Higher Education and Political Repression 3
THE
CRISIS OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Harry Targ
(From comments prepared for the statewide meeting of
the Indiana American Association of University Professors, April 28, 2017,
University of Indianapolis)
Historical Analyses
According to Clyde Barrow, (Universities
and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of
American Higher Education. 1894-1928, The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1990) 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.
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.
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 attacks on tenure (which is a right to job
security that all workers should enjoy if they perform their duties) are spreading
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.
The Crisis of Higher Education
The crisis of higher education involves the efforts of
economic elites and politicians to transform education to serve the
twenty-first century needs of the larger economy and polity, and not
necessarily, the citizenry at large. Barrow provides us with a useful paradigm
from which to assess developments in all public institutions including colleges
and universities. Power and control resides in Boards of Trustees and political
elites and to a lesser extent university administrators. Their lens on educational
policy is shaped by unfolding economic and political interests.
If we continue the narrative from the time period
Barrow studies, we can identify the growth in higher education with the
post-war United States economy, sometimes referred to as the “golden age.”
After World War II economic priorities shifted to stimulating manufacturing,
mass production and consumption, creating consumer and military demand, the
expansion of education, and the provisioning of opportunities for higher
education. Higher education became affordable for middle class Americans. War
veterans had access to education via the GI Bill. Whole educational systems
were constructed in big states like New York and California. Systems of
community colleges were established to provide opportunities for poorer and
part-time students. The size of faculties increased dramatically. Professional
associations and journals increased to facilitate credentialing of new
generations of faculty. And in response to uprisings in the 1960s over war,
racism, and student rights universities expanded educational programs to overcome
traditional “canons” of scholarship and education that left out the examination
of the experiences of masses of people (particularly people of color, women,
workers, immigrants). The post-war economy boomed and so did higher education.
However, economic stagnation (nationally and globally)
began in the 1970s. Rates of profit declined. Consumption could not
match production. Governments no longer could allocate sufficient resources to
fund public programs (a political problem) and those who were critics of the
modern social democracies marshalled their wealth and political muscle to
challenge the vary premises of public policy.
By the late 1970s, Democrats as well as Republicans
began to endorse government policies (internationally and domestically) that
called for declining government support for social programs; deregulating
finance, manufacturing, and markets; and the privatization of public
institutions and programs. The policy agenda and this latest phase of
capitalism was called neoliberalism. Some commentators refer to the economic
policies adopted in the era of neoliberalism as “austerity.”
Below the political radar the billionaire Koch
Brothers established The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the
early 1970s to support client state legislators, create “expert” think tanks on
various policy issues, write model legislation on subjects as varied as health
care, labor issues, creating charter schools, and transforming higher
education. The neoliberal agenda, as was said, was endorsed to varying degrees
by both political parties, and was most effectively institutionalized in state
governments. Indiana in the era of Governors Daniels and Mike Pence was a model
for applied neoliberalism.
Sometime in the late 1980s I heard Rush Limbaugh
celebrate on his radio show the neoliberal victories that had been achieved but
he declared that the one institution “we” had not been able to shape and
control was the university. And that has been the project of endorsed by ALEC,
state legislators, rightwing advocacy groups, and university administrators all
across the nation.
As an essay by Anthony Paul Farley in an issue of Academe suggests:
“Recent struggles over higher education
have taken place on the terrain of austerity, where a new ‘business’ model of
higher education has called for the dramatic reduction of labor costs through
such means as the elimination of tenure and the replacement of full-time
academics with adjuncts. The idea of higher education as a public good has, it
seems, very little purchase in the discourse of austerity.
Everything that can be measured is
measured. Money becomes the measure of all things. This metaphysics of
austerity has consequences for things not measurable in monetary terms. If the
value of an academic discipline cannot be measured in such terms, then it does
not exist.” (https://www.aaup.org/article/austerity-and-academic-freedom).
Starving the Beast: Cutting Support for
Higher Education
Purdue University President Mitch Daniels testified
March 17, 2015 before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee
on Education and Workforce on what he calls higher education reform. He also
spoke during that week to the American Council on Education and the Brookings
Institute. A centerpiece of his recommendations was “income share agreements”
whereby students partner with investors, particularly alumni, who would provide
funds for their education in exchange “for a small share of the student’s
future income.”
Daniels was touting this idea in addition to new
cost-saving policies at Purdue University, such as offering three-year degree
programs, using different metrics rather than course hours to measure student
preparation, and tuition freezes. He has also urged a reduction in costly
federal regulations.
Although some of Daniels’ proposals and programs at
his home university have merit, the conversation he and other administrators
around the country are having about rising tuition and the accumulation of
years of debt ignore the major reason why costs and tuition are rising. In
addition to the cost of higher education attributable to increased faculty
salaries; layers of new administrators; the creation of new luxury amenities to
attract students (housing, food, and recreational facilities), tuition has risen
because state government financing of higher education has not kept pace with
expenditures.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities issued a
report on May 1, 2014 (“States Are Still Funding Higher Education Below
Pre-Recession Levels”) which provides data to show that higher education
funding remains below 2007-2008 pre-recession levels in 48 of 50 states. This
means, according to CBPP: “the large funding cuts have led to both steep
tuition increases and spending cuts that may diminish the quality of education
available to students at a time when a highly educated workforce is more
crucial than ever to the nation’s economic future.”
CBPP reports that since 2007-2008 state spending on
higher education is down 23 percent, or $2,026 per student. Tuition increases
have been substantial in public colleges and universities from fiscal year 2008
to 2014 ranging from $253 in Montana to $4,493 in Arizona. In
Indiana tuition increased by $1,191 during this period. CBPP notes that in 1988
colleges and universities received 3.2 times more of their revenue from state
and local governments than from students. That ratio declined to about 1.1
times more from government supports than tuition in 2013. Put another way the
report states:
“Nearly every state has shifted costs to students over
the last 25 years--with the most drastic shift occurring since the onset of the
recession…Today, tuition revenue now outweighs government funding for higher
education in 23 states…”
Not surprisingly Daniels’ idea that students find a
rich supporter in exchange for future student earnings came from proposals made
by free market advocate Milton Friedman in the 1980s. Friedman, the University
of Chicago economist, was the most significant descendent of so-called “free
market” economists who believe as did President Reagan that “government was not
the solution; government was the problem.” From the vantage point of 2015, the
privatization of all education, including higher education, is on the agenda of
wealthy conservatives such as the Koch Brothers and the powerful state
legislative lobbying organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council
(ALEC). ALEC funds state politicians who support the elimination of public
institutions, such as education.
Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The
Rise of Disaster Capitalism, argued that during periods of economic or
political crisis, changes have been introduced to weaken government and the
maintenance of public services. The CBPP data suggests that the deep recession
of 2008-2011 was an occasion for ALEC and the politicians and educators they
support to reduce resources available for higher education. Despite the long
history of government support for higher education, public schools from
kindergarten through high school, libraries, roads, and police and
fire-fighting services, the recession offered the occasion for influential and
wealthy elites to pressure for policies that reduced state financial support
for public services and a shift toward their privatization. In addition
universities became even more dependent on big corporations, banks, and the
military. Finally, tuition increased and students had to pay a
higher share of the cost of their education.
Throughout much of U.S. history public education,
including higher education, has been seen as a public good. The land grant
system of public higher education was instituted in 1862. From then until the
recent recession, public colleges and universities educated large percentages
of the young and generated much of the scientific and technical knowledge that
stimulated the U.S. economy, based on substantial public support and low
student tuition.
After World War II, returning veterans became eligible
for free higher education under the GI Bill. The program led to the training
and credentialing of a whole generation of young people who went on to become
educators and researchers, and also consumers of products
manufactured after the war. The so-called economic “golden age,” from 1945
until the 1970s, was driven by research and development initiated by GI Bill
recipients. These college graduates became members of the largest middle class
in American history.
As Bob Samuels author of Why Public Higher
Education Should Be Free put it:
“I actually believe that we should and
could make all public higher education completely free. We’re currently
spending around $185 billion on higher education annually—which includes
spending on for-profit schools, which have very low graduation rates and high
debt rates, as well as on merit aid for wealthy students. Given current
enrollment, I estimate that it would cost about $155 billion to fund public
colleges and four-year institutions completely. My argument is instead of
funding the individuals, we should just fund the institutions directly”
(quoted in Rebecca Burns, “Why Can’t College Be Free?” In These Times,
June 13, 2014, http://www.inthesetimes.com).
However, advocates of “higher education reform” at
least those collaborating with economic and political elites who advocate
policies depriving government of financial resources, sometimes called
“starving the beast,” envision a day when all public institutions are
privatized. There is much evidence that the privatization of education will
increase gaps between rich and poor and may leave the latter with inferior
educations. The Daniels plan will rely on wealthy benefactors to support
students while tuition costs continue to rise and those who still seek a
college education will continue to accumulate a lifetime of debt.
Without a return to affordable publicly supported
higher education, large proportions of young, intellectually curious, and
talented students may be deterred from pursuing higher education which will
have negative consequences for the entire society.
Impacts on Faculty
Along with putting roadblocks in place for faculty to
form unions, there has been a growing attack on the tenure system. Tenure means
job security. Tenure means that faculty cannot be arbitrarily fired. Tenure
means that after going through a period of performance and rigorous review,
faculty have some job protections. And tenure means that faculty, in a work
setting in which the free flow of ideas is vital, are protected from
controversy in their teaching and research. Abolishing tenure is a high priority
in higher education.
And, of course, there has been a qualitative decline
in the percentage of college and university classes taught by tenure or
tenure-track faculty and a concomitant rise in courses taught by graduate
students and adjuncts. As state legislatures reduce financial allocations of
resources, universities hire low paid adjuncts, often on a course-by-course
basis at extraordinary savings. Of course, if an adjunct gets to teach four
courses at more than one university, her/his time is spent traveling with
little time to keep up with relevant literature and do research which in the
long run reduces the chance for securing tenure-track employment.
And finally, returning to the 2017 Purdue University creation of an line degree program, Purdue Global, it is assumed by Boards of Trustees, spokespersons for ALEC, corporate executives, and politicians turned university administrators that on-line education is just fine. Although on-line education may have a place in the matrix of a total academic career, the appropriate mix of campus and on-line coursework; interpersonal/electronic contact; and reading versus videos and power points on computer screens needs to be discussed all across the campus. Also, programs of additional support for regional campuses and community colleges, extension programs, extended hours on campuses for course offerings and other programs to meet the needs of non-traditional students might be part of a discussion of educational opportunities. It may be that several approaches in the long run might better serve the educational needs of non-traditional students than new collaboration with for-profit on-line firms with dubious performance records.
What Next?
In a 2010 essay in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus made a series of proposals to
address some of the crises of higher education today. They began by noting that
tuition for public and private colleges had doubled compared with a generation
ago. Rising educational costs required parents to commit large financial
outlays, second only to house mortgages, to their children’s education.
Alternatively, students have had to take out loans that will burden them for
their entire lives.
Among the proposals these authors made were the following:
-Institute free higher education for all who seek it.
-Maintain course requirements that lead to knowledge in history, the arts,
sciences, and reasoned discourse.
-Provide secure full-time teaching jobs for every classroom. Eliminate the
system of staffing classrooms with graduate students and temporary adjuncts who
receive one-sixth the pay of the regular faculty.
-Pay presidents and other administrators salaries commensurate with public
employees, not CEOs of Wall Street banks and corporations.
While our wealthiest and most powerful institutions-- corporations and banks,
the military, and the health care system-- have come under some scrutiny in the
new century, until recently higher education has remained hidden behind a wall
of mystery even though everyone pays lip service to it as the hope for the
future.
With enduring economic stagnation coupled with rising gaps in the distribution
of income and wealth, education is offered as an escape route from poverty. We
need to broaden public discussion about our assumptions concerning higher
education; assessing its costs, accessibility, educational quality, and
workplace security.
