University Inc. - The Corporatization of American Higher Education

A new book has just come out, Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University (University of Chicago Press): www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/06/wannabe. In the book, the author critiques the changing nature of the university, and the push toward accountability, corporate and management logic, the hiring of adjunct faculty and the undermining of the core mission of higher education from its inception. Like all social institutions, the instrumental rationality of business now reign supreme, undermining the job of teaching the next generation, opening minds, doing independent research and challenging entrenched knowledge. Instead schools have become about efficiency, cost saving, efficiency and reputation alone. What is lost in this push? The last bastion for independent research in the world.

A retired administrator at Miami University of Ohio, James C. Garland has written blog responses to critique the article, and in the process further solidified the point:

"Wannabe U made me squirm at times, because many of the examples paralleled my own experiences. And therein lies the book’s value. I hope my administrative colleagues will read this book, not because they will agree with it, or even because it is, as the dust cover asserts, 'an eye-opening expose of the modern university.' They should read it because people in power seldom understand how their actions are viewed by others, and why their good deeds and intentions often provoke suspicion and mistrust.”

In a second he further solidifies the point:

"I fear Professor Tuchman and her faculty colleagues may have it backwards. Increasing productivity and efficiency are ways to reduce class sizes, teaching loads, and busywork, not increase them. When productivity goes up, it means the quality of the institution can be maintained by fewer people, none working harder or longer than before," he writes. "Efficiency and productivity improvements can’t solve all problems, of course, and when money is running out, a university has few options but to make cuts in services that lower quality and put additional stresses on faculty and staff. But successful efforts to make an organization more efficient and productive can moderate undesirable changes."

And administrators, he writes, have valid, education-related reasons to focus on metrics. "Like it or not, the fundamental responsibility of all senior academic administrators is to improve their institution, by which is typically meant emulating more highly regarded institutions having a similar mission," Garland writes. "However, benchmarking one university against another naturally invites metrics of comparison. For example, if Berkeley chemistry professors publish more research articles, win more awards, garner more federal funds, give more invited papers at conferences, write more textbooks, and serve on more national commissions than do chemistry professors at Wan U, then tabulating changes in these measurable quantities is a way to see whether the chemistry department at Wan U is becoming more or less Berkeley-like.

In other words, efficiency and productivity are the methods to replicate research one universities, and intellectual rigor, good instruction, a vibrant intellectual community and the like are secondary to increasing the stature of the university. The logic is based on competition and markets, not seeing different universities as serving different constituencies and embracing their role. The attack is effective because it bases itself on instrumental rationality and a logic that seems depoliticized, while it is instead ripe with political ambitions and concerns. Research that doesn’t help the bottom line is deemphasized or outright rejected. The humanities don’t “add value” and are thus attacked and underfunded. Theoretical work of any kind is always labeled inferior to empirical work that is “objective” and brings in grant money and prestige. And money making enterprises in universities, like MBA and medical schools, to the neglect of other important work. The role of professors as public intellectuals is neither respected nor counted toward tenure and attacks are levied on those that openly critique the system – or the very logic that marginalizes them.

As its heart, the logic makes universities similar to K-12 in reproducing rather than improving society and deems particular types of knowledge as implicitly dangerous. This undermines the heart of the university from its inception – to challenge entrenched power and, ultimately, to serve the role of the common good.