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The
Struggle Against Corporate Takeover of the University
By Peter Seybold
I
In 1984 I was invited to give a talk at Indiana University–Pennsylvania
shortly after I lost my teaching job at a branch of the University of
Wisconsin system. I entitled my talk “Toward a Corporate Service
Station” because I believed this described the direction in which
universities and colleges were headed. I thought that the ideals of the
university, although often contested and interpreted differently by various
constituencies, were being compromised by corporate power, and dissenters
in the academy were being rooted out. It was a bad time and a “mean
season” for anyone who questioned Reagan’s “morning
in America” optimism.
When I look back at that period it seems clear that universities were
beginning to mimic the conservative trend in politics that Reagan helped
to popularize. This was not the first time that universities had lost
their nerve and bowed to pressure from the right; much the same had happened
during the McCarthy era. Despite their professed openness to a diversity
of opinion, universities seem to be particularly vulnerable to political
pressure from the larger society. My fears about the university turning
into a corporate service station were well-founded; they prefigured what
is happening now in higher education.
During the George W. Bush era, we have witnessed:
-- A broad attack on the mission of the university, leading to a blurring
of the lines between the university and the corporate world;
· A mobilization of bias to shape faculty research in the direction
of corporate priorities, including an elevation of grantsmanship into
a major criterion for evaluating faculty performance;
-- An ideological offensive by the right on the professorate, spearheaded
by David Horowitz’s shrill attacks on universities as havens for
leftists;
-- A reduction in the role of student participation in the college experience
to those concerns related to being a “customer”;
-- An assault on the craft of teaching and a questioning of the value
of face-to-face teaching in higher education;
-- A concerted effort against clerical, food service, and maintenance
workers, as well as some professional staff on campus, through privatization
and union decertification campaigns;
-- A major effort by universities to outsource services previously performed
in-house, such as maintenance of grounds and buildings, travel services,
motor pools, food service, and the operation of bookstores; and
-- An attempt to transform service to the community by faculty and students
into service to government, corporate, and non-profit elites.
All these trends are much more pronounced today than they were in the
1980s, because of the failure by members of the university community to
defend its democratic ideals against the attacks that began under Reagan.
These ideals, despite the different ways they are viewed by different
protagonists, constituted a bedrock defense of the university as being
a distinctive place, necessarily separate from and sometimes incompatible
with corporate agendas. Lulled into a false sense of security by the notion
that the academy was somehow insulated from trends in the larger political
economy, faculty often said to each other “it could happen someplace
else – some lesser college or university – but it could not
happen on this campus.” The university, for many faculty, was a
sort of feudal castle guarded by a large moat which protected them from
the encroachment of outside forces. By the 1980s the counterattack against
the student and anti-war movements which had transformed academe in the
1960s and early 70s was well under way, and the academy became more inward-looking
and consumed by status hierarchies that muted any remaining attempts at
democratization.
However, in the new millennium the chickens have come home to roost and
the democratic ideal of the university (which was always contested by
social forces both inside and outside the institution) is now for sale
to the highest bidder. This trend is more pronounced, of course, in the
sciences than in the humanities and social sciences, but the threat of
corporate domination over the university as a whole grows stronger each
day. The entire university is being subjected to the logic of profit,
which is reshaping the priorities of the institution and degrading the
everyday practice and culture of higher education. Such has been the impact
of the right-wing assault. As Frances Fox Piven shows in her 2006 book,
Challenging Authority, during times in which progressive social
movements are in retreat, elites seek to take back any earlier concessions.
It is in this context that we must view the corporate counterattack. In
a society in which hope for bringing about social change is often blunted
by cynicism and rampant consumerism, corporations seek to turn universities
into their handmaidens.
Evidence of an attempted corporate takeover of the university abounds.
David Noble’s Digital Diploma Mills, for example, discusses
the threat of distance education and efforts by universities to gain control
over intellectual property. More recently, Jennifer Washburn’s University
Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education, highlights corporate
abuses in the sciences. Chris Mooney’s book, The Republican
War on Science, provides additional documentation of the attempt
to corporatize science, raise doubts about scientific findings, and marginalize
basic scientific research.
The attempted coup by big business is combined with an ideological onslaught
on those who stand against corporate hegemony in higher education. Witness
what has happened to Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado, Norman
Finkelstein at DePaul University, or constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky
at the University of California-Irvine (who was denied a deanship), as
well as other faculty who have denounced the Bush administration and the
war in Iraq. Websites which encourage students to report professors who
exhibit “bias” have received considerable publicity. They
define bias as simply questioning the status quo, or possibly noting instances
in which the Bush administration has violated the Constitution, the law,
or international agreements, or even just looking at American society
from outside the mainstream.
Disciplines such as Women’s Studies, Afro-American Studies, Latina/o
Studies, Native American Studies, and Labor Studies all bring perspectives
which implicitly challenge the social order and provide a voice for those
who historically have been marginalized. In recent years labor studies
departments at UCLA and Indiana University have been under attack, and
even the justification for having a labor studies department at a university
has been subject to intense scrutiny. Departments which offer perspectives
that challenge the mainstream have in the current climate become targets
for possible elimination or downsizing.
However, it is not only potentially politicized departments which face
the axe. In an environment dominated by the logic of business, departments
which do not generate enough revenue for the university or have difficulty
bringing in grant money are also threatened. Responsibility-centered budgeting,
adopted by a number of universities, now treats individual units as self-contained
entities which are supposed to pay for their expenses. Some departments
simply cannot fund themselves but nevertheless make a unique contribution
to the university. However, the single-minded focus on revenue-generation
means that they must alter their mission and concentrate on chasing higher
head counts.
In short, the so-called “free marketplace of ideas” which
universities have always suggested was their trademark is not so free
and is increasingly shaped by the power of capital. The attempt to turn
the university into a business, to run it as a business, and to utilize
corporate logic and practice in overseeing workers, students, and faculty
is no longer just some far-fetched nightmare of leftists. Instead, such
corporate practices and orientation are defining the university’s
structure and its everyday life. One illustration of this is the outsourcing
of university bookstores to big chain bookstores. Books that don’t
come from mainstream publishers are often not carried by the distributional
networks which service these big chains, and pressure is put on faculty
to adopt texts that are more readily available. Therefore, faculty who
order books from presses such as Monthly Review, South End Press, Common
Courage, and other smaller presses confront growing institutional barriers
to the selection of books for their courses.
II
So how do we conceptualize what is happening to higher education, and
how do we resist its increasing corporatization? It is important to recognize
that this is not a new problem, as corporations have tried many times
to shape the university environment (as Thorstein Veblen pointed out in
his book The Higher Learning in America, 1918). When social movements
fight to reform higher education and democratic impulses prevail, corporations
try to reverse these gains once the pressure from inside and outside the
university subsides. For insight, I turn to C. Wright Mills, and particularly
his book, The Sociological Imagination. Mills continually made
the case that it was important for social critics to “think big,”
that is, to connect social issues to the larger institutional order. He
also repeatedly asserted that it was the duty of intellectuals to be critical
of present institutional arrangements and to reject the idea that these
arrangements were a given, or to be considered part of the natural order
of things. For Mills, intellectuals who failed to question the status
quo or the bigger picture abdicated their responsibility. Contemporary
critics such as David Noble, Jennifer Washburn, Stanley Aronowitz, and
Henry Giroux have made similar arguments.
Mills further contended that a well-developed sociological imagination
integrated biography, history, and social structure, and was able to incorporate
these different levels of analysis. He believed that the sociological
imagination could play an essential role in taking what seemed to be “private
troubles” and translating them into “public issues.”
Mills, like Marx, stressed that people make history, but within definite
limits set by the social structure and the historical era.
Applying Mills and other critics’ ideas to the corporatization of
higher education is a complicated matter and involves many levels of analysis.
The university as an institution occupies a contradictory location in
capitalist society, as it represents a number of competing institutionalized
thought-structures and constituencies. It is also a large employer, which
at least in the past has provided relatively secure jobs to a wide range
of workers. In recent years higher education has faced a changing environment
with ever expanding financial pressures. State financial support for public
universities has dropped steadily, and at the same time universities have
been asked to play a bigger role in jumpstarting a stagnating economy.
On the surface it might seem that administrators, faculty, and students
share similar goals, when actually their interests are often very much
at odds. Add to this mixture the interests of people who work at the university
in a variety of support positions and you have a unique collection of
perspectives. Of course, there is great diversity of opinion within and
among these different segments of the university community, but they are
all increasingly buffeted by corporate influence over the university climate.
In these times it seems “natural” to many people at the university
and in the community to endorse and advance a corporate agenda.
Nevertheless, it is crucial not to get lost in analyzing the internal
dynamics of higher education institutions. Clearly there are important
struggles going on at this level, but what happens within the university
must ultimately be situated in its larger context, which is the political
economy of capitalism. Higher education has come to acquire greater importance
in the current era because 1) it is a significant source of employment,
2) it is supposed to play a bigger role in workforce development in late
capitalism, 3) it is depended upon to generate product spinoffs and intellectual
property that are to fuel the knowledge-based economy, 4) it is to produce
the so-called “symbolic analysts” that Robert Reich and others
feel are so important to a creative society, and 5) it plays such a crucial
role in producing ideological justifications for the current social arrangements.
The attempted corporate takeover of the university is part of the ever-present
search by capitalists to cultivate new areas of profitability and to pacify
an institutional sector (higher education) which historically has fostered
dissent and resisted commodification. Higher education has also frequently
served as an agent of social control by socializing and “cooling
out” the next generation. That higher education would be targeted
as this point for further corporatization is predictable, because it constitutes
a critical sector in the so-called “new economy.” The university’s
twin functions – as an engine for the knowledge-based economy and
as an agent of social control – make it an important arena of class
struggle.
Capitalists seek not only to mold the university to their own interests,
but also to marginalize challengers to corporate hegemony. To accomplish
this task, university culture must be commodified, and the logic of capital
must thoroughly penetrate the university’s administration. While
big business and the university have always been linked, the current corporate
counterattack is much more explicit. Business models for running higher
education have become more acceptable in an era when countervailing social
forces (unions, social movements) have been substantially weakened and
the range of alternatives considerably narrowed. The more successful this
corporate penetration becomes, the more the logic of profit presents itself
as the natural order of things, until members of the university community
do not see any other reasonable alternatives. Nor do they see that there
is a problem with the university being run like a business.
In an age in which state legislatures are very stingy in their support
for higher education, the call for more efficient allocation of campus
resources seems to be a necessity. As Jennifer Washburn argues in her
above-cited book, the “public interest” is equated with serving
the needs of private industry:
Traditionally, the university‘s public-interest mission was
far more expansive: to open new scientific frontiers, to educate and train
the next generation of scholars and world leaders, to advance technological
and industrial development, to perform disinterested research, to preserve
humankind’s great intellectual and cultural achievements, to provide
expert advice and public service, to protect the public domain of knowledge,
and to serve as a critic and conscience of society. “Public service”
meant providing service not only to powerful constituencies … but
also to farmers, laborers, the poor and disaffected. (227)
But
in a university oriented toward profit, the goals of the institution have
been substantially altered. As Washburn observes,
In the classroom, deans and provosts are concerned less with the quality
of instruction than with how much money their professors bring in. As
universities become commercial entities, the space to perform research
that is critical of industry or challenges conventional market ideology
– research on environmental pollution, poverty alleviation, occupational
health hazards – has gradually diminished, as has the willingness
of universities to defend professors whose findings conflict with the
interests of their corporate sponsors. Will universities stand up for
academic freedom in these situations, or will they bow to commercial pressure
out of fear of alienating their donors? (227)
Of course, this shift in orientation toward corporate priorities happens
at different rates depending on the institution, but it nevertheless defines
what has become the prevailing “mobilization of bias” on a
growing number of college campuses. Power becomes centralized, administrators
proliferate, and the faculty has far less influence (except for a few
“stars” who are usually close to business and industry because
corporations influence the definition of a “star” and endow
these prestigious positions). Campus workers’ unions come under
added pressure as their work is contracted out and privatized, and students
become “customers” and ultimately cash cows for the knowledge-based
economy. Students face a range of obstacles that limit their opportunities
to engage in political activity as they contend with higher tuition and
fees, exploitative lending institutions, hyper consumerism, greater police
presence on campus, and the overall degradation of their college experience.
In the present era universities mirror the vast inequalities found in
other parts of American society. Some university employees live incredibly
privileged lives, while others experience pay cuts, benefit cuts, higher
insurance co-pays (if they have health insurance), and other forms of
marginalization. Since the university is also central to the defense and
reproduction of corporate hegemony, students and others must wade through
the many layers of ideological obfuscation which fragment opposition in
a capitalist society and produce contradictory consciousness. Nevertheless,
it is important to recognize that hegemony is never one-sided domination
and its contradictions leave openings for ideological and political struggle.
III
In the face of this aggressive corporate agenda, it is important to recognize
the university as an arena of struggle. As universities run more like
businesses, they not only degrade university culture and everyday life;
they also create their own opposition. Moreover, they create possibilities
for more unified resistance. In recent years there have been numerous
examples of students, campus workers, and faculty contesting the corporate
takeover. Groups united to oppose tuition increases, to block the outsourcing
of campus services, to defend campus workers’ unions, to highlight
the exploitation of adjunct faculty, and to criticize the emphasis on
corporate-oriented research at the expense of pure research are some examples
of recent responses. Parents and students as consumers of higher education
have challenged college loan policies, tuition hikes, the imposition of
new fees, cuts in state funding and federal support for higher education,
and the singular focus on research at the expense of teaching.
In order for these actions to be effective, the level of critical consciousness
must grow among all sectors of the university community. It is folly to
believe that corporate forces can be effectively neutralized by actions
of faculty alone. We must examine the bases of unity and strategize to
oppose the degradation of university life. The common ground in this struggle
is the widespread alienation and estrangement experienced by various segments
of the university community. With record endowments at many universities,
students, faculty, and staff wonder why some of the money is not used
to lower tuition, improve services, and address other significant inequities
on campus.
To address these issues we must look at the negative effects corporatization
has had on the most vulnerable and potentially the most strategically
located: campus service workers, clerical employees, students, and lower-level
professional staff. As we saw in the 1960s, a student movement can challenge
the structure of the university and bring about substantive changes. In
unity with campus workers and supportive faculty, students can bring “business
as usual” on campus to a halt. A new democratic movement which seeks
to link the battle inside the university with community struggles and
is attentive to the many ways that race, gender, and social class interact
has the potential to spur student activism. As capitalism degrades life
more generally in the U.S. and elsewhere, it creates opportunities for
social movements to galvanize opposition.
In order to build on such opportunities, we must assist students and others
on campus to translate their “private troubles” into “public
issues,” to “think big,” and to reject the status quo.
This will require them to develop a critical consciousness and to ultimately
build a counter-hegemony which challenges corporate domination. Mills’s
arguments and the work of Gramsci, Freire, Giroux, and others help clarify
what is necessary to build critical consciousness in higher education.
However, there are many barriers to building a political coalition on
campus. Despite efforts by the right wing to paint the campus as a haven
for radical leftists, the university is a conservative institution at
the higher levels. Institutions of higher education change slowly because
they are enmeshed in bureaucratic and ritualistic forms of organization.
Potential oppositional forces are too often stuck in their own local milieux
and treat university life as abstracted from the rest of their lives and
from the community. While this is understandable, especially for students
with job and family obligations, it is nonetheless a serious hurdle.
To escape the local campus environment that limits as well as promotes
critical consciousness, it is important to link the problems faced on
campus to the larger society. By translating private troubles faced on
campus into public issues, there is a much greater possibility of transcending
the barriers presented by the ivory tower.
Yet, these barriers are frequently disguised and difficult to apprehend.
A constant obstacle to effective grassroots activity on campus is the
threat of cooptation. An example of this is the current trend toward supporting
service-learning projects. The transformation of student consciousness
and the creation of links to community campaigns will not be forged by
corporate, government, or university sponsored service-learning programs
which pay little attention to social justice and structural inequities.
These programs, which have received increased financial support from business
and universities, create an illusion of acting in solidarity with the
community. However, more often than not they blame the victim and serve
the interests of elites by generating favorable public relations for the
very institutions that generate inequality, regulate the poor, and promote
institutional racism and sexism.
In place of such symbolic and largely top-down community involvement,
a new grassroots student and worker movement must be carefully linked
to the larger struggle against the reign of capital, and it must be mindful
of attempts by elites to shape and redirect political activism. This movement
must be engaged in both an ideological battle – a battle of ideas
and an effort to unmask and critique conservative justifications for existing
social arrangements – and an economic and political fight to improve
the conditions of work and learning in the academy. The struggle against
the corporate takeover of the university is an important part of a larger
campaign for social justice and democracy.
The recent formation of the new Students for Democratic Society (SDS)
is an encouraging development on this front. Despite having to address
some of the political baggage and long-lasting conflicts associated with
the SDS of the 1960s, students have organized more than 250 chapters of
the new SDS on campuses ranging from high schools to universities.
At their founding convention in August 2006, the new SDS confronted a
number of important issues related to autonomy of local chapters, links
to faculty support groups, and involvement in labor and community struggles.
Adopting some of the strategies of web-based organizing campaigns and
of other student protest groups, as well as lessons learned from grassroots
consensus-based organizations, the new SDS shows considerable promise.
While students seem more open to progressive political ideas in recent
years, they now confront a growing and more resourceful military-industrial-academic
complex. In response, the new SDS has conducted multi-issue campaigns
which transcend campus boundaries and seek to build broader alliances.
So far, these campaigns have been locally centered.
What remains to be seen is whether the new SDS can effectively organize
on a national basis as well as reach working-class students who are necessarily
preoccupied with trying to stay in school in an uncertain economy. The
absence of a military draft as a galvanizing force and the myriad problems
facing students in this era (including much more sophisticated repressive
measures) make it more difficult for the SDS to build a wider social movement.
Despite these barriers, student leaders have displayed considerable awareness
on a range of issues and a commitment to bringing business as usual to
a halt.
As Henry Giroux argues in his new book, The University in Chains,
a multi-layered strategy is necessary to retake the university. The corporatized,
militarized, and intellectually compromised university must be challenged
on all levels – economic, political, cultural, and ideological.
The battle to retake the university is just one of the fronts in the fight
for social justice and democracy. However, this front is growing in significance
and has the potential to be a catalyst for other oppositional social movements.
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