Key Points:
·
The American University as utopian imaginary and
a four-year degree represented as guaranteeing individual class ascendancy and
national competitiveness; contrast this against the reality of the contemporary
university (i.e. crippling student debt);
·
Contemporary University as supply-side
education: “a ‘credential’ that’s ‘a prerequisite for 21st century
jobs’,” an economic input, but this is a
higher education cliché; “no one really knows the particular contents of the
education that is supposed to save us”;
o
college grads as colonizing an entire economy,
perpetuating their “worth” via networking;
o
powerful quote: “Get something else, like a
cosmetologist license or a membership in the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, and you lose
o
powerful quote: “What they sell, in other words,
is something we believe to be so valuable it is almost impossible to measure”;
·
The University as academic capitalism: patents
and startups; self-description as “entrepreneurial” institutions; outsourcing
of operations; antagonistic to worker organization; wealth managers;
·
Selling the imaginary of the University to naïve
student consumers: Grant to an industry control over access to the good things
in life; insist that it transform itself into a throat-cutting, market-minded
mercenary; get thought leaders to declare it to be the answer to every problem;
mute any reservations the nation might have about it – and, lastly, send it
your unsuspecting kids, armed with a blank check drawn on their own futures;
o
American student as “cash-cow” (monopolies and
oligopolies: text book industry, standardized test industry, test-prep
industry, enrollment management consultancies
o
Universities as luxury good (tuition hikes,
Starchitect buildings)
o
Proliferation of university administrators with
bloated salaries – their expanded role in governance; management theory and
jargon
o
De-professionalization of faculty: proliferation
of adjuncts and contingent labor
·
Academic capitalism has been chronicled for
decades. What “ought” to happen is that
trends described should be put in reverse, but what “will” happen is a bubble
bust, followed by more deep marketization
·
The “only way out”: student activism
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