the time found that many electronic-engineering grads applying for
production-oriented positions weren't suitably qualified. As a graduate in engineering, I
believe it made my finding a job much easier than some of my counterparts in other
universities, both in Ireland and abroad. Our degrees opened many doors for my class in a lot
of different industries, and I believe they still hold us in good stead today when changing our
careers or setting up indigenous businesses.
Since inception in 2011, the Commercial Banking Program in the Mays Business School of Texas
A&M University has joined with the banking industry in implementing and teaching a required
commercial-banking curriculum that is designed to position our graduates for successful careers
in commercial banking. The banking industry provides us with valuable input on essential
training and skills they require of our students to be considered for employment. In addition,
selected parts of the program curriculum are taught by senior banking executives from our
advisory board of directors. Students receive current, relevant banking-industry training
taught by banking executives positioning them for successful careers in commercial banking.
Banks find our graduates are trained according to industry requirements and are productive
sooner than their peers, and the Commercial Banking Program is helping alleviate the shortage
of trained talent within the banking industry.
This book considers the detrimental changes that have occurred to the institution of the university, as a result of the withdrawal
of state funding and the imposition of neoliberal market reforms on higher education. It argues that universities have lost their
way, and are currently drowning in an impenetrable mush of economic babble, spurious spin-offs of zombie economics, management-speak
and militaristic-corporate jargon. John Smyth provides a trenchant and excoriating analysis of how universities have enveloped themselves
in synthetic and meaningless marketing hype, and explains what this has done to academic work and the culture of universities – specifically,
how it has degraded higher education and exacerbated social inequalities among both staff and students. Finally, the book explores
how we might commence a reclamation. It should be essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of education and sociology,
and anyone interested in the current state of university management.
Quotes
If we are to unmask what is going on within and to universities, then we need to look forensically at the forces at work and
the pathological and dysfunctional effects that are placing academic lives in such jeopardy -- hence my somewhat provocative-sounding
title 'the toxic university 5 .
One of the most succinct explanations of what is animating me in writing this book was put by Lucal (2015) -- echoing arguably
the most significant sociologist ever. Charles Wright Mills (1971 [1959]) in his The sociological imagination -- when she said:
...neoliberalism is a critical public issue influencing apparently private troubles of college [university] students and teachers,
(p. 3)
... ... ...
Pathological Organizational Dysfunction
Just on 40 years ago, for all of my sins, I studied 'organizational theory and 'management behaviour' as part of my doctorate
in educational administration. I cannot remember encountering the term, but in light of mv subsequent four decades of working
in universities around the world, I think I have encountered a good deal of what 'pathological organisational dysfunction" (POD)
means in practice. I regard it is an ensemble term for a range of practices that fall well within the ambit of the 'toxic university
5 . The short explanation is that what I am calling POD has become a syndrome within which the toxic university has
become enveloped in its unquestioning embrace of the tenets of neoliberalism -- marketization, competition, audit culture, and
metrification. In other words. POD has become a major emblematic ingredient of the toxic university, which as Ferrell (2011) points
out looks fairly unproblematic on the surface:
Higher education on the corporate model imagines students as consumers, choosing between knowledge products and brands. It
imagines itself liberating the university from the dictates of the state/tradition/aristocratic self-replication, and putting
it in the hands of its democratic stakeholders. It therefore naturally subscribes to the general management principles and practices
of global corporate culture. These principles -- transparency, accountability, efficiency -- are hard to argue with in principle.
(p. 166 emphasis in original)
What is not revealed in this glossy reading of neoliberalism is the way in which it does its work, or its effects, as Ferrell
(2011) puts it in relation to universities, the way it has 'wrecked something worthwhile" (p. 181).
John Gatto. an award-winning teacher of the year in New York, comes closest to what I mean by POD in his description of'psychopathic
5 organizations. Gatto (2001) says that the term psychopathic, as applied to organizations, while it might conjure
up lurid images of deranged people running amuck, really means something quite different; he invokes the term to refer to people
'without consciences' (p. 303). The way he put it is that:
4.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for anyone working in a UK university today.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2019
Reviewers of this book seem to conflate the price of, and access to, this book in an ironic context. This isn't fair as this
is very much a book written from a formal academic perspective. In that sense the book is probably priced reasonably.
However, as I don't work in this field I found that I had to read around some of the topics in order to get a deeper understanding
of the issues raised by the book. So one thing I think that author could do is to almost re-write the book in a more "journalistic"
sense and this would make it more accessible to a wider audience.
As it stands, however, this book is right on the money. Reading almost every page brought from me nods of agreement at familiar
practices from university "leaders". This book is therefore absolutely correct in its findings and this then makes it profoundly
depressing as the book describes, in my view, the dismantling of the university system as we know it. Every chapter details things
I have witnessed or heard about from other universities. The "rock star" academics section, usually focusing on "dynamic" researchers,
is the highlight as I know enough people who fit the descriptions given - people who would sell their mothers to get a grant or
get slightly higher up the greasy pole.
The critique of university leadership, marketing functions and financial (mis)management are also spot-on.
Overall, get past the formal academic nature of this book (it is not a book designed for a wide audience, which is a pity)
and it is excellent, timely and deeply depressing.
PHILIP TAYLOR5.0 out of 5 stars
Forensic Analysis of The Toxic Neo-Liberal University Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2019
A brilliant exposition of the toxic neo-liberal University
"Schools teach to the test, depriving children of a rounded and useful education."
Boy do they. I work in Business/IT training and as the years have rolled on I and every colleague I can think of have noticed
more and more people coming to courses that they are unfit for. Not because they are stupid, but because they have been taught
to be stupid.
So used to being taught to the test that they are afraid to ask questions. Increasingly I get asked "what's the right way to
do...", usually referring to situation in which there is no right way...
I had the great pleasure of watching our new MD describe his first customer-facing project, which was a disaster, but they
"learned" from it. I had to point out to him that I teach the two disciplines involved - businesss analysis and project management
- and if he or his team had attended any of the courses - all of which are free to them - they would have learned about the issues
they would face, because (astonishingly) they are well-known.
I fear that these incurious adult children are at the bottom of Brexit, Trump and many of the other ills that afflict us. Learning
how to do things is difficult and sometimes boring.
Much better to wander in with zero idea of what has already been done and repeat the mistakes of the past. I see the future
as a treadmill where the same mistakes are made repetitively and greeted with as much surprise as if they had never happened before.
This is a classic catch 22 situation with this "oath" described below...
Also I think a lot of professors of neo-classical economics look like the member of Komsomol
described below ;-) For them it is about opening new opportunities for advancement not about the
truth and the level of corresponding to the reality of this pseudo-scientific neo-classical garbage, with the smoke screen of
mathematics as a lipstick on the pig (mathiness)
Most such people will teach students complete garbage understanding that this is a complete garbage with a smile.
Still, in in Soviet way it is possible for some to accept the position and work to undermine neo-classical economics acting within
the institution using Aesopian language in lectures and papers.
"... Consider an example from the contemporary United States. Today a number of private universities, colleges, and schools in several states require teachers and professors to take a "loyalty oath" to ensure that they do not "hold or foster undesirable political beliefs.... ..."
"... From a political standpoint she disagreed with the practice of taking loyalty oaths, and later, in her role as professor of the sociology of law, she voiced political positions counter to those mentioned in the oath and challenged the oath-taking practice itself. ..."
"... However, before she could do this, she first had to take the oath, understanding that without this act she would not be employed or recognized by the institution as a legitimate member with a voice authorized to participate in teaching, research, and the institution's politics (committees, meetings, elections, and so forth), including even the possibility to question publicly the practice of taking oaths. ..."
"... "The oath did not mean much if you took it, but it meant a lot if you didn't." ..."
"... However, "when a vote had to be taken, everyone roused -- a certain sensor clicked in the head: 'Who is in favor?' -- and you raised your hand automatically" (see a discussion of such ritualized practices within the Komsomol in chapter a). ..."
"... Participating in these acts reproduced oneself as a "normal" Soviet person within the system of relations, collectivities, and subject positions, with all the constraints and possibilities that position entailed, even including the possibility, after the meetings, to engage in interests, pursuits, and meanings that ran against those that were stated in the resolutions one had voted for. ..."
"... These acts are not about stating facts and describing opinions but about doing things and opening new possibilities. ..."
A general shift at the level of concrete ritualized forms of discourse, in which the
formal dimension's importance grows, while the
informal, substantiative dimension opens up to new meanings, can and does occur in different historical and
cultural contexts.
Consider an example from the contemporary United States. Today a number of private
universities, colleges, and schools in several states require teachers and professors to take a
"loyalty oath" to ensure that they do not "hold or foster undesirable political
beliefs....
While the statutes vary, [these institutions] generally deny the right to teach to those who
cannot or will not take the loyalty oath" (Chin and Rao 2003, 431 -32). Recently, a sociologist
of law took such a loyalty oath at a Midwestern university when her appointment as a professor
began.
From a political standpoint she disagreed with the practice of taking loyalty oaths, and
later, in her role as professor of the sociology of law, she voiced political positions counter
to those mentioned in the oath and challenged the oath-taking practice itself.
However, before
she could do this, she first had to take the oath, understanding that without this act she
would not be employed or recognized by the institution as a legitimate member with a voice
authorized to participate in teaching, research, and the institution's politics (committees,
meetings, elections, and so forth), including even the possibility to question publicly the
practice of taking oaths.
Here, the informal, substantiative dimension of the ritualized act experiences a shift, while the
formal dimension remains fixed and important: taking the oath opens a world of
possibilities where new informal, substantiative meanings become possible, including a professorial position
with a recognized political voice within the institution. In the sociologist's words, "The
oath did not mean much if you took it, but it meant a lot if you didn't." 3
^
This example illustrates the general principle of how some discursive acts or whole types of
discourse can drift historically in the direction of an increasingly expanding formal
dimension and increasingly open or even irrelevant informal, substantiative dimension. During Soviet late
socialism, the formal dimension of speech acts at formal gathering and rituals became
particularly important in most contexts and during most events.
One person who participated in large Komsomol meetings in the 1970s and 1980s described how
he often spent the meetings reading a book. However, "when a vote had to be taken, everyone
roused -- a certain sensor clicked in the head: 'Who is in favor?' -- and you raised your hand
automatically" (see a discussion of such ritualized practices within the Komsomol in chapter
a).
Here the emphasis on the formal dimension of organizational discourse was unique both
in scale and substance. Most ritualized acts of "organizational discourse" during this time
underwent such a transformation.
Participating in these acts reproduced oneself as a
"normal" Soviet person within the system of relations, collectivities, and subject positions,
with all the constraints and possibilities that position entailed, even including the
possibility, after the meetings, to engage in interests, pursuits, and meanings that ran
against those that were stated in the resolutions one had voted for.
It would obviously be wrong to see these acts of voting simply as informal, substantiative statements
about supporting the resolution that are either true (real support) or false (dissimulation of
support). These acts are not about stating facts and describing opinions but about doing
things and opening new possibilities.
Amazing; I had no idea Betsy Voss – advocate of for-profit charter schools (privatizing
education) and The New Curriculum – and Eric Prince (advocate for privatizing war) are
brother and sister. Blood will tell.
Profiteering is naked and in the open now in the west, and public systems increasingly
favour the wealthy – if you want better, you should be ready to pay for it. I guess
that's what all those tax cuts were about – shifting a burden off of the wealthy, so
that now public services are pay-as-you-go because the government can't afford to provide
them for everyone. However, tax cuts also favoured the wealthy – gee, it almost makes
you think the class system is coming back, dunnit?
I recall Jeremy Scahill mentioning in his book on Blackwater (before it started changing its
name faster than you can change your socks) that Erik Prince was related to Betsy deVos. This
was long before Scahill turned his own name and reputation into mud when he walked out of a
London conference back in 2012 or 2013 because the Syrian nun Agnes Mariam de la Croix, who
was known to support President Assad at the time, was a guest speaker at the conference.
Neoliberalism and Education
(To borrow a term often seen here at NC term – more evidence of "crapification")
In the new issue of the American Affairs Journal, the following article may be of interest
to those who tune into scholastic matters. Two quotes are posted here in case the paywall
obstructs.
1. "But the technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development and an
unredeemable waste. In the first place, technology exacerbates the greatest problem of all in
schools: confusion about their purpose. Education is the cultivation of a person, not the
manufacture of a worker. But in many public school districts we have already traded our
collective birthright, the promise of human flourishing, for a mess of utilitarian pottage
called 'job skills.' The more recent, panicked, money-lobbing fetish for STEM is a late
realization that even those dim promises will go unmet [E]ducational technology is a
regressive political weapon, never just a neutral tool: it increases economic inequality,
decreases school accountability, takes control away from teachers, and makes poorer students
more vulnerable to threats from automation and globalization."
2. "Dumping gadgets on children is a win-win proposition in poor school districts. It's a
win for tech billionaires looking to buy progressive indulgences (e.g., Mark Zuckerberg
in Newark), and it's a win for local mayors wanting to gesture toward needy schools
without changing the underlying economic reality (e.g., Cory Booker in Newark, Pete
Buttigieg in South Bend) The meanest trick of all is when funds allocated to bring struggling
students "into the future" are used instead to banish them into the realm of for-profit
programs called "online charter schools," which consist mostly of children watching lecture
videos all day instead of being taught by a teacher. Online charter schools are a worsening
catastrophe. Compared to the performance of peers in traditional public schools with similar
income, race, gender, and first-language characteristics, the impact of online charter
attendance on student reading is so bad, it's like missing 72 days of school each year.
In math, being afflicted by an online charter school is like being absent for 180 days!"
"... When administrators make budget cuts, it isn't for recreational facilities and their own salaries -- it's the classics and history departments, and it's to faculty, with poorly paid part-time adjuncts teaching an unconscionable share of courses. ..."
"... So universities have been exacerbating the same unequal division between the people who actually do the work (faculty) and the people who allocate salaries (administrators) -- so too as in the business world, as you say. ..."
I don't think that's entirely accurate, and even if true, leaving students to the
predations of private lenders isn't the answer. Although I'm willing to entertain your
thesis, soaring tuition has also been the way to make up for the underfunding of state
universities by state legislatures.
At the same time, there's been an increase since the 70s in de luxe facilities and bloated
administrator salaries. When administrators make budget cuts, it isn't for recreational
facilities and their own salaries -- it's the classics and history departments, and it's to
faculty, with poorly paid part-time adjuncts teaching an unconscionable share of
courses.
So universities have been exacerbating the same unequal division between the people
who actually do the work (faculty) and the people who allocate salaries (administrators) --
so too as in the business world, as you say.
Schools are teaching to the test. As someone who recently retrained as a secondary science
teacher - after nearly 30 years as a journalist - I know this to be true.
Education is a prime example of where neoliberalism has had a negative effect. It worked well
when labour was pumping billions into it and they invested in early intervention schemes such
as sure start and nursery expansion. Unfortunately under the tories we have had those
progressive policies scaled right back. Children with SEND and/or in care are commodities
bought and sold by local authorities. I've been working in a PRU which is a private company
and it does good things, but I can't help but think if that was in the public sector that it
would be in a purpose built building rather than some scruffy office with no playground.
The facilities aren't what you would expect in this day in age. If we had a proper
functioning government with a plan then what happens with vulnerable children would be
properly organised rather than a reactive shit show.
"Schools teach to the test, depriving children of a rounded and useful education."
Boy do they. I work in Business/IT training and as the years have rolled on I and every
colleague I can think of have noticed more and more people coming to courses that they are
unfit for. Not because they are stupid, but because they have been taught to be stupid. So
used to being taught to the test that they are afraid to ask questions. Increasingly I get
asked "what's the right way to do...", usually referring to situation in which there is no
right way, just a right way for your business, at a specific point in time.
I had the great pleasure of watching our new MD describe his first customer-facing project,
which was a disaster, but they "learned" from it. I had to point out to him that I teach the
two disciplines involved - businesss analysis and project management - and if he or his team
had attended any of the courses - all of which are free to them - they would have learned
about the issues they would face, because (astonishingly) they are well-known.
I fear that these incurious adult children are at the bottom of Brexit, Trump and many of the
other ills that afflict us. Learning how to do things is difficult and sometimes boring. Much
better to wander in with zero idea of what has already been done and repeat the mistakes of
the past. I see the future as a treadmill where the same mistakes are made repetitively and
greeted with as much surprise as if they had never happened before. We have always been at
war with Eastasia...
The term Casializatin was repced by more correct term "neoliberalization" for clarity.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalization, a word that says much in, and of, itself, is seen as analogue of broader outsourcing initiatives. Militaries do it, governments do it, and the university does it. Services long held to be the domain of the state, itself an animation of the social contract, the spirit of the people, have now become the incentive of the corporate mind, and, it follows, its associated vices. The entire scope of what has come to be known as outsourcing is itself a creature of propaganda, cheered on as an opportunity drawing benefits rather than an ill encouraging a brutish, tenuous life. ..."
"... Practitioners and policy makers within the education industry have become devotees of the amoral dictates of supply and demand, underpinned by an insatiable management class. Central to their program of university mismanagement is the neoliberal academic, a creature both embraced and maligned in the tertiary sectors of the globe. ..."
"... The neoliberal academic is meant to be an underpaid miracle worker, whose divining acts rescue often lax academics from discharging their duties. (These duties are outlined in that deceptive and unreliable document known as a "workplan", as tedious as it is fictional.) The neoliberal academic grades papers, lectures, tutors and coordinates subjects. The neoliberal provides cover, a shield, and an excuse for a certain class of academic manager who prefers the calling of pretence to the realities of work. ..."
"... Often, these neoliberal academics are students undertaking a postgraduate degree and subject to inordinate degrees of stress in an environment of perennial uncertainty. ..."
"... A representative sample of PhD students studying in Flanders, Belgium found that one in two experienced psychological distress, with one in three at risk of a common psychiatric disorder. Mental health problems tended to be higher in PhD students "than in the highly educated general population, highly education employees and higher education students." ..."
"... Neoliberalization can be seen alongside a host of other ills. If the instructor is disposable and vulnerable, then so are the manifestations of learning. Libraries and research collections, for instance, are being regarded as deadening, inanimate burdens on the modern, vibrant university environment. Some institutions make a regular habit of culling their supply of texts and references: we are all e-people now, bound to prefer screens to paper, the bleary-eyed session of online engagement to the tactile session with a book. ..."
Any sentient being should be offended. Eventually,
the Neoliberalization of the academic workforce was bound to find lazy enthusiasts who neither
teach, nor understand the value of a tenured position dedicated to that musty,
soon-to-be-forgotten vocation of the pedagogue. It shows in the designs of certain universities
who confuse frothy trendiness with tangible depth: the pedagogue banished from the podium, with
rooms lacking a centre, or a focal point for the instructor. Not chic, not cool, we are told,
often by learning and teaching committees that perform neither task. Keep it modern; do not
sound too bright and hide the learning: we are all equal in the classroom, inspiringly even and
scrubbed of knowledge. The result is what was always to be expected: profound laziness on the
part of instructors and students, dedicated mediocrity, and a rejection of all things
intellectually taxing.
Neoliberalization, a word that says much in, and of, itself, is seen as analogue of broader
outsourcing initiatives. Militaries do it, governments do it, and the university does it.
Services long held to be the domain of the state, itself an animation of the social contract,
the spirit of the people, have now become the incentive of the corporate mind, and, it follows,
its associated vices. The entire scope of what has come to be known as outsourcing is itself a
creature of propaganda, cheered on as an opportunity drawing benefits rather than an ill
encouraging a brutish, tenuous life.
One such text is Douglas Brown and Scott Wilson's The
Black Book of Outsourcing . Plaudits for it resemble worshippers at a shrine planning
kisses upon icons and holy relics. "Brown & Wilson deliver on the best, most innovative,
new practices all aimed at helping one and all survive, manage and lead in this new economy,"
praises
Joann Martin, Vice President of Pitney Bowes Management Services. Brown and Wilson take aim at
a fundamental "myth": that "Outsourcing is bad for America." They cite work sponsored by the
Information Technology Association of America (of course) that "the practice of outsourcing is
good for the US economy and its workers."
Practitioners and policy makers within the education industry have become devotees of the
amoral dictates of supply and demand, underpinned by an insatiable management class. Central to
their program of university mismanagement is the neoliberal academic, a creature both embraced and
maligned in the tertiary sectors of the globe.
The neoliberal academic is meant to be an underpaid miracle worker, whose divining acts rescue
often lax academics from discharging their duties. (These duties are outlined in that deceptive
and unreliable document known as a "workplan", as tedious as it is fictional.) The neoliberal
academic grades papers, lectures, tutors and coordinates subjects. The neoliberal provides cover, a
shield, and an excuse for a certain class of academic manager who prefers the calling of
pretence to the realities of work.
Often, these neoliberal academics are students undertaking a postgraduate degree and subject to
inordinate degrees of stress in an environment of perennial uncertainty. The stresses
associated with such students are documented in the Guardian's Academics
Anonymous series and have also been the subject of research
in the journal Research Policy . A representative sample of PhD students studying in
Flanders, Belgium found that one in two experienced psychological distress, with one in three
at risk of a common psychiatric disorder. Mental health problems tended to be higher in PhD
students "than in the highly educated general population, highly education employees and higher
education students."
This is hardly helped by the prospects faced by those PhDs for future permanent employment,
given what the authors of the Research Policy article describe
as the "unfavourable shift in the labour-supply demand balance, a growing popularity of
short-term contracts, budget cuts and increased competition for research sources".
There have been a few pompom holders encouraging the Neoliberalization mania, suggesting that it
is good for the academic sector. The explanations are never more than structural: a neoliberal
workforce, for instance, copes with fluctuating enrolments and reduces labour costs. "Using
neoliberal academics brings benefits and challenges," we find Dorothy Wardale, Julia Richardson and
Yuliani Suseno
telling us in The Conversation . This, in truth, is much like suggesting that
syphilis and irritable bowel syndrome is necessary to keep you on your toes, sharp and
streamlined. The mindset of the academic-administrator is to assume that such things are such
(Neoliberalization, the authors insist, is not going way, so embrace) and adopt a prostrate
position in the face of funding cuts from the public purse.
Neoliberalization can be seen alongside a host of other ills. If the instructor is disposable
and vulnerable, then so are the manifestations of learning. Libraries and research collections,
for instance, are being regarded as deadening, inanimate burdens on the modern, vibrant
university environment. Some institutions make a regular habit of culling their supply of texts
and references: we are all e-people now, bound to prefer screens to paper, the bleary-eyed
session of online engagement to the tactile session with a book.
The neoliberal, sessional academic also has, for company, the "hot-desk", a spot for temporary,
and all too fleeting occupation. The hot-desk has replaced the work desk; the partitions of the
office are giving way to the intrusions of the open plan. The hot-desker, like coitus, is
temporary and brief. The neoliberal academic epitomises that unstable reality; there is little need
to give such workers more than temporary, precarious space. As a result, confidentiality is
impaired, and privacy all but negated. Despite extensive research
showing the negative costs of "hot-desking" and open plan settings, university management
remains crusade bound to implement such daft ideas in the name of efficiency.
Neoliberalization also compounds fraudulence in the academy. It supplies the bejewelled short
cut route, the bypass, the evasion of the rigorous things in learning. Academics may reek like
piddling middle class spongers avoiding the issues while pretending to deal with them, but the
good ones at least make some effort to teach their brood decently and marshal their thoughts in
a way that resembles, at the very least, a sound whiff of knowledge. This ancient code, tested
and tried, is worth keeping, but it is something that modern management types, along with their
parasitic cognates, ignore. In Australia, this is particularly problematic, given suggestions that up to 80
percent of undergraduate courses in certain higher learning institutions are taught by neoliberal
academics.
The union between the spread sheet manager and the uninterested academic who sees promotion
through the management channel rather than scholarship, throws up a terrible hybrid, one
vicious enough to degrade all in its pathway. This sort of hybrid hack resorts to skiving and
getting neoliberals to do the work he or she ought to be doing. Such people co-ordinate courses but
make sure they get the wallahs and helpers desperate for cash to do it. Manipulation is
guaranteed, exploitation is assured.
The economy of desperation is cashed in like a reliable blue-chip stock: the skiver with an
ongoing position knows that a neoliberal academic desperate to earn some cash cannot dissent, will
do little to rock the misdirected boat, and will have to go along with utterly dotty notions.
There are no additional benefits from work, no ongoing income, no insurance, and, importantly,
inflated hours that rarely take into account the amount of preparation required for the
task.
The ultimate nature of the Neoliberalization catastrophe is its diminution of the entire
academic sector. Neoliberals suffer, but so do students. The result is not mere sloth but
misrepresentation of the worst kind: the university keen to advertise a particular service it
cannot provide sufficiently. This, in time, is normalised: what would students, who in many
instances may not even know the grader of their paper, expect? The remunerated, secure
academic-manager, being in the castle, can raise the drawbridge and throw the neoliberals to the
vengeful crowd, an employment environment made safe for hypocrisy.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT
University, Melbourne and can be reached at: [email protected] . Read other articles by Binoy .
In this article, we explore commodities and consumption , two concepts that
are central to critiques of the neoliberal university. By engaging with these concepts, we
explore the limits of neoliberal logic. We ground this conceptual entanglement in Marxist and
post-Marxist traditions given our understanding of neoliberalism both as an extension of and as
a meaningfully different form of capitalism. As colleges and universities enact neoliberal
economic assumptions by focusing on revenue generation, understanding students as customers,
and construing their faculty as temporary service providers, the terms commodity and
consumption have become commonplace in critical higher education literature. When
critiques concerning the commodification and consumption of higher education are connected with
these theoretical and conceptual foundations, they not only become more effective but also
provide a more meaningful guide upon which current and future scholars can build.
"... The solution is the privatization of everything (hence the slogan "let's get governments off our backs"), which would include social security, health care, K-12 education, the ownership and maintenance of toll–roads, railways, airlines, energy production, communication systems and the flow of money. (This list, far from exhaustive, should alert us to the extent to which the neoliberal agenda has already succeeded.) ..."
"... The assumption is that if free enterprise is allowed to make its way into every corner of human existence, the results will be better overall for everyone, even for those who are temporarily disadvantaged, let's say by being deprived of their fish. ..."
"... the passage from a state in which actions are guided by an overarching notion of the public good to a state in which individual entrepreneurs "freely" pursue their private goods, values like morality, justice, fairness, empathy, nobility and love are either abandoned or redefined in market terms. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, David Harvey explains, delivers a "world of pseudo-satisfactions that is superficially exciting but hollow at its core." ("A Brief History of Neoliberalism.") ..."
"... Harvey and the other critics of neoliberalism explain that once neoliberal goals and priorities become embedded in a culture's way of thinking, institutions that don't regard themselves as neoliberal will nevertheless engage in practices that mime and extend neoliberal principles -- privatization, untrammeled competition, the retreat from social engineering, the proliferation of markets. These are exactly the principles and practices these critics find in the 21st century university, where (according to Henry Giroux) the "historical legacy" of the university conceived "as a crucial public sphere" has given way to a university "that now narrates itself in terms that are more instrumental, commercial and practical." ("Academic Unfreedom in America," in Works and Days.) ..."
"... This new narrative has been produced (and necessitated) by the withdrawal of the state from the funding of its so-called public universities. If the percentage of a state's contribution to a college's operating expenses falls from 80 to 10 and less (this has been the relentless trajectory of the past 40 years) and if, at the same time, demand for the "product" of higher education rises and the cost of delivering that product (the cost of supplies, personnel, information systems, maintenance, construction, insurance, security) skyrockets, a huge gap opens up that will have to be filled somehow. ..."
"... Faced with this situation universities have responded by (1) raising tuition, in effect passing the burden of costs to the students who now become consumers and debt-holders rather than beneficiaries of enlightenment (2) entering into research partnerships with industry and thus courting the danger of turning the pursuit of truth into the pursuit of profits and (3) hiring a larger and larger number of short-term, part-time adjuncts who as members of a transient and disposable workforce are in no position to challenge the university's practices or agitate for an academy more committed to the realization of democratic rather than monetary goals. In short , universities have embraced neoliberalism. ..."
Here is an often cited definition by Paul Treanor: "Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which
the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous
relationship with the production of goods and services . . . and where the operation of a
market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for
all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs."
("Neoliberalism: Origins, Theory, Definition.")
In a neoliberal world, for example, tort questions -- questions of negligence law -- are
thought of not as ethical questions of blame and restitution (who did the injury and how can
the injured party be made whole?), but as economic questions about the value to someone of an
injury-producing action relative to the cost to someone else adversely affected by that same
action. It may be the case that run-off from my factory kills the fish in your stream; but
rather than asking the government to stop my polluting activity (which would involve the loss
of jobs and the diminishing of the number of market transactions), why don't you and I sit down
and figure out if more wealth is created by my factory's operations than is lost as a
consequence of their effects?
As Ronald Coase put it in his classic article, "The Problem of Social Cost" (Journal of Law
and Economics, 1960): "The question to be decided is: is the value of the fish lost greater or
less than the value of the product which the contamination of the stream makes possible?" If
the answer is more value would be lost if my factory were closed, then the principle of the
maximization of wealth and efficiency directs us to a negotiated solution: you allow my factory
to continue to pollute your stream and I will compensate you or underwrite the costs of your
moving the stream elsewhere on your property, provided of course that the price I pay for the
right to pollute is not greater than the value produced by my being permitted to continue.
Notice that "value" in this example (which is an extremely simplified stand-in for
infinitely more complex transactions) is an economic, not an ethical word, or, rather, that in
the neoliberal universe, ethics reduces to calculations of wealth and productivity. Notice too
that if you and I proceed (as market ethics dictate) to work things out between us -- to come
to a private agreement -- there will be no need for action by either the government or the
courts, each of which is likely to muddy the waters (in which the fish will still be dying) by
introducing distracting moral or philosophical concerns, sometimes referred to as "market
distortions."
Whereas in other theories, the achieving of a better life for all requires a measure of
state intervention, in the polemics of neoliberalism (elaborated by Milton Friedman and
Friedrich von Hayek and put into practice by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher), state
interventions -- governmental policies of social engineering -- are "presented as the problem
rather than the solution" (Chris Harman, "Theorising Neoliberalism," International Socialism
Journal, December 2007).
The solution is the privatization of everything (hence the slogan "let's get governments off
our backs"), which would include social security, health care, K-12 education, the ownership
and maintenance of toll–roads, railways, airlines, energy production, communication
systems and the flow of money. (This list, far from exhaustive, should alert us to the extent
to which the neoliberal agenda has already succeeded.)
The assumption is that if free enterprise is allowed to make its way into every corner of
human existence, the results will be better overall for everyone, even for those who are
temporarily disadvantaged, let's say by being deprived of their fish.
The objection (which I am reporting, not making) is that in the passage from a state in
which actions are guided by an overarching notion of the public good to a state in which
individual entrepreneurs "freely" pursue their private goods, values like morality, justice,
fairness, empathy, nobility and love are either abandoned or redefined in market terms.
Short-term transactions-for-profit replace long-term planning designed to produce a more
just and equitable society. Everyone is always running around doing and acquiring things, but
the things done and acquired provide only momentary and empty pleasures (shopping, trophy
houses, designer clothing and jewelry), which in the end amount to nothing. Neoliberalism,
David Harvey explains, delivers a "world of pseudo-satisfactions that is superficially exciting
but hollow at its core." ("A Brief History of Neoliberalism.")
Harvey and the other critics of neoliberalism explain that once neoliberal goals and
priorities become embedded in a culture's way of thinking, institutions that don't regard
themselves as neoliberal will nevertheless engage in practices that mime and extend neoliberal
principles -- privatization, untrammeled competition, the retreat from social engineering, the
proliferation of markets. These are exactly the principles and practices these critics find in
the 21st century university, where (according to Henry Giroux) the "historical legacy" of the
university conceived "as a crucial public sphere" has given way to a university "that now
narrates itself in terms that are more instrumental, commercial and practical." ("Academic
Unfreedom in America," in Works and Days.)
This new narrative has been produced (and necessitated) by the withdrawal of the state from
the funding of its so-called public universities. If the percentage of a state's contribution
to a college's operating expenses falls from 80 to 10 and less (this has been the relentless
trajectory of the past 40 years) and if, at the same time, demand for the "product" of higher
education rises and the cost of delivering that product (the cost of supplies, personnel,
information systems, maintenance, construction, insurance, security) skyrockets, a huge gap
opens up that will have to be filled somehow.
Faced with this situation universities have responded by (1) raising tuition, in effect
passing the burden of costs to the students who now become consumers and debt-holders rather
than beneficiaries of enlightenment (2) entering into research partnerships with industry and
thus courting the danger of turning the pursuit of truth into the pursuit of profits and (3)
hiring a larger and larger number of short-term, part-time adjuncts who as members of a
transient and disposable workforce are in no position to challenge the university's practices
or agitate for an academy more committed to the realization of democratic rather than monetary
goals. In short , universities have embraced neoliberalism.
Meanwhile, even those few faculty members with security of employment do their bit for
neoliberalism when they retire to their professional enclaves and churn out reams of
scholarship (their equivalent of capital) that is increasingly specialized and without a clear
connection to the public interest: "[F]aculty have progressively . . . favored professionalism
over social responsibility and have . . . refused to take positions on controversial issues";
as a result they have "become disconnected from political agency and thereby incapable of
taking a political stand" (McClennen, Works and Days).
... ... ...
Stanley Fish is a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, in Miami. In the Fall of 2012,
he will be Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He has also taught at the
University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Duke University and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author
of 15 books, most recently “Versions of Antihumanism: Milton and Others”; “How to Write a Sentence”; “Save the World On Your Own
Time”; and “The Fugitive in Flight,” a study of the 1960s TV drama. “Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to
Revolution” will be published in 2014.
Lobbying and campaign finance are two forms of legalized bribery. Citizens United
legalized political corruption for corporations and showed the complete corruption of the
Supreme Court which decided it. Astroturfed political organizations, the manufacture of
"popular consent", are another form of corruption in politics. The hiding of contributors to
these and other groups gives cover to their corruption.
The media are corrupt, even a lot of the blogosphere is. It is all propaganda all the
time, just segmented and tailored to different audiences of rubes.
Universities are corrupt. They no longer fulfill an educational mission rather they are
purveyors of the status quo. They are corrupt in their corporate structure, in their
alliances with other corporations, and in their foisting of debt on to their
students.
Academia is corrupt. There is the whole publish or perish thing that results in most of
academia's research product being worthless and useless. This is even before we get to the
quack sciences like economics. Academic economics is completely corrupt. The dominant
politico-economic system of our times is kleptocracy. Yet almost no academic economist will
acknowledge it let alone make it central to their point of view.
The judicial system and the judiciary are corrupt. How else to explain our two-tiered
justice system? The great criminals of our times, the largest frauds in human history, are
not only not prosecuted, they are not even investigated. And how can anyone take the Supreme
Court to be anything but corrupt? This is an institution that except for a couple of decades
around the Warren Court has, for more than 200 years, always been on the side of the haves
against the have-nots, for the powerful, against the powerless, pro-slavery, pro-segregation,
and anti-worker. How can anyone take decisions like Bush v. Gore or Citizens United to be
anything other than corrupt, politics dressed up as legal thinking?
In a kleptocracy, all the institutions, at least those controlled by the rich and elites,
are put into the service of the kleptocrats to loot or justify and defend looting and the
looters. So corruption is endemic and systemic.
Trigger warning: This post contains the discussion of depression and other mental
health issues, and suicide. If you or anyone you know needs help or support for a mental
health concern, please don't suffer in silence. Many countries have confidential phone
helplines (in Australia you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14, for example);this organisationprovides
worldwide support, whilethis websitecompiles a
number of helpline sites from around the world.
I am writing today from a place of anger; from a rage that sits, simmering on the surface of
a deep well of sadness. I didn't know Dr. Malcolm Anderson, the senior accountancy lecturer
from Cardiff University whose death, after falling from the roof of his university building,
was last week ruled
a suicide . I obviously have no way to know the complexity of his feelings or what sequence
of events led up to his decision to end his own life. However, according to the results of an
inquest, we can know what Dr. Anderson wanted his university to understand about his death
– that it was, at least in part, because of the pressures of his academic work.
The media reports that Dr. Anderson had recently been appointed to Deputy Head of his
department, significantly increasing his administrative load. Nonetheless, he was still
teaching 418 students and needed to mark their work within a 20-day turnaround. To meet that
deadline, he would have needed to work approximately 9 hours a day without food or toilet
breaks, for 20 days straight, and not do ANY other kind of work during that time (such as the
admin that comes with being a Deputy Head). Practically impossible, given he was also a human
being, with a home life, and physical needs like food, in addition to work
responsibilities.
His wife, Diane, has been quoted saying that Dr. Anderson worked very long hours and often
took marking to family events. She has said that although he was a passionate educator who won
teaching awards every year, he had been showing signs of stress and had spoken to his managers
about his difficulty meeting deadlines. A colleague told the inquest that he was given the same
response each time he asked for help, and staffing cuts had continued.
A Marked
Problem
... ... ...
And look, I get it. To someone outside the academy, I'm sure the perception
remains that academics sit in leather armchairs, gazing out the gilded windows of our ivory
towers, thinking all day.
That has not been my experience, nor that of anyone I know.
My colleagues and peers have, however , experienced levels of anxiety and
depression that are
six times higher than experienced in the general population (Evans et al. 2018). They
report
higher levels of workaholism , the kind that has a negative and unwanted effect on
relationships with loved ones (Torp et al. 2018). The picture is often even bleaker for
women
,
people of colour , and other non-White, non-middle-class, non-males. So whether you think
academics are 'delicate woeful souls' or not, it's difficult to deny that there is a real
problem to be tackled here.
Obviously, marking load is only one issue amongst many faced in universities the world over.
But it's not bad as an illustration, partly because it's quantifiable . It's somewhat
ironic that the neoliberal metrics that we rail against, the audit culture that causes these
kinds of examples to happen, could also help us describe to others why they are a problem for
us. So quantifiability brings us to neoliberalism. How did neoliberalism become so pervasive
that it's almost impossible to imagine how the world could look different?
Neoliberalism,
then and now
These last two weeks I've been working out of the Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research in Sweden,
which, by coincidence, is where Professor Cris Shore , anthropologist of
policy and the guest on our next podcast episode is
currently based. I was chatting to him the other day about the interview we recorded last
December, which centres around many of the ideas I'm discussing in this blog post. I had to
admit, I hadn't realised until we did that interview how angry many people still feel towards
the
Thatcher government for introducing neoliberal ideologies and practices into the public
sector. Despite doing a Ph.D. about modern university life, it hadn't fully registered for me
that events of the past , specifically the histories of politics and economics in 'the
West', were such active players in the theatre of higher education's present .
To understand today's neoliberal universities, let's explore a little history in the UK and
the US, two of the biggest influencers in the global higher education sector today. In 1979,
Margaret Thatcher rose to power on a platform of reviving the stagnant British economy by
introducing market-style competition into the public sector. This way, she claimed, she was
ensuring, that "the state's power [was] reduced and the power of the people, enhanced"
(Edwards,
2017) . For universities, this meant increased "accountability" and quality assurance
measures that would
drag universities out of their complacency .
Meanwhile, in the US, Ronald Reagan was also arriving at neoliberalism via a different path.
Americans historically don't trust central government (Roberts,
2007) , so in 1981, Reagan introduced tax cuts (especially for the rich) for the first time
in American history, therefore "protecting" the American people from the rapacious spending
habits of the state (Prasad,
2012) . In American universities, this manifested over the next 30 years in reduced public
spending on higher education, transferring the costs for tuition to student-consumers, and
encouraging partnerships with industry and endorsements from philanthropists (often with
agendas) to cover research costs (Shumway, 2017) .
Then in the 90s, there was a moral panic about the public sector caused by scandals such as
" the collapse of Barings
Bank in 1995 , the failures of the medical profession revealed by investigations into the
serial murders by Dr
Harold Shipman , and the numerous cases of child abuse
that have plagued the Catholic Church " (Shore, 2008) . Frankly, it
seems pretty understandable that people were looking for greater transparency, a bit of
accountability, and a whole lot less of, "leave it to the professionals, they seem like alright
blokes, don't they?" from their public sector.
The official rationale for [neoliberal ideologies and actions] appears benign and
incontestable: to improve efficiency and transparency and to make these institutions more
accountable to the taxpayer and public (and no reasonable person could seriously challenge
such commonsensical and progressive objectives). The problem, however, is that audit confuses
'accountability' with 'accountancy' so that 'being answerable to the public' is recast in
terms of measures of productivity, 'economic efficiency' and delivering 'value for money'
(VFM).
The trouble with neoliberalism and its offshoot, New Public Management , is that
much like the Newspeak of
Orwell's 1984 , the words that were used to sell it – quality, accountability,
transparency etc. – in practice, mean the opposite of what they appear to mean.
For example, as Chris Lorenz (2012) points out in an article that convincingly compares New Public
Management in universities to the outcomes of a Communist regime , there has been no
evidence, statistical or otherwise, that increasing 'quality control measures' in universities
has actually improved quality in universities by any objective criteria – and often just
the opposite.
What has "improved" in universities because of neoliberal practices is efficiency,
often through measures like restructures and reviews. Again, taking steps to save money and
time sounds like a positive. However, the problem with 'efficiency' is that, unlike its
counterpart 'effectiveness' (the ability to bring about a specific effect), 'efficiency' has no
end point – it is a goal unto itself. As Lorenz phrases it, "efficient, therefore, is
never efficient enough," (2012, p. 607).
Bringing this back, then, to issues of mental health and increasing workloads on campus. Liz
Morrish of Academic
Irregularities pointed out last week that when tragedies such as the death of Malcolm
Anderson occur in universities, the most common response is for said university to announce a
review. As anticipated, two days after the results of Dr. Anderson's inquest were first
reported in the media, Cardiff University
announced that they would be reviewing the 'support, information, advice and specialist
counselling' available to all staff, but also urged any academic "who has any concerns
regarding workload, to raise them with their line manager, in the first instance, so all
available advice and support can be offered."
This platitude has been taken by many online as exactly that – a platitude. Several commenters
on Twitter have pointed out that providing more mental health support doesn't actually
reduce workload, while others have noted that there has been no discussion by Cardiff U of
attempting to fix the underlying cause. I agree with them, and it's part of the reason I'm so
angry. Malcolm Anderson could easily be any one of us.
Yet, I have to admit, I'd also hate to be part of the executive team at Cardiff University
right now. Can you imagine the anguish of knowing that someone had taken their life, and held
you directly responsible? You'd have to feel so helpless, so powerless in the shadow of
neoliberal forces that permeate every last aspect of the global higher education sector. I
don't know, I haven't been a Vice Chancellor, maybe you wouldn't have to feel that way. But
it's easy to imagine how one could.
The path to neoliberal hell is paved with good
intentions
So, what's the answer? I wish I knew. What I do know is that anthropological thinking has a
lot to offer in the exploration of big immutable mobiles
2 like neoliberalism. As Sherry Ortner asks in her 2016 article " Dark anthropology and
its others: Theory since the eighties ", who better to question the power structures
inherent in 'dark' topics such as neoliberalisation or colonialism than anthropologists? Yet,
she urges an approach that also acknowledges the possibility of goodness in the world,
quoting from the opening to Michael Lambek's Ordinary Ethics as rationale:
Ethnographers commonly find that the people they encounter are trying to do what they
consider right or good, are being evaluated according to criteria of what is right and good,
or are in some debate about what constitutes the human good. Yet anthropological theory tends
to overlook all this in favor of analyses that emphasize structure, power, and interest.
(Lambeck, 2010, p. 1)
And this is where I have to deviate from the majority of the neoliberal university critiques
I've read. In these pieces, it's all too common to read criticisms of academic managers, or
administrators, or university 'service providers' as if they are The Reason that neoliberal
ideologies get enacted in university contexts. But usually, they're just human beings too, also
subject to KPIs and managerial demands and neoliberal ideologies.
Having worked at different times as an educator, a researcher, and a communications manager
in various universities for more than 10 years, and now having conducted fieldwork at a
university for my PhD, I have had the chance to observe and conduct research on at least nine
different university campuses, in at least five countries. Based on those experiences, I am in
complete agreement with Lambek: the majority
3 of non-academics that I have encountered, in every type of department, and at every
level of universities from Level 1 administrative officers to Presidents and Vice Chancellors,
"are trying to do what they consider right or good" (2010, p. 1).
They demonstrate, both through words and their actions, their beliefs that education is
valuable, and that students are important as human beings, not just as cash cows. They are
often working long hours themselves, trying to keep up with the demands that neoliberal
university life is placing on them. I just can't get on board with the idea that they are,
universally, the villains of the neoliberal horror story.
It seems much more likely, to me, that neoliberal ideologies continue to get enacted and
reinforced by academic managers because these practices have become the norm. Throughout and
because of the historical growth pattern neoliberalism has experienced, these ideologies have
put down roots, and these roots have become so entangled with other aspects of university life
as to be inseparable. For many working-aged people, neoliberalism is the water we were born
swimming in. Even presented with its inadequacies, it's difficult to imagine an
alternative.
What I can agree with the critics about, however, is that non-academics often don't
understand or appreciate – or perhaps remember (if they had worked in that capacity in
the past) – the demands of being an academic, just like academics don't tend to
understand or appreciate the demands that non-academics within the university are facing.
In their recently published book
Death of the Public University (2017), Susan Wright and Cris Shore refer to the idea of
'Faculty Land' – a place synonymous with 'La La Land', where non-academic employees of
universities think academics live. This really resonates with what I saw on fieldwork at
an international university in Vietnam, but not only from administrators – academics
too.
As I've said in a previous
post , all the actors in universities are trying to abrogate responsibility sideways or
upwards until they can only blame 'the neoliberal agenda', and once they get there, all they
can see is a towering, monolithic idea , and it becomes like trying to have a fist fight
with a cloud. Most people don't ever get to that point though, because the world feels more controllable if
we believe that there is another human to blame .
The thing is though, blaming others almost never works . It doesn't make things
better, it just creates a greater divide between groups, encourages isolationism and othering,
and decreases the likelihood that either side will ever want to work together to fix the
problem.
Dr Anderson's tragic death, and the similarly tragic statistics that tell us that the
collective mental health of our academics is in crisis, should be a wake up call to all
of us who work or study in universities, in any capacity. Whether it will be remains to be
seen.
Again: If you or anyone you know needs help or support for a mental health concern,
please don't suffer in silence . Sometimes talking about things with an objective
outsider can help.
If you work in a university with a counselling service, consider seeking them out.
Many have emergency sessions set aside each day.
Many countries have confidential phone helplines (in Australia you can call
Lifeline on 13 11 14, for example).
If you (or your department) have the financial means, psychologists who
specialise in working with HDR students and academics, such asDr Shari Walsh of Growth
Psychologysometimes offer Skype appointments. (I have had Skype sessions with
Shari myself; she's lovely. PS. I don't get anything out of plugging her services, I
just think what she offers is valuable.)
Yes, I know, this is a structural problem and we shouldn't have to take care of it as
individuals (see Grace Krause's moving
poem about this here ). But in the meantime, while we work on that, please seek help
if you need it .
"... Neoliberalism has transformed education from a social good into a production process where the final product is a reserve army of workers for the information economy. What David Harvey calls the "state-finance nexus" pushes universities to play the part by withholding state funds until they expand their enrollment and increase the number of college graduates entering the workforce.[13] In 2012, the Obama Administration identified increasing the number of undergraduate STEM degrees by one million over the next decade as a 'Cross-Agency Priority Goal' on the recommendation of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). ..."
"... The present relationship between the university and the state flows from the dynamics of financialization. As financialization transforms the role of the United States in the global economy, it appropriates higher education to suit the needs of finance capital. Compared to the ever-expanding administrative apparatus responsible for managing contracts and investments, programs outside of STEM and business fields are considered superfluous. Humanities programs are often downsized and tenure tracks closed to push professors into permanent part-time employment arrangements.[15] Meanwhile, schools like Northeastern and MIT are surrounded by high-tech and business firms that rely on students and research facilities for cheap labor and productive capital. ..."
"... The position of financial and credit institutions as the financiers of America's productive infrastructure has far-reaching consequences for social institutions like universities with the potential to absorb surplus capital in the form of credit or produce the 21st-century 'information' workforce. Students, and faculty at universities like Northeastern will struggle against market pressures on universities to attract outside investors while downsizing education for as long as the U.S. economy is dominated by finance. ..."
Last month at Northeastern University, the adjunct union reached a
tentative agreement with the university administration to avert a planned walkout after
more than a year of unsuccessful negotiations. Those familiar with the adjunct campaign know
that adjunct professors are contingent workers who comprise more than half of the teaching
staff at Northeastern and are paid a couple thousand dollars for each class that they teach.[1]
From a budgetary standpoint, contingent workers are economical because they are easily replaced
and therefore can be paid less. Still, at a school like Northeastern University with an
operating budget of more than $2.2 billion, it is hard to argue that more than half of all
professors need to earn poverty wages for the school to remain profitable.[2]
In today's neoliberal landscape -- a term which refers to the coordinated effort by capital
and financial interests after the 1980s to privatize public institutions and deregulate markets
-- Northeastern is not unusual in its treatment of adjunct professors. The neoliberal
university model of high tuitions, bloated administrative departments, and upscale student
facilities -- along with assaults on the job security and pay of professors -- is the new norm.
It is the image of a thoroughly financialized economy that has transformed the relationship
between universities and the state.
From the 19th century through the 1970s, the relationship between universities and the state
remained constant. There was an informal arrangement of mutual independence: Academics operated
autonomously with state funding on the understanding that they were willing to pursue research
in which the state had an interest, such as medicine or space exploration.[3] Underlying this
arrangement was the assumption that as a social good, education should drive public research
and development.
The story of how universities became neoliberalized begins with the economic crisis of the
1970s and the subsequent free-market discourse that invoked capitalism's insatiable need for
economic growth in order to equate the interests of working people with the interests of
financiers.
In the three decades after World War II, the U.S. established economic hegemony over the
global capitalist world. The Fordist
compromise between strong manufacturers and a strong, suburbanizing working class yielded
unprecedented wage growth.[4] However, the Fordist model could not last forever. As a general
rule, whenever compound economic growth falls below three percent, people
begin to get scared . In order to sustain three percent compound growth, there must be no
barriers to the continuous expansion and reinvestment of capital.
The suburbanization of postwar America did sustain high demand for American-made automobiles
and home products, but reinvestment in manufacturing eventually became difficult for capital
because a widely-unionized and militant working class created a labor shortage (i.e. near-full
employment) which drove up wages and hurt profitability.[5][6] To the extent that productivity
could be improved by technological innovations, organized labor insisted on "productivity
agreements" that ensured that machines would not be used to undermine wages or benefits. To
make matters worse for U.S. manufacturers, monopolies like the Big Three auto companies were
broken by foreign imports from a newly rebuilt Europe and Japan.[7]
In The Grundrisse , Karl Marx remarked that "every limit [to capital accumulation]
appears as a barrier to be overcome."[8] For Marx, sustained capital accumulation requires an
"industrial reserve army" to keep the cost of labor (i.e. wages) from impeding profitability.
To restore profits, American capital had to discipline labor by drawing from the global working
population. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 addressed U.S. labor scarcity by
abolishing immigration quotas based on nationality so that cheap labor would flood the market
and drive down wages.[9] However, it proved more effective for manufacturing capital to simply
relocate to countries with cheaper labor, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s capital did just
that -- first to South Korea and Thailand, and then to China as wages in those countries became
too high.[10]
"Globalization" entailed removing barriers to international capital relocation such as
tariffs and quotas in order to construct a global market where liquid money capital could flow
internationally to wherever it yielded the most profits. Of course, wage suppression eventually
lowers consumer demand. The neoliberal solution was for financial institutions to sustain
middle-class purchasing power through credit. In The Enigma of Capital , David Harvey
writes that "the demand problem was temporarily bridged with respect to housing by
debt-financing the developers as well as the buyers. The financial institutions collectively
controlled both the supply of, and demand for, housing!"[11]
The point of this history though, is that the financialization of the American economy,
through which financial markets came to dominate other forms of industrial and agricultural
capital, served as the backdrop for the transformation of higher education into what it is
today. Neoliberal ideology reframed the social value of higher education as a tool for building
the next workforce to serve the new "information economy" -- a term that emerged in the midst
of globalization to describe the role of U.S. suburban professionals in the global economy.
Simultaneously, finance capital repurposed universities as points of capital accumulation and
investment.
The discourse around the information economy sought to rationalize the offshoring of
manufacturing from the U.S. The idea was that due to globalization, America has reached a stage
of development where its participation in the global economy is as a white-collar work force,
specializing in technology and the spread of information.[12] In this telling, there is nothing
to critique about the deindustrialization of the American economy because it was inevitable. It
was then simple to realign the social goals of universities with the economic goals of Wall
Street because the state repression of radical civil rights movements on the Left and the
emergent free-market discourse of the Right formed a widespread perception of the state as
inherently
problematic . State research and development at universities was easily dismissed as
inefficient, which cleared space for a neoliberal redefinition of higher education.
Neoliberalism has transformed education from a social good into a production process
where the final product is a reserve army of workers for the information economy. What David
Harvey calls the "state-finance nexus" pushes universities to play the part by withholding
state funds until they expand their enrollment and increase the number of college graduates
entering the workforce.[13] In 2012, the Obama Administration identified increasing the number
of undergraduate STEM degrees by one million over the next decade as a 'Cross-Agency Priority
Goal' on the
recommendation of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
(PCAST).
At the same time that neoliberalism transforms education into a production process for
high-tech workers, it transforms the university itself into a site for surplus capital
absorption through the construction of new labs, facilities, and houses to draw wealthy
students and faculty capable of attracting federal grants. In December 2015, Northeastern filed
a letter of intent with the Boston Redevelopment Authority to propose building a residence hall
for approximately 800 students. The Boston Globe
reported that the project is currently under review by American Campus Communities, the
largest developer of private student housing in the U.S. To an economizing university
administrator, private developers are very appealing because they assume the debt generated by
construction projects. The circular process whereby a large university endowment comprised of
financial assets is used to contract a debt-financed independent developer reveals how
neoliberalism integrates universities into the circulatory system of capital as circuits of
accumulation and investment.[14]
The present relationship between the university and the state flows from the dynamics of
financialization. As financialization transforms the role of the United States in the global
economy, it appropriates higher education to suit the needs of finance capital. Compared to the
ever-expanding
administrative apparatus responsible for managing contracts and investments, programs
outside of STEM and business fields are considered superfluous. Humanities programs are
often
downsized and tenure tracks closed to push professors into permanent part-time employment
arrangements.[15] Meanwhile, schools like Northeastern and MIT are surrounded by high-tech and
business firms that rely on students and research facilities for cheap labor and productive
capital.
The position of financial and credit institutions as the financiers of America's
productive infrastructure has far-reaching consequences for social institutions like
universities with the potential to absorb surplus capital in the form of credit or produce the
21st-century 'information' workforce. Students, and faculty at universities like Northeastern
will struggle against market pressures on universities to attract outside investors while
downsizing education for as long as the U.S. economy is dominated by finance.
"... Higher education was being made to conform to the norms of efficiency, value for money, customer service, audit and performance targets. One of the consequences of this was the substitution of the authority of the academic, which is based on his or her professional knowledge of the discipline, for the authority of the line manager. ..."
"... I don't think that there has been a more sinister assault on academic freedom than this colonisation of higher education by neoliberalism. It justifies itself by calling for "transparency" and "accountability" to the taxpayer and the public. But it operates with a perverted sense of these words (since what it really means is "discipline and surveillance" and "value for money"). ..."
"... Let me explain. One of the central aspects of neoliberalism is the disappearance of the distinction between the worker and the capitalist. In the neoliberal setting, the worker is not a partner of exchange with the capitalist. She does not sell her labour-power for a wage. ..."
"... The labourer's ability to work, her skill, is an income stream. It is an investment on which she receives a return in the form of wages. The worker is capital for herself. She is a source of future earnings. In the neoliberal market, as Michel Foucault remarks, everyone is a capitalist. ..."
"... Neoliberalism has converted education from a public good to a personal investment in the future, a future conceived in terms of earning capacity. ..."
Many
of the students I have taught in Britain and South Africa see higher education as a place where
they "invest" in themselves in the financial sense of the word. "Going to university," one
student said, was a way of "increasing" his "value" or employability in the labour market.
This perception of the university has not arisen by chance.
Capitalism entered a new phase with the Thatcher and Reagan governments in Britain and the
United States during the 1980s. The managerial practices used to run businesses were applied to
the public sector, in particular to education and healthcare.
This reform of the public sector (called "new public management")
introduced a new way of thinking about the university.
Higher education was being made to conform to the norms of efficiency, value for money,
customer service, audit and performance targets. One of the consequences of this was the
substitution of the authority of the academic, which is based on his or her professional
knowledge of the discipline, for the authority of the line manager.
Since then, everything has come to depend on audits and metric standards of so-called
quality assessment (student satisfaction, pass rates, league tables, et cetera). Academics have
little, if any, say on whether departments should continue to exist, what degrees and courses
should be on offer and even what kind of assessment methods should be used.
I don't think that there has been a more sinister assault on academic freedom than this
colonisation of higher education by neoliberalism. It justifies itself by calling for
"transparency" and "accountability" to the taxpayer and the public. But it operates with a
perverted sense of these words (since what it really means is "discipline and surveillance" and
"value for money").
Its effect, if not its aim, has been to commodify higher education and produce a new kind of
social identity. This is the identity of the self as entrepreneur.
Let me explain. One of the central aspects of neoliberalism is the disappearance of the
distinction between the worker and the capitalist. In the neoliberal setting, the worker is not
a partner of exchange with the capitalist. She does not sell her labour-power for a wage.
The labourer's ability to work, her skill, is an income stream. It is an investment on which
she receives a return in the form of wages. The worker is capital for herself. She is a source
of future earnings. In the neoliberal market, as Michel Foucault remarks, everyone is a
capitalist.
Neoliberalism has converted education from a public good to a personal investment in the
future, a future conceived in terms of earning capacity.
How did we get to this situation?
The modern university came into existence at the start of the 19th century as an extension
of the state. The aim of the state during the colonial and imperial age was to constitute the
identity of the national subject. As a public institution, the university was designed to teach students to see their life in
a specific way. They would learn to see that it is only as members of a national community and
culture that their individual life has a meaning and worth. This was the aim of the educational programme that German philosophers such as Wilhelm von
Humboldt and Johann Gottlieb Fichte envisaged for the University of Berlin. For them, science
was in the service of the moral and intellectual education of the nation.
Established in 1810, the University of Berlin was the first modern university. It was
founded on the principles of academic freedom, the unity of research and teaching, and the
primacy of research over vocational training. It functioned as the prototype for universities in both the United States and Europe during
the second half of the 19th century.
Once transnational corporations started to control more capital than nation-states in the
1980s, the university ceased to be one of its principal organs. It lost its ideological mission
and entered the market as a corporation. It started to encourage students to think of
themselves as customers rather than as members of a nation. This history shows that the university is today the site of two competing social
identities.
On the one hand, because of globalisation, the student who enters university sees herself as
someone who is there to increase her human capital, as an enterprise to invest in.
It must be remarked that, for the entrepreneur (taken as a social figure) who invests in
herself, differences of class, religion, ethnicity or race are phantasms of a bygone age. The
differences in the name of which wars were waged and social movements organised in the past
have no more meaning in her eyes than cheap advertising.
There is, for her, something improper or inauthentic about them, as Giorgio Agamben says of
the new petty bourgeoisie in The Coming Community. Like Britain's former prime minister, David
Cameron, she is sceptical of multiculturalism.
On the other hand, the university has not ceased to draw on its modern role as a producer,
protector and inculcator of national identity and culture. Much of what is going on today in
South African universities under the name of decolonisation and Africanisation draws on this
heritage and understanding of the modern university, even if tacitly. That is why students will
politicise themselves by identifying with an ethnicity or nationality.
Nationalism was an emancipatory political project during the anti-colonial struggles of the
second half of the 20th century. It was not tribalist or communalist.
According to Eric Hobsbawm in Nations and Nationalism since 1780, its aim was to extend the
size of the social, cultural and political group. It was not to restrict it or to separate it
from others. Nationalism was a political programme divorced from ethnicity.
Is this political nationalism a viable way of resisting neoliberalism today? Can it gainsay
the primacy of economic rationality and the culture of narcissist consumerism, and restore
meaning to the political question concerning the common good? Or has nationalism irreversibly become an ethnic, separatist project? It is not easy to say. So far, we have witnessed one kind of response to the social
insecurities generated by the global spread of neoliberalism. This is a return to ethnicity and
religion as havens of safety and security.
When society fails us owing to job insecurity, and, concomitantly, with regard to housing
and healthcare, one tends to fall back on one's ethnicity or religious identity as an ultimate
guarantee.
Moreover, nationalism as a political programme depends on the idea of the state. It holds
that a group defined as a "nation" has the right to form a territorial state and exercise
sovereign power over it. But given the decline of the state, there are reasons to think that
political nationalism has withdrawn as a real possibility.
By the "decline of the state" I do not mean that it no longer exists. The state has never
been more present in the private life of individuals. It regulates the relations between men
and women. It regulates their birth and death, the rearing of children, the health of
individuals and so forth. The state is, today, ubiquitous.
What some people mean by the "decline of the state" is that, with the existence of
transnational corporations, it is no longer the most important site of the reproduction of
capital. The state has become managerial. Its function is to manage obstacles to liberalisation
and free trade.
Perhaps that is one of the challenges of the 21st century. How is a "nation" possible, a
"national community" that is not defined by ethnicity, on the one hand, and, on the other, that
forsakes the desire to exercise sovereign power in general and, in particular, over a
territorial state?
The university is perhaps the place where such a community can begin to be thought.
Rafael Winkler is an associate professor in the philosophy department at the University
of Johannesburg
"... Neoliberalism's presence in higher education is making matters worse for students and the student debt crisis, not better. ..."
"... Cannan and Shumar (2008) focus their attention on resisting, transforming, and dismantling the neoliberal paradigm in higher education. They ask how can market-based reform serve as the solution to the problem neoliberal practices and policies have engineered? ..."
"... What got us to where we are (escalating tuition costs, declining state monies, and increasing neoliberal influence in higher education) cannot get us out of the SI.4 trillion problem. And yet this metaphor may, in fact, be more apropos than most of us on the right, left, or center are as yet seeing because we mistakenly assume the market we have is the only or best one possible. ..."
"... We only have to realize that the emperor has no clothes and reveal this reality. ..."
"... Indeed, the approach our money-dependent and money-driven legislators and policymakers have employed has been neoliberal in form and function, and it will continue to be so unless we help them to see the light or get out of the way. This book focuses on the $1.4+ trillion student debt crisis in the United States. It doesn't share hard and fast solutions per se. ..."
"... In 2011-2012, 50% of bachelor's degree recipients from for-profit institutions borrowed more than $40,000 and about 28% of associate degree recipients from for-profit institutions borrowed more than $30,000 (College Board, 2015a). ..."
Despite tthe fact that necoliberalism brings poor economic growth, inadequate availability
of jobs and career opportunities, and the concentration of economic and social rewards in the
hands of a privileged upper class resistance to it, espcially at universities, remain weak to
non-existant.
The first sign of high levels of dissatisfaction with neoliberalism was the election of
Trump (who, of course, betrayed all his elections promises, much like Obma before him). As a
result, the legitimation of neoliberalism based on references to the efficient
and effective functioning of the market (ideological legitimation) is
exhausted while wealth redistribution practices (material legitimation) are
not practiced and, in fact, considered unacceptable.
Despite these problems, resistance to neoliberalism remains weak.
Strategics and actions of opposition have been shifted from the sphere of
labor to that of the market creating a situation in which the idea of the
superiority and desirability of the market is shared by dominant and
oppositional groups alike. Even emancipatory movements such as women,
race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation have espoused individualistic,
competition-centered, and meritocratic views typical of ncolibcral dis-
courses. Moreover, corporate forces have colonized spaces and discourses
that have traditionally been employed by oppositional groups and move-
ments. However, as systemic instability' continues and capital accumulation
needs to be achieved, change is necessary. Given the weakness of opposi-
tion, this change is led by corporate forces that will continue to further
their interests but will also attempt to mitigate socio-economic contra-
dictions. The unavailability of ideological mechanisms to legitimize
ncolibcral arrangements will motivate dominant social actors to make
marginal concessions (material legitimation) to subordinate groups. These
changes, however, will not alter the corporate co-optation and distortion of
discourses that historically defined left-leaning opposition. As contradic-
tions continue, however, their unsustainability will represent a real, albeit
difficult, possibility for anti-neoliberal aggregation and substantive change.
Connolly (2016) reported that a poll shows that some graduated student loan borrowers
would willingly go to extremes to pay off outstanding student debt. Those extremes include
experiencing physical pain and suffering and even a reduced lifespan. For instance, 35% of
those polled would take one year off life expectancy and 6.5% would willingly cut off their
pinky finger if it meant ridding themselves of the student loan debt they currently held.
Neoliberalism's presence in higher education is making matters worse for students and
the student debt crisis, not better. In their book Structure and Agency in the
Neoliberal University, Cannan and Shumar (2008) focus their attention on resisting,
transforming, and dismantling the neoliberal paradigm in higher education. They ask how can
market-based reform serve as the solution to the problem neoliberal practices and policies
have engineered?
It is like an individual who loses his keys at night and who decides to look only beneath
the street light. This may be convenient because there is light, but it might not be where
the keys are located. This metaphorical example could relate to the student debt crisis.
What got us to where we are (escalating tuition costs, declining state monies, and
increasing neoliberal influence in higher education) cannot get us out of the SI.4 trillion
problem. And yet this metaphor may, in fact, be more apropos than most of us on the right,
left, or center are as yet seeing because we mistakenly assume the market we have is the only
or best one possible.
As Lucille (this volume) strives to expose, the systemic cause of our problem is "hidden
in plain sight," right there in the street light for all who look carefully enough to see.
We only have to realize that the emperor has no clothes and reveal this reality. If
and when a critical mass of us do, systemic change in our monetary exchange relations can
and, we hope, will become our funnel toward a sustainable and socially, economically, and
ecologically just future where public education and democracy can finally become realities
rather than merely ideals.
Indeed, the approach our money-dependent and money-driven legislators and policymakers
have employed has been neoliberal in form and function, and it will continue to be so unless
we help them to see the light or get out of the way. This book focuses on the $1.4+ trillion
student debt crisis in the United States. It doesn't share hard and fast solutions per
se. Rather, it addresses real questions (and their real consequences). Are collegians
overestimating the economic value of going to college?
What are we, they, and our so-called elected leaders failing or refusing to sec and why?
This critically minded, soul-searching volume shares territory with, yet pushes beyond, that
of Akers and Chingos (2016), Baum (2016), Goldrick-Rab (2016), Graebcr (2011), and Johannscn
(2016) in ways that we trust those critically minded authors -- and others concerned with our
mess of debts, public and private, and unfulfilled human potential -- will find enlightening
and even ground-breaking.
... ... ...
In the meantime, college costs have significantly increased over the past fifty years. The
average cost of tuition and fees (excluding room and board) for public four-year institutions
for a full year has increased from 52,387 (in 2015 dollars) for the 1975-1976 academic year,
to 59,410 for 2015-2016. The tuition for public two-year colleges averaged $1,079 in
1975-1976 (in 2015 dollars) and increased to $3,435 for 2015-2016. At private non-profit
four-year institutions, the average 1975-1976 cost of tuition and fees (excluding room and
board) was $10,088 (in 2015 dollars), which increased to $32,405 for 2015-2016 (College
Board, 2015b).
The purchasing power of Pell Grants has decreased. In fact, the maximum Pell Grants
coverage of public four-year tuition and fees decreased from 83% in 1995-1996 to 61% in
2015-2016. The maximum Pell Grants coverage of private non-profit four-year tuition and fees
decreased from 19% in 1995-1996 to 18% in 2015-2016 (College Board, 2015a).
... ... ....
... In 2013-2014, 61% of bachelor's degree recipients from public and private non-profit
four-year institutions graduated with an average debt of $16,300 per graduate. In
2011-2012, 50% of bachelor's degree recipients from for-profit institutions borrowed more
than $40,000 and about 28% of associate degree recipients from for-profit institutions
borrowed more than $30,000 (College Board, 2015a).
Rising student debt has become a key issue of higher education finance among many
policymakers and researchers. Recently, the government has implemented a series of measures
to address student debt. In 2005, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act
(2005) was passed, which barred the discharge of all student loans through bankruptcy for
most borrowers (Collinge, 2009). This was the final nail in the bankruptcy coffin, which had
begun in 1976 with a five-year ban on student loan debt (SLD) bankruptcy and was extended to
seven years in 1990. Then in 1998, it became a permanent ban for all who could not clear a
relatively high bar of undue hardship (Best 6c Best, 2014).
By 2006, Sallie Mae had become the nation's largest private student loan lender, reporting
loan holdings of $123 billion. Its fee income collected from defaulted loans grew from $280
million in 2000 to $920 million in 2005 (Collinge, 2009). In 2007, in response to growing
student default rates, the College Cost Reduction Act was passed to provide loan forgiveness
for student loan borrowers who work full-time in a public service job. The Federal Direct
Loan will be forgiven after 120 payments were made. This Act also provided other benefits for
students to pay for their postsecondary education, such as lowering interest rates of GSL,
increasing the maximum amount of Pell Grant (though, as noted above, not sufficiently to meet
rising tuition rates), as well as reducing guarantor collection fees (Collinge, 2009).
In 2008, the Higher Education Opportunity Act (2008) was passed to increase transparency
and accountability. This Act required institutions that are participating in federal
financial aid programs to post a college price calculator on their websites in order to
provide better college cost information for students and families (U.S. Department of
Education |U.S. DoE|, 2015a). Due to the recession of 2008, the American Opportunity Tax
Credit of 2009 (AOTC) was passed to expand the Hope Tax Credit program, in which the amount
of tax credit increased to 100% for the first $2,000 of qualified educational expenses and
was reduced to 25% of the second $2,000 in college expenses. The total credit cap increased
from $1,500 to $2,500 per student. As a result, the federal spending on education tax
benefits had a large increase since then (Crandall-Hollick, 2014), benefits that, again, are
reaped only by those who file income taxes.
"... Every academic critique of neoliberalism is an unacknowledged memoir. We academics occupy a crucial node in the neoliberal system. Our institutions are foundational to neoliberalism's claim to be a meritocracy, insofar as we are tasked with discerning and certifying the merit that leads to the most powerful and desirable jobs. Yet at the same time, colleges and universities have suffered the fate of all public goods under the neoliberal order. We must therefore "do more with less," cutting costs while meeting ever-greater demands. The academic workforce faces increasing precarity and shrinking wages even as it is called on to teach and assess more students than ever before in human history -- and to demonstrate that we are doing so better than ever, via newly devised regimes of outcome-based assessment. In short, we academics live out the contradictions of neoliberalism every day. ..."
"... Whereas classical liberalism insisted that capitalism had to be allowed free rein within its sphere, under neoliberalism capitalism no longer has a set sphere. We are always "on the clock," always accruing (or squandering) various forms of financial and social capital. ..."
Every academic critique of neoliberalism is an unacknowledged memoir. We academics
occupy a crucial node in the neoliberal system. Our institutions are foundational to
neoliberalism's claim to be a meritocracy, insofar as we are tasked with discerning and
certifying the merit that leads to the most powerful and desirable jobs. Yet at the same time,
colleges and universities have suffered the fate of all public goods under the neoliberal
order. We must therefore "do more with less," cutting costs while meeting ever-greater demands.
The academic workforce faces increasing precarity and shrinking wages even as it is called on
to teach and assess more students than ever before in human history -- and to demonstrate that
we are doing so better than ever, via newly devised regimes of outcome-based assessment. In
short, we academics live out the contradictions of neoliberalism every day.
... ... ...
On a more personal level it reflects my upbringing in the suburbs of Flint, Michigan, a city
that has been utterly devastated by the transition to neoliberalism. As I lived through the
slow-motion disaster of the gradual withdrawal of the auto industry, I often heard Henry Ford s
dictum that a company could make more money if the workers were paid enough to be customers as
well, a principle that the major US automakers were inexplicably abandoning. Hence I find it
[Fordism -- NNB] to be an elegant way of capturing the postwar model's promise of creating
broadly shared prosperity by retooling capitalism to produce a consumer society characterized
by a growing middle class -- and of emphasizing the fact that that promise was ultimately
broken.
By the mid-1970s, the postwar Fordist order had begun to breakdown to varying degrees in the
major Western countries. While many powerful groups advocated a response to the crisis that
would strengthen the welfare state, the agenda that wound up carrying the day was
neoliberalism, which was most forcefully implemented in the United Kingdom by Margaret Thatcher
and in the United States by Ronald Reagan. And although this transformation was begun by the
conservative part)', in both countries the left-of-centcr or (in American usage) "liberal"party
wound up embracing neoliberal tenets under Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, ostensibly for the
purpose of directing them toward progressive ends.
With the context of current debates within the US Democratic Party, this means that Clinton
acolytes are correct to claim that "neoliberalism" just is liberalism but only to the extent
that, in the contemporary United States, the term liberalism is little more than a word for
whatever the policy agenda of the Democratic Party happens to be at any given time. Though
politicians of all stripes at times used libertarian rhetoric to sell their policies, the most
clear-eyed advocates of neoliberalism realized that there could be no simple question of a
"return" to the laissez-faire model.
Rather than simply getting the state "out of the way," they both deployed and transformed
state power, including the institutions of the welfare state, to reshape society in accordance
with market models. In some cases creating markets where none had previously existed, as in the
privatization of education and other public services. In others it took the form of a more
general spread of a competitive market ethos into ever more areas of life -- so that we are
encouraged to think of our reputation as a "brand," for instance, or our social contacts as
fodder for "networking." Whereas classical liberalism insisted that capitalism had to be
allowed free rein within its sphere, under neoliberalism capitalism no longer has a set sphere.
We are always "on the clock," always accruing (or squandering) various forms of financial and
social capital.
"... Our US students have been taught since at least grade 6, but mostly since school began, that there are only certain acceptable ideas, and genuflecting to those ideas is what makes you the Top Student, the Front Row kid, the one who checks all the boxes to get into Brown or Oberlin or Yale. ..."
"... My brother is a biology professor at an elite liberal arts college in the Midwest. He uses no pronouns with his students, as the demands escalate and change daily. A whole cluster of young female students in the physics department have suddenly declared themselves trans. ..."
"... He says that it is impossible -- absolutely impossible -- to question what is happening in society concerning the abandonment of human biological facts or to have a rational debate about any of this on campus, either among the faculty or with the students. ..."
"... This is 100% correct and also the result of our K-12 education system doing what it was designed to do: engineer certain social outcomes. ..."
"... I grew in a period of suffocating conformity, the dregs of the Cold War hysteria that communists are hiding under your bed and in your anxiety closet to burst out and turn your local church into a museum pretending that a Russian invented the telephone. ..."
"... Somehow, quite a few of us found the means to stand up, to challenge, to question, to dismiss, to lampoon, and most of all, to turn back mindless adjectives accusing us of Thining The Wrong Way. I doubt that any generation coming up now is so mindlessly conformist as the writer insinuates. ..."
"... I also find it ironic that a piece called "Creating A-Plus Conformists" is published by the author of "The Benedict Option". I can't think of a greater force for creating conformity than religious orthodoxy. ..."
"... I have no idea who Alice is. But as a college professor, I find this to be (and this is being charitable) exaggerated nonsense. Has Alice actually ever stood in front of and talked to class of college freshman? ..."
Reader Alice comments on the hyperpoliticization of college students:
Understand: they *arrive at universities thinking this way*.
Our US students have been taught since at least grade 6, but mostly since school began,
that there are only certain acceptable ideas, and genuflecting to those ideas is what makes
you the Top Student, the Front Row kid, the one who checks all the boxes to get into Brown or
Oberlin or Yale.
The "best and brightest" accepted to these schools are kids who, consciously or
unconsciously, have learned to excel in places by accepting as true the acceptable ideas and
never bringing up the unacceptable. Some thoughts are just too dangerous to have.
Trajectories that are good for one's future to the Ivies don't allow you to engage these
unacceptable ideas. So in school and in other places where one deals with adults, these front
row kids learn to believe, or at least be comfortable with parroting, these acceptable ideas.
Just as there's a correct answer to a calculus question, there's a correct answer to
questions such as why one country is more successful than another, why there are measurable
differences in incarceration rates by race (even as there's also a contradictory answer to
the question of what is a race), what a nation owes non-citizens vs. citizens, how much
training can alter [ ], are sex differences on average innate, are there two sexes, etc.
Meanwhile, if you hear something unacceptable, you've also been equipped with the trump
card to demolish the argument: arguer is racist, sexist, bigot. So the Overton window is big
for trans rights and little for the role of, say, duty to ones' elders, big for
microaggression but little for the personality differences of men and women.
Whether they believe it or not at the beginning is irrelevant. They make the appropriate
verbal gestures, they get a reward. After 6-12 years of doing so, they're not capable of
engaging in debate or rhetoric, argument from evidence, even following a line of reasoning or
recognizing a fallacy. They've never done it, and anyone who tried was actively shut down
either calls of "my truth".
On the past, ignorance and obnoxious self regard were demolished by profs rather quickly.
What's changed is college profs no longer push back on this crap. They no longer demand
argument, reason, and counter argument. They simply are stunned that they share no overlap of
consciousness with the students they bequeathed to themselves. They are afraid of them and
afraid to stand up to the students or spineless weasel administrators.
I live on the east coast and can only tell you what we see. The public schools teach gender
identity ideology, starting in elementary. I didn't even know what that is until our autistic
daughter suddenly decided that she's "really a guy", along with a cluster of her school
friends, when she was 16. They are 19 now, and two of her friends have had irreversible
surgery which has made them sterile.
My brother is a biology professor at an elite liberal arts college in the Midwest. He uses
no pronouns with his students, as the demands escalate and change daily. A whole cluster of
young female students in the physics department have suddenly declared themselves trans. The
mantra of "supporting women in physics!" swiftly changed to "supporting transgender people in
physics!"
He says that it is impossible -- absolutely impossible -- to question what is
happening in society concerning the abandonment of human biological facts or to have a
rational debate about any of this on campus, either among the faculty or with the
students.
The unthinkable has happened. An ideology which would have been laughed at as ridiculous
on college campuses in the 1980s is now driving social, legal, and medical practice
throughout our entire country. If you haven't been affected by this yet, then you will be.
Soon.
This is 100% correct and also the result of our K-12 education system doing what it was
designed to do: engineer certain social outcomes.
Conservative calls to "de-fund college" over this are misplaced.
Also, the reason that college professors don't stand up to this is because they know that
the administration won't have their back if a student accuses them of being
racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic. And the administrator won't have their back due to the
desire to avoid bad press and students protesting on campus. Give the (vocal) students what
they want so everyone stays happy.
I could not disagree with this more strongly. This is the false argument of broad
generalization. The vast majority of schools are not en masses teaching radical SJW thought
control. They are doing their best to teach AT ALL given the federal over reach into state
public education and the excessive focus on testing and scores and the impact that has on
funding.
And certainly anecdote does not equal accumulative data but our personal experience of
high school
For our children is that there is zero indoctrination of SJW values coming from the teachers
of the institution. Certainly the peer group has SJW people and activities but I'm here to
declare that not one teacher or one principal in my district has for e fed my children any
SJW dogma. In fact I can list multiple examples of Tim's when I've wondered how teachers got
away with things like singing Christian or Jewish music at a choir concert or teaching the
Our Father prayer in German or studying the great schism and having my kids present the
Orthodox side of the story in World History.
Who knows. Maybe I live in an anomaly. But I wonder if the hyping of crazy SJW stories of
abuse in schools has created an image in people's minds that ALL schools are crazy SJW
hotbeds.
It's just not true. Public education IS in crisis due to ridiculous over testing and
funding that is abysmal. And the majority of people who work in public ed are really just
hanging on by their fingernails trying to do their best and make rent!!!
Sure there's a crazy teacher, waka-doodle principal or spineless superintendent that makes
the news. And certainly the NEA is an bastion of left leaning ideas, but to make this huge
sweep that the kids arriving at University were indoctrinated by their 1st grade teacher and
on up through their childhood is just absolutely not true.
A hundred years or so ago, I was in high school debate. One of the good things about that is
we had to learn how to argue either for or against the same thing with equal conviction.
Because we were young and inexperienced, i.e. stupid, most of us were pretty liberal, but the
idea that there was only one way to think about a problem was completely foreign.
Well, the writer of that comment paints a picture. But that assumes facts not in evidence. I
don't have a statistical overview of all the high schools in the country, but I know enough
about enough students at enough of them to question whether the above description is The
Truth About The Meaning Of Life And Everything.
I grew in a period of suffocating conformity, the dregs of the Cold War hysteria that
communists are hiding under your bed and in your anxiety closet to burst out and turn your
local church into a museum pretending that a Russian invented the telephone.
Somehow, quite a few of us found the means to stand up, to challenge, to question, to
dismiss, to lampoon, and most of all, to turn back mindless adjectives accusing us of Thining
The Wrong Way. I doubt that any generation coming up now is so mindlessly conformist as the
writer insinuates.
There are two answers to being reflexively called "racist, sexist, bigot."
1) So what?
2) Prove it.
I prefer the second option, but there are other adjectival nouns I would respond to with
the first.
This situation will not last. The Social Justice canon is too clearly false and modern people
are too rebellious to shoulder it for long. One of the characteristics of liquid modernity is
that the pendulum swings more freely than it ever has before. It will be interesting to see,
when the Social Justice narrative finally collapses, how much of our foundational mythology
goes along with it.
As far as I can tell, our modern dysfunction is a very consistent and rational result of
one simple foundational lie: "All men are created equal." The intent of this lie may have
been noble but it is self-evidently false. And the Social Justice narrative rests very
comfortably upon it. I can't see how it survives the collapse of Social Justice no matter how
badly we desire to maintain it.
P.S. I understand the reflexive anger and distrust that most readers will feel upon
reading this post. This is certainly a painful idea to grapple with. It is embedded deeply
into our many intersecting identities. But what would you say to someone claiming that all
pots are created equal? Would you posit that anyone denying this claim is a wok supremacist?
No. If two things are not interchangeable, then they are not equal. But this does not mean
that one is ultimately superior to the other. Human equality is a comfortable illusion. But
we can find better reasons to treat one another with the proper respect and kindness. And in
the process we might build a more perfect civilization.
The natural follow up for those in power to saying "Some men are more equal than others"
is to say "therefore the better men are the ones in power."
No. Being born poor makes it much, much harder to succeed. Having connections puts
incompetents and immoral people in power. We need to understand that the rich and powerful
*are* usually born with silver spoons in their mouths. Injustice is real. Face it.
College students today are the first generation in US history to have grown up with openly
gay friends and neighbors. They know, from lived experience, that there is nothing wrong with
gay people. They know it in their bones.
So, yah, they think differently than we do on sexual issues, and they tune us out when we say
things they know to be false.
"Kids, I don't know what's wrong with the kids these days".
So a reader send this in without citing any Support for her conclusions and you tack on a
headline about conformism and print it.
One could easily write a companion piece about homeschooled kids going off to some
evangelical college where they set aside all reason and accept creationism and the Bible as
the sole arbiter of truth. But those kids aren't going to get into "Brown or Oberlin or
Yale".
That's where Alice tips her hand. This has nothing to do with the brainwashing or
indoctrination of our youth, but that the Brown, Oberlin and Yale graduates are going to end
up running this country, while Alice doesn't get, and isn't in anyway entitled too, tell them
what to think.
Our US students have been taught since at least grade 6, but mostly since school began,
that there are only certain acceptable ideas, and genuflecting to those ideas is what makes
you the Top Student, the Front Row kid, the one who checks all the boxes to get into Brown or
Oberlin or Yale.
There has never been a time in history that this hasn't been true.
Rod, the comment is okay, but seems to lack an actual article written around it. Looks quite
incomplete both from a literary perspective and from the perspective of the idea.
This may sound mawkish, and it's based on just a few years teaching undergrads when I was in
grad school, but I think there are a lot of college students who want to be able to say or
write something more than the party line, but often they don't know how and have managed to
go through high school without having read anything. My students, of both sexes and all
races, included a good number of kids who, once I made it clear enough that I didn't want to
hear any canned "diversity is excellence" crap or whatever, seemed pretty happy that they
could try writing about something else for a change.
There are always the sycophantic
apple-polishers whose whole shtick is regurgitating the conventional wisdom at every
opportunity, but people hate that kind of person (see Hillary Clinton).
You could spend some time reading your kids' AP World History and AP US History textbooks
to discover the "analytical" grid that everything is rammed through. Good for you/your kids if your local teachers don't teach it in that manner, but trust me, the AP test
questions are geared toward certain ideological answers.
Also, when Alice mentioned "My truth" I wondered if she has also had a kid in an elite
college prep school. If so, it sure sounds like she and I have come to the same conclusions
from experience.
Working in IT I get to talk to a lot of young people coming out of college with a variety of
degrees. Most have no idea what Alice is talking about. Perhaps if you go for something like
a sociology or general liberal arts degree at the most liberal schools in the nation this is
true but real students are worried about their fields of study (business, software, UX
design, etc.) and the courses that might teach these types of things are fluff electives they
skate through and ignore as much as possible.
I also find it ironic that a piece called "Creating A-Plus Conformists" is published by
the author of "The Benedict Option". I can't think of a greater force for creating conformity
than religious orthodoxy.
This post is one big exercise in confirmation bias. There are no facts, just assertions
stated firmly enough to convince the already-convinced. I expect better from The American
Conservative.
The fact that it's supposedly an example of other peoples' conformity is just the
ironic icing on the non-self-aware cake.
"But what would you say to someone claiming that all pots are created equal?"
That pots are objects with objective value and none inherent, while people are subjects who
invest value in objects and possessed of inherent worth that is not objectively comparable,
so we shorthand render it "equality". You know, the reason conservatives are supposed to hate
'borshun.
Actual studies shows actually, what happens in college is professors move left-wing students
slightly to the right and right-wing students slightly to the left.
Hi Rod, sorry about the typos in the original! Thanks for the raising the comment. I hope
it's fruitful.
To some folks saying 'this is an overgeneralization', my comments were in the post re:
what's happening at the elite institutions, and so were directed to the set of kids on k-12
that intend to get to such institutions. Those elite univs are more likely to select students
with this SJW profile on the first place, yes. But again, the kids intending to go to such
places know this is the profile.
To those questioning whether every k-12 school is like this, I ask you to look at the
required courses in teaching colleges and master's programs that credential teachers. It's
SJWism everywhere all the time, in every single discipline. Math class is about racial
equity. Reading class is about gender equity. There's no other lens through which teachers
are taught, so this is the lens through which they teach. Read the journals in teaching and
see the articles.
To those questioning whether every college is like this, I suggest you look more closely
at your community college's bookstore.
I'm in a southern state that voted for Trump. The big city cc offers this required English
class,
ENG-111: Writing and Inquiry
'This course is designed to develop the ability to produce clear writing in a variety of
genres and formats using a recursive process. Emphasis includes inquiry, analysis, effective
use of rhetorical strategies, thesis development, audience awareness, and revision. Upon
completion, students should be able to produce unified, coherent, well-developed essays using
standard written English. This course will also introduce students to the skills needed to
produce a college-level research essay.'
Seems a reasonable course, right? Freshman English.
The Reader for the course in 2017:
Sex Ed
Family Values
Oh, Come On, Men Aren't Finished
Wonder Woman by Gloria Steinem
Sex, Lies and Conversation: why Is It So Hard to Talk to Each Other?
Again, you can claim I'm cherry picking, but you will find this in every city in every
state.
Or just listen to vacuous comments of middle school admins. Look at when districts give
days off to kids to bus them to anti Trump rallies, and ask yourself if such a place is real
pushing a socratic discussion about these points of view.
If you listen closely, you will understand this is everywhere.
Andrew in MD: "If two things are not interchangeable, then they are not equal." Is interchangeability the sole criteron of equality? Could a person argue that since all people are sinners/fallen, they are, therefore, equal?
Or are some more sinning or fallen?
The Buddha demonstrated that all people are empty of self – why cannot that suffice
for the establishment of equality?
Andrew in MD: some great American (John Randolph?) once said "I do not believe that all men
are equal, for the simple reason that it isn't true". So, nothing anger-producing in your
post. If giving up this noble lie is what is needed to consign SJWism to the ideological
trash bin along with other totalitarian ideologies like Maoism, then out it goes.
When I was, in my late college years through my first ten or so years in The Real World, I
was a doctrinaire conservative Republican, although not a member of any church or religion.
In a way, this did me some good, because I was attending some elite, some not-so-elite,
and all very leftish educational institutions. Often my grades suffered, but I had to learn
to marshal facts and formulate arguments that people did not want to hear. Often this was
pretty easy, because the people I was arguing with had never really thought about what they
believed or why, much less the unspoken assumptions underlying those beliefs, and they had
never heard them challenged.
Usually the response was sputtering outrage, but that's a poor substitute for logical
argument, especially when I am almost autistic in how little I care what other people think
of me. In fact, if you react by being even calmer and more logical, the other person will
dissolve into a spitting mad Donald Duck meltdown.
If I had simply gone with the flow, all that was necessary was to recite the correct
dogmas and platitudes with adequate conviction and I would have been greeted with
hosannas.
They say that a person becomes more conservative as they get older, but the opposite
happened to me. I suppose because I enjoy challenging my own beliefs, finding facts that
don't fit my own theories and then trying to make sense of them.
I learned that theory didn't always apply in real world conditions and pat answers don't
always translate into solutions. (Apply "markets in all the things" to healthcare, for
instance.)
They also say that a person becomes more conservative as they become more successful, but
that wasn't the case for me either. I suppose to a certain extent, I am successful because I
was lucky.
Honestly, what Shelley wrote sounds more accurate than what Alice did, although I think there
is at least a grain of truth in Alice's post, too. And the poster at another one of Rod's
pieces who put more of the blame on the Internet than on schools and teachers at any level
made sense, too.
As much as I find the content on AmCon to be generally thought provoking, the complaint
expressed by "Alice" is a recurring sentiment that I think "conservatives" use to cover up
shoddy arguments
"I have all these really great ideas and deep insights about race and gender, but every
time I try to express them, I get called a bigot, and I'm totally not a bigot, but those
dastardly liberals won't even let me make my argument because they are always shouting me
down and calling me a bigot, so me and the vast majority of ordinary folks who also agree
with me are effectively silenced a shrill few elites, which is totally unfair! Anyone else
feel this way? Sad!"
Point #1
Something doesn't jive about the general premise. Summarizing Alice's post as "All the kids
today are totally brainwashed by SJWs, and everyone mindlessly goes along with whatever the
PC police say". On a related note, last week's major news item was essentially "ordinary
Americans were recently polled and 92% of them don't support political correctness and they
are totally sick of identity politics and fed up with SJWs -- #WalkAway #RedWave #MAGA"
Am I missing something? Because those don't seem to make sense to be occurring in the same
place at the same time. "The kids are totally brainwashed by identity politics and are just a
bunch of useful idiots for the Left", BUT "they also see right through it, see that it's a
sham, and they thoroughly reject it". Also, "The ordinary folks are cowering in fear, there's
nothing they can do about it, the situation is beyond hopeless because the SJWs have
effectively silenced all dissent", BUT "there's a revolution about to burst forth because so
many ordinary people are mad as hell and not going to take it any more and in November they
are going to vote hardcore against all this identity stuff and kick these knuckleheads out of
power."
Doesn't make sense. It's one or the other, not both.
Point #2
I don't instinctively believe that all Republicans and Conservatives are bigots. I'm a
Conservative. I don't think I'm a bigot. But I do get a little skeptical of a particular
handful of my fellow conservatives who always seem to be running around complaining
"everyone's always calling me a bigot, everyone's always calling me a bigot, I'm totally not
a bigot, but everyone's always calling me a bigot when I express my ideas".
Well, okay, what exactly are these wonderful, totally not bigoted ideas that you have?
Would you like to share them with us?
For example, Alice (or anyone else), please illuminate us with the answer to one of the
questions that you raised in your post, one of those off-limits questions where people are
always unfairly saying that your answer is racist: why there are measurable differences in incarceration rates by race?
Help me to understand, in your own, totally not-bigoted words, what is the answer that we
all need the hear, the answer that the SJWs won't let us hear? I promise, promise, promise
that I will not call you a racist. This is a safe space for you.
I have no idea who Alice is. But as a college professor, I find this to be (and this is being
charitable) exaggerated nonsense. Has Alice actually ever stood in front of and talked to
class of college freshman?
The upside is that all the good little Maoists will starve, come some real crises in our
society. Good for them that they can make up micro aggressions out of nothing, not so good
for them that they won't be able to feed their soy faces when things begin to break down in
this nation.
I figured we'd already gone around the useless bend with these people years ago when I was
trapped someplace and MTV was playing. Some yoyo on the TV was talking about a show he was
producing and soooooo scared that it wasn't going to go right and freaking out and all this,
basically over nothing. I then noticed more and more of this type of behavior once I started
looking for it. Lots of younger and younger people living in fear of absolutely nothing just
fear for its own sake.
Learned fear and helplessness, nothing less or more. You have an increasingly large number
of kids who are raised up as sheltered as possible and who have no real will or ability to
take care of themselves. Couple that with the ideological vampires that roam higher education
these days and you wind up with people who don't really care about whatever cause they're
promoting, or what they're protesting, but it becomes all abut trying to drive out any
dissenting sound from a basis of fear.
The soy boys are wretched creatures at best, and the harpies who lead them about by the
nose are just as pitiful. Kinda dangerous, but only to a point, because all of them value
their own skin more than real confrontation or principles (this is kinda true of the
alt-right, too, which is why the media always suffers meltdowns at violence that wouldn't
even merit a mention in Freikorps-riddled Germany, where the Browns and Reds duke it out
regularly and Hitler brandished a pistol, not a Twitter hissy fit).
There's really no upside, just the irritation of living with these people on a daily basis
and trying to tune out their BS. Maybe the social credit system will get rolling here and
some point, which will be a clue to move to the sticks and learn how to raise organic produce
and enjoy the simpler things. Lord knows, none of them are going to want to risk getting mud
on their hipster work boots by being in the real country.
I'm sure Reader Alice is identifying a real phenomenon, but it's funny to see a traditional
Christian publishing it. Are we saying the other side is a haven of consistently
rational debate ?
I teach high school kids for a living. My school is in a high income area and nearly 100% of
the kids are college bound, many of them to very selective universities. My experience is
that our stronger students take challenging and reasonably balanced courses – they do
not arrive to college as leftist zombies. Our weaker students sometimes find a home with the
leftists and realize that they can be praised by adults and sometimes even given high grades
in politicized but low level classes. These are the ones I worry about. I have a good view of
the next generation, and from where I sit the most capable 17 year olds are for more
influenced by Lin Manuel Miranda than by Ta Nehisi Coates – and I find that fairly
encouraging.
I taught high school English in the California Bay Area and even there, I encountered only a
couple teachers who could be said to have any kind of liberal agenda and to have included it
in the classroom. My 3 kids have gone to California public schools (2 of them are currently
in high school), in the Bay Area and the Sacramento regions, and we haven't experienced any
of what the writer of this post describes. It's been my experience that kids get their
political leanings these days mostly from their peers, their media heroes and social media.
Now, college is another matter entirely, but I don't need to tell anyone here that.
I remember well the time I made the perfectly wise and rational statement in history class
that "might makes right," which of course it does. My poor teacher, at his usual loss for
words in dealing with my divine wisdom sputtered some foolishness to the effect that, "Hitler
had might. Was he right?'
To which I responded, as the Young Voice of God, "Hitler lost."
The look on the poor man's face was worth the price of admission for he had chosen exactly
the wrong example to use. He slumped back, defeated, for he had proven me right.
Fear not. The young will grow up and, as their compatriots in Christian schools will,
learn to see past the platitudes, knowing that the very idea of justice is a vile thing,
incompatible with their personal freedom, and they will end up despising it from their very
bones.
Jonathan Haidt has pointed out a key reason why we get such mixed messages about what is
really happening.
Millennials get blamed for a lot of this, but most of this stuff is actually the arrival
of the first of the immediate post-millennial generation at college, just within the last
couple of years.
He points out that this is the first generation to have gone through formative late
childhood/early adolescent years experiencing the destructive impact social media throughout
their development. (Previous generations encountered it after they were just that bit older
and more emotionally stable.)
I can look back at my kids, who were born smack-dab in the middle of the millennial
generation, and their high school experience wasn't remotely like anything described above.
Granted, they grew up in Old West country, but it was at a very large high school–and
as this blog repeatedly points out, nowhere is sheltered from the modern diseases. Their
teachers were certainly overwhelmingly liberal, as is true pretty much everywhere these days,
no matter how red the state.
If Haidt is right, the experience my millennial kids had (and the experiences that many
readers of this blog will be appealing to) is *completely* irrelevant. There is something
brand-new just arrived on the scene, and only in the last 2-3 years.
We can argue about whether teachers caused it, culture caused it, social media caused it,
parents caused it The question is what we are going to do about it.
I find this really, really hard to believe. Also, I think I can state (with some degree of
confidence) that Alice does, in fact, believe that there is only one answer to her questions
about incarceration, national success, etc.
The "best and brightest" come in a few different flavors. A lot of them are the kids who
do everything absolutely right, don't seem to rock any particular boats, and are often pretty
conservative in various ways, including politically.
Others are those fueled by a desire for justice and reforms, because they've been on the
receiving end of injustice, or they've witnessed it and felt sympathy/empathy. These are the
ones who often clash with administrators and/or the more entitled demographics among their
peers. They're the ones standing by their controversial school newspaper articles, the ones
organizing the gay-straight (etc.) alliances in the face of often serious threat, and so on.
This isn't happening because they've been indoctrinated, though they may have been inspired
by that one English or History teacher.
As others have said Rod, you've stumbled across the NPC meme. No doubt someone will be along
to tell you about how you are dehumanizing people, because having an NPC avatar will get you
banned from twitter but calling white people dogs will get you on the editorial board of the
NYT.
For those unfamiliar with it, NPC means Non-Player-Character. It comes from video games,
although I've read that it appeared in DnD before that. In any case it is mostly relevant to
RPG games here. In an RPG game, the player will encounter many NPCs who have a few scripted
responses that they will repeat whenever the player talks to them. The meme is that SJWs do
not think for themselves, and simply respond to everything with a few scripted responses to
any political debate, usually some variation of an 'ist' or an 'ism' or white privilege or
lived experience. It has been an effective meme for mocking the left, which is why twitter
moved so quickly to shut it down.
So the Overton window is big for trans rights and little for the role of, say, duty to
ones' elders, big for microaggression but little for the personality differences of men and
women.
This is exactly right, and is actually the reason why the experience of becoming
"red-pilled" can be so exhilarating and freeing for many people. Suddenly there are huge
areas of discussion and debate that you can explore. It is especially potent because often
these areas were once filed under "common sense" or "fairness". Examples include the
differences between men and women which are evident to most toddlers, or the intrinsic
unfairness of judging people guilty for crimes that were committed hundreds of years before
they were born.
The euphoria of this rediscovered freedom can lead people to over-correct, and go very far
into conspiracy theories in search of more "truths" which have been considered off-limits.
I've seen this in an acquaintance who went far down the rabbit-hole of holocaust denial
theories and neo-nazism. I think it became a rush for him to go where others fear to tread,
and I think it is somehow connected to the red-pill experience.
[NFR: I found the graphic when I typed "conformity" into Shutterstock's search engine.
-- RD]
Shelley, I don't mean this as an insult, but you are 100% completely out of touch on this
issue. My sense is that you don't want to know the truth. This is evidenced by statements
like this:
"For our children is that there is zero indoctrination of SJW values coming from the
teachers of the institution. Certainly the peer group has SJW people and activities but I'm
here to declare that not one teacher or one principal in my district has for e fed my
children any SJW dogma."
First of all, this is anecdotal. Secondly, I can ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE you that your
absolutist statement is wrong. Your assertion that you know every single thing that
teachers/administrators have "fed" to your children shows how unserious you are about soberly
assessing/investigating the situation. You are operating on selective evidence and faith.
We are living in a time where our schools, the mainstream media, the entertainment
industry, high ed, and The Democratic party are united in a vitriolic, hysterical insistence
that citizens of all ages support The Narrative, OR ELSE.
I think your mindset is shared by many who simply can't accept the fact that what should
be the fringe rantings of the occasional "waka-doodle" has become the norm in the leftist
controlled institutions I listed above. I hope you all wake up, and see the extremist agenda
and actual violence that the left is supporting. If you don't, we will descend into actual
civil war. That probably sounds crazy to you, too. I wish you were right.
"This situation will not last. The Social Justice canon is too clearly false and modern
people are too rebellious to shoulder it for long."
Agree ..I would call it the social justice Koran though ..but unlike the Islamic Koran
(Qu'ran) it keeps changing all the time.
One day you're an "ally" the next day you find yourself a "nazi"
Seriously ..just go around campus today saying lines from Obama speeches back in 2008 ."I
believe marriage is between a man and a woman" and "immigration must be controlled and the
violence on the southern border must be stopped"
Thats now "hate speech"
At least the wahhabis tend to stick to one set of rules.
As someone who has spent most of my life in education and higher education, it is not my
experience that there is some sort of universal SJW indoctrination. In reality what basically
happens is this:
Certain professions at the commanding heights of the culture (journalism,
entertainment, academia etc ) are inherently cosmopolitan and tend to disproportionately
appeal to liberals/leftists.
Therefore, most college profs, students, and academic types end up being Nice Moderate
Liberals. Most are not dogmatic or hateful, and are willing to entertain rational
argumentation (to a point). Many–especially the students–are apolitical.
However, centrist liberal hegemony is largely defenseless against radical SJWs,
especially if they are ethnic minorities/women making accusations of racism/sexism, and the
Nice Moderate Liberals get bullied (sometimes quite literally) into going along with the SJW
agenda.
So, for instance, during the big SJW freakouts in places like Yale and Evergreen State,
the SJWs were not protesting and shutting down conservatives (too few of them to really
matter). They were protesting/assaulting/shutting down moderate liberals.
I was and still am a teacher (worked in public schools). Some teachers are liberal, some are
conservative. Personal politics does not come into the classroom unless a teacher brings it
in. However, standardized testing, funding, and infrastructure spending are all political
realities that affect teachers.
The idea that there are teachers indoctrinating your children is a conservative boogeyman.
There are a few bad teachers, but they are usually apathetic, not passionate. There are also
a few doctors who have sexually abused their clients, but that doesn't demonize the whole
health profession.
If parents are so concerned about transmitting values, they are free to homeschool, but it
would involve living on one income and re-prioritizing their finances. Many people are not
really that concerned about it, but it's easy to decry the fictional bad teachers they
imagine are stalking the schools. If public schools did not exist, all of these parents would
be forced to educate their own children, and they would realize a small sampling of what
teachers contend with on a daily basis.
Please stop painting a false picture of the profession. Public education is a genuine good
of democracy. If it disappears completely, people will one day realize what they have
lost.
I would like to echo reader G's sentiment – paraphrasing G, you've stated your
arguments in a detached way, without giving any samples of your own thinking. It's as if you
seek some implied consensus on conclusions you are, for some reason, unwilling to share. Your
arguments seem to be:
(a) Grade and high school age students are being indoctrinated into "certain acceptable
ideas", which they carry to the university;
(b) Universities confirm and deepen this indoctrination: "Some thoughts are just too
dangerous to have";
(c) Science and engineering fields lead to objectively correct, singular solutions to
given questions. The humanities try to mimic them, by insisting that there are singular
solutions to more complex questions as well;
(d) Here you do give us a few hints of these complex questions: some countries are more
successful than others, incarceration rates vary by race, what is the correct treatment of
non-citizens, the number of sexes, and possibly, a question on IQ;
If I've misunderstood any of your arguments, please correct me. I would also like to echo
G's invitation for you to provide a sample of your own thinking on any of these questions.
Should you respond, I too promise not to engage in polemics. To encourage you, Alice, for
what it's worth, these are my early thoughts on why "one country is more successful than
another":
At an individual's level, the basic idea of "success" is biological survival and
procreation. At the level of a country (and by that, I mean a nation which embodies a certain
culture), it is cultural survival, and handing down of its culture to succeeding generations
for preservation and improvement. Thus, at this basic level, the most successful countries
are those that faced adversity, even dissolution as states (some for several generations),
and still managed to preserve, improve, and pass on their culture till more favorable times.
This is one proof, perhaps the strongest, of cultural resilience;
Other measures of "success" are more ephemeral. All countries, if they survive long
enough, experience cycles of economic and military ups and downs, cultural rots and
regenerations, and demographic changes, to list a few examples. Thus, history decrees that in
these matters, no country can expect to be "number one" in perpetuity. In my mind, such
passing things are not good indicators of "success". For countries, success depends on those
cultural factors that are transmittable and willingly accepted (even embraced and cherished)
by succeeding generations. It also depends of each generation to have the wherewithal to
continuously adapt and improve them. The next question would be, what are these factors?
Has anyone considered that these kids (who are certainly no where close to a majority) might
be picking up these values at home? Leftwing people also have kids.
from where I sit the most capable 17 year olds are far more influenced by Lin Manuel
Miranda than by Ta Nehisi Coates – and I find that fairly encouraging.
Publicly standing up against the Bush administration was not the sort of thing that was an
unthinking default at the time. I don't think it was the way to get into the best
universities. I don't think it was a path prescribed by teachers and the corporate media
(though lots of conservatives claimed otherwise).
It represented a struggle for social justice, and an unpopular one at that.
"Teaching to the test" is a perversion of education. Excessive quantification is bad. Both are primary features of neoliberal
education.
Notable quotes:
"... If we care about the prospects of democratic education, we must take neoliberalism's success seriously, for it is a philosophical framework in which freedom and democratic education are mutually exclusive. ..."
"... We must intentionally challenge the neoliberal notion of the value freedom and the usefulness of its associated philosophical assumptions. ..."
Goodlad, et al. (2002) rightly point out that a culture can either resist or support change.
Schein's (2010) model of culture indicates observable behaviors of a culture can be explained
by exposing underlying shared values and basic assumptions that give meaning to the
performance. Yet culture is many-faceted and complex. So Schein advised a clinical approach to
cultural analysis that calls for identifying a problem in order to focus the analysis on
relevant values and assumptions. This project starts with two assumptions:
The erosion of democratic education is a visible overt behavior of the current U.S.
macro-culture, and
This is a problem.
I intend to use this problem of the erosion of democratic education as a basis for a
cultural analysis. My essential question is: What are the deeper, collective, competing value
commitments and shared basic assumptions that hinder efforts for democratic education? The
purpose of this paper is to start a conversation about particular cultural limitations and
barriers we are working with as we move toward recapturing the civic mission of education.
... ... ...
Neoliberalism's success in infiltrating the national discourse shuts out alternative
discourses and appears to render them irrelevant in everyday American culture (R. Quantz,
personal communication, Summer 2006). If we care about the prospects of democratic education,
we must take neoliberalism's success seriously, for it is a philosophical framework in which
freedom and democratic education are mutually exclusive. Dewey (1993), in all his wisdom,
warned:
And let those who are struggling to replace the present economic system by a cooperative one
also remember that in struggling for a new system of social restraints and controls they are
also struggling for a more equal and equitable balance of powers that will enhance and
multiply the effective liberties of the mass of individuals. Let them not be jockeyed into
the position of supporting social control at the expense of liberty [emphasis added]. (p.
160)
Yet, that is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves today. Democratic education is
viewed as a social control policy, as an infringement on the supremacy of the [neoliberal] freedom. We
witness a lack of democratic citizenship, moral, and character education in our schools. We see
a lack of redistributing resources for equality of educational opportunity. We observe a lack
of talk about education's civic mission, roles, and goals. Democratic education is viewed as
tangential, secondary, and mutually exclusive from the prioritized value of "liberty." How can
we foster alternative notions of freedom, such as Lincoln's republican sense of liberty as
collectively inquiring and deciding how we rule ourselves?
We must intentionally challenge the
neoliberal notion of the value freedom and the usefulness of its associated philosophical
assumptions.
"... First, we need to accept that there is no such thing as "value-free" analysis of the economy. As I've explained, neoclassical economics pretends to be ethically neutral while smuggling in an individualistic, anti-social ethos " – Howard Reed ..."
"... Fundamentally, economics is a religion, with priests, high priests, creed, dogma, punishment for heretics, and all the other trappings of a religion. But the pay is good, so Clive's rule for middle class jobs applies. ..."
Economics conducted
a curriculum review of 174 modules at 7 Russell Group universities -- rightly or wrongly
considered the 'top' universities in the UK -- and we found that the uncritical acceptance of
one type of economics begins with education. Under 10% of modules even mentioned anything other
than mainstream or 'neoclassical' economics; in econometrics, over 90% of modules devoted more
than two-thirds of their lectures to linear regression. Only 24% of exam questions required
critical or independent thinking (i.e. were open-ended); this dropped to 8% if you only counted
the compulsory macro and micro modules that form the core of economics education.
We have
previously called this 'indoctrination', and while this may seem dramatic the dictionary
definition of indoctrination is to "teach a person or set of people to accept a set of beliefs
uncritically", which we think adequately characterises the results of the review, as well as
our own experience and many widely used economics textbooks. Given this education, it is no
wonder that economists remain wedded to the fundamental precepts of choice models and linear
regression no matter where they turn their attention. By putting the method first, the implicit
assumption becomes that answering a question using this framework is prima facie
interesting, and critical evaluation of these tools against others is made unthinkable.
For nearly thirty years after the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) became received gospel
in the mid-1960s, the claim that stock prices exhibited momentum (which shouldn't be true in
a perfectly efficient market) was roundly mocked by mainstream economists.
Then in 1993, Jegadeesh and Titman published a paper titled "Returns to Buying Winners and
Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency" in the Journal of Finance .
Its evidence for a momentum effect was impossible to refute.
So economists bolted en masse to the opposite side of the boat. Today there are
thousands of papers on momentum, often presenting some fairly trivial arithmetic that
home-based amateurs have long used. But it's formulated into equations with Greek letters,
and a [totally boring] statistical panel appears in the Appendix to prove some statistical
significance.
A few professors actually exploited their discoveries to get rich. Cliff Asness, a U of
Chicago PhD (but a practitioner, not a professor) offers some light-hearted commentary on his
mentor Eugene Fama:
Of course the book The Fama Portfolio also contains contributions by other
authors (or how the heck did I get in there?) that reflect, directly or indirectly, on
Gene's work.
Being able to read Gene's originals and some of the major papers by others that explore
his work in one volume is both a treat and incredibly useful (these contributors, unlike
John Liew and myself, are themselves serious academic luminaries!).
OK, enough shilling. If you love finance and don't immediately pine for this book, I
can't help you any further☺
Where the police were call off their pursuit, when within a finger nail of – helping
– their subject. Because the economic perimeters their models produced, with the help of
computational machines, gave a ridged defined view of the operation. Seems the subject was
operating outside the econometric perimeters due to mental illness – was a patient whom
escaped at the time.
Alas we never get to see what he saw when he popped out on the surface, save a blinding
orb.
In retrospect did they do the underground thingy to better control, could nature itself be a
threat to the model, hence the need to control every aspect of environment for behavioral
reasons.
Anywho I'll just leave this on my way to work:
"If we accept that we need fundamental reform, what should the new economics --
"de-conomics" as I'm calling it -- look like?
First, we need to accept that there is no such thing as "value-free" analysis of the
economy. As I've explained, neoclassical economics pretends to be ethically neutral while
smuggling in an individualistic, anti-social ethos " – Howard Reed
Linear regression is economists' preferred empirical technique
That's really a powerful tool in a world which is chaotic.
The trouble with embracing chaos and catastrophe theory is the "chaos" part of predicting
the future. But economists, being human and liking their paychecks, are not interested in any
predictions which do not cater, or pander, to the needs of their bosses or paymasters.
Why, that might suggest the boss is wrong! Such heresy leads to a quick execution!
Fundamentally, economics is a religion, with priests, high priests, creed, dogma,
punishment for heretics, and all the other trappings of a religion. But the pay is good, so
Clive's rule for middle class jobs applies.
Disclaimer: My view of Religion is similar: Why?
1. You'll get your reward in the afterlife, after you are dead!
2. We know this is true, because we've never had a complaint.
Linear regression certainly is a powerful tool for examining linear distributions, but it
essential to first confirm that the distribution is linear, and to remember that on occasion,
samples drawn from random (unrelated) distributions can show a spurious correlation.
but it essential to first confirm that the distribution is linear
Very true, but how is this proven? In nature and economics are there any linear
distributions? If so over what range?
I notice a preponderance of using straight lines instead of growth curves. I also notice
chaos, or noise, in behaviors, coupled with a complete non-understanding of entropy.
In nature linear behavior is unlikely. If it were linear we'd see straight branches on
trees, rainfall evenly distributed and the wind would always blow at constant speed, with
predictable eddies.
I suppose a rock dropped would exhibit linear behaviors until it hits the ground, and at
that point in time the "dropping rock" system become decidedly chaotic, from stuck in the mud,
to bouncing in a random direction, to bursting into pieces, pieces who's destiny is completely
uncertain.
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one
takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability,
they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man."
Nassim, I think covers all this better than anyone else. Would love to hear of
similarly comprehensive works.
Stumbling and Mumbling has a good riff on this topic:
". Economics, for me, is not about armchair theorizing. It should begin with the facts, and
especially the big ones. The facts are that share buy-backs do usually matter, so thought
experiments that say otherwise are wrong from the off. Similarly, the fact that wage
inflation has been low for years (pdf) is much more significant than any theorizing about
Phillips curves."
The comments are good as well:
"That's a category error: you don't define "Economics", tenure committees define it, and they
award tenure to people who have a long record of publishing "internally consistent"
("armchair theorizing") papers."
"I found myself sitting next to a very likable young middle-aged academic tenured at an elite
British university, whom henceforth I will refer to as Doctor X and whose field is closely
associated with this blog. Every year I publish papers in the top journals and they're pure
shit." Doctor X, who by now had had a glass or two, felt bad about this, not least because
"students these days are so idealistic and eager to learn; they're really wonderful."
Furthermore Doctor X could and would like "to write serious papers but what would be the
point?" "
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2018/04/facts-vs-hand-waving-in-economics.html#comments
Yeah. I'm inclined to think the author needs to curb his enthusiasms and take up dejected
drinking.
The nub of his presentation was a model in which consumers, due to cognitive
limitations, were unable to fully examine every single product they purchased. The result
was that regulations guaranteeing a certain standard of safety, quality and the like could
improve competition by giving people more time to shop around instead of having to devote
so much time to investigate specific products. Thus, regulation would improve markets and
competition
This is Nobel-level work? It amounts to finding a way to pitch a product to
anti-regulation dogmatists. I'm sure that you could find similar arguments being made during
the Progressive era regulatory push. Only they would have been framed more as "people will
have more time to shop around if they're not killed by previous ingestion of the
product."
What I mean by 'mathemagics' is the misuse of mathematics –even simple
mathematics -- to create the illusion that 'utility' or 'indifference curves' actually
pertain to real concepts. In reality, they 'mathematize' gobbledygook passed off as coherent
concepts. There is nothing so conceptually barren as 'utility' or 'indifference curve'
analytics. The notion that one can derive any coherent 'demand' analysis for any one consumer
that is individual human being (or life form of any kind) for any product, or that one can
aggregate these up is mathematical junk.
The Classical Economists used the broader political economy rather than today's narrow
economics.
The Washington Consensus dreamed of a world run by the laws of economics.
The laws of economics worked in China's favour and the Western economies got hollowed
out.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Maximising profit required minimising wages.
The minimum wage is set when disposable income equals zero.
The minimum wage = taxes + the cost of living
China had it made and the West had tilted the playing field against itself.
The US eventually woke up the geopolitical consequences of a world governed by the laws of
economics that had worked in China's favour.
Trump has just made things worse with his tax cuts.
Theory:
If we reduce taxes on the wealthy they will create more jobs and wages.
Reality:
If we reduce taxes on the wealthy they will create more jobs and wages in Asia where they can
make more profit. They can then ship the stuff back here increasing Western trade
deficits.
"... Weinstein argues that the GUI agenda (inspired by Reaganomics) sought to prevent these salary increases. He contends that the legislation that enabled this oversupply was the Immigration Act of 1990 that expanded the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program and instituted employment-based immigration preferences. ..."
"... As I show in my book Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? , the beginning of the end of CWOC was the transformation of IBM, the world's leading computer company, from OEBM to NEBM from 1990 to 1994. In 1990, with 374,000 employees, IBM still bragged about its adherence to the CWOC norm (calling it "lifelong employment"), claiming that the company had not laid off anyone involuntarily since 1921. By 1994 IBM had 220,000 employees, and, with senior executives under CEO Louis Gerstner themselves getting fired for not laying off employees fast enough, CWOC was history. Over the course of the 1990s and into the 2000s, other major Old Economy companies followed IBM's example, throwing out of work older employees, many of them highly educated and with accumulated experience that had previously been highly valued by the companies. ..."
"... The salaries of S&E employees tended to increase with years of experience with the company, with a defined-benefit pension (based on years of service and highest salary levels) in retirement. These types of secure employment relations, and the high and rising pay levels associated with them, were the norm among established high-tech companies in the mid-1980s, but, as exemplified by IBM's transformation, started to become undone in the early 1990s, and were virtually extinct a decade later, as Old Economy companies either made the transition to the NEBM, or disappeared.8 The culprit in the weakening in the demand for, and earnings of, S&E PhDs from the early 1990s was the demise of CWOC-a phenomenon that Weinstein (and Teitelbaum) entirely ignore. ..."
"... As exemplified by IBM in the 1990s and beyond, a company's stock price could be raised by laying off expensive older workers and using the resultant "free" cash flow (as the purveyors of MSV called it) to do stock buybacks. 12 ..."
"... "But the company is "returning" capital to shareholders who never gave the company anything in the first place; the only time in its history that Apple has ever raised funds on the public stock market was $97 million in its 1980 IPO." ..."
"... During that period, the only job market for native PhD STEM students became the American Defense and Intelligence agencies, because they required security clearances and US Citizenship. I found myself driven in those directions too. ..."
"... Technology for the most part is just increasing complexity and increasing complexity has diminishing returns. With energy becoming less available, we probably need a lot less complexity. ..."
"... I wouldn't say that there is a lack of R&D - it just isn't done in-house any more. Gone are the Bell Labs and the Xerox PARCs; welcome to the brave new world of university partnerships and non-profit R&D shops (most famous: the Southwest Research Institute). ..."
"... Basically the rich are waging class war. That's the problem no matter how you slice and dice this one. This whole "New Economy" has been one big war on wages. I mean look at the collusion too between Google, Apple, and Intel to keep wages low. ..."
"... Basically it comes down to, the rich are really greedy. The issue right now for the rich is that they are desperate to keep the looting from happening, while people are increasingly aware that the system is against them. Bernie Sanders got a lot of support in the Valley and while it is a very Democratic leaning area, I cannot imagine that Trump's anti-H1B and L1B stance would have been opposed by the average employee. I think that the rich are not going to concede anything and that there needs to be some sort of solidarity union amongst all workers. ..."
"... Is there a single person here who has worked on Wall Street (writ large) who can convince us that his job or his company had an overall positive effect on the US and/or world economy over five years, ten years, or twenty-five years? ..."
"... Its not just PhDs. I know several Engineers who advise their children to do something else. It's just not worth the amount of effort that is required to be put into it and there is no future hope of a turn around. As bad as it is for graduates today, it's only going to get worse. ..."
"... They're catching up with us arts and humanities majors. Sad! ..."
"... I am a civil engineer and one of my daughters is studying to become a structural engineer. I would not have advised her to go into engineering because of the problem with the H-1B visas. ..."
"... But who am I to advise? Who can know the future? The world is just changing too fast now to really be able to advise our children on what careers to take. Besides, one of the advantages of studying engineering as you can work anywhere in the world. ..."
"... Post WWII labor overplayed its hand by the 1970's. Corporations and their decided they had had it. Corps and management proceeded to change the rules of the game on everything -- courts, trade, taxation and regulation. These countermeasures have had disastrous long term consequences. Corporations now run the country in a fascist manner. Government capture has created myriad problems beyond financialization, only one tool in the corporate quiver. Oligopolies across most to all industries comes to mind. Rail, air, health insurance, banking, defense, telecom, entertainment . ..."
"... Not sure about the labor part overplaying their hand. They just wanted an even wage and productivity rise. It is capital IMO that has overplayed its hand and the rise of neoliberal economics which has led to declines in public R&D spending. There isn't anything like the Space Race anymore. ..."
"... Frankly, labour underplayed its hand. At one point it had capital by the throat, and should have finished it off then. If peace is not an option, you should utterly and permanently destroy your enemy. ..."
"... Labor did NOT overplay its hand after WW2 - Taft-Hartley was a HUGE smack-down to labor after the privations of the Depression followed by the war effort. The decent wages during the post-war period were part of a concerted effort to convince workers that they didn't need unions and to be complacent. ..."
"... Labor leadership certainly became corrupt from all the money sloshing around without global competition due to war devastation of Europe and Japan, the Cold War, and the death throes of colonialism, but this was not due to "overplaying" their hand. ..."
"... Contrary to popular belief, in aggregate U.S. corporations fund the stock market, not vice versa. Note that almost all of the buybacks in the decade 1976-1985 occurred in 1984 and 1985 after in November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10b-18 that gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price manipulation and the looting of the U.S. business corporation. ..."
"... Actually though, watching the train wreck that is the outlook for the youngest generation today, provides some grim amusement. For instance noting that the "bubble-driven" economy composed of companies desperate to prevent their stock becoming "badly diluted" by having fire sales on capitol and expertise that probably took their predecessors decades to build can really only have one outcome. Depression, misery, socialism. Maybe we skip the Mao route this time, maybe not. ..."
"... Gregory Peck: "The Robber Barons of old at least left something tangible in their wake - a coal mine, a railroad, banks. THIS MAN LEAVES NOTHING. HE CREATES NOTHING. HE BUILDS NOTHING. HE RUNS NOTHING. And in his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain. Oh, if he said, "I know how to run your business better than you," that would be something worth talking about. But he's not saying that. He's saying, "I'm going to kill you because at this particular moment in time, you're worth more dead than alive." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws ..."
"... IBM. Poster child of everything wrong at the executive-level and the shareholder-level. ..."
"... Yes, the IBM reference is interesting.The author gives an ordinal lead to IBM as a mover from the OEBM to NEBM. I ask myself if, from a mere one large corporation managing perspective, this was IBM's 11th hour response to the by then devastating rise of its competitors like Apple & Microsoft. ..."
"... Also the irony that it did not help IBM at least in the midterm. So, IBM was the prime mover to initiate some aspects of a model change -change which every major player adhered to- in response to a new technological disadvantage vs. competitors, and in turned did not seem to do much for IBM in the immediate years. Although, if I recall well, IBM was immersed in many political battles and internal problems, legal and otherwise. Nevertheless, I doubt there was a historic inevitability on IBM's ordinal force. Outstanding work by Lazonick ..."
"... "IBM is the poster child for shenanigans. Last month, IBM reported its 20th quarter in a row of declining year over year revenues .. a 13% drop in earnings, profit margins that declined in every business segment ( much worse than expected ), free cash flow that plummeted over 50% year over year and an earnings "beat" of 3 cents per share. How could this "beat" happen? .. a negative tax rate of -23% . This is why they pay the CEO Rometti the big bucks ( estimated at $50 to $65 million last year)." ..."
"... And this is one of the Bluest of the Blue Chip companies in the world. ..."
"... Amazon has lost money every fucking quarter for the last 20 fucking years, and that Bezos motherfucker is the king. ..."
"... In addition, the rise of 401(k) based investing, in which workers are tax-incentivized to buy in to the corporate stock scheming, but lack the normal shareholder voice in corporate governance, has taken the chains off the looters as well. ..."
"... The impact on the Grads was secondary a byproduct of a larger agenda which included the transfer offshore and consolidation of "IP" of the entire American, EU and Asian industrial economies along with the withdrawl of capital, while at the same time intentionally sabotaging future innovations with the handicap of diversity. Who got the loot and capital? Usual suspects. ..."
At the outset of his paper, Weinstein argues that:
Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies. That is not to say that
they don't exist. They are created when employers or government agencies tamper with the natural
functioning of the wage mechanism.
The contention, written from the perspective of the late 1990s, is that in the first half of the
1990s an oversupply ("a glut") of science and engineering (S&E) labor that depressed the wages of
PhD scientists and engineers was primarily the result of the promotion of a government-university-industry
(GUI) agenda, coordinated by the National Science Foundation under the leadership of Erich Bloch,
head of the NSF from 1984 to 1990. Beginning in 1985, the NSF predicted a shortfall of 675,000 S&E
personnel in the U.S. economy over the next two decades. According to a study by the NSF's Policy
Research and Analysis (PRA) division, quoted by Weinstein, salary data show that real PhD-level pay
began to rise after 1982, moving from $52,000 to $64,000 in 1987 (measured in 1984 dollars). One
set of salary projections show that real pay will reach $75,000 in 1996 and approach $100,000 shortly
beyond the year 2000.
Weinstein argues that the GUI agenda (inspired by Reaganomics) sought to prevent these salary
increases. He contends that the legislation that enabled this oversupply was the Immigration Act
of 1990 that expanded the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program and instituted employment-based immigration
preferences. Given that most of these foreigners came from lower-wage (Asian) nations, it is
assumed that they were attracted to work in the United States by what for them were high wages, whereas
Americans with S&E PhDs began to shun S&E careers as the salaries became less attractive.1
There is a lot missing from Weinstein's perspective, which is also the perspective of demographer
Michael Teitelbaum, who Weinstein cites extensively and who was at the Sloan Foundation from 1983
to 2013, rising to Vice-President in 2006. Weinstein and Teitelbaum view the salaries of scientists
and engineers as being determined by supply and demand on the labor market ("the natural wage rate"
and "the natural functioning of the labor market"). From this (neoclassical) perspective, they completely
ignore the "marketization" of employment relations for S&E workers that occurred in the U.S. business
sector from the mid-1980s as well as the concomitant "financialization" of the U.S. business corporation
that remains, in my view, the most damaging economic problem facing the United States. This transformation
of employment relations put out of work large numbers of PhD scientists and engineers who previously
had secure employment and who enjoyed high incomes and benefits as well as creative corporate careers.
The marketization of employment relations brought to an end of the norm of a career with one company
(CWOC)-an employment norm that was pervasive in U.S. business corporations from the 1950s to the
1980s, but that has since disappeared. 2 The "financialization" of the corporation, manifested by
massive distributions to shareholders in the forms of cash dividends and stock buybacks, undermined
the opportunities for business-sector S&E careers.
The major cause of marketization was the rise of the "New Economy business model" (NEBM) in which
high-tech startups, primarily in information-and-communication technology (ICT) and biotechnology,
lured S&E personnel away from established companies, which offered CWOC under the "Old Economy business
model" (OEBM). As startups with uncertain futures, the New Economy companies could not realistically
offer CWOC, but instead enticed S&E personnel away from CWOC at Old Economy companies by offering
these employees stock options on top of their salaries (which were typically lower than those at
the Old Economy companies). The stock options could become extremely valuable if and when the startup
did an initial public offering (IPO) or a merger-and-acquisition (M&A) deal with an established publicly-listed
company.
The rise in S&E PhD salaries from 1982 to 1987, identified in the NSF study that Weinstein quotes,
was the result of increased demand for S&E personnel by New Economy companies, with some of the increase
taking the form of stock-based pay, which in the Census data drawn from tax returns is lumped in
with salaries.3 Competing with companies for S&E personnel, the rise of the NEBM in turn put pressure
on salaries at Old Economy companies as they tried to use CWOC to attract and retain S&E labor in
the face of the stock-based alternative. By the last half of the 1980s, this New Economy competition
for talent was eroding the learning capabilities of the corporate research labs that, in many cases
from the early twentieth century, had been a characteristic feature of Old Economy companies in a
wide range of knowledge-intensive industries. 4
The CWOC norm under OEBM had provided employment security and rising wages from years-of-service
with the company and internal promotion of S&E personnel (significant proportions of whom in science-
based companies had PhDs). As I show in my book Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy?
, the beginning of the end of CWOC was the transformation of IBM, the world's leading computer
company, from OEBM to NEBM from 1990 to 1994. In 1990, with 374,000 employees, IBM still bragged
about its adherence to the CWOC norm (calling it "lifelong employment"), claiming that the company
had not laid off anyone involuntarily since 1921. By 1994 IBM had 220,000 employees, and, with senior
executives under CEO Louis Gerstner themselves getting fired for not laying off employees fast enough,
CWOC was history. Over the course of the 1990s and into the 2000s, other major Old Economy companies
followed IBM's example, throwing out of work older employees, many of them highly educated and with
accumulated experience that had previously been highly valued by the companies.
Already in the early 1990s, the marketization of employment relations was responsible for a precipitous
decline of employment at the corporate research labs that had underpinned the twentieth-century growth
of Old Economy high-tech companies, of which IBM was an exemplar. In 1993, a conference held at Harvard
Business School decried the "end of an era" in industrial research, with papers from the conference
appearing in a volume Engines of Innovation , published in 1996.5 In the introductory chapter,
entitled "Technology's Vanishing Wellspring," conference organizers and volume editors Richard Rosenbloom
and William Spencer argued that industrial research (as distinct from product development) of the
type that had been carried out by corporate labs in the "golden era" of the post- World War II decades
"expands the base of knowledge on which existing industries depend and generates new knowledge that
leads to new technologies and the birth of new industries." In the more competitive environment of
the 1980s and 1990s, however, in the new industries of "biotechnology, exotic materials, and information
products (and services based on them)", Rosenbloom and Spencer observed that it was more difficult
for companies "to keep new technologies fully proprietary", and hence "research activities have been
downsized, redirected, and restructured in recent years within most of the firms that once were among
the largest sponsors of industrial research." 6
There is little doubt that S&E PhDs were major victims of this transformation. But the problem
that they, along with most other members of the U.S. labor force, have faced is not simply the marketization
of employment relations. For reasons that I have fully described in my publications cited above,
the transition from OEBM to NEBM was accompanied by the "financialization" of the U.S. business corporation
as, from the last half of the 1980s, U.S. boardrooms and business schools embraced the ideology that,
for the sake of superior economic performance, a business enterprise should be run to "maximize shareholder
value" (MSV). Instead of retaining employees and reinvesting in their productive capabilities, as
had been the case when CWOC had prevailed, MSV advocated and legitimized the downsizing of the company's
labor force and the distribution of corporate revenues to shareholders in the forms of both cash
dividends and stock repurchases. 7
With the demise of CWOC, older employees were the most vulnerable, not only because they tended
to have the highest salaries, but also because the shift from OEBM to NEBM was a shift from proprietary
technology systems, in which employees with long years of experience were highly valued, to open
technology systems that favored younger workers with the latest computer-related skills (often acquired
by working at other companies). Under CWOC, older employees were more expensive not because of a
"natural wage rate" that was the result of supply and demand on the S&E labor market, but because
of the internal job ladders that are integral to a "retain-and-reinvest" resource-allocation regime.
The salaries of S&E employees tended to increase with years of experience with the company, with
a defined-benefit pension (based on years of service and highest salary levels) in retirement. These
types of secure employment relations, and the high and rising pay levels associated with them, were
the norm among established high-tech companies in the mid-1980s, but, as exemplified by IBM's transformation,
started to become undone in the early 1990s, and were virtually extinct a decade later, as Old Economy
companies either made the transition to the NEBM, or disappeared.8 The culprit in the weakening in
the demand for, and earnings of, S&E PhDs from the early 1990s was the demise of CWOC-a phenomenon
that Weinstein (and Teitelbaum) entirely ignore.
With the rise of NEBM, companies wanted employees who were younger and cheaper , and that
was the major reason why at the end of the 1980s the ICT industry pushed for an expansion of H-1B
nonimmigrant visas and employment-based immigration visas. It is not at all clear that an influx
of PhDs from foreign countries via these programs was undermining the earnings of S&E PhDs in the
early 1990s. Most H-1B visa holders had Bachelor's degrees when they entered the United States. At
the same time, large numbers of non-immigrant visa holders entered the United States on student visas
to do Master's and PhD degrees, and then looked to employment on H-1B visas to enable them to stay
in the United States for extended periods (up to seven years).9 It was in response to the availability
of advanced- degree graduates of U.S. universities that in 2005 an additional 20,000 H-1B visas were
added to the normal cap of 65,000. Without the influx of foreign students into U.S. S&E Master's
and PhD programs, many of these programs would not have survived. Through this route, the H-1B visa
program has made more foreign-born PhDs available to corporations for employment in the United States.
But I posit that it has been the demise of OEBM and rise of the NEBM, not an increased supply of
foreign-born PhDs, that has placed downward pressure on the career earnings of the most highly educated
members of the U.S. labor force.
Besides giving employers access to an expanded supply of younger and cheaper high-tech labor in
the United States, the H-1B visa along with the L-1 visa for people who had previously worked for
the employer for at least one year outside the United States have another valuable attribute for
employers: the person on the visa is immobile on the labor market-he or she can't change jobs-whereas
under NEBM the most valued high-tech workers are those who are highly mobile. This mobility of labor
can boost the worker's pay package but is highly problematic for a company that needs these employees
to be engaged in the collective and cumulative learning processes that are the essence of generating
competitive products. Under OEBM, CWOC was the central employment institution for college-educated
workers precisely because of the need for collective and cumulative learning. But it was the rise
of NEBM, not the Immigration Act of 1990, that undermined CWOC. The growing dominance of NEBM with
its open systems architectures then led employers to make increased use of H-1 and L-1 visas in the
1980s, prompting them to get behind an expanded cap for H-1B visas in the Immigration Act of 1990.
10
Once OEBM was attacked by NEBM, with its offer of stock-based pay, these corporations became fertile
territory for the adoption of the ideology that a company should be run to "maximize shareholder
value" (MSV). This momentous transformation in U.S. corporate governance occurred from the late 1980s,
legitimizing the transition from a "retain-and-reinvest" to a "downsize-and-distribute" corporate-
governance regime. In the 1990s and beyond, this corporate-governance transformation laid waste to
CWOC across corporate America, knowledge-intensive companies included. 11 With corporate research
eroding as high-tech personnel responded to the lure of stock-based pay from NEBM companies- including
not only startups but also those such as Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco Systems
that during the 1990s grew to employ tens of thousands of people, most of them with stock- based
pay-senior executives at the Old Economy high-tech companies began to see their company's stock price
as not only key to the size of their own stock-based pay packages but also as an instrument to compete
for a broad-based of high-tech personnel. As exemplified by IBM in the 1990s and beyond, a company's
stock price could be raised by laying off expensive older workers and using the resultant "free"
cash flow (as the purveyors of MSV called it) to do stock buybacks. 12
As I have documented in detail, over the past three decades this legalized looting of the U.S.
business corporation has only gotten worse. As shown Table 1, driven by stock buybacks, net equity
issues by U.S. nonfinancial corporations were, in 2015 dollars, minus $4.5 trillion over the
decade 2006-2015. In 2016 net equity issues were minus $586 billion. Net equity issues are new stock
issues by companies (in this case nonfinancial corporations) minus stock retired from the market
as the result of stock repurchases and M&A deals. The massively negative numbers in recent decades
are the result of stock buybacks. I have calculated net equity issues as a percent of GDP by decade
to provide a measure of the value of buybacks done relative to the size of the U.S. economy. In both
absolute inflation-adjusted dollars and as a percent of GDP, buybacks have become a prime mode of
corporate resource allocation in the U.S. economy. Contrary to popular belief, in aggregate U.S.
corporations fund the stock market, not vice versa. Note that almost all of the buybacks in the decade
1976-1985 occurred in 1984 and 1985 after in November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
adopted Rule 10b-18 that gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price
manipulation and the looting of the U.S. business corporation.
Table 1: Net equity issues of nonfinancial corporations in the United States, 1946-2015, by
decade, in 2015 dollars, and as a percent of GDP
Decade
Net Equity Issues,
2015$ billions
Net Equity Issues
as % of GDP
1946-1955
143.2
0.56
1956-1965
110.9
0.30
1966-1975
316.0
0.58
1976-1985
-290.9
-0.40
1986-1995
-1,002.5
-1.00
1996-2005
-1,524.4
-1.09
2006-2015
-4,466.6
-2.65
Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Statistical Release
Z.1, "Financial Accounts of the United States: Flow of Funds, Balance Sheets, and Integrated Macroeconomic
Accounts," Table F-223: Corporate Equities, March 9, 2017, at
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/
.
Over the years 2006-2015, the 459 companies in the S&P 500 Index in January 2016 that were publicly
listed over the ten-year period expended $3.9 trillion on stock buybacks, representing 53.6 percent
of net income, plus another 36.7 percent of net income on dividends. Much of the remaining 9.7 percent
of profits was held abroad, sheltered from U.S. taxes. Mean buybacks for these 459 companies ranged
from $291 million in 2009, when the stock markets had collapsed, to $1,205 million in 2007, when
the stock market peaked before the Great Financial Crisis. In 2015, with the stock market booming,
mean buybacks for these companies were $1,173 million. Meanwhile, dividends declined moderately in
2009, but over the period 2006-2015 they trended up in real terms.
Among the largest repurchasers are America's premier high-tech companies. Table 2 shows the top
25 repurchasers over the decade 2006-2015. Among the companies that one would expect to employ large
numbers of S&E PhDs are Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Pfizer,
Oracle, Intel, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. We do not know the
historical numbers of S&E PhDs at these companies, but I hypothesize that numbers would be much higher
than they are if the companies were not financialized. Many of America's largest corporations
routinely distribute more than 100 percent of net income to shareholders, generating the extra
cash by reducing cash reserves, selling off assets, taking on debt, or laying off employees.13 As
I have shown, the only logical explanation for this buyback activity is that the stock-based pay
that represents the vast majority of the remuneration of senior corporate executives incentivizes
them to manipulate their companies' stock prices, leaving most Americans worse off. 14
Table 2: The 25 largest stock repurchasers among U.S.-based corporations, 2006-2015, showing
net income (NI) stock buybacks (BB), and cash dividends (DV)
Source: Calculated from data downloaded from Standard & Poor's Compustat database.
The Weinstein-Teitelbaum focus on a GUI design to expand the supply of S&E PhDs ignores the
transformations of corporate governance and employment relations that have decimated career employment
for this group of workers over the past three decades. At the same time, the channeling of trillions
of dollars of value created in U.S. nonfinancial corporations to the financial sector has opened
up jobs on Wall Street that can provide quick income bonanzas for highly-educated members of the
U.S. labor force, many of whom might have otherwise pursued S&E careers. Among the wealthiest
of these Wall Street players are corporate predators-euphemistically known as "hedge-fund activists"-who
have billions of dollars in assets under management with which they can attack companies to pump
up their stock prices through the implementation of "downsize-and-distribute" allocation regimes
and, even if it takes a few years, dump the stock for huge gains.15
In the case of Apple, we have shown how Carl Icahn used his wealth, visibility, hype, and influence
to take $2 billion in stock-market gains by buying $3.6 billion of Apple shares in the summer of
2013 and selling them in the winter of 2016, even though he contributed absolutely nothing of any
kind to Apple as a value-creating company.16 Apple CEO Tim Cook and his board (which includes former
U.S. Vice President Al Gore) helped Icahn turn his accumulated fortune into an even bigger one by
having Apple repurchase $45 billion in shares in 2014 and $36 billion in 2015-by far the two largest
one-year stock buybacks of any company in history. Imagine the corporate research capabilities in
which Apple could have invested, and the S&E PhDs the company could have employed, had it looked
for productive ways to use even a fraction of the almost unimaginable sums that it wasted on buybacks.17
From 2011 through the first quarter of 2017, Apple spent $144 billion on buybacks and $51 billion
on dividends under what it calls its "Capital Return" program. But the company is "returning" capital
to shareholders who never gave the company anything in the first place; the only time in its history
that Apple has ever raised funds on the public stock market was $97 million in its 1980 IPO. 18
A number of "hedge-fund activists"-Nelson Peltz of Trian, Daniel Loeb of Third Point, and William
Ackman of Pershing Square are among the most prominent-have been able to put up one or two billion
dollars to purchase small stakes in major high-tech companies, and, with the proxy votes of pension
funds, mutual funds and endowments, have been able put pressure on companies, often by placing their
representatives on the boards of directors, to implement "downsize-and-distribute" regimes for the
sake of "maximizing shareholder value."19 In the summer of 2013, Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management
bought DuPont stock worth $1.3 billion, representing 2.2% of shares outstanding. In May 2015 Peltz
lost a proxy fight to put four of his nominees on the DuPont board, but in October 2015 DuPont CEO
Ellen Kullman, who had opposed Peltz, resigned, and the new management began to implement Peltz's
plans to cut costs and hit financial targets, to be done in the context of a merger with Dow Chemical,
which had fallen into the hands of another corporate predator Daniel Loeb. Meanwhile, in October
2015, Peltz bought 0.8 percent of the shares of General Electric (GE), and began to pressure another
iconic high-tech company to cut costs and increase its stock price. GE was already a financialized
company that had done $52 billion in buybacks in the decade 2006-2015 (see Table 2)-a massive amount
of money for the purpose of manipulating its stock price. Undoubtedly responding to additional pressure
from Peltz, during 2016, GE, with profits of $8.0 billion, paid out $8.5 billion in dividends and
spent another $22.0 billion on buybacks. This financialization of U.S. high-tech corporations undermines,
among other things, the employment of S&E PhDs.
We need research on this subject to quantify its impacts. I submit, however, that such a research
agenda must focus on transformations of regimes of corporate governance and employment relations.
Relying on the neoclassical economist's notion of a "natural wage rate" determined by the interaction
of supply and demand, Weinstein, a mathematician, and Teitelbaum, a demographer, missed the transformations
in corporate governance and employment relations that marked the late 1980s and early 1990s-and beyond-and
as result, in my view, failed to understand the changing fortunes of S&E PhDs in the marketized,
globalized, and financialized New Economy. Given the dominance of what I have called "the myth of
the market economy"20 in the thought processes of economists, Weinstein and Teitelbaum were by no
means alone in erroneously focusing on supply and demand on the PhD labor market while failing to
recognize the centrality of corporate governance and employment relations in determining the earnings
and career prospects of S&E PhDs. It is time for new economic thinking on these critical questions.
Footnotes
1 The Weinstein paper appears to have been published prior to the adoption of the American
Competitiveness and Workforce
2 William Lazonick, Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? Business Organization and High-Tech
Employment in the United States, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2009; ; William
Lazonick, "The New Economy Business Model and the Crisis of US Capitalism," Capitalism and Society,
4, 2, 2009: article 4; William Lazonick, Philip Moss, Hal Salzman, and Öner Tulum, "Skill Development
and Sustainable Prosperity: Collective and Cumulative Careers versus Skill-Biased Technical Change,"
Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Group on the Political Economy of Distribution Working
Paper No. 7, December 2014, at
https://www.ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/research-papers/skill-development-and-sustainable-prosperity-cumulative-and-collective-careers-versus-skill-biased-technical-change
; William Lazonick, "Labor in the Twenty- First Century: The Top 0.1% and the Disappearing
Middle Class," in Christian E. Weller, ed., Inequality, Uncertainty, and Opportunity: The Varied
and Growing Role of Finance in Labor Relations, Cornell University Press, 2015: 143-192.
3 Almost all gains from exercising employee stock options and the vesting of employee stock
awards are taxed at the ordinary income-tax rate, not at the capital-gains tax rate, with taxes
withheld by the employer at the time that options are exercised or awards vest. Hence these stock-based
gains are reported as part of "wages, tips, other compensation" on IRS Form 1040.
5 Rosenbloom and Spencer, Engines of Innovation . Richard Rosenbloom was David Sarnoff
Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, while William Spencer was CEO
of SEMATECH.
6 Ibid., pp. 2-3.
7 William Lazonick, "Profits Without Prosperity: Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market and
Leave Most Americans Worse Off," Harvard Business Review , September 2014, 46-55; William
Lazonick, "Stock Buybacks: From Retain-and-Reinvest to Downsize-and-Distribute," Center for Effective
Public Management, Brookings Institution, April 2015 at
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/04/17-stock-buybacks-lazonick.
8 Lazonick, Sustainable Prosperity , ch. 3. For an important case study that includes
the fate of the once renowned Bell Labs, see William Lazonick and Edward March, "The Rise and
Demise of Lucent Technologies," Journal of Strategic Management Education , 7, 4, 2011.
9 Lazonick, Sustainable Prosperity , ch. 5.
10 Ibid., ch. 2. Note that the H-1 visa for workers in specialty occupations was renamed the
H-1B visa in 1990 after the H-1A visa was created specifically for nurses.
11 Lazonick, "Stock Buybacks"; Lazonick, "Labor in the Twenty-First Century."
12 Lazonick, "Profits Without Prosperity"; Lazonick, "Stock Buybacks."
13 Lazonick, "Labor in the Twenty-First Century": William Lazonick, "How Stock Buybacks Make
Americans Vulnerable to Globalization," Paper presented at the Workshop on Mega-Regionalism: New
Challenges for Trade and Innovation, East-West Center, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, January
20-21, 2016, at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2745387
14 Lazonick, "Profits Without Prosperity."
15 Rachel Butt, "Here are some of the 10 biggest activist money managers and some of their
most impressive bets," Business Insider , June 17, 2016, at
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-10-biggest-activist-investors-2016-6. Matt Hopkins, William
Lazonick, and Jang-Sup Shin are engaged in research on the methods and gains of these predatory
value extractors.
19 With Matt Hopkins and Jang-Sup Shin, I am involved in project on how the U. S. SEC has
accommodated and even encouraged the corporate value extractors who call themselves "shareholder
activists" or "hedge-fund activists."
20 William Lazonick, Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy , Cambridge
University Press, 1991
It was indeed a tough article to read to the end, but this nugget near the end was worth it:
"But the company is "returning" capital to shareholders who never gave the company anything
in the first place; the only time in its history that Apple has ever raised funds on the public
stock market was $97 million in its 1980 IPO."
As one who actually lived this process, I can tell you that the premise of this article must
be basically true.
Back in the early '90s I set out to fill in the gaps of my own computer science background
(I'm actually an astrophysicist). And my classes were filled entirely by people from Asia, except
for myself and one other Anglo. Job ads in the journals were already beginning to ask for PhD
level CompSci with emphasis on, e.g., voice recognition, for a pay rate of $26K (1992 !). That
was definitely appealing to the foreign students and unappealing to American STEM students.
During that period, the only job market for native PhD STEM students became the American
Defense and Intelligence agencies, because they required security clearances and US Citizenship.
I found myself driven in those directions too.
Now, after many years doing my own thing, I look around at the STEM marketplace and I am shocked
to find large numbers of compatriots being pressured into the GIG Economy, and pay rates are appalling
by former standards. There is a serious lack of expenditure on research and development today.
There is a serious lack of expenditure on research and development today.
From another perspective this is just over investment in education. Technology for the
most part is just increasing complexity and increasing complexity has diminishing returns. With
energy becoming less available, we probably need a lot less complexity.
"American Defense". hmmm, wonder if sending the jobs and know-how to China and India in the
belief both will always be the US's willing subcontractors is such a good idea (from a US national
defense point of view).
I wouldn't say that there is a lack of R&D - it just isn't done in-house any more.
Gone are the Bell Labs and the Xerox PARCs; welcome to the brave new world of university partnerships
and non-profit R&D shops (most famous: the Southwest Research Institute).
Basically the rich are waging class war. That's the problem no matter how you slice and
dice this one. This whole "New Economy" has been one big war on wages. I mean look at the collusion
too between Google, Apple, and Intel to keep wages low.
Considering how slap on the wrist this was, what incentive is there to not do it again? They
know they can get away with this. Not to mention, this H1B and L1B program has become a way to
keep wages low in the technology sector. In many sectors, there really isn't a "shortage" of Americans.
Oh and for all the talk of these companies being "innovative", if they are prioritizing money
on stock buybacks over R&D, that's not really innovative as much as it is trying to boost salaries
by capitalizing on the huge cash reserves they get for being the dominant companies in their sector.
Same could be said about Exxon. Not much being spent on R&D means that they are more about rent
seeking rather than innovation. Perhaps not yet as blatant as those patent trolls, which are little
more than shell companies that sue other companies over patents, but that is their ideal business
model.
I think that at the end of the day, even though many engineers in the tech companies are in
the top 10% in terms of income percentile, their interests are closer aligned with working class
people. The other issue is that I bet when many of these engineers turn into their 40s, they are
going to witness first hand the very real age discrimination that exists in the technology industry.
Basically it comes down to, the rich are really greedy. The issue right now for the rich
is that they are desperate to keep the looting from happening, while people are increasingly aware
that the system is against them. Bernie Sanders got a lot of support in the Valley and while it
is a very Democratic leaning area, I cannot imagine that Trump's anti-H1B and L1B stance would
have been opposed by the average employee. I think that the rich are not going to concede anything
and that there needs to be some sort of solidarity union amongst all workers.
Is there a single person here who has worked on Wall Street (writ large) who can convince
us that his job or his company had an overall positive effect on the US and/or world economy over
five years, ten years, or twenty-five years?
I'll go first: three investment banks under my belt and one was a giant financial and moral
sucking machine called Citi. The other two were wannabe's but certainly did not add value.
While "maximizing shareholder value" is the huge problem wrecking our economy, having watched
the genesis of New Economic Paradigm through the experiences my wife and most of my friends going
through the Silicon Valley start-up Tulip-mania from the mid-'80's through the first decade of
th e 2000's, the author is hitting important points while over-simplifying and missing other equally
important points, such as the role of the "Peace Dividend" in the collapse of aerospace and research
funding, and the role of the Reagan and Clinton "tax reforms" in driving stock-based compensation
systems.
Early on, the use of stock-based compensation drove down wage-based compensation and increased
the role of financial speculators. Today, the speculators get the stock, but wages remain suppressed
and only foreign workers will accept them. The author is correct: the causes are complicated,
but the result drove down wages and job security for STEM workers.
I got my Ph.D. in biology in 2000. It was absolutely the worst decision in my life. In fact,
it actually destroyed my life, reducing me to near homelessness and starvation because-GASP--regular
employers (like office jobs, retail etc.) will not hire Ph.D.s. There there is the lovely student
debt that has grown exponentially, as my wages could not make the smallest dent. Convicted felons
make more that I do. So to make a long story short, I started a small on-line business 9 years
ago and got the FFFFF OUT of the rotten POS United States and moved to Ecuador, one of the most
progressive countries in the world. I cannot believe how the US abuses its national treasures-is
is truly a POS and I do not miss it for one day. I hope the US crashes and rots in hell.
Its not just PhDs. I know several Engineers who advise their children to do something else.
It's just not worth the amount of effort that is required to be put into it and there is no future
hope of a turn around. As bad as it is for graduates today, it's only going to get worse.
I am a civil engineer and one of my daughters is studying to become a structural engineer.
I would not have advised her to go into engineering because of the problem with the H-1B visas.
But who am I to advise? Who can know the future? The world is just changing too fast now
to really be able to advise our children on what careers to take. Besides, one of the advantages
of studying engineering as you can work anywhere in the world.
I bought houses for each of my children and told them if they wanted to go to college they
could trade the house in for the education. I personally think they should have considered keeping
the house and working minimum wage jobs that they enjoy. But both of them are pursuing educations,
my son to be history teacher!
Post WWII labor overplayed its hand by the 1970's. Corporations and their decided they
had had it. Corps and management proceeded to change the rules of the game on everything -- courts,
trade, taxation and regulation. These countermeasures have had disastrous long term consequences.
Corporations now run the country in a fascist manner. Government capture has created myriad problems
beyond financialization, only one tool in the corporate quiver. Oligopolies across most to all
industries comes to mind. Rail, air, health insurance, banking, defense, telecom, entertainment
.
But this paper is also lamenting a lack of business capex, which is directly correlated to
public investment. When you decided to offshore manufacturing and fail to invest in infrastructure
you get a double whammy that hits business capex. Increasing regulation and taxation on small
and midsize companies has lead to consolidation. Approximately 5000 public companies have likely
been consolidated. Sarbanes-Oxley added millions to compliance costs making it highly uneconomical
to be a public company with less than $300 million in revenue. Dodd-Frank has created increases
in cost for financial firms that had nothing to do with the crisis. In fact, the big banks have
benefited enormously from implementation of this legislation.
Not sure about the labor part overplaying their hand. They just wanted an even wage and
productivity rise. It is capital IMO that has overplayed its hand and the rise of neoliberal economics
which has led to declines in public R&D spending. There isn't anything like the Space Race anymore.
Frankly, labour underplayed its hand. At one point it had capital by the throat, and should
have finished it off then. If peace is not an option, you should utterly and permanently destroy
your enemy.
Labor did NOT overplay its hand after WW2 - Taft-Hartley was a HUGE smack-down to labor
after the privations of the Depression followed by the war effort. The decent wages during the
post-war period were part of a concerted effort to convince workers that they didn't need unions
and to be complacent.
Labor leadership certainly became corrupt from all the money sloshing around without global
competition due to war devastation of Europe and Japan, the Cold War, and the death throes of
colonialism, but this was not due to "overplaying" their hand.
The trends described in the post predate by decades the communist tyranny [/s] imposed by those
bills.
The wholesale closing or offshoring of corporate research labs already started in the 1980s,
driven in part by corporate raiders like Milken, Pickens and Icahn.
IBM, GM, Kodak, Xerox, GE they all had labs that provided jobs to STEM graduates
and a stream of discoveries and inventions to generate more jobs.
Now these are largely gone or substantially off-shored.
What has happened to corporate R&D shouldn't be used as an excuse to make life easier
for the Wall Street culture largely responsible for it.
Yes, any burdens imposed by Sarbanes Oxley are the fault of numerous unethical business executives
over recent decades, and not the fault of people in government.
When I was a student in IT, the shining stars at the firmament of industrial computer science
and engineering R&D were Xerox PARC, DEC SRC, ATT Bell Labs and IBM Yorktown Heights.
Contrary to popular belief, in aggregate U.S. corporations fund the stock market, not
vice versa. Note that almost all of the buybacks in the decade 1976-1985 occurred in 1984 and
1985 after in November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10b-18
that gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price manipulation
and the looting of the U.S. business corporation.
See Lazonick's footnoted paper for many loving particulars. Especially note the details of
how Rule 10b-18 offers no protection from abuse and (no news to NC readers) is a pillar of general
corporate asset-stripping .
Engineering long-term career arc has been an issue since at least my father's generation (those
born during WWI). Longer tenure (mid to late mid career) engineers were being eased out for young
grads. When I was in a ChemE program in the 70s, advice was to follow the engineering degree with
either law or a business degree because the odds of a long career doing engineering was not great.
No one advised going for a PhD in engineering.
When I asked him why he got the degree, which didn't seem necessary for someone who spent much
of his career in industrial R&D, he said, "I'm like Mallory climbing Mount Everest. I got that
degree because it is there."
So, there you have it. My old man getting that degree because he wanted to. And because my
mother was willing to support both of them while he worked on it.
"Many of America's largest corporations routinely distribute more than 100 percent of net income
to shareholders, generating the extra cash by reducing cash reserves, selling off assets, taking
on debt, or laying off employees the only logical explanation for this buyback activity is that
the stock-based pay that represents the vast majority of the remuneration of senior corporate
executives incentivizes them to manipulate their companies' stock prices "
This not only applies to the STEM sector, but nearly every large corp. in America. "Earnings
quality" (i.e stock price) takes precedence over everything else leading to the crapification
of products & services and devaluation of employees.
Thank gawd this type of thinking wasn't around when Jonas Salk was working on the polio vaccine.
" In November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10b-18 that
gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price manipulation and
the looting of the U.S. business corporation. "
How can you have "looting" without lootees? The stockholders aren't complaining. If any party
is being disadvantaged by borrowing to fund stock buybacks, it's existing bondholders. As David
Swensen describes in an extended example in Pioneering Portfolio Management , managers
compensated by stock options tend to treat corporate debt holders quite shabbily by piling on
more debt, compromising the interest coverage ratio.
High tech companies use stock buybacks to offset their widespread granting of stock options
which - absent Rule 10b-18 - would badly dilute existing stock holders over time.
Trying to paint the well-disclosed practice of stock buybacks as "looting" is histrionic ax
grinding on Lazonick's part. Over-leveraged companies are going to regret it in the next recession.
But that's a lamentable social phenomenon in a bubble-driven economy. Those who disagree with
it are free to sell short over-leveraged stocks - perhaps a more meaningful way of expressing
dissent than scribbling academic screeds.
Well Jim, ponzi schemes work pretty well for those at the top. I suppose we shouldn't worry
about it until we start getting complaints..
Actually though, watching the train wreck that is the outlook for the youngest generation
today, provides some grim amusement. For instance noting that the "bubble-driven" economy composed
of companies desperate to prevent their stock becoming "badly diluted" by having fire sales on
capitol and expertise that probably took their predecessors decades to build can really only have
one outcome. Depression, misery, socialism. Maybe we skip the Mao route this time, maybe not.
Here's some related "histrionics" of your channeling D.D . an excerpt of a debate about "creative
destruction" (emphasis mine) from 1991(context), chronologically, roughly following the tandem
of Ronnie and Maggie.
Gregory Peck: "The Robber Barons of old at least left something tangible in their wake
- a coal mine, a railroad, banks. THIS MAN LEAVES NOTHING. HE CREATES NOTHING. HE BUILDS NOTHING.
HE RUNS NOTHING. And in his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain. Oh, if
he said, "I know how to run your business better than you," that would be something worth talking
about. But he's not saying that. He's saying, "I'm going to kill you because at this particular
moment in time, you're worth more dead than alive."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws
Danny Devito: "Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death certificate,
collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future "Ah, but we can't," goes the prayer.
"We can't because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community.
What will happen to them?" I got two words for that: WHO CARES? Care about them? Why? They didn't
care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years
this company bled your money. Did this community ever say, "We know times are tough. We'll lower
taxes, reduce water and sewer." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q
Yes, the IBM reference is interesting.The author gives an ordinal lead to IBM as a mover
from the OEBM to NEBM. I ask myself if, from a mere one large corporation managing perspective,
this was IBM's 11th hour response to the by then devastating rise of its competitors like Apple
& Microsoft.
Also the irony that it did not help IBM at least in the midterm. So, IBM was the prime
mover to initiate some aspects of a model change -change which every major player adhered to-
in response to a new technological disadvantage vs. competitors, and in turned did not seem to
do much for IBM in the immediate years. Although, if I recall well, IBM was immersed in many political
battles and internal problems, legal and otherwise. Nevertheless, I doubt there was a historic
inevitability on IBM's ordinal force. Outstanding work by Lazonick
"IBM is the poster child for shenanigans. Last month, IBM reported its 20th quarter in
a row of declining year over year revenues .. a 13% drop in earnings, profit margins that declined
in every business segment ( much worse than expected ), free cash flow that plummeted over 50%
year over year and an earnings "beat" of 3 cents per share. How could this "beat" happen? .. a
negative tax rate of -23% . This is why they pay the CEO Rometti the big bucks ( estimated at
$50 to $65 million last year)."
And this is one of the Bluest of the Blue Chip companies in the world.
I read IBM spent a fortune at that time defending itself against monopolistic claims litigation.
This was happening while Microsoft and Apple were clearly consolidating their oligopolistic empires.
I read reports stating Oracle initial breakthroughs were taken from IBM's research work.
Not sure if anyone watches "Silicon Valley", but here is a quote that seems fitting:
Season 2 – Bad Money
Richard: Once we get a few customers and start a subscription-revenue model.
Russ: What? Revenue? No, no, no, no, no. No. If you show revenue, people will ask "How much?"
And it will never be enough, but if you have no revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue. You're
a potential pure play. It's not about how much you earn, it's about what you're worth. And
who's worth the most? Companies that lose money. Pinterest, Snap chat No revenue. Amazon
has lost money every fucking quarter for the last 20 fucking years, and that Bezos motherfucker
is the king.
Just wanted to point out that there is one more link in the chain to be followed: the financiers
would not have such an easy time playing Nero with our economy, if the banking sector were still
properly constrained by a gold standard (=limited supply of printed credit), the risk of bank
runs by outraged consumers, the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial from investment banking,
personal rather than corporate punishment for fraud and abuse, antitrust enforcement, etc.
In addition, the rise of 401(k) based investing, in which workers are tax-incentivized
to buy in to the corporate stock scheming, but lack the normal shareholder voice in corporate
governance, has taken the chains off the looters as well.
It's time to end the impunity. The government has been corrupted by the corporations, so only
a populist uprising will produce reform. The uprising will require sacrifices of time, income,
security. It will require boycotts of products that people like, but whose producers and vendors
are evil. The products will not disappear while demand persists – but the producers and vendors
must be brought to heel.
Consider the following inductees into the Corporate Hall of Shame:
Wells Fargo – customer abuse
United Airlines – customer abuse
UBER – employee abuse; legal system abuse
Mylan (Epi Pens) – Monopolistic price abuse
Hewlett Packard (spyware on laptops) – customer abuse
pick an industry, you'll find a Hall of Shame candidate. Hit them all in the wallet until they
reform.
The impact on the Grads was secondary a byproduct of a larger agenda which included the
transfer offshore and consolidation of "IP" of the entire American, EU and Asian industrial economies
along with the withdrawl of capital, while at the same time intentionally sabotaging future innovations
with the handicap of diversity. Who got the loot and capital? Usual suspects.
"... As with any major reform movement, the corporate backlash was predictable. In Neo-classical Economics, Gaffney reveals that this backlash took two main forms. The first was the Red Scare (1919-1989), overseen by J Edgar Hoover as Assistant Attorney General and later as FBI director. ..."
"... The second was more insidious and involved the deliberate reframing of the classical economic theory developed by Adam Smith, Locke, Hume, and Ricardo as so-called neoclassical economics. ..."
Why do American children study Karl Marx, the villain we love to hate, in school? Yet Henry George,
whose views on land and tax reform gave rise to the Progressive and Populist movements of the
1900s, is totally absent from US history books.
During the 1890s George, author of the 1879 bestseller Progress and Poverty, was the third
most famous American, after Mark Twain and Thomas Edison. In 1896 he outpolled Teddy Roosevelt
and was nearly elected mayor of New York.
In Neo-classical Economics as a Stratagem Against Henry George (2007), University of California
economist Mason Gaffney argues that George and his Land Value Tax pose a far greater threat than
Marx to America's corporate elite.
America's enormous concentration of wealth has always depended on the inherent right of the
wealthy elite to seize and monopolize vast quantities of land and natural resources (oil, gas,
forests, water, minerals, etc) for personal profit.
Adopting an LVT, which is far easier than launching a violent revolution, would essentially
negate that right. What's more, every jurisdiction that has ever implemented an LVT finds it works
exactly the way George predicted it would. Productivity, prosperity, and social wellbeing flourish,
while inflation, wealth inequality, and boom and bust recessions and depressions virtually vanish.
When Progress and Poverty first came out in 1879, it started a worldwide reform movement that
in the US manifested in the fiercely anti-corporate Populist Movement in the 1880s and later the
Progressive Movement (1900-1920). Many important anti-corporate reforms came out of this period,
including the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), a constitutional amendment allowing Americans to elect
the Senate by popular vote (prior to 1913 the Senate was appointed by state legislators), and
the country's first state-owned bank, The Bank of North Dakota (1919).
The Corporate Elite Strikes Back
As with any major reform movement, the corporate backlash was predictable. In Neo-classical
Economics, Gaffney reveals that this backlash took two main forms. The first was the Red Scare
(1919-1989), overseen by J Edgar Hoover as Assistant Attorney General and later as FBI director.
The second was more insidious and involved the deliberate reframing of the classical economic
theory developed by Adam Smith, Locke, Hume, and Ricardo as so-called neoclassical economics.
The latter totally negates Adam Smith's basic differentiation between "land", a limited, non-producible
resource. and "capital", a reproducible result of past human production. Smith, Locke, Hume, and
Ricardo all held that individuals have no right to seize and monopolize scarce natural resources,
such as land, minerals, water, and forests. They believed that because these resources are both
limited and essential for human survival, they should belong to the public.
Neoclassical economics, which first developed in the 1890s, was based on the premise that growth
and development can only occur if a handful of rent-seekers are allowed to monopolize scarce land
and natural resources for their personal profit. Henry George, who publicly debated the early
pioneers of neoclassical economics, claimed the science of economics was being deliberately distorted
to discredit him. Gaffney agrees. Because George's proposal to replace income and sales tax with
single land value taxed is based on logical concepts of land, capital, labor, and rent advanced
by Adam Smith, Locke, Hume, and Ricardo, they all had to be discredited.
Gaffney believes neoclassical economic theory undermines George's arguments for a single Land
Value Tax in two basic ways: 1) by claiming that land is no different from other capital (ironically
Marx made the identical argument) and 2) by portraying the science of economics as a series of
hard choices and sacrifices that low and middle income people must make. Some examples:
If we want efficiency, we must sacrifice equity.
To attract business, we must lower taxes and shut libraries and defund schools.
To prevent inflation, we must keep a large number of Americans unemployed.
To create jobs, we must destroy the environment and pollute the air, water, and food chain.
To raise productivity, we must fire people.
Gaffney's book traces the phenomenal public support Georgism enjoyed before the tenets of neoclassical
economics took hold in American universities. In addition to inspiring the Populist and Progressive
movements, an LVT to fund irrigation projects in California's Central Valley made California the
top producing farm state. In 1916 the first federal income tax law was introduced by Georgist
members of Congress (Henry George Jr and Warren Bailey) and included virtually no tax on wages.
In 1934 Georgist Upton Sinclair was almost elected governor of California.
Gaffney also identifies the robber barons whose fortunes financed the economics departments of
the major universities who went on to substitute neooclassical economics for classical economic
theory. At the top of this list were
Ezra Cornell (owner of both Western Union and Associated Press) – founder of Cornell University
John D Rockefeller – helped fund the University of Chicago and installed his cronies in its
economics department.
J. P Morgan – investment banker and early funder of Columbia University
B&O Railroad – John Hopkins University
Southern Pacific Railroad – Stanford University
The final section of Gaffney's book lays out the tragic economic, political, and social consequences
of allowing the Red Scare and neoclassical economics to stifle America's movement for a single
Land Value Tax:
Economic Consequences
The corporate elite has privatized, or is privatizing, most of the public domain (including
fisheries, the public airwaves, water, offshore oil and gas, and the right to clean air) without
compensation to the public.
The rate of saving and capital formation continues to fall rapidly. This is the main reason
there is no recovery.
Although profits soar, corporations have no incentive to invest in expansion and jobs. Instead
they invest their profits in real estate, derivatives, and commodities speculation.
American capital is decayed and obsolete. The US has lost much of its steel and auto industries.
Power plants and oil refineries are ancient and polluting. Most public capital (infrastructure)
is old and crumbling.
The number of American farms has fallen from 6 million in 1920 to 1 million in 2007.
The USA, once so self-sufficient, has grown dangerously dependent on importing raw materials
and foreign manufacturers.
The US financial system is a shambles, supported only by loading trillions of dollars of bad
debts onto the taxpayers.
Real wage rates have continued to fall since 1975,
Unemployment has risen to chronically high levels.
Inequality in wealth and income continues to increase rapidly.
Political Consequences
The corporate elite has nullified all the Progressive Era electoral reforms by pouring money
into politics and "deep lobbying," at all levels of government, including our institutions of
higher learning and our public schools.
The corporate elite continue to pour ever more of our tax money into prisons.
Social Consequences
Homelessness has risen to new heights, in spite of decades of subsidies to home-building and,
favorable tax treatment of owner-occupied homes
Hunger is rampant.
Street begging, once rare, is everywhere
Americans have experienced a sharp loss of community, honor, duty, loyalty and patriotism.
In the shadow world between crime and business there is now the vast, gray underground economy
that includes tax evasion, tax avoidance, and drug-dealing.
The US which once led the world in nearly every endeavor, has fallen far behind in infant survival,
in longevity, in literacy, in numeracy, in mental health.
American education no longer leads the world. Privatized education in the form of commercial
TV has largely superseded public education.
Received a "new academic programs" missive from my alma mater in today's
mail, containing the following:
How to Make Innovation Happen in Your Organization
The Certified Professional Innovator (CPI) program is intended to develop
the competency of high potential leaders in the theory and practice of
innovation. It is rooted on the principle that innovation can only be
learned by doing and through many short bursts of experimentation.
The certification is comprised of a 12-week curriculum with specific
syllabus and assignments for each week, including videos, workbook
assignments, and reports. During the program, participants, functioning as a
cohort, communicate and collaborate with each other and faculty through a
series of webinars and discussions. The program culminates in project
pitches.
"It is rooted on [sic] the principle that innovation can only be learned by
doing and through many short bursts of experimentation" - OK, fine there, but
it is also rooted in the notion that such creativity can be taught in a formal
academic setting, here monetized and condensed into a 12-week program. As for
me, I'm gonna hold out for the following surely-in-development mini-courses:
o Certified Professional Serial Disruptor (CPD)
o Certified Professional Innovative Thought Leader (CPCTL)
o Certified Professional Smart Creative (CPSC)
I love the smell of money-greased credentialism in the morning.
Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era
Begins
By Kevin Carey
The confirmation of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education
was a signal moment for the school choice movement. For the
first time, the nation's highest education official is
someone fully committed to making school vouchers and other
market-oriented policies the centerpiece of education reform.
But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave
of new research has emerged suggesting that private school
vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are
startling - the worst in the history of the field,
researchers say.
While many policy ideas have murky origins, vouchers
emerged fully formed from a single, brilliant essay *
published in 1955 by Milton Friedman, the free-market
godfather later to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics.
Because "a stable and democratic society is impossible
without widespread acceptance of some common set of values
and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the
part of most citizens," Mr. Friedman wrote, the government
should pay for all children to go to school.
But, he argued, that doesn't mean the government should
run all the schools. Instead, it could give parents vouchers
to pay for "approved educational services" provided by
private schools, with the government's role limited to
"ensuring that the schools met certain minimum standards."
The voucher idea sat dormant for years before taking root
in a few places, most notably Milwaukee. Yet even as many of
Mr. Friedman's other ideas became Republican Party orthodoxy,
most national G.O.P. leaders committed themselves to a
different theory of educational improvement: standards,
testing and accountability. That movement reached an apex
when the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 brought a new focus
on tests and standards to nearly every public school
nationwide. The law left voucher supporters with crumbs: a
small demonstration project in Washington, D.C.
But broad political support for No Child Left Behind
proved short-lived. Teachers unions opposed the reforms from
the left, while libertarians and states-rights conservatives
denounced it from the right. When Republicans took control of
more governor's mansions and state legislatures in the 2000s,
they expanded vouchers to an unprecedented degree. Three of
the largest programs sprang up in Indiana, Louisiana and
Ohio, which collectively enroll more than a third of the
178,000 voucher students nationwide.
Most of the new programs heeded Mr. Friedman's original
call for the government to enforce "minimum standards" by
requiring private schools that accept vouchers to administer
standardized state tests. Researchers have used this data to
compare voucher students with similar children who took the
same tests in public school. Many of the results were
released over the last 18 months, while Donald J. Trump was
advocating school choice on the campaign trail.
The Role of Government in Education
By Milton Friedman
The general trend in our times toward increasing
intervention by the state in economic affairs has led to a
concentration of attention and dispute on the areas where new
intervention is proposed and to an acceptance of whatever
intervention has so far occurred as natural and unchangeable.
The current pause, perhaps reversal, in the trend toward
collectivism offers an opportunity to reexamine the existing
activities of government and to make a fresh assessment of
the activities that are and those that are not justified.
This paper attempts such a re-examination for education.
Education is today largely paid for and almost entirely
administered by governmental bodies or non-profit
institutions. This situation has developed gradually and is
now taken so much for granted that little explicit attention
is any longer directed to the reasons for the special
treatment of education even in countries that are
predominantly free enterprise in organization and philosophy.
The result has been an indiscriminate extension of
governmental responsibility.
The role assigned to government in any particular field
depends, of course, on the principles accepted for the
organization of society in general. In what follows, I shall
assume a society that takes freedom of the individual, or
more realistically the family, as its ultimate objective, and
seeks to further this objective by relying primarily on
voluntary exchange among individuals for the organization of
economic activity. In such a free private enterprise exchange
economy, government's primary role is to preserve the rules
of the game by enforcing contracts, preventing coercion, and
keeping markets free. Beyond this, there are only three major
grounds on which government intervention is to be justified.
One is "natural monopoly" or similar market imperfection
which makes effective competition (and therefore thoroughly
voluntary ex change) impossible. A second is the existence of
substantial "neighborhood effects," i.e., the action of one
individual imposes significant costs on other individuals for
which it is not feasible to make him compensate them or
yields significant gains to them for which it is not feasible
to make them compensate him-- circumstances that again make
voluntary exchange impossible. The third derives from an
ambiguity in the ultimate objective rather than from the
difficulty of achieving it by voluntary exchange, namely,
paternalistic concern for children and other irresponsible
individuals. The belief in freedom is for "responsible"
units, among whom we include neither children nor insane
people. In general, this problem is avoided by regarding the
family as the basic unit and therefore parents as responsible
for their children; in considerable measure, however, such a
procedure rests on expediency rather than principle. The
problem of drawing a reasonable line between action justified
on these paternalistic grounds and action that conflicts with
the freedom of responsible individuals is clearly one to
which no satisfactory answer can be given.
In applying these general principles to education, we
shall find it helpful to deal separately with (1) general
education for citizen ship, and (2) specialized vocational
education, although it may be difficult to draw a sharp line
between them in practice. The grounds for government
intervention are widely different in these two areas and
justify very different types of action....
"... By Henry Heller, a professor of history at the University of Manitoba, Canada and the author of The Capitalist University. Cross posted from Alternet ..."
"... The following is an excerpt from the new book ..."
"... by Henry Heller (Pluto Press, December 2016): ..."
"... Inside Higher Education ..."
"... The University, State and Market: The Political Economy of Globalization in the Americas ..."
"... New Left Review ..."
"... The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature ..."
"... Letters from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher ..."
"... Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America ..."
"... Marxism is still regarded with suspicion in the United States. ..."
"... As if on cue, sociology, psychology, literature, political science, and anthropology all took sides by explicitly rejecting Marxism and putting forward viewpoints opposed to it. History itself stressed American exceptionalism, justified U.S. expansionism, minimized class conflict, and warned against revolution. ..."
How Universities Are Increasingly Choosing Capitalism Over Education
Posted on
February 7, 2017
by
Yves Smith
Yves here. Some further observations. First, the author neglects to mention
the role of MBAs in the reorientation of higher education institutions. When
I went to school, the administrative layer of universities was lean and not
all that well paid. Those roles were typically inhabited by alumni who
enjoyed the prestige and being able to hang around the campus. But t
he
growth of MBAs
has meant they've all had to find jobs, and colonizing
not-for-profits like universities has helped keep them off the street.
Second, this post focuses on non-elite universities, but the same general
pattern is in play, although the specific outcomes are different.
Universities with large endowments are increasingly hedge funds with an
educational unit attached.
By Henry Heller, a professor of history at the University of
Manitoba, Canada and the author of The Capitalist University. Cross posted
from
Alternet
The fact that today there are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the
United States represents an unparalleled educational, scientific, and
cultural endowment. These institutions occupy a central place in American
economic and cultural life. Certification from one of them is critical to
the career hopes of most young people in the United States. The research
produced in these establishments is likewise crucial to the economic and
political future of the American state. Institutions of higher learning are
of course of varying quality, with only 600 offering master's degrees and
only 260 classified as research institutions. Of these only 87 account for
the majority of the 56,000 doctoral degrees granted annually. Moreover, the
number of really top-notch institutions based on the quality of their
faculty and the size of their endowments is no more than 20 or 30. But
still, the existence of thousands of universities and colleges offering
humanistic, scientific, and vocational education, to say nothing of
religious training, represents a considerable achievement. Moreover, the
breakthroughs in research that have taken place during the last two
generations in the humanities and social sciences, not to speak of the
natural sciences, have been spectacular.
But the future of these institutions is today imperiled. Except for a
relatively few well-endowed universities, most are in serious financial
difficulty. A notable reason for this has been the decline in public
financial support for higher education since the 1980s, a decline due to a
crisis in federal and state finances but also to the triumph of right-wing
politics based on continuing austerity toward public institutions. The
response of most colleges and universities has been to dramatically increase
tuition fees, forcing students to take on heavy debt and putting into
question access to higher education for young people from low- and
middle-income families. This situation casts a shadow on the implicit
post-war contract between families and the state which promised upward
mobility for their children based on higher education. This impasse is but
part of the general predicament of the majority of the American population,
which has seen its income fall and its employment opportunities shrink since
the Reagan era. These problems have intensified since the financial collapse
of 2008 and the onset of depression or the start of a generalized capitalist
crisis.
Mounting student debt and fading job prospects are reflected in
stagnating enrollments in higher education, intensifying the financial
difficulties of universities and indeed exacerbating the overall economic
malaise.[1] The growing cost of universities has led recently to the
emergence of Massive Online Open Courses whose upfront costs to students are
nil, which further puts into doubt the future of traditional colleges and
universities. These so-called MOOCs, delivered via the internet, hold out
the possibility, or embody the threat, of doing away with much of the
expensive labor and fixed capital costs embodied in existing university
campuses. Clearly the future of higher education hangs in the balance with
important implications for both American politics and economic life.
The deteriorating situation of the universities has its own internal
logic as well. In response to the decline in funding, but also to the
prevalence of neoliberal ideology, universities-or rather the presidents,
administrators, and boards of trustees who control them-are increasingly
moving away from their ostensible mission of serving the public good to that
of becoming as far as possible like private enterprises. In doing so, most
of the teachers in these universities are being reduced to the status of
wage labor, and indeed precarious wage labor. The wages of the non-tenured
faculty who now constitute the majority of teachers in higher education are
low, they have no job security and receive few benefits. Although salaried
and historically enjoying a certain autonomy, tenured faculty are losing the
vestiges of their independence as well. Similarly, the influence of students
in university affairs-a result of concessions made by administrators during
the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s-has effectively been neutered. These
changes reflect a decisive shift of power toward university managers whose
numbers and remuneration have expanded prodigiously. The objective of these
bureaucrats is to transform universities as much as possible to approximate
private and profit-making corporations, regarded as models of efficient
organization based on the discipline of the market. Indeed, scores of
universities, Phoenix University for example, have been created explicitly
as for-profit businesses and currently enroll millions of students.
Modern universities have always had a close relationship with private
business, but whereas in the past faculty labor served capital by producing
educated managers, highly skilled workers, and new knowledge as a largely
free good, strenuous efforts are now underway to transform academic
employment into directly productive, i.e., profitable, labor. The knowledge
engendered by academic work is accordingly being privatized as a commodity
through patenting, licensing, and copyrighting to the immediate benefit of
universities and the private businesses to which universities are
increasingly linked. Meanwhile, through the imposition of administrative
standards laid down in accord with neoliberal principles, faculty are being
subjected to unprecedented scrutiny through continuous quantified evaluation
of teaching and research in which the ability to generate outside funding
has become the ultimate measure of scholarly worth. At the same time,
universities have become part of global ranking systems like the Shanghai
Index or the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in which their
standing in the hierarchy has become all important to their prestige and
funding.
Several intertwined questions emerge from this state of affairs. In the
first place, given the rising expense and debt that attendance at university
imposes and declining employment prospects especially for young people, will
there continue to be a mass market for higher education? Is the model of the
university or college traditionally centered on the humanities and the
sciences with a commitment to the pursuit of truth compatible with the
movement toward converting the universities into quasi- or fully private
business corporations? Finally, what are the implications of changes in the
neoliberal direction for the future production of objective knowledge, not
to speak of critical understanding?
Universities during the Cold War produced an impressive amount of new
positive knowledge, not only in the sciences, engineering, and agriculture
but also in the social sciences and humanities. In the case of the
humanities and social sciences such knowledge, however real, was largely
instrumental or tainted by ideological rationalizations. It was not
sufficiently critical in the sense of getting to the root of the matter,
especially on questions of social class or on the motives of American
foreign policy. Too much of it was used to control and manipulate ordinary
people within and without the United States in behalf of the American state
and the maintenance of the capitalist order. There were scholars who
continued to search for critical understanding even at the height of the
Cold War, but they largely labored in obscurity. This state of affairs was
disrupted in the 1960s with the sudden burgeoning of Marxist scholarship
made possible by the upsurge of campus radicalism attendant on the anti-war,
civil rights, and black liberation struggles. But the decline of radicalism
in the 1970s saw the onset of postmodernism, neoliberalism, and the cultural
turn. Postmodernism represented an unwarranted and untenable skepticism,
while neoliberal economics was a crude and overstated scientism. The
cultural turn deserves more respect, but whatever intellectual interest
there may be in it there is little doubt that the net effect of all three
was to delink the humanities and social sciences from the revolutionary
politics that marked the 1960s. The ongoing presence in many universities of
radicals who took refuge in academe under Nixon and Reagan ensured the
survival of Marxist ideas if only in an academic guise. Be that as it may,
the crisis in American society and the concomitant crisis of the
universities has become extremely grave over the last decade. It is a
central contention of this work that, as a result of the crisis,
universities will likely prove to be a key location for ideological and
class struggle, signaled already by the growing interest in unionization of
faculty both tenured and non-tenured, the revival of Marxist scholarship,
the Occupy Movement, the growing importance of the Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions movement, and heightening conflicts over academic freedom and the
corporatization of university governance.
The approach of this work is to examine the recent history of American
universities from the perspective of Marxism, a method which can be used to
study these institutions critically as part of the capitalist economic and
political system. Despite ongoing apologetics that view universities as
sites for the pursuit of disinterested truth, we contend that a critical
perspective involving an understanding of universities as institutions based
on the contradictions of class inequality, the ultimate unity of the
disciplines rooted in the master narrative of historical materialism, and a
consciousness of history makes more sense as a method of analysis. All the
more so, this mode of investigation is justified by the increasing and
explicit promotion of academic capitalism by university managers trying to
turn universities into for-profit corporations. In response to these
policies scholars have in fact begun to move toward the reintegration of
political economy with the study of higher education. This represents a turn
away from the previous dominance in this field of postmodernism and cultural
studies and, indeed, represents a break from the hegemonic outlook of
neoliberalism.[2] On the other hand, most of this new scholarship is
orientated toward studying the effects of neoliberalism on the contemporary
university, whereas the present work takes a longer view. Marxist political
economy demands a historical perspective in which the present condition of
universities emerged from the crystallization of certain previous trends. It
therefore looks at the evolution of the university from the beginning of the
twentieth century, sketching its evolution from a preserve of the
upper-middle class in which research played almost no role into a site of
mass education and burgeoning research, and, by the 1960s, a vital element
in the political economy of the United States.
In contrast to their original commitment to independence with respect to
the state up to World War II, most if by no means all universities and
colleges defined their post-war goals in terms of the pursuit of the public
good and were partially absorbed into the state apparatus by becoming
financially dependent on government. But from start to finish
twentieth-century higher education also had an intimate and ongoing
relationship with private business. In the neoliberal period universities
are taking this a step further, aspiring to turn themselves into quasi- or
actual business corporations. But this represents the conclusion of a
long-evolving process. The encroachment of private business into the
university is in fact but part of the penetration of the state by private
enterprise and the partial privatization of the state. On the surface this
invasion of the public sphere by the market may appear beneficial to private
business. We regard it, on the contrary, as a symptom of economic weakness
and a weakening of civil society.
The American system of higher education, with its prestigious private
institutions, great public universities, private colleges and junior
colleges, was a major achievement of a triumphant American republic. It
provided the U.S. state with the intellectual, scientific, and technical
means to strengthen significantly its post-1945 power. The current
neoliberal phase reflects an America struggling economically and politically
to adapt to the growing challenges to its global dominance and to the crisis
of capitalism itself. The shift of universities toward the private corporate
model is part of this struggle. Capitalism in its strongest periods not only
separated the state from the private sector, it kept the private sector at
arm's length from the state. The role of the state in ensuring a level
playing field and providing support for the market was clearly understood.
The current attempt by universities to mimic the private sector is a form of
economic and ideological desperation on the part of short-sighted and
opportunistic university administrators as well as politicians and
businessmen. In our view, this aping of the private sector is misguided,
full of contradictions, and ultimately vain if not disastrous. Indeed, it is
a symptom of crisis and decline.
The current overwhelming influence of private business on universities
grew out of pre-existing tendencies. There is already an existing corporate
nature of university governance both private and public, as well as an
influence of business on universities in the first part of the twentieth
century. In reaction there developed the concept of academic freedom as well
as the establishment of the system of tenure and the development of a rather
timid faculty trade unionism. This underscores the importance of private
foundations in controlling the development of the curriculum and research in
both the sciences and humanities. In their teaching, universities were
mainly purveyors of the dominant capitalist ideology. Humanities and social
science professors imparted mainly liberal ideology and taught laissez-faire
economics which justified the political and economic status quo. The
development of specialized departments reinforced the fragmentation of
knowledge and discouraged the emergence of a systemic overview and critique
of American culture and society. There were, as noted earlier, a few Marxist
scholars, some of considerable distinction, who became prominent
particularly in the wake of the Depression, the development of the influence
of the Communist Party, and the brief period of Soviet-American cooperation
during World War II. But the teaching of Marxism was frowned upon and
attacked even prior to the Cold War.
The post-1945 university was a creation of the Cold War. Its expansion,
which sprang directly out of war, was based on the idea of education as a
vehicle of social mobility, which was seen as an alternative to the equality
and democracy promoted by the populism of the New Deal. Its elitist and
technocratic style of governance was patterned after that of the large
private corporation and the American federal state during the 1950s. Its
enormously successful research programs were mainly underwritten by
appropriations from the military and the CIA. The CIA itself was largely
created by recruiting patriotic faculty from the universities. Much of the
research in the social sciences was directed at fighting Soviet and
revolutionary influence and advancing American imperialism abroad. Marxist
professors and teaching programs were purged from the campuses.
Dating from medieval times, the curriculum of the universities was based
on a common set of subjects including language, philosophy, and natural
science premised on the idea of a unitary truth. Although the subject matter
changed over the centuries higher education continued to impart the
hegemonic ideology of the times. Of course the notion of unitary truth was
fraying at the seams by the beginning of the twentieth century with the
development of departmental specialization and the increasingly contested
nature of truth, especially in the social sciences in the face of growing
class struggle in America. However, the notion of the idea of the unity of
knowledge as purveyed by the university was still ideologically important as
a rationale for the existence of universities. Moreover, as we shall
demonstrate, it was remarkable how similarly, despite differences in subject
matter and method, the main disciplines in the humanities and social
sciences responded to the challenge of Marxism during the Cold War. They all
developed paradigms which opposed or offered alternatives to Marxism while
rationalizing continued loyalty to liberalism and capitalism. As if on cue,
sociology, psychology, literature, political science, and anthropology all
took sides by explicitly rejecting Marxism and putting forward viewpoints
opposed to it. History itself stressed American exceptionalism, justified
U.S. expansionism, minimized class conflict, and warned against revolution.
Indeed, this work will focus on these disciplines because they defended the
capitalist status quo at a deeper cultural and intellectual level than the
ubiquitous mass media. As Louis Althusser pointed out, the teaching received
by students from professors at universities was the strategic focal point
for the ideological defense of the dominant class system. That was as true
of the United States as it was of France, where institutions of higher
learning trained those who would later train or manage labor. Criticizing
the recent history of these disciplines is thus an indispensable step to
developing an alternative knowledge and indeed culture that will help to
undermine liberal capitalist hegemony.[3]
The approach of this work is to critically analyze these core academic
subjects from a perspective informed by Pierre Bourdieu and Karl Marx.
Bourdieu points out that the deep involvement of the social sciences (and
the humanities) with powerful social interests makes it difficult to free
their study from ideological presuppositions and thereby achieve a truly
socially and psychologically reflexive understanding.[4] But such reflexive
knowledge was precisely what Marx had in mind more than a century earlier.
Leaving a Germany still under the thrall of feudalism and absolutism for
Paris in 1843, the young Marx wrote to his friend Arnold Ruge that
reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form but,
if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not
our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at
present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists,
ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives
at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the
powers that be.[5]
His task as he saw it was to criticize the existing body of knowledge so
as to make it as reasonable as possible, i.e., to undermine its illusory and
ideological character and substitute knowledge which was both true and
helped advance communism. Such a project entailed deconstructing the
existing body of knowledge through rational criticism, exposing its
ideological foundations and advancing an alternative based on a sense of
contradiction, social totality, and a historical and materialist
understanding. It is our ambition in surveying and studying the humanities
and social sciences in the period after 1945 to pursue our investigation in
the same spirit. Indeed, it is our view that a self-reflexive approach to
contemporary knowledge, while woefully lacking, is an indispensable
complement to the development of a serious ideological critique of the
crisis-ridden capitalist society of today.
Marxism is still regarded with suspicion in the United States. As a
matter of fact, anti-Marxism in American universities was not merely a
defensive response to McCarthyism as some allege. Anti-communism was bred in
the bone of many Americans and was one of the strongest forces that affected
U.S. society in the twentieth century, including the faculty members of its
universities. An
idée fixe
rather than an articulated ideology, it
was compounded out of deeply embedded albeit parochial notions of
Americanism, American exceptionalism and anti-radicalism.[6] The latter was
rooted in the bitter resistance of the still large American middle or
capitalist class to the industrial unrest which marked the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries and which had a strong bed of support among
the immigrant working class. Nativism then was an important tool in the
hands of this class in fighting a militant if ethnically divided working
class. Moreover, the anti-intellectual prejudices of American society in
general and the provincialism of its universities were ideal terrain for
fending off subversive ideas from abroad like Marxism. Later, this
anti-communism and hostility to Marxism became the rationale for the
extension of American imperialism overseas particularly after 1945. The
social origins of the professoriate among the lower middle class,
furthermore, and its role as indentured if indirect servants of capital,
strengthened its position as inimical to Marxism. Just as careers could be
lost for favoring Marxism, smart and adroit academics could make careers by
advancing some new intellectual angle in the fight against Marxism. And this
was not merely a passing feature of the height of the Cold War: from the
1980s onward, postmodernism, identity politics, and the cultural turn were
invoked to disarm the revolutionary Marxist politics that had developed in
the 1960s. Whatever possible role identity politics and culture might have
in deepening an understanding of class their immediate effect was to
undermine a sense of class and strengthen a sense of liberal social
inclusiveness while stressing the cultural obstacles to the development of
revolutionary class consciousness.
This overall picture of conformity and repression was, however, offset by
the remarkable upsurge of student radicalism that marked the 1960s,
challenging the intellectual and social orthodoxies of the Cold War. In
reaction to racism and political and social repression at home and the
Vietnam War abroad, students rebelled against the oppressive character of
university governance and by extension the power structure of American
society. Overwhelmingly the ideology through which this revolt was refracted
was the foreign and until then largely un-American doctrine of Marxism.
Imported into the universities largely by students, Marxism then inspired a
new generation of radical and groundbreaking scholarship. Meanwhile it is
important to note that the student revolt itself was largely initiated by
the southern civil rights movement, an important bastion of which were the
historically black colleges of the South. It was from the struggle of
racially oppressed black students in the American South as well as the
growing understanding of the anti-colonial revolutionaries of Vietnam that
the protest movement in American colleges and universities was born. Equally
important was the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. Indeed, it is the
contention of this work that the issues raised at Berkeley over democracy in
the universities and the free expression of ideas not only shaped the
student movement of that time but are still with us, and indeed are central
to the future of universities and intellectual life today.
At the heart of the Berkeley protest lay a rejection of the idea of a
university as a hierarchical corporation producing exchange values including
the production of trained workers and ideas convertible into commodities.
Instead the students asserted the vision of a democratic university which
produced knowledge as a use value serving the common good. It is our view
that this issue raised at Berkeley in the 1960s anticipated the class
conflict that is increasingly coming to the fore over so-called knowledge
capitalism. Both within the increasingly corporate neoliberal university and
in business at large, the role of knowledge and knowledge workers is
becoming a key point of class struggle. This is especially true on
university campuses where the proletarianization of both teaching and
research staff is in process and where the imposition of neoliberal work
rules is increasingly experienced as tyrannical. The skilled work of these
knowledge producers, the necessarily interconnected nature of their work,
and the fundamentally contradictory notion of trying to privatize and
commodify knowledge, have the potential to develop into a fundamental
challenge to capitalism.
Notes:
1. Paul Fain, "'Nearing the Bottom': Inside Higher Education,"
Inside
Higher Education
, May 15, 2014.
2. Raymond A. Morrow, "Critical Theory and Higher Education: Political
Economy and the Cul-de-Sac of the Postmodernist Turn," in
The
University, State and Market: The Political Economy of Globalization in the
Americas
, ed. Robert A. Rhoads and Carlos Alberto Torres, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2006, pp. xvii‒xxxiii.
3. Perry Anderson, "Components of the National Culture,"
New Left
Review
, No. 50, July‒August, 1968, pp. 3–4.
4. Pierre Bourdieu,
The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art
and Literature
, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 86–7.
Capitalism requires that total strangers be on the hook for student
loans? And if this is Capitalism then why didn't this trend emerge 100+
years ago? Why now?
Because a) the market for a college degree is vastly bigger today than
it was 100+ years ago b) tuitions were affordable so there was no way for
high-interest lenders ("total strangers") to game the system as they do
today.
Plus I wonder if the legal system or tax code would have let them get
away with anything like what they get away with today.
I agree with everything dude says, but the way he says it is so deathly
dull and needlessly technical . . .
it's a shame that someone so openly critical of the university system and
culture nonetheless unquestioningly obeys the tradition of: "serious writing
has to turn off 99% of the people that might be otherwise interested in the
subject."
Yes, his writing caused this reader to do a MEDGO ("my eyes doth gloss
over")
It was technical in its assertions, but has few metrics to quantify
the trends such as inflation adjusted administrative cost or inflation
adjusted government college funding now vs then.
There is a mention that the USA government has touted the "upward
mobility" or excess value, AKA "consumer surplus", of a college degree to
students and their families for years.
The US government further encouraged the student loan industry with
guarantees and bankruptcy relief de-facto prohibited.
The current system may illustrate that colleges raised their prices to
capture more of this alleged consumer surplus, a surplus that may no
longer be there..
If one looks at the USA's current political/economic/infrastructure
condition, and asserts that the leaders and government officials of the
USA were trained, overwhelmingly, over the last 40 years, in the USA's
system of higher education, perhaps this is an indication USA higher
education has not served the general public well for a long time.
The author mentions this important point "These so-called MOOCs,
delivered via the internet, hold out the possibility, or embody the
threat, of doing away with much of the expensive labor and fixed capital
costs embodied in existing university campuses. Clearly the future of
higher education hangs in the balance with important implications for
both American politics and economic life."
Maybe the MOOCs are the low cost future as the 4 year degree loses
economic value and the USA moves to a life-long continuous education
model?
And that rate doesn't even mention what scores they achieved.
MOOCs are hopeless especially since college is now less about
getting an education and more about a statement about a young
person's lifestyle or identity.
Now sure about the `now' bit. I maybe a bit cynical but I've
always thought, even when I was at one, that
colleges/universities major function was as a middle-class
finishing school for those unable to afford the real deal in
Switzerland.
I do not agree and it is deathly dull and needlessly technical. In
fact it remains me off the marxistic education I enjoyed growing up in
East Germany.
Maybe it is time to rethink after school education. Physical Labor should
loose its stain of being for loosers and stupid people. A whole lot of
professions could be better taught through apprentiships and technical
college mix.( many younge people would maybe enjoy being able to start
qualified work after only 3 additional years of education).
And do we really need 12 years of standard school education? There are so
many kids that do not function well in school.
Universities should be for the really eager and talented who want to
spend a big part of
their youth learning.
I guess we need a lot of new ideas to get away from the old paradigma (
anti- marxist or marxist)
I don't know how you read other works from academics if you think that
this
was dull.
Do you or anyone thinking this was "dull" have any examples of
academic essays or books that contain useful knowledge but also consider
them "shiny?"
Personally, I thought this was a very good essay as it explains some
things I've been thinking about American higher education and quite a few
things about my personal university education at a tier-1 research
school.
Basically universities have become a cog in the machine of neoliberalism.
Rather than anything resembling an institution for the public good, it
has taken on the worst aspects of corporate America (and Canada). You can
see this in the way they push now for endowment money, the highly paid
senior management contrasted with poorly paid adjuncts, and how research is
controlled these days. Blue skies research is cut, while most research is
geared towards short-term corporate profit, from which they will no doubt
milk society with.
I tremble when I think about what all of this means:
1. Students won't be getting a good education when they are taught by
adjuncts being paid poverty wages.
2. Corporations will profit in the short run.
3. The wealthy and corporations due to endowment money have a huge sway.
4. Blue skies research will fall and over time, US leadership in hard
sciences.
5. The productivity of future workers will be suppressed and with it, their
earning potential.
6. Related to that, inequality will increase dramatically as universities
worsen the situation.
7. There will be many "left behind" students and graduates with high debt,
along with bleak job prospects.
8. State governments, starving for tax money will make further cuts,
worsening these trends.
9. Anything hostile to the corporate state (as the article notes) will be
suppressed.
10. With it, academic freedom and ultimately democracy will be much reduced.
What it means is decline in US technological power, productivity gains,
and with it, declining living standards.
All of these trends already are happening. They will worsen.
I'd agree that a more readable version of this should be made for the
general public.
But your description suggests an inevitable bleak dystopic future – a
self-fulfilling prophesy. The future is not written – we can help
determine its course. It starts with grass roots movement building in
your neighborhood and community. And I can't think of a more rewarding
task then creating a better future for our children.
But perhaps my farmer's work ethic, my inclination to side with the
underdog and stand up to the bully capitalists, are notions that most
Americans no longer possess. Perhaps Cornel West is correct when he
states: "The oppressive effect of the prevailing market moralities leads
to a form of sleepwalking from womb to tomb, with the majority of
citizens content to focus on private careers and be distracted with
stimulating amusements. They have given up any real hope of shaping the
collective destiny of the nation. Sour cynicism, political apathy, and
cultural escapism become the pervasive options."
However, it is my observation that Trump's election has woken this
sleepwalking giant, and that his bizarre behavior continues to energize
people to resist. So why not rebel and help bring down the neoliberal
fascists. Is there any cause more worthy? And for those who won't try
because they don't think they can win, consider the words of Chris
Hedges: "I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists
because they are fascists."
I'm going to complain about your headline. A lot of stuff on this blog is
obviously relevant only to the USA, and when it's obvious it doesn't need to
be mentioned in the headline. But it's not at all obvious that this topic is
only about the USA (or North America, since the author is in Canada?), so
maybe you could edit the headline to reflect that it is in fact only about
the USA?
My observation of Australian universities is that they have similar
problems, although maybe to a lesser extent. But I doubt the same things
happen in all countries. I'd be interested to know more about mainland
European universities, and ex-Soviet-bloc universities, and Chinese
universities, and Third World universities.
As for "Universities with large endowments are increasingly hedge funds
with an educational unit attached", I think the rich universities in the UK
(i.e. the richer residential Oxbridge colleges, if you count them as
universities – Oxford and Cambridge Universities themselves are not
particularly rich – plus maybe Imperial College?) have very little invested
in hedge funds and a lot in property. Can anyone confirm or deny that?
In the past two decades, the UK's top universities, often called the
Russell Group after the Russell Hotel in Russell Square where they met to
form a sort of lobby group, have made money and started hiring rock star
academics. I don't know how much these academics teach, but they often
pontificate in the media.
Big business, oligarchs and former alumni (often oligarchs) donate
money, allowing them to build up their coffers. Imperial is developing an
area of west London.
Oxbridge colleges own a lot of property. Much of the land between
Cambridge and London is owned by Cambridge colleges. This goes back to
when they were religious institutions and despite Henry VIII's
dissolution of the monasteries.
London Business School has expanded from its Regent's Park base to
Marylebone as the number of students, especially from Asia, grow. I have
spoken to students from there and Oxford's Said Business School and know
people who have guest lectured there. They were not impressed. Plutonium
Kun has written about that below.
Oxford and Cambridge are British state universities as I understand
it. The Russell Group consists primarily of state institutions that
have assumed / been given / been restored to an elite role in the
British system of higher education, which is overwhelmingly public.
Oxford and Cambridge are at the peak of a relatively flat hierarchy of
elite public higher education. Higher ed's role in the constitution of
British elites is characterized by 3 features: association with an
institutional reputation and thereby access to a network, a financial
hurdle, and a meritocratic process of selection. Of these the
financial hurdle is the least problematic – tuition is still peanuts
compared to that at American elite institutions.
Things have gotten better – you no longer have to be a male member
of the church of England to get in – and the system is more democratic
than the French system of elite public higher ed, i.e. the ruling
elite in the UK can be penetrated by working people, e.g. Corbyn.
My son is half Japanese and half American and holds a passport with both
countries, he is still in elementary school, but my wife and I are
encouraging him to go to school in Japan or to Germany (ancestral home) and
seek his fortunes outside of the US as the crapification of the US roller
coasters out of control.
Japanese universities are still affordable compared to the US and it's
administrative layer, modestly paid, isn't run by MBAs, corporate hacks and
neoliberal apologists and others who would better serve the public by
decorating a lamp post somewhere with piano wire tightly wrapped around
their necks!
My niece attended Kyoto University, one of the best schools in Japan and
it cost her and her parents about 7500.00 a year. She commuted from Nara
City and Finished her degree in just under three years and had a job waiting
for her in the middle of her third year.
Now, I agree that Japanese universities have their fare share of problems
and insanity, but the thought of dealing with US universities nauseates my
wife and me.
The only school in the US that I would want my son to attend would be
Caltech, if he could ever successfully get accepted. They still do great
science there, much of it blue sky research. LIGO is still running!
https://eands.caltech.edu/random-walk-3/
An increasing number of British students are going to the Netherlands
and, to a lesser extent, Germany for courses taught in English and for
under EUR2000 per annum. Leiden and Maastricht are particularly favoured.
Apparently, some Spanish universities are cottoning on to that market.
Half a dozen years ago, a clown masquerading as a BBC breakfast news
reporter went to have a look and condescend. Her concluding remark was,
"The question is are continental universities as good as British ones."
The university system is not set up for education. it's a reward to
the conformists who studied 12 hours a day all through jr
high/highschool to pass the university entrance exams (which
notoriously don't test for any useful knowledge). The idea being that
if you waste your whole childhood studying for a phoney test, you
won't dare question the system once you're in the workforce, as it
would mean admitting your whole childhood was wasted!
Since college is viewed as a reward, rather than a challenge,
there's very little learning going on. it's about developing
relationships (and drinking problems) with future members of this
elite class.
So most Japanese corporations wind up having to teach the grads
everything on the job anyway.
A Japanese degree doesn't mean 'i know things' it means 'i have
already by age 20 sacrificed so much that i don't dare ever rock the
boat', which is exactly how the corporations and govt bureaucracies
want it.
You might say "oh but science! Japanese are good at that!"
But my wife, a nurse, says that it's considered rude to flunk an
incompetent student, providing she/he's respectful of the professor.
There are doctors who routinely botch surgeries, but firing them would
be rude. These doctors would have flunked out of regular (i.e.
non-Japanese) universities.
Having on more than one occasion suffered through management
restructuring organised by MBA's which did nothing other than reduce
productivity in favour of meaningless metrics and increase the power of
managers who had no idea how to actually do the job, I'm increasingly coming
to the conclusion that the MBA was a clever invention by an anarchist
determined to create a virus to undermine capitalism from within. At least,
thats the only possible theory that makes sense to me.
I agree . Putting it more bluntly the MBA is a clever con to get
would-be students to sign up in the belief it'll teach them something
that can't be taught – how to make money. I've said this on this blog
before – the ability to make money is a knack ; it doesn't matter what
the field is it's all akin to someone selling cheap goods on a market
stall .
Many UK universities are targeting foreign, especially Asian, students
for the purpose of profit, not education. Some universities refer to
students as clients.
Some provincial universities are opening campuses in London as foreign
students only want to study in London.
There are many Chinese would be students in London this week. Some
universities have open days at the moment. When the youngsters and their
parents are not attending such days, they go shopping at Bicester Village,
just north of Oxford. It's odd to see commuters arriving from
Buckinghamshire at Marylebone for work and Chinese and Arab tourists going
shopping in the opposite direction, and the reverse in the evening.
The targeting of rich Asian students, often not up to academic standard,
has led to a secondary school in mid-Buckinghamshire, where selective
education prevails at secondary / high school, to take Chinese students for
the summer term and house them with well to do (only) local parents. The
experiment went well for the "grammar" school, i.e. it made money. As for
the families who housed the kids, not so much. There were complaints that
the children could speak little or no English, which is not what they
expected, so the host families could barely interact with the visitors. The
school wants to repeat the programme and expand it to a full year. That is
the thin end of a wedge as the school will scale back the numbers of local
children admitted and probably expand the programme to the entire phase of
secondary / high school. It's like running a boarding school by stealth. The
school is now an "academy", so no longer under government control and
similar to charter schools, and can do what it wants.
Yves Smith,
I like your introduction to the article. "Universities with large endowments
are increasingly hedge funds with an educational unit attached" A recent and
very simple but eye opener interview on the subject-Richard
Wolff-http://www.rdwolff.com/rttv_boom_bust_for_profit_schools_are_making_money_but_failing_the_grade
As Henry Heller mentions Bourdieu, I can not find among his bibliography
much on the specific increasing dominance of the "free market" over learning
institutions. The Field of Cultural Production focuses mainly on the
opposition market/art,cultural field and the rules of art. Some of his other
works elaborate very well on the transformed reproduction of social agents
with different economic and cultural capital weights. His major works on
higher learning are The State Nobility and Academic Discourse, which are
about the homologies between the hierarchy of higher learning centers and
the market position occupiers which the latter produce. All of it within the
French context. The great late Bourdieu certainly denounced the increasing
free market ideology presence and dominance on "everything human"(i.e Free
Exchange, Against the Tyranny of the Market and elsewhere); yet not much in
that regard-to my knowledge-on the centers with the granted power to issue
higher learning degrees. I guess my point is that Heller's reference to
Bourdieu strikes me as a bit odd here.
Nevertheless, I like Heller's article. Just as incidental evidence: my
town's community college President is a CPA and MBA title holder, the
Economics 101 class taught does not deviate the slightest from economic
orthodoxy doctrine and I must add that, despite-or because of- a 75%
tutoring fee increase in the last eight years, the center has consistently
generated a surplus aided by the low wages from the vastly non-tenured
teachers.
The students from China, Singapore and the Middle East often live in the
upscale areas of London, often at home rather than rent. Parents are often
in tow. They also drive big and expensive cars.
It's amazing to see what is driven and by whom around University,
Imperial and King's colleges and the London School of Economics in central
London. This was remarked upon by US readers a couple of years ago. Parking
is not cheap, either.
A friend and former colleague was planning to rent at Canary Wharf where
he was a contractor. He put his name down and was getting ready to move in.
The landlord got in touch to say sorry, a family from Singapore was coming
and paying more. Apparently, Singaporeans reserve well in advance, even
before the students know their exam results.
A golf course was put up for sale near home. The local authority tipped
off some upscale estate agents / realtors from London. A Chinese buyer has
acquired the thirty odd acre property. Without planning (construction)
permission, the property is worth £1.5m. With planning permission, it's
worth £1m per acre. A gated community / rural retreat for the Chinese
student community is planned. Oxford, London, Shakespeare Country, Clooney
Country and Heathrow are an hour or less away.
My favorite line:
Marxism is still regarded with suspicion in the United States.
I love a good Marxist and I know that a totalizing perspective such as
Marxism requires a certain amount of generalization, but I found more to
criticize in this post than to recommend it. Apparently entire disciplines
have agency (
As if on cue, sociology, psychology, literature, political
science, and anthropology all took sides by explicitly rejecting Marxism and
putting forward viewpoints opposed to it. History itself stressed American
exceptionalism, justified U.S. expansionism, minimized class conflict, and
warned against revolution.
).
It is clearly true that the modern university is overly focused on
money-making – both the university enterprise itself and the selling of
higher ed to students – but, from my long experience with one big Tier One
and lesser knowledge of several others, it is wrong to say that the modern
university looks to operate as a business. Indeed, the top heaviness of
bureaucratic administration in the modern university is not very
business-like.
IMO what declining public funding has done is allow/force the modern
university to aim it's giant vacuum sucker in any and every direction. By
the way, if Wisconsin is any example, there are enough Chinese students
interested in American university degrees to keep it in business for quite a
long time.
But my biggest complaint is with the history. After first laying out an
ideal (but not very) historical vision of the utopian university, in
contrast with today's money grubber, he later admits that the mid-century
university was not all that open to leftism. Then the miracle of the 1960s,
which seems to spring from social protest alone. The real story of the 1960s
was the huge expansion of higher ed in the U.S., which led to considerable
faculty hiring, which allowed a lot of leftists to get hired in the 1960s
and early 1970s (often at second or third-tier schools) when they would not
have in the 1950s. This was always going to be a one-time event.
The author also seems to suggest that universities owe it to Marxists to
hire them if their analysis is good. This is a weird argument for a Marxist
to make, seemingly entirely oblivious to the overall political economy he
otherwise emphasizes. It ends up sounding more than a bit self-serving. I'm
not sure lecturing in History on the public dime is Marx's idea of praxis.
"... Another quibble, the defining of inequality by the single metric of share of income of the 1% is a bit reductive, though only a bit. ..."
"... Sometimes I think that the success of neoliberalism would be impossible without computer revolution. ..."
"... Bargaining power was squashed by neoliberalism by design. So this is not a "natural" development, but an "evil plot" of financial oligarchy, so to speak. In this sense dissolution of the USSR was a huge hit for the US trade unions. ..."
"... Education is now used as the filter for many jobs. So people start to invest in it to get a pass, so to speak. With the neoliberal transformation of universities it now often takes pervert forms such as "diploma mills" or mass production of "Public relations" graduates. ..."
"... Neoliberal transformation of universities into profit centers also played the role in increasing the volume -- they need "customers" much like McDonalds and use misleading advertisements, no entrance exams, and other tricks to lure people in. ..."
If the world were sane, this is the kind of thinking that would be taking place about inequality.
Rather than jumping to simple conclusions based on heavy priors (which is where too much of the
"debate" starts and stops), one starts with a broad, open minded and contemplative review that
seeks to identify primary causal factors.
That said ... there is a lot that could be quibbled here.
One, it's not always the case that identifying primary causes leads one directly to solutions.
Sometimes the solution has little to do with the cause. If, for example, changing climate causes
an increase in forest fires, we should consider that as another factor in our evaluation of climate
economics, but in terms of strategies for addressing forest fires, we have to find proximate solutions.
Although in practice, certainly we will often have a better understanding of what solutions
might be possible and might be effective when we carefully analyze causes. The endeavor of identifying
causes is absolutely worthwhile for that reason.
Another quibble, the defining of inequality by the single metric of share of income of
the 1% is a bit reductive, though only a bit.
Last note ... I notice international trade is not mentioned here. That doesn't mean it isn't
a primary driver, although as I've said many times, I don't think it is a primary driver, and
it appears Kenworthy didn't think it even worth mentioning.
Although my biggest quibble is that I think Kenworthy missed the big cause entirely: the effect
technology has had in making workers fungible.
IT has made communications almost free and made micromanagement of business systems ubiquitous.
As a result, firms are no longer dependent on long-tenured workers, or even teams of workers in
a particular place. Anything and anyone can be replaced and outsourced (in the broadest sense
of the term, not just offshoring to foreign workers), and when costs are high companies do this
aggressively.
This change has immeasurably changed the nature of work and the relative bargaining powers
of individual workers and even teams of workers. That, I believe, is why education is rising,
and doing so in the countries that are most adept and aggressive about business process solutions
implementation across many sectors. If I'm right, we will see this trend accelerate very soon
in countries that are laggards in this domain, as they finally start operating as resource planned
enterprises.
Because this effect is not measured and difficult to measure ... I think it gets overlooked.
But if I were a researcher in this field, I'd be looking at ERP adoption trends vs within firm
inequality trends and looking for correlations. This would get confounded by firm size but I bet
there are ways to tease out the effect.
"the effect technology has had in making workers fungible."
Yes, this is a very good point. Especially computer revolution and related revolution in telecommunications.
Starting from "PC revolution" (August 12, 1981) the pace of technological innovation was really
breathtaking. Especially in hardware.
Regular smartphone now is more powerful then a mainframe computer of 1971 which would occupy
a large room with air conditioning (IBM 360/370 series). So say nothing about early 1960th ("Desk
Set" movie with Katharine Hepburn, which was probably the first about displacement of workers
by computers, was produced in 1957)
"This change has immeasurably changed the nature of work and the relative bargaining powers
of individual workers and even teams of workers. That, I believe, is why education is rising..."
The nature of work in "classic" human fields (agriculture, steel industry, electrical generation,
law, etc) was not changed dramatically but the "superstructure" above them did.
Sometimes I think that the success of neoliberalism would be impossible without computer
revolution.
Bargaining power was squashed by neoliberalism by design. So this is not a "natural" development,
but an "evil plot" of financial oligarchy, so to speak. In this sense dissolution of the USSR
was a huge hit for the US trade unions.
Education is now used as the filter for many jobs. So people start to invest in it to get
a pass, so to speak. With the neoliberal transformation of universities it now often takes pervert
forms such as "diploma mills" or mass production of "Public relations" graduates.
Neoliberal transformation of universities into profit centers also played the role in increasing
the volume -- they need "customers" much like McDonalds and use misleading advertisements, no
entrance exams, and other tricks to lure people in.
So university education now is a pretty perverted institution too.
"... For over a decade now, Chicago has been the epicenter of the fashionable trend of "privatization"-the transfer of the ownership or operation of resources that belong to all of us, like schools, roads and government services, to companies that use them to turn a profit. Chicago's privatization mania began during Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration, which ran from 1989 to 2011. Under his successor, Rahm Emanuel, the trend has continued apace. For Rahm's investment banker buddies, the trend has been a boon. For citizens? Not so much. ..."
"... the English word "privatization" derives from a coinage, Reprivatisierung, formulated in the 1930s to describe the Third Reich's policy of winning businessmen's loyalty by handing over state property to them. ..."
"... As president, Bill Clinton greatly expanded a privatization program begun under the first President Bush's Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Hope VI" aimed to replace public-housing high-rises with mixed-income houses, duplexes and row houses built and managed by private firms. ..."
"... The fan was Barack Obama, then a young state senator. Four years later, he cosponsored a bipartisan bill to increase subsidies for private developers and financiers to build or revamp low-income housing. ..."
"... However, the rush to outsource responsibility for housing the poor became a textbook example of one peril of privatization: Companies frequently get paid whether they deliver the goods or not (one of the reasons investors like privatization deals). For example, in 2004, city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations at Lawndale Restoration, the largest privately owned, publicly subsidized apartment project in Chicago. Guaranteed a steady revenue stream whether they did right by the tenants or not-from 1997 to 2003, the project generated $4.4 million in management fees and $14.6 million in salaries and wages-the developers were apparently satisfied to just let the place rot. ..."
PGL on Chicago's parking meters. Yes Democratic Mayor Daley made a bad deal. If Trump does invest in infrastructure is this the kind of thing he'll be doing, selling off public
assets and leasing them back again, aka privatization?
Seems like two different things. Here's an In These Time article from January 2015 by the smart Rick Perlstein.
Welcome to Rahm Emanuel's Chicago, the privatized metropolis of the future.
BY RICK PERLSTEIN
In June of 2013, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a new appointment to the city's seven-member
school board to replace billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker, who'd decamped to run President Barack
Obama's Department of Commerce. The appointee, Deborah H. Quazzo, is a founder of an investment firm
called GSV Advisors, a business whose goal-her cofounder has been paraphrased by Reuters as saying-is
to drum up venture capital for "an education revolution in which public schools outsource to private
vendors such critical tasks as teaching math, educating disabled students, even writing report cards."
GSV Advisors has a sister firm, GSV Capital, that holds ownership stakes in education technology
companies like "Knewton," which sells software that replaces the functions of flesh-and-blood teachers.
Since joining the school board, Quazzo has invested her own money in companies that sell curricular
materials to public schools in 11 states on a subscription basis.
In other words, a key decision-maker for Chicago's public schools makes money when school boards
decide to sell off the functions of public schools.
She's not alone. For over a decade now, Chicago has been the epicenter of the fashionable
trend of "privatization"-the transfer of the ownership or operation of resources that belong to all
of us, like schools, roads and government services, to companies that use them to turn a profit.
Chicago's privatization mania began during Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration, which ran from
1989 to 2011. Under his successor, Rahm Emanuel, the trend has continued apace. For Rahm's investment
banker buddies, the trend has been a boon. For citizens? Not so much.
They say that the first person in any political argument who stoops to invoking Nazi Germany automatically
loses. But you can look it up: According to a 2006 article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives,
the English word "privatization" derives from a coinage, Reprivatisierung, formulated in the
1930s to describe the Third Reich's policy of winning businessmen's loyalty by handing over state
property to them.
In the American context, the idea also began on the Right (to be fair, entirely independent of
the Nazis)-and promptly went nowhere for decades. In 1963, when Republican presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater mused "I think we ought to sell the TVA"-referring to the Tennessee Valley Authority,
the giant complex of New Deal dams that delivered electricity for the first time to vast swaths of
the rural Southeast-it helped seal his campaign's doom. Things only really took off after Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher's sale of U.K. state assets like British Petroleum and Rolls Royce in the 1980s
made the idea fashionable among elites-including a rightward tending Democratic Party.
As president, Bill Clinton greatly expanded a privatization program begun under the first
President Bush's Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Hope VI" aimed to replace public-housing
high-rises with mixed-income houses, duplexes and row houses built and managed by private firms.
Chicago led the way. In 1999, Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Democrat, announced his intention to tear
down the public-housing high-rises his father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, had built in the 1950s and
1960s. For this "Plan for Transformation," Chicago received the largest Hope VI grant of any city
in the nation. There was a ration of idealism and intellectual energy behind it: Blighted neighborhoods
would be renewed and their "culture of poverty" would be broken, all vouchsafed by the honorable
desire of public-spirited entrepreneurs to make a profit. That is the promise of privatization in
a nutshell: that the profit motive can serve not just those making the profits, but society as a
whole, by bypassing inefficient government bureaucracies that thrive whether they deliver services
effectively or not, and empower grubby, corrupt politicians and their pals to dip their hands in
the pie of guaranteed government money.
As one of the movement's fans explained in 1997, his experience with nascent attempts to pay private
real estate developers to replace public housing was an "example of smart policy."
"The developers were thinking in market terms and operating under the rules of the marketplace,"
he said. "But at the same time, we had government supporting and subsidizing those efforts."
The fan was Barack Obama, then a young state senator. Four years later, he cosponsored a bipartisan
bill to increase subsidies for private developers and financiers to build or revamp low-income housing.
However, the rush to outsource responsibility for housing the poor became a textbook example
of one peril of privatization: Companies frequently get paid whether they deliver the goods or not
(one of the reasons investors like privatization deals). For example, in 2004, city inspectors found
more than 1,800 code violations at Lawndale Restoration, the largest privately owned, publicly subsidized
apartment project in Chicago. Guaranteed a steady revenue stream whether they did right by the tenants
or not-from 1997 to 2003, the project generated $4.4 million in management fees and $14.6 million
in salaries and wages-the developers were apparently satisfied to just let the place rot.
Meanwhile, the $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation drags on, six years past deadline and still
2,500 units from completion, while thousands of families languish on the Chicago Housing Authority's
waitlist.
Be that as it may, the Chicago experience looks like a laboratory for a new White House
pilot initiative, the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program (RAD), which is set to turn over some
60,000 units to private management next year. Lack of success never seems to be an impediment where
privatization is concerned.
"... The corruption I'm going to describe seems more along the lines of converting a public institution to serve private purposes (assuming higher education to be a public institution, which I do, because education is a public good)[3]. ..."
"... Now, human nature being what it is, a certain amount of empire-building and concern for one's rice bowl has always been inevitable, but when greed for one's self, or one's class, becomes the institutional driver, it's time for a thorough cleansing. ..."
"... New York University students carry some of the highest debt loads in the nation, a fact they are bound to remember through gritted teeth when they read the New York Times report about the school's loans to top faculty for vacation homes in places like Fire Island and the Hamptons. ..."
"... The house, which is owned by John Sexton, the president of New York University, was bought with a $600,000 loan from an N.Y.U. foundation that eventually grew to be $1 million, according to Suffolk County land records. ..."
"... I think this perfectly describes what I've observed with public school superintendents also. They are like 'The Music Man.' Selling dreams that our children will be smarter, better looking, and above average if we just get with the program. While our school district has a local in charge who appears to be here for the long term, a neighboring district had a 'Music Man' or rather, woman, who got the city to float a $10 million bond issue so every fourth grader could have an I-Pad. She then left to do the same (for a higher salary) in another state. Another, much poorer, district nearby wanted to get rid of a super who had allegedly threatened subordinates with bodily harm: they bought out her contract for $300,000. In a county with a population of 20,000 and ten percent unemployment. ..."
"... It is not only at the college level that those in charge are engaging is questionable behavior. It is a society wide problem. ..."
"... To a naive student with no experience in institutional politics, their stories of resentment, gossip, backbiting, and the politics of personal reputational destruction were like a glimpse into an unimagined world. ..."
"... It used to be that there was a saying in academe: the competition is so great because the stakes are so low. But, if there is a path to six or seven figures, now I see that there is serious cash to be banked to justify working in the university racket. ..."
I haven't posted on higher education before, and a series of posts on credentialism really should
focus on the institutions where those credentials are, in the main, granted. But rather than a serious
analytical piece on the state of the university, this will be a light-hearted romp through some spectacular
examples of executive malfeasance at NYU, Baylor, and Penn State.[1] (Tomorrow I'll look at the adjunct
system, and potential effects of
yesterday's NLRB decision . And there will be more posts to come on this topic, as I come to
understand it better.)
Before I begin, though, let's recall Zephyr Teachout's definition of corruption. Not a quid pro
quo - that's the Citizen's United doctrine, now supported by the Clinton campaign - but the use of
public office for private ends. What does corruption look like in a university setting, given that
some universities are private to begin with, and that "ends," in the ancient and tricky academe,
may not always be immediately evident?
Here's a story from the University of Maine, Maine's "flagship" university. Our last President,
Robert Kennedy, gave the contract for sports broadcasting to ClearChannel, thereby moving the profits
out of state, because he took the contract away from Stephen King's radio station (yes, that Stephen
King). Naturally, this ticked King off, and King - up to that point the university's largest donor,
and the funder of many good works round the state, like dental clinics and libraries - decided he
would no longer give to the university. (Kennedy then rotated out to the University of Connecticut,
for a hefty salary increase, where he was shortly
axed by the Regents for a cronyism scandal . Dodged a bullet, there, Maine!)
Dollying back to the larger picture, King came up through the much despised and derided English
Department, in the humanities, which powerful institution forces in the administration and the Board
of Trustees are shifting resources away from, in favor of more pragmatic, "business-friendly," corporate
majors (graduates, that is, that they themselves can hire[2]. Even though King was the university's
largest donor.)
Is there corruption here? I would argue yes, but I'm not sure that Teachout's definition quite
meets the case. The corruption I'm going to describe seems more along the lines of converting
a public institution to serve private purposes (assuming higher education to be a public institution,
which I do, because education is a public good)[3]. This is evident from the King story in two
ways. First, Kennedy is only one of
many university administrators
who stay a couple years at an institution, punch their ticket, and move on to a higher salaried position
elsewhere. Second, optimizing university curricula, grounds, personnel decisions, etc. for corporate
ends is about as corrupt as you can get (as are the concomitant rationalizations and cover-ups that
occur when scandal breaks). Now, human nature being what it is, a certain amount of empire-building
and concern for one's rice bowl has always been inevitable, but when greed for one's self, or one's
class, becomes the institutional driver, it's time for a thorough cleansing.
With that, let's look at the case of John Sexton, once President of NYU. (NYU is an important
nexus for the Democrat nomenklatura , so we'll have more to say about NYU in the future.)
NYU gave president's aspiring actor son apartment on campus
Jed Sexton, whose sole affiliation with NYU was his status as the president's son, for years
enjoyed a spacious faculty apartment while the university experienced a "severe" housing shortage,
The Post has learned.
In spring 2002, NYU ordered that a pair of one-bedroom apartments normally reserved for law
school faculty be combined into a lavish, two-story spread in the heart of Greenwich Village,
property records show.
The Harvard-educated Sexton, who was a 33-year-old aspiring actor at the time, shared the new
duplex with his newlywed wife, Danielle Decrette, for the next five years, according to documents
and people briefed on the situation.
That's despite the fact that NYU officials, just weeks earlier, had warned in a written report
of a "severe housing shortage" for faculty, "especially of larger units."
NYU Offers Top Talent a Path to Beachfront Property
New York University students carry some of the highest debt loads in the nation, a fact
they are bound to remember through gritted teeth when they read the New York Times report about
the school's loans to top faculty for vacation homes in places like Fire Island and the Hamptons.
The loans, which have gone to at least five faculty members in the medical and law schools
as well as university president John Sexton, sometimes get forgiven over time as their recipients
continue to work at the university. Mortgage loans apparently aren't unheard of as compensation
packages for professors and executives in tight real estate markets, but they're usually for homes,
not vacation properties.
From
the New York Times , which broke the story, it seems that Sexton gifted himself a house,
an "an elegant modern beach house that extends across three lots":
The house, which is owned by John Sexton, the president of New York University, was bought
with a $600,000 loan from an N.Y.U. foundation that eventually grew to be $1 million, according
to Suffolk County land records.
Since the late 1990s, at least five medical or law school faculty members at N.Y.U. have received
loans on properties in the Hamptons or Fire Island, in addition to Dr. Sexton.
While that feeling is understandable, it is important to note the economic truth that the markets
for different positions often dictate different levels of compensation, whether that is embodied
in salary payments, loans, or an overarching agreement about terms of employment. And, when we
commit to provide such compensation, we do so only when we are sure
that the benefit to the University far exceeds the cost.
First,
CEO compensation
and shareholder returns are inversely correllated ; even if we grant Dorph's premise, and a corporate
model for the university, it's just not clear that top compensation means top talent. Second, why
doesn't NYU simply pay its talent more? Why complicate matters by bringing in vacation housing?
Why not just write a fatter check? The answer can only be
arbitrage of some sort: NYU giving access to property that otherwise isn't on the market, tax
advantages of some kind, a better rate on the mortgage, or whatever; some way in which NYU uses its
muscle on behalf of the compensated. But that is, precisely, converting a public institution to serve
private purposes. Not to mention Sexton openly using NYU facilities to house his son and for his
own vacation home on Fire Island. Come on. Why is that not self-dealing? And the rest of looks suspiciously
like powerful faculty members feathering their own nests. "Why not? We deserve it."
The 19th and topmost floor of the building will be turned into a master-bedroom suite, where
Dr. Hamilton will have private exits - one from the bedroom and one from the bathroom - onto a
terrace overlooking Washington Square and, to the south, the financial district skyline, according
to documents filed with New York City.
Baylor University, the country's largest Baptist university and a bastion of Christian values,
has just been denounced in
a blistering
report by the
University's Board of Regents for "mishandling" - covering up might be a more apt description
- credible allegations of horrific sexual violence against female students, especially alleged
assaults by members of the football team. The Board of Regents said it was "shocked," "outraged"
and "horrified" by the extent of the acts of sexual violence on the campus, which covered years
2012 through 2015, and the failure of the University to take appropriate action to punish violators
and prevent future violations. The Board issued an "apology to Baylor Nation," fired the football
coach, and "transitioned" (the Regents' term) Baylor's President, Kenneth Starr, to the role of
Chancellor. Starr also was allowed to retain his lucrative Chair and Professorship of constitutional
law at Baylor's law school .
As Baylor's president from 2010 to 2016, the vexing question is the level of Starr's culpability
for the "shocking," "outrageous," and "horrendous" sex scandal. What exactly did Starr know? The
allegations of sexual violence on the campus were rampant and notorious, especially by the football
players. Starr had to know something about the extent of the University's response to the complaints,
and most likely the failure to address these complaints properly. Indeed, there were several Title
IX investigations by the Justice Department at the time that Starr must have known about. Moreover,
there are plenty of egregious examples of sexual violence on the campus that had to have been
reported. In one egregious case, an All-Big 12 football player was accused in 2013 of sexual violence
against a student. Although Waco police contacted university officials, nobody in the university
investigated the case until two years later, after a Title IX investigation was underway, and
media reports highlighted the case. This was after several other Baylor football players were
indicted and convicted of sexual assaults. It was only then that the University hired an outside
investigator. Notably, the headlines also prompted a public outcry, and a candlelight vigil at
Starr's residence.
The Board of Regents Report describes the breadth of the independent investigation into the
university's failure to properly address the University's dereliction. The investigators interviewed
numerous University officials, but there is no mention whether they interviewed Starr, and if
so, what he may have said. Starr may have claimed to be unaware of the repeated failures of
university officials to investigate these complaints, but is that contention credible? Starr presumably
had to know that aggressively investigating these allegations - indeed, as aggressively as he
investigated the sexual misdeeds of President Clinton - might have interfered with his intensive
multi-million dollar fundraising efforts to build a new and lavish football stadium, which opened
in 2014. And Starr may have believed that getting too deep into the mud of the roiling sexual
scandal would undermine the public perception of Baylor's "Christian commitment within a caring
community" - again the Board of Regents' description - as well as compromise the heroic efforts
of the Baylor football team to win a national championship.
So Starr is no longer the university's president. To be sure, it's a demotion of sorts. He
was allowed to keep his Chancellorship, which he just relinquished, but he still gets to keep
his Chair and Professorship at the Law School. One might think this is not a very harsh result,
certainly not if Starr knowingly violated federal law, or by his deliberate indifference allowed
serious criminal conduct to take place at the university he led.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but Ken Starr is accused of ignoring sexual violence
at Baylor University mostly because doing something about it would have jeopardized a cash cow.
(Note that the disgraced Baylor football coach's salay,
$6 million , was six (6) times college President "Judge Starr." Starr will also retain his position
on the faculty. Priorities!)
The New York Times says what Alternet says , in its own more muffled language:
[Baylor] also fired the football coach, Art Briles, whose ascendant program brought in millions
of dollars in revenue but was dogged by accusations of sexual assault committed by its players
- an increasingly familiar combination in big-time college sports.
Among the firm's findings was that football coaches and athletics administrators at the school
in the central Texas city of Waco had run their own improper investigations into rape claims and
that in some cases they chose not to report such allegations to an administrator outside of athletics.
By running their own "untrained" investigations and meeting directly with a complainant, football
staff "improperly discredited" complainants' claims and "denied them a right to a fair, impartial
and informed investigation."
Starr wanted the revenues. Briles wanted the revenues, the facilities, the salaries, the ticket
to be punched, etc. Again, this is quite directly converting a public institution to serve private
purposes. And like NYU, Baylor appears to have learned nothing. Starr still has a job, and was never
censured. The full report was never released. And
from an ad taken out by Baylor alumni : "Thank You Judge Ken Starr - For your integrity, leadership,
character and humble nature."
ERIC J. BARRON: We actually have launched a whole program, which is titled
" Invent Penn State ," and there are several
different elements of this. One is to do more to incentivize people on campus to get their ideas
out into the marketplace. We have many, many student events that are competitions and have scholarship
funds at the end of it. The second part of it is to add more visibility to our intellectual property.
A third part is to build an ecosystem around our campuses that promote startups and partnerships
with communities.
A general view, in my opinion, is that many universities are focused on this topic as a source
of revenue, not as educational experiences for students and opportunities for them to do startups.
We have a lot of effort on the student side. The minors have expanded. I think we have six or
seven entrepreneurship minors now that are embedded in curriculum for different colleges if you
want. Last year, we started having any student with any major to be able to get all the credits
equivalent to a minor in business. There's a lot on that side plus startup weeks and other activities
with a scholarship side of it.
We have funded but have not yet cut the ribbon on a total of 20 incubators and accelerators
around the state of Pennsylvania associated with our campuses. In March, we cut the ribbon on
what's called Happy Valley Launch Box, which is here in State College, with the idea of having
30 startups in there at any one time. I think we had about 15 before even 30 days. All of these
have gone through some sort of vetting process or competition for which they were winners. It's
growing just left and right. Many of them, we've given them seed money and they've gotten many
times more money from their community and other partners that want to enable the students.
Never mind converting an entire student population into "winners" and "losers."
Never mind that 90% of start-ups
fail . Never mind that when startups succeed, it's as much a matter of luck, and especially the
luck of having been born into the right social network. Thomas Frank has already described Barron's
program, and where it leads. This is
the innovation cult ! Quoting Frank once more:
I just finished Thomas Frank's excellent Listen, Liberal , and he has a great rant about
"innovation," of which I will show a great slab here, from p 186 et seq. Frank even helpfully
quotes the more egregious bullshit tells, so I don't have to highlight them! Do read it in full.
After visiting hollowed out mill town Fall River, Frank goes to Boston:
And:
Let's also leave aside the issue of whether "innovation" culture increases "income inequality."
Suppose Penn State structures its curriculum to optimize for startups (and not for education as such;
critical thinking skills, the construction of narratives, the sciences, research, even (relatively)
humdrum majors like accounting). What happens to the students when 90% of their startups fail,
as history tells us they will? What will they have to fall back on, if everything has been optimized
for startups, and the rest of the university's assets have been stripped?
The future lies ahead on that question. For now, I'm uncertain whether "the innovation" cult is
corrupt as such, or not. Certainly it provides almost limitles opportunities for backscratching,
logrolling, bezzle creation, and so forth. And Barron seems to conceive of it as a big revenue generating
opportunity for Penn State (rather like the football team, if it comes to that). If the program fails,
and is seen to fail, will Penn State learn from the experience? It's hard to know, but
Barron's handling of the fallout from the Sandusky matter does not inspire confidence .
Conclusion
So, what we've got here is an NYU President handing a New York apartment, meant for faculty, to
his son, and what looks rather like powerful faculty members feathering their own nests with cheap
housing; we've got a Baylor President not wanting to cross a powerful and wealthy football team,
even to the extent of failing to handle a rape scandal; and at Penn State we've got a President who's
a member of the "innovation cult," when it's not at all clear this will benefit the student body
as a whole. Have any of these institutions learned from these experiences? No. Are these college
Presidents personally responsible for corruption at their universities - for converting a public
institution to serve private purposes? Sexton and Start, yes. For Barron, the jury is still out.
And these are the institutions of higher education that are granting credentials. Not a good look.
More examples from readers welcome!
NOTES
[1] I should disclose my priors and/or prejudices: I'm a university brat with a humanities
background. Family tradition mandates that I instinctively distrust college administrators, Big
Football, fraternities, and sororities (and, my parents would urge, for very good reasons). Only
the first two will be at issue here.
[2] That is, they're creating hires, as opposed to creating graduates some of whom might be
creative enough to come up with businesses that compete with their own.
[3] If you think that implies that neoliberalism is intrinsically corrupt, since it will put
everything up for sale, including itself, you're not wrong.
'First, Kennedy is only one of many university administrators who stay a couple years at an
institution, punch their ticket, and move on to a higher salaried position elsewhere.'
I think this perfectly describes what I've observed with public school superintendents
also. They are like 'The Music Man.' Selling dreams that our children will be smarter, better
looking, and above average if we just get with the program. While our school district has a local
in charge who appears to be here for the long term, a neighboring district had a 'Music Man' or
rather, woman, who got the city to float a $10 million bond issue so every fourth grader could
have an I-Pad. She then left to do the same (for a higher salary) in another state. Another, much
poorer, district nearby wanted to get rid of a super who had allegedly threatened subordinates
with bodily harm: they bought out her contract for $300,000. In a county with a population of
20,000 and ten percent unemployment.
It is not only at the college level that those in charge are engaging is questionable behavior.
It is a society wide problem.
It is not only at the college level that those in charge are engaging is questionable behavior.
It is a society wide problem.
That is my impression as well-corruption is a society wide problem from top to bottom. The
small town mayors, courts, police, newspapers, insiders, etc may be playing with small potatoes
but corruption is corruption whether it is $1000 or a $1,000,000. I know it can't be everyone
with a little power but way too many. Makes you doubt the whole system.
Greetings from one of those coworking spaces that Mr. Frank took to task in Listen, Liberal
.
Let me tell you a dirty little secret about this place. And, no, I'm not talking about who
left a lunch in the fridge for too long. This is an even dirtier secret. Here it is:
Most of us are not innovators.
That's right. I said it.
The truth is, most of us are working on things that are, well, pretty run of the mill. Guy
behind me is doing digital marketing work for his out-of-state employer, an ad agency. Lady over
there is doing marketing for a resort in Mexico. Oh, and the guy who's my best friend here? We're
both photographers. His other main hustle is graphic design and mine is writing for business.
We have a handful of what could be described as startups, but those businesses are definitely
in the minority.
Well we don't need a sh&t pot full of "innovators" . we need people that can do what they do
well. Does everybody have to create something "new"?? I don't think so.* Edison wasn't the greatest
guy in the world overall, but as he said getting something up is 99% perspiration and only 1%
inspiration – I think he would have spit at the word "innovation", btw.
In fact, he has another lesson for the "innovators" in that a lot of his perspiration was generated
due to his efforts in stealing ideas from other people. Which is going to happen to almost all
of the (if we take their optimistic slices) 10% that do come up with something anybody cares about.
*For a good example, I love the improvement of the American pub scene over the past few decades.
But the best beer and grub isn't the best because it is "innovative" - sometimes it is a bit different,
sometimes not - but because it is very, very well done.
Slim, in your home town town there is one of the perfumed princes that could have fit nicely
into Lambert's post. Us AZ residents are paying neoliberal scumbag a premium price for their "talents"
of enriching themselves.
Oh, brother. Ann Weaver Hart. Don't get me started.
Okay, I am started. So, here goes
A couple of summers ago, I was meeting with a longtime acquaintance and potential client on
the University of Arizona campus. Madame Presidente was about to move her office into Old Main,
which is the UA's oldest building. It's revered as this sacred space. Or something like that.
Any-hoo, I was in a pretty spacious office in a building near Old Main. But my meeting host
told me that Ann Weaver Hart's Old Main *bathroom* was bigger than that office.
Yeesh.
Oh, as for the work space, were you involved in the one that had a pirate theme? Because that
place was - and is - full of pump -n- dump startups.
'King came up through the much despised and derided English Department, in the humanities.'
Although not a product of the English department at my alma mater, Whatsamatta U., I knew some
professors in the department.
To a naive student with no experience in institutional politics, their stories of resentment,
gossip, backbiting, and the politics of personal reputational destruction were like a glimpse
into an unimagined world.
It used to be that there was a saying in academe: the competition is so great because the
stakes are so low. But, if there is a path to six or seven figures, now I see that there is serious
cash to be banked to justify working in the university racket.
Nowadays I bristle when someone describes me as "faculty," even though it's technically correct,
because it papers over the fact that some of the people doing the exact same job as me have full
employment, a full salary, and fringe benefits, where the people in my position get paid per credit
with no benefits. We are "permitted" to buy into university health insurance, at full cost, but
that's the extent of our bennies.
If you're getting to the employment situation in a further post, I'll save my more extensive
comments for that.
Update: one of the articles cited in this essay says Ken Starr resigned from Baylor Law School
and severed all ties with the university this past Friday.
As someone who has a university background, as a grad student in three different universities,
and short stints as a faculty member and an administrator (I was shoved out/left in disgust from
administration)- I attest that this kind of neoliberal thinking, which automatically generates
converting public responsibility to private advantage, is commonplace. As readers here know, the
university is a place where one must strive to present oneself - and simultaneously fool oneself
- as creative and independent-minded within the confines of the matrix. This is most pronounced
in the professional school because they are most beholden to corporate money. A final note: you
will find the best to the worst of humanity in universities.
One more for the honor roll: West Virginia University's former president Michael Garrison,
who ordered the granting of an M.B.A. to moral leper Mylan CEO and Epi-Pen price
optimizer Heather Bresch in 2007,
I have to repeat my favorite historical anecdote here (h/t the late, great Paul Goodman, from
his Compulsory Miseducation, I believe).
It seems that in the summer of 1650, while the faculty was away helping in the fields, Henry
Dunster sold Harvard to a group of Boston businessmen, creating the first Corporation in the New
World, and making himself "President" thereof.
Now Wikipedia claims that Dunster "set up as well as taught Harvard's entire curriculum alone
for many years, graduating the first college class in America, the Class of 1642". So perhaps
Dunster was simply ahead of his time in creating the prototype for Trump University.
Administrators in academia hold themselves to the same high ethical standards as officials
in government. In other words, they do whatever they can get away with, and then sputter about
future "transparency," and "doing better," when their misdeeds come to light.
This blather from Austin, Texas, could just as well have come from Washington, D.C.:
"I've read the report a half-dozen times in totality, and I found no willful misconduct
, no criminal activity on the part of any of the folks at the University of Texas
at Austin, and have told the Board of Regents that I intend to take no disciplinary action,"
he said.
"Can we do things better? You bet," he continued. "Should we have been more transparent?
Absolutely. Are we going to get this fixed? No doubt about it."
Mr. Powers pushed back against the report's suggestion that he had not been forthcoming,
saying he had been "truthful and not evasive" in his dealings with investigators.
My $2c; apologies that they're a bit unpolished: One question you/we might ponder is how (a
desire for) obvious nepotism engenders privatization, versus more "principled" demands
for privatization of public goods/services. To give a very brief summary of the developments since
WWII inspired by my reading of David Harvey's The Enigma of Capital : privatization became
important once western economies 'matured', because of how this meant that there were ever fewer
(obvious) opportunities for growth. And secondly because, once more and more people started getting
degrees, there was an explosion in the number of people who were "trained" (only) for middle/upper
management positions; for who there was fairly little demand in public institutions, probably
because workers had decent unions/voice, so that the people who ran those places couldn't easily
justify managerial metastasis and the taking away of job-related autonomy (to create demand for
"decision-makers") by creating cultures of institutionalized distrust (via yammering about the
importance of "accountability"). (Though the latter was/is still an issue, it gets worse the more
neoliberalized the organizational mode gets, because of neoliberalisms implicit (rational-actor)
misanthropic world view.) Those developments strike me as separate from the more narcissistic
( professional class/meritocratic-reasoning )-related forms of corruption/grift/etc. that
you discuss above, though.
(To clarify, Harvey doesn't talk about professionalization; that's just me combining observations
made by Graeber with those made by Tom Frank in Listen, Liberal .)
Harvey's book is great; as for Frank & Graeber, I was thinking of Graeber's remarks about what
he (in Debt) calls the crisis of inclusion (which he's also talked about elsewhere, e.g. in the
Army of Altruists essay in Revolutions in Reverse ). Graeber there (as I assume you recall)
only talks about the fact that those who don't belong to what Frank calls the professional class
(and those who self-identify with them), only have the army and the church open to them if they
wish to pursue goals other than accumulating money/power; yet the higher-ed explosion must've
also had enormous consequences for the supply of people with managerial and similar training.
But I only started pondering that question recently, after reading Frank woke me up to the obvious.
How about Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha - who managed to screw up the school's endowment
that had been in place since 1859. Check out the movie "Ivory Tower".
NYU is a school run by money, and it's so transparent that for a board populated by billionaires,
run by a press-shy guy who helped a lot of them become billionaires, that they prop up the flamboyant
Sexton's supposed fundraising abilities and
"imperial" presidency. Fortunately for Sexton and NYU, he's paid enough money to take the
press's lashings like a good boy.
But surely such a mediocre pedant isn't the mastermind behind the bloated, technocratic, real
estate development company and vanity project (which also offers classes, which are taught by
#publicintellectuals).
Pam Martens has written several posts at Wallstreetonparade talking about NYU's corruption,
connections to Wall St, and Jack Lew. Don't have links handy but easy to Google.
I would like to point out that Chancellors Linda Katehi (UC Davis)and Nicholas Dirks (UC Berkeley)
have both recently resigned under pressure from UC Top Honcho Janet Napolitano. It seems Administrator
transgressions (impunity and self-dealing) are finding its way into the "sunlight".
Some people starting up can get "small loans" of $1,000,000 from the old man and have those
kinds of resources to fall back on if they flop. The other 99.99% of us? Not so much. How is this
innovation dogma supposed to work for those of us who can't buy our way into the Creative Class?
In 2004, a housecat named
Colby Nolan was awarded an "Executive
MBA" by Texas-based
Trinity Southern
University. The cat belonged to a deputy attorney general looking into allegations of fraud by the school. The cat's application
was originally for a Bachelor of Business Administration, but due to the cat's "qualifications" (including work experience in fast-food
and as a paperboy) the school offered to upgrade the degree to an Executive MBA for an additional $100. As a result of this incident,
the Pennsylvania attorney general has filed suit against
the school.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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