THE CHANGING INDIANA ECONOMY IN A CHANGING NATIONAL ECONOMY

Harry Targ

When East Coast executives open The New York Times’ business section Sunday morning, they’ll be greeted with a full-page advertisement hawking Indiana as a good place to do business (Journal and Courier, January 25, 2014). 

…the number of Hoosier’s living in poverty reached more than one million, unemployment in Indiana has remained above the national average…low wage jobs and income inequality are both on the rise, and; post-secondary educational attainment continues to present challenges to high-growth job creation (Indiana Institute for Working Families, “Status of Working Families in Indiana, 2012,” July, 2013).

Economic Change in the United States

Fred Magdoff recently published an article in Monthly Review (January, 2014) aptly titled “The Plight of the U.S. Working Class.” In it he describes the historic process of capital accumulation of the wealth produced by workers. He points out that since the industrial revolution numerous ways have been developed to expropriate more and more of the value of what workers’ produce. These methods included cutting wages, increasing hours of work, paying workers just enough to have energy to return to the workplace to produce more, speed-up on the line, and using technology to get more labor out of fewer and fewer workers. Over time exploitation has included the use of police power to crush demands from workers for increased public services, including education, health care, housing, and transportation, that would “cost” the wealthy taxes, and the right to form trade unions. During the worst of times workers’ ability to resist increased exploitation was compounded by the existence of a desperate pool of unemployed and underemployed workers who would be forced to accept lower wages and unhealthy working conditions just to get employment. 

As this process unfolded historically rates of profit grew, capital accumulated, corporations and banks expanded, economies became more concentrated in fewer hands, and corporate/banking political influence grew. Periodically workers and their allies organized, traditional sources of division around race and gender were broken down (particularly in the 1930s), and the working class broadly defined gained some political power. For a time reforms (such as the New Deal in the 1930s and the Great Society in the 1960s) were carried out to lessen the pain and suffering of workers. As movements grew, they inspired others to make demands on the economic and political system that began to change the fabric of society. The most radicalized workers, often through socialist organizations, talked about worker controlled economic and political systems which were likely to improve the human condition for the vast majority of the population.

Magdoff argues that workers in the United States are currently under the most extreme pressure since the Great Depression. Since the imposition of the neoliberal agenda during the 1980s--deregulation, promotion of markets, cutting government programs for the many, establishing global trade agreements, and increasing financial speculation--“capital has squeezed labor ever harder.”

Magdoff presents data which describes major features of the U.S. economy:

-a decline by more than half the average rate of growth per year of GNP (from 4 percent in the 1950s and 1960s to 1.8 percent today)

-a decline in job growth from about 2 percent per year in the 1970s and 1980s to 0.3 percent per year over the last decade

-a dramatic increase in joblessness among those 25-54 from 5 percent in 1968 to 18 percent in 2013

- a jobless rate for women 25-54 from 31 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2000 to 28 percent in 2012

-for 18-24 year olds joblessness has risen among men from 28 percent in 1990 to 44 percent in 2012 and from 38 percent to 46 percent among women

-in all worker categories there has been an increase in part-time over full-time work and growing numbers of discouraged workers who have given up looking for work

-to reach a full-employment economy an additional 29.2 million jobs would be needed

-approximately 18.9 percent of Hispanics are unemployed and 22.4 percent of African Americans

These long-term trends are correlated with deteriorating health, stagnating wages, and rising poverty (46 million people, 15 percent of the population, lived below the poverty line in 2013)

And for the ruling class Magdoff says:

During the economic recovery from the Great Recession the top 1 percent of income earners in the United States has captured 95 percent of the total growth of income in the economy. In 2002-2012 the bottom 90 percent of the population saw their average family income (excluding capital gains) drop by 11 percent, while those in the top 0.01 percent, that is, one in every ten thousand people, enjoyed a 76 percent increase in average family income (excluding capital gains).

Indiana’s Political Economy

Indiana is one example of a state in which local economic trends mirror the accumulation of wealth on one side and poverty on the other. In fact, Indiana has been one of the worst states in terms of providing for its population. Almost 16 percent of the state’s population lives in poverty, including over 22 percent of its children, 17 percent of women, 33 percent of African Americans, 29 percent of Latinos, and 25 percent of Native Americans. One-third of Indiana residents are low-income and for a decade have experienced a decline in median household income. Even with a recent slight decline in the rate of poverty, the number of low income Hoosiers (earning less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Guideline (FPG) has risen since 2011. (Indiana Institute for Working Families, 9/19/13; cited in “Slight Decrease in Poverty Offset by Increase in Low-Income Hoosiers,” Lafayette Independent, October, 2013).

To quote the Indiana Institute for Working Families:

“…more than 1 in 5 children live in poverty and 47 percent are low-income (more than all neighbor states, including Kentucky); more than 1 million Hoosiers over the age of 18 are in poverty and 2.24 million are low-income; more than 70% of Hoosier jobs are in occupations that pay less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines – that’s less than $39,060 for the same family of three.... we have a larger share of jobs in occupations that pay at or below poverty wages ($19,530 for a family of three) and jobs that pay at or below minimum wage than all neighbor states, including Kentucky; and wages have declined for lower- and middle-income Hoosiers over the past decade, while worker productivity has soared.” (Derek Thomas, “Cato Study Disingenuously Presents Molehills as Mountains,” Indiana Institute for Working Families, August 23, 2013).

As to economic inequality in Indiana:

-over the last thirty years the poorest twenty percent of the population experienced an income  decline of 6.7 percent and the income of the richest twenty percent rose by 57.2 percent

-the richest five percent of households have average incomes 11.9 times larger than the average incomes of the bottom 20 percent

-average income of the poorest twenty percent is $19,100; the richest five percent averages $228,200

The immiseration of workers in Indiana has largely paralleled the national trends described by Magdoff. Since the 1980s, the Indiana economy has experienced significant deindustrialization--radical reductions in the production of steel, automobiles, electronics; and increases in wholesale and retail trade; finance, real estate and insurance; and services. The changing economy was reflected in declining union membership which peaked at 21 percent of the work force in 1989 and declined to 9.1 percent of wage and salary workers in 2012. (Indiana union membership as a percentage of the total work force exceeded national membership from 1989 until 2001 and since then has declined compared to the national figure by 3 percent).

Currently, Indiana Republicans control the governor’s office, both state legislative bodies, one of two US Senate seats, and have 7 of nine House seats. Forty-six percent of Hoosier voters have registered as Republicans and 32 percent as Democrats. Although Indiana is largely a Republican state (voting for Democratic candidates for president only four times between 1900 and 2012), half of the state’s governors were Democrats in the 20^th century. Historically Democrats have been strongest in Northwest Indiana and bigger cities such as Gary, Fort Wayne, South Bend, and Indianapolis (where union members and minorities were larger proportions of the population than in rural areas and smaller cities in the Southern part of the state). Republican strength is greatest in rural areas, central parts of the state, and south of the capital city of Indianapolis to the Kentucky border. Democrats controlled the Governor’s office from 1988 until 2004. Popular governor, Evan Bayh served two terms as the state executive before moving on to the Senate.

Until 2010 redistricting, Democrats controlled the Indiana House of Representatives. Since the 2010 election and redistricting, Republicans control the Governor’s office and both Indiana legislative chambers. Without the check of a Democratic controlled House, state government escalated draconian legislation (some already in place) affecting working people: charter schools, cutting property taxes and resources for public schools, establishing (after a long public battle) a new right-to-work law, and privatizing public facilities, particularly highways. Governor Daniels (2004-2012) and now Governor Pence have served during the period of economic decline reflected in the data reported above. Cities, particularly in areas where minorities and unions have been strong, have been particularly devastated. Gary, Indiana has experienced economic decline on a scale paralleling Detroit.

Finally, state and local Democratic party organizations, with a few exceptions, have been weak and most of those Democrats elected to public office have been more conservative than the national party. One significant exception was the mobilization of independent Democrats (in Tippecanoe County they called themselves ‘Yes We Can Tippecanoe’) in 2008 to achieve extraordinary victories for primary and presidential candidate Barack Obama. Many YWCT activists continue to work in local progressive organizations today.

In addition, with declining union membership, the state AFL-CIO has been considerably weakened: paid staff has declined in numbers, national labor support has declined, and the traditionally strong Indiana University Labor Studies Program, defended by the labor movement, was closed down early in the new century.

Progressive Politics in Indiana Today

In short, the Indiana economy has experienced deindustrialization, joblessness, growing economic inequality, rising poverty and misery, and declining support for public institutions and minimal standards of well-being for the working class. These long-term changes have been occurring parallel to the changing national economy, only in more extreme form. The once vibrant labor movement in the state has been weakened dramatically. The long-term trajectory of economic decline and worsening conditions for workers has continued under periods of leadership of both political parties. From 2004 to the present growing Republican strength and introduction of rightwing policies has exacerbated the pain and suffering of workers referred to above.

Despite the long period of economic decline and the weakening labor movement in Indiana, progressives, small in number but vigorous in energy, have continued to fight back against reactionary state governance. Activists around the state are mobilizing around economic issues such as Medicaid expansion and raising the minimum wage; women’s reproductive rights; saving public education; and fighting efforts to restrict marriage equality.

(A future essay will examine political movements in Indiana).

THE MIDDLE EAST:MILITARISM, GROWING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, AND STARVATION

Harry Targ

Global Economic Context         

Looking at the last third of the twentieth century, Canadian economist James Davies, in a study prepared by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, wrote “income inequality has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years and we think that is true for inequality in the distribution of wealth.” In 2,000 the study showed, the top 1 percent of the world’s population accounted for 40 percent of its total net worth, with the bottom half owning 1.1 percent. Edward Wolff, another economist participating in the study, wrote “With the notable exception of China and India, the third world has drifted behind.” (New York Times, December 6, 2006).

The starkest interpretation of this kind of data was reflected in a 2003 article by Egyptian economist Samir Amin, who asserted that the global economy is creating what he called “the precarious classes,” both in agriculture and manufacturing, who cannot count on day-to-day remunerative activity to survive. He estimated that 2/3 to 3/4 of humankind is among the “precarious classes.”

Relevance to the Middle East in the 21^st Century

A financial publication entitled “Arab Banker” printed a summary of a World Bank study, “Two Years After London: Restarting Palestinian Economic Recovery” in 2007.  The World Bank, the Arab Banker, and other sources presented the following alarming data:

-The percentage of Gazans living in poverty steadily increased from 1998 (21.6%) to 2006 (35%).

-Israeli policies barring imports and exports isolated Gaza from the Israeli and global economy made matters worse; a 90 % decline in Gaza’s industrial operations occurred between the 2006 parliamentary election victory of Hamas and 2007

-Industrial employment in Gaza declined from 35,000 in 2005 to 4,200 in 2007. 

During the first decade of the new century, comparative economic data on Israel and the occupied territories indicated that West Bank and Gaza gross national product per capita was about 10 percent of that of Israel.

More recently, the United Nations issued a report entitled “Socio-Economic and Food Security Survey 2012: West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestine.” This report was produced under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, and the World Food program. It documented a connection between food insecurity in Palestine and external constraints on the economies of the West Bank and Gaza imposed by occupation and blockades. Among their findings were the following:

-34 percent of Palestinian households, comprising over 1.5 million people live in situations of food insecurity (19 percent in the West Bank and 57 percent in Gaza).

-Food insecurity, increasing since 2009, derived from growing unemployment, declining purchasing power, and slowed or abandoned aid thus decreasing jobs, income, and consumption.

-Food insecure households (often with larger families) are more likely to experience disabilities and chronic illnesses.

The report made three general recommendations: lift the embargo on Gaza, increase West Bank access to the Israeli economy, and support efforts to increase economic productivity in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Middle East Wars

The contested land of Palestine had been largely populated by Muslim peoples from the 7^th century until the mid-twentieth century.  In 1947, the year that the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, only 1/3 of the land’s inhabitants were of Jewish background. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the chairman of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, declared the establishment of a new state of Israel, and the first Middle East war between the new Israeli army and Arab states ensued. Palestinians and Arab neighbors regarded the creation of the new state as an occupation of the historic residents of the land. Over the course of this first Middle East war and those that followed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became a displaced population.

Subsequently wars occurred in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and intermittently from the 1980s until today. Wars were fought among Israelis, her neighbors, and Palestinians who lived in what became the occupied territories. Disputes have involved the legitimacy of the state of Israeli; Israeli expansion particularly its continuing construction of settlements in the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinian people; the rights of Palestinian peoples inside Israel, control of water and land throughout the region; and other issues. Various organizations challenging the Israeli state and land expansion emerged over the last fifty years including the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Outside nations, the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War; former European colonial powers such as Great Britain and France; and neighboring Arab and other Muslim states; have provided support for contending Israeli and Palestinian parties to the continuing conflict.

The United States became Israel’s main ally during all these years. Since 1979 Israel has been the largest recipient on a per capita basis of foreign assistance from the United States of any of the latter’s clients. In addition, Israel has become the best equipped and most powerful military force in the region, largely due to the billions of dollars of U. S. military assistance. Israel is the only state with nuclear capabilities in the region.

Finally, pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States support continued military and economic aid to Israel, Israel’s opposition to serious negotiations with what is now the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas ruled Gaza, and oppose  initiatives from peace groups in the U.S. and the international community. Currently, militant pro-Israel lobby groups are pressuring Congress to pass legislation threatening expansion of Iranian sanctions in the midst of a major Obama administration effort to reach accords with Iran on nuclear weapons. These domestic groups and the Israeli government regard Iran as the number one enemy in the region.

Violence and instability in the region, the tragedy of 9/11, worldwide terrorism directed against U.S. targets, and insurmountable and spreading conflicts have been directly related to Israel’s economic isolation of and military policies toward the Palestinian people and the continuing US support of Israel’s behavior. Within the United States, critics of U.S. support of Israel are excoriated and politicians are intimidated such that policy debate on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians inside Israel as well as economic embargoes and military attacks on interim Palestinian institutions and people in Gaza and the West Bank are largely censored from public discourse.

What Does This Mean?

First, violence and political instability in the world is intimately connected to the absence of economic well-being.  The economic crises faced in recent years in the industrial capitalist world are small compared to the punishing crises of survival that some countries of the Global South still experience in the 21^st century; countries and territories of the Middle East are prime examples.

Second, data suggests clearly that in the occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, all conquered in the 1967 Middle East war) the notion of “precariousness” (joblessness, land theft, food insecurity, grotesque economic and political inequalities in the region) is an apt way to describe the condition of the Palestinian people.

Third, shifting currents in Palestinian politics have been connected to patterns of economic growth and decay. In the 1950s and 1960s, secular leaders in the Arab world, including Palestinians, offered a vision of economic change and political autonomy for their people that was processed in Washington, and European capitals as threatening to dominant economic interests. Paradoxically, the U.S. began to support political actors in the region with a religious agenda, such as the followers of Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and Hamas in Palestine. Subsequently, these groups responded to the sense of economic injustice that peoples like the Palestinians experience.

There is no easy solution but the United States and other wealthy countries have an obligation to participate in a disinterested economic reconstruction of the occupied territories and support for complete political autonomy of the Palestinian people. Only that will break the back of anger, mutual hatred, and political instability. The United States should stop fueling the violence in the region by ending military aid to Israel. Economic reconstruction requires negotiation toward the creation of a viable Palestinian state, land repatriation, and guarantees of security from Israeli military attack. For example, Israeli settlements in the West Bank need to be dismantled. Economic development must be coupled with economic justice.

In the United States, the political climate needs to change so that a resumption of frank dialogue can proceed on United States foreign policy toward Israel, ending the violence in the region, and supporting economic justice and political rights for the Palestinian people.

RETHINKING THE UNIVERSITY IN AN AGE OF EDUCATIONAL CRISIS: LOOKING BACK AND MOVING FORWARD

Harry Targ

Measuring Educational Outcomes

A Purdue University press release of December 17, 2013 announced a dramatic new collaboration with the Gallup polling organization (and funded by the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation) to “conduct the largest representative study of college graduates in U.S. history….The Gallup-Purdue Index will provide the first measure that evaluates the long-term success of graduates in their pursuit of ‘great jobs’ and ‘great lives.’ ”  

While the details of the study instrument are still to be disclosed, the Purdue/Gallup/Lumina collaboration has raised a variety of concerns from scholars and other citizens. Why is Purdue collaborating with the much criticized Gallup organization? Who is the Lumina Foundation? Why is the large body of research on issues of educational impacts not being considered? Have reservations about survey research as a tool to understand and predict outcomes related to the college experience being considered in the research agenda? And, finally, is there a non-transparent political agenda from the federal government, state government, prominent institutions of higher education, the corporate sector or all of the above to restructure the role of faculty, students, traditional curricula, in the 21^st century? 

Becoming an Educator

These questions reminded me of some of my own experiences as a professor who came to Purdue University in 1967, unclear about my own goals about what I wanted to achieve as an educator. As a young professor entering the teaching profession in the midst of campus activism and debates about race, class, gender, escalating war, and environmental devastation, I came to the view that the university was a place where students and teachers could reflect on this complicated world in a setting that encourages open discussion and debate. Education for careers and happiness were surely important to the educational process but so was understanding and reflection about how all of us (students and teachers) could help make the world a better place.

I reported on some of these reflections in an essay (“Higher Education Today: Theory and Practice,” MRzine, 2009) some of which is revised, edited and presented below.

When I came to Purdue University, I was assigned to teach courses on introductory international relations. I was troubled by the fact that the professional literature in the field did not help me understand the escalating war in Vietnam.  I was also increasingly troubled by the assumption that it was not my place as a professor to publicly comment on or otherwise actively engage in expressions of my informed views on United States foreign policy, as teacher and citizen.

I also started teaching a course with the ambiguous title "Contemporary Political Problems," and through it my students and I explored the writings of the day that we thought bore upon our place in the world.  These ranged from The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), to the Port Huron Statement (1995), to Camus' The Rebel (1992), to C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite (1959), to William Appleman Williams' The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1972).  Later on I added literature from anarchist, utopian and Marxist traditions.

Almost invariably, our discussions ended up exploring what the various theorists and activists we read thought about education.  We added to our readings in these courses essays on education by Paul Goodman, Compulsory Mis-Education and the Community of Scholars (1964); Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society: Social Questions (1999); Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age (1968); Herbert Kohl, 36 Children (1988); Robert Paul Wolff, The Idea of the University (1970); and  Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1963).  Later writers such as Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000), Henry Giroux.The University in Chains (2007), Peter McLaren, Che Guevara, Paulo Friere, and the Pedagogy of Revolution, (2000), and other radical educational theorists continued the discussion. When Howard Zinn published A People’s History of the United States, (1980) my students and I discussed the author’s claims about who makes history and the various ways in which it is made.

Out of all this, I began to develop an analysis of the political and economic contexts of higher education; a sense of the contradictory character of education, particularly higher education; a conception of how my education had been shaped by the Cold War and U.S. empire; how the modern university was "contested terrain" (a metaphor drawn from writings on worker/management conflict) as to ideas and behavior; how "theory and practice" were connected; and, for me, what the obligations of the educator were in the modern world.

Interests Served by Higher Education

In his presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 2000, Robert Perrucci refers to "Galileo's crime."  He argues that while most claim that Galileo was punished for proposing that the planets moved around the sun, others have pointed out that he was condemned because "he chose to communicate his findings about the earth and the sun, not in Latin, the medium of the educated elite, but in Italian, the public vernacular, parola del popolo," Robert Perrucci, “Inventing Social Justice: SSSP and the Twenty-First Century, Social Problems, May, 2001.

This thought, for me, constitutes a parable for the history of higher education as we know it.  In my view it is not unfair to suggest that institutions of higher education have always been created and shaped by the interests of the ruling classes and elites in the societies in which they exist.  This means they serve to reinforce the economic, political, ideological, and cultural interests of those who create them, fund them, and populate them. 

In Robert Paul Wolff ‘s book, The Ideal of the University (1970), the author identifies the historical university as the training ground for theology, literature, and law.  In each case, sacred or secular canonical texts were studied with a microscope.  Their study was designed to reify and transmit the core knowledge claims, ethics, and laws across generations.  Wolff's description, quoted below and written forty years ago, about a reality hundreds of years earlier might still resonate with us today:

Thus the activity of scholarship is in the first instance a religious and literary activity, directed toward a given corpus of texts, either divine or secular, around which a literature of commentary accumulated.  The corpus is finite, clearly defined, growing slowly as each stage in the progress of Western civilization deposited its masterpieces in the Great Tradition.  Though the tradition may contain pregnant, emotionally powerful commentaries upon life and men's affairs, the scholar's concern is with the textual world, not with the world about which the text speaks.  (Wolff, 5)

Wolff (1970), James Berlin, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures, Refiguring College English Studies, (1996), David N. Smith, Who Rules the Universities? An Essay on Class Analysis (1974) as well as others added to this discussion an analysis of how the university changed in the late nineteenth century to serve the needs of rising industrial capitalism in Europe and North America.  The university shifted in the direction of serving new masters: from the clerics and judges to the capitalists.  Plans were instituted in elite universities to develop "departments," compartmentalizing knowledge so it could be fashioned for use in research and development, human relations, making the modern corporation more efficient, developing communications and accounting skills, and developing good citizens.  Elite universities initiated the changes that made higher education more compatible with and an instrumentality of modern capitalism.  The model then "trickled down" to less prestigious universities, which in the end became even more effective developers and purveyors of knowledge for use in capitalist societies.

Wolff quoted Clark Kerr, the former president of the University of California system and the target of the student movement in that state in the 1960s, who hinted at this theme of connectedness between certain societal needs, power, and education, and a parallelism between the era of the industrial revolution and the quarter century after World War II:

The American University is currently undergoing its second great transformation.  The first occurred during roughly the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the land grant movement and German intellectualism were together bringing extraordinary change.  The current transformation will cover roughly the quarter century after World War II.  The university is being called upon to educate previously unimagined numbers of students; to respond to the expanding claims of national service; to merge its activities with industry as never before; to adapt to and rechannel new intellectual currents.  By the end of this period, there will be a truly American university; an institution unique in world history, an institution not looking to other models but serving, itself, as a model for universities in other parts of the globe.  (Wolff, 33-34)   

For Kerr, the modern "multiversity," responding to the needs of society as reflected in federal and corporate research funding, was obliged to produce scientists, engineers, and doctors, what we call today the STEM fields.  This university, he said, was "a model" for higher education around the world.

During World War II and the Cold War, the modern university began to serve powerful new masters.  As Charles Wilson, president of General Electric, advocated in 1944, there was a need to maintain the coalition of forces that defeated fascism in Europe and Japanese imperialism in Asia, to stave off new threats to U.S. and global capitalism, and to forestall a return to the grim Depression economy of the 1930s.  To do that, Wilson said, we needed to justify the need for government (particularly the defense department)/corporate/and university collaboration, a collaboration that did so much to secure victory during the war.  His vision was referred to as "a permanent war economy."  Shortly after the war that justification was created, the threat of international communism.  The military, defense-related corporations, and research institutions had a reason to work together: to lobby for dollars, do the research, produce the technologies, train future scientists and engineers for the Cold War, and educate the broader non-technically trained population in and out of the university to accept the basic parameters of the Cold War struggle. 

Henry Giroux paraphrased President Eisenhower's warning, referred to above: ". . . the conditions for production of violence, the amassing of huge profits by defense industries, and the corruption of government officials in the interest of making war the organizing principle of society had created a set of conditions in which the very idea of democracy, if not the possibility of politics itself, was at stake." (Giroux, 14-15).

What kind of claims can be derived from these formative statements; the variety of literatures of more recent vintage,  arguments of educational theorists such as Giroux; and our observations of universities, curricula, and academic professions?

First, higher education remains subject to, influenced by, and financially beholden to governments and corporations.  These influences profoundly shape what professors and graduate students teach and research.

Second, as history shows, conceptions of disciplines, fields, bodies of knowledge, appropriate methods, fundamental truths pervasive in disciplines (rational choice in economics and the pursuit of power in political science) and the academic organization of universities are shaped by economic interest and political power.

Third, the structure of academic professions -- professional associations, journals, peer review, the validation of professional work, definitions of the substance of courses, dominant paradigms governing disciplines -- is largely shaped by economic and political interest.

Fourth, in the main, the university as an institution is, and has always been, designed to serve the interests of the status quo, a status quo, again governed by economic and political interest.

Discourse and Contradiction in Higher Education: The University as “Contested Terrain”

It would be a mistake to leave the impression that all that the university does is diabolical, even as it is shaped by and serves the dominant economic and political interests in society.  Within the confines of what Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (1962) called "normal science," researchers and educators have made enormous contributions to society.  But even this is not the whole story.

There emerged over the centuries and decades a view that this institution, the university, should have a special place in society.  It should be, in a term Christopher Lasch used to refer to the family, "a haven in a heartless world."  Through its seclusion, professors could reflect critically on their society and develop knowledge that could be productively used by society to solve human puzzles and problems.  This view of higher education diametrically conflicts with the reality described above.

The Galileo case suggests he was punished for his theoretical and communications transgressions by the academic hierarchy of his day.  More recently, scholars such as Scott Nearing were fired for opposing World War I, and over the years hundreds more for being communists, eccentrics, radicals of one sort or another, or for challenging accepted professional paradigms.  Of particular virulence have been periods of "red scares," when faculty who taught and/or engaged in activism outside some mainstream were labeled "communists," which by definition meant they were traitors to the United States.

In response to the ideal of the free-thinking scholar who must have the freedom to pursue her/his work, professional organizations and unions embraced and defended the idea of "academic freedom."  Academic freedom proclaimed that researchers and teachers had the right to pursue and disseminate knowledge in their field unencumbered by political constraints and various efforts to silence them and their work.  To encourage young scholars to embrace occupations in higher education and to encourage diversity of views, most universities in the United States gave lip service to academic freedom and in the main have sought to protect the principle in the face of attacks on the university in general and controversial scholars in particular.

During periods of controversy and conflict in society at large, universities become "contested terrain."  That is, external pressures on universities lead administrators to act in ways to stifle controversy and dissent.  The targets of that dissent and their supporters, and students and colleagues at large, raise their voices to protest efforts to squelch it.  Interestingly enough, the university, which on the one hand serves outside interests, on the other hand, prizes independence from outside interests.

The University in the 21^st Century

If the university is conceptualized as the site of “contested terrain,” as a place where ideas are debated and contested, and students and teachers alike connect these ideas to their activity in the world beyond the campus, then conceiving of the impacts only in terms of careers, job satisfaction, and vague references to “well-being” in terms of “purpose, social, physical, financial, and community” dimensions is too limited and simplistic. The university should be a place where traditional and non-traditional students are stimulated to develop a deeper understanding of the world and some sense of how it can be changed for the better.

In addition, the model of the university as “contested terrain” is a communal one, involving teachers and students in the ongoing collective struggle to better understand the world and conceptualize ways to engage in it. 

I am afraid the Gallup-Purdue Index, and other such measures, will not be motivated to or be able to help assess how higher education aided students to understand and change the world. In the end, this new set of metrics likely will be designed to measure the interests of those who control higher education today, not those who see the university as a vital institution that participates in the process of change.