Harry Targ
What
radical scholars must therefore rediscover is not merely that intellectuals
play a significant role in the reproduction of capitalism and the capitalist
state, but that education has been and remains every bit as much a contested
terrain as the shop floor, the party caucus, and the halls of legislative
assemblies. Clyde W. Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the
Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894-1928, The University of
Wisconsin Press, 1990, 9.
But many professors and other observers said the roller
coaster hit a new low Friday afternoon when the (Wisconsin) State
Legislature's powerful Joint Finance Committee approved, by a vote of 12-4, the
elimination of tenure from state statute. The committee also
approved adding new limits to the faculty role in shared governance and
procedures for eliminating faculty members in good standing outside of financial
exigency. (Colleen Flaherty, “Trying to Kill Tenure,” Inside Higher Education, June 1, 2015).
One of the most thorough,
analytical, and historical analyses of the relationship between the capitalist
economy, the state, and higher education was provided by political scientist,
Clyde W. Barrow (Universities and the
Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American
Higher Education 1894-1928, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).
Although his focus was on the rise of the modern university in the “age of
reform” (from the 1890s until the 1920s), many of his insights are relevant today,
another era of educational “reform.”
According to Barrow, the modern
university had its roots in the period of rising capitalism after the Great
Depression of the 1870s to the 1890s when mergers created an economic system in
which a few hundred corporations and banks came to dominate the entire U.S.
economy. Interlocking directorates of corporations and banks created a system
of financial speculation, concentrated wealth, and a capitalist state. The
capitalist state through pro-corporate and banking regulations, the allocation
of tax and other benefits for the wealthy and powerful, and military
mobilizations, such as President Cleveland’s use of the United States army to
crush workers during the Pullman strike of 1894, helped create twentieth
century monopoly capitalism.
Higher education, once dominated by
theological pursuits, was refashioned to serve the needs of modern capitalist
society. The need for scientific and technical skills coupled with a trained
work force stimulated the establishment of educational institutions that could
produce credentialed graduates who would serve the capitalist system. Also theoretical
work and classroom education was required to educate the young to celebrate the
blessings of the economic system and the conduct of the government. Young
people learned about the desirability of market economies, the country’s long tradition
of democratic institutions, and the manifest destiny of the United States as it
conquered the North American continent and established a global empire from the
Philippine Islands, to Cuba, to Central and South America.
Barrow provides data to show that
members of university Boards of Trustees, the key decision makers in these
institutions, came largely from big corporations, huge banks, and law firms which
served big business. Some universities from the Midwest and South were led by
trustees who represented regional manufacturing and finance capital, but their
outlook and interests paralleled those from the major universities of the
Northeast and the major state universities. There were never representatives of
broader citizens groups such as labor unions on these boards.
During the early twentieth century,
Trustees worked to establish an administrative class that could carry out the
day-to-day operations of the university and manage the faculty who were the
producers of the mental products the university was assigned to produce.
Managerial procedures were adopted to control mental labor in the classroom and
the laboratory. Metrics were institutionalized to evaluate the rates of
productivity of the faculty; from measuring enrollments, publications, and the rankings
of the university.
Federal and state governments and
foundations funded the construction of a national university system that would
serve the interests of twentieth century capitalism. Major foundations
generated studies, did surveys, and made recommendations that found their way into
institutions and policies of both public and private universities. During
periods when domestic crises, such as depressions, and international ones, such
as World War I, stimulated critical analyses from universities, faculty were disciplined
or fired for challenging the economic system or state policy. The educational
mission was to serve the interests of the capitalist elites and the state, not
to provide a venue for critical thinking and debate about issues important to
society.
Barrow summarized his findings about
higher education:
Individual institutions were developing into centralized
corporate bureaucracies administered according to nationally standardized
measurements of productivity and rates of return on investment. The entire
educational enterprise was being restructured within these standards as a
production process that was increasingly integrated into local or regional
markets for labor, information, research and professional expertise. The
process was more and more a planned undertaking directed by the federal government.
The construction of a national ideological state apparatus oriented toward
solving the problems of capitalist infrastructure, capital accumulation, and
political leadership within a capitalist democracy was well under way. (123)
This description of the emergence of
the modern university system about one hundred years ago bears resemblance to
the wrenching changes that are occurring in higher education in the
twenty-first century. First, the further consolidation of capitalist class
power in higher education in the current century comes in the aftermath of the
Great Recession that began in 2008. United States capitalism continued its
transformation from manufacturing to finance as rates of profit from the latter
declined. Financial speculation led to banking failures and the collapse of the
housing market. Consumer demand shrunk due to rising structural unemployment
and falling real wages. And the cost of state support for the provision of
education and various social safety nets programs rose. Economic crisis was
used to justify austerity policies that included significant reductions in
support for higher education. As Naomi Klein suggested, economic shocks
facilitated changes in public policy, in this case the adoption of “educational
reforms.”
Second, the economic shocks were
used by Boards of Trustees, and their advisers in think tanks and political
organizations, to demand increasing efficiencies in the production and teaching
of knowledge. Programs that could not be justified as good “investments” became
vulnerable. The humanities disciplines had to be justified by their use value
to the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
disciplines.
Third, metrics have become
omnipresent. Colleges and universities are using quantitative instruments to
measure “creativity,” “critical thinking,” “personal satisfaction,” “teacher
effectiveness,” and faculty “productivity.” University administrators strongly
imply that if the activities at their institutions are not measurable in the
narrow numerical sense, they should not be supported.
Fourth, academic fields are shaped
by paradigms, or theories that justify the existing economic and political
order. The university is not usually a haven for discussions about the
fundamental structures of inequality, racism, patriarchy, the devastation of
the environment, or war. In the end, Boards of Trustees, think tanks,
university administrators, and federal programs, are committed to a university
system that supports the capitalist state. Only limited and circumscribed
debate about issues fundamental to economic vitality and political democracy
are allowed. In sum, the university was not created for nor does
it prioritize today discussions of fundamental truths.
Finally, as the experience of academic
critics one hundred years ago of child labor, anti-union policies, World War I,
and financial speculation suggests, the nature of debate in the university is
circumscribed. University policies, in response to organizations of professors
and students, have expanded rights to “academic freedom” and have provided some
job security through tenure. But, as the recent decision made by the Wisconsin
state legislature suggests, attacks on tenure (which is a right to job security
that all workers should enjoy if they perform their duties) may spread as the
twenty-first century “reconstruction of American higher education” proceeds.
To forestall these trends, faculty
and students, as Barrows suggests, need to understand that “education has been
and remains a contested terrain.” Most
educators believe that the primary purpose of the university is or should be to
stimulate a “marketplace of ideas.” However, the history of higher education, he
says, is really about how the university can serve the preservation and enhancement
of the capitalist state.
