Harry Targ
(Part of a larger paper entitled “The Crisis of Higher Education in the Era of
Neoliberal Globalization” published in Perspectives
on Global Development and Technology 19 (2020) 127-137).
A
prominent Big Ten university, Purdue, has led the process of transforming
itself into a model neoliberal university, in keeping with the Koch Brothers/
ALEC model of education. The transformation of Purdue University has involved
significant changes including privatization of public control of the
institution; moving into the increasingly competitive online education market;
shifting programs away from an educational mix of science, technology, the
social sciences, and humanities to more STEM and less liberal arts; currying
the favor of huge corporations and enlarged Department of Defense contracts;
establishing programs whereby wealthy alumni fund students’ education with
contractual guarantees by which students pay back the alums; and the
establishment at the university of a country club ambience to attract students.
As to
increasing Purdue’s connections with the corporate sector and the military,
Purdue’s Discovery Park launched a nanotechnology center in 2001 with a grant
from the state of Indiana and expanded with a $25 million Lilly Endowment.
Today it is a $1.15 billion research and learning complex that combines
Purdue’s expertise in science, engineering, technology, and biology, with
connections to the corporate world. As its website suggests: “Leveraging Lilly
Endowment’s investment, Discovery Park has created an innovative environment
where major global challenges are examined objectively, generating new ideas
and directions for future generations.” One of Discovery Park’s core strengths
is “Global Security.” Key research on this subject is designed to respond to
security threats, global instability, defense needs, terrorism, nuclear
deterrence and proliferation, basically responding to “the most pressing
security and defense challenges facing the nation and the world.” Recently, the
National Defense Industrial Association, a key military/industrial lobbying
group (NDIA) and Purdue University hosted a conference on “hypersonics,” the
development of highspeed weapons systems stimulated by a $2.4 billion
allocation in the 2020 defense budget.
According
to a Purdue press release, the university has one of the most comprehensive
hypersonic research capabilities. University President Mitch Daniels (2018)
declared that the university was “… ready to establish itself as the
‘university hub’ of hypersonic research and development.” Indiana Governor Eric
Holcomb declared that “Hypersonics systems are our state’s number one defense
priority, and I’m glad we can bring industry leaders together at Purdue
University to showcase what Indiana can offer” (Purdue University 2019). Some
comments suggested also that this new military research agenda would lead to
greater economic development in the Greater Lafayette area. One particularly
bizarre spokesperson justified the Purdue commitment to high-speed warfare by
referring to the mission of the Morrill Act of 1862 establishing land-grant
universities (Bangert 2019).
To
justify the expansion of collaboration with military contractors and the
Department of Defense, a Discovery Park spokesman wrote, “It has become
apparent that the United States is no longer guaranteed top dog status on the
dance card that is the future of warfare. To maintain military superiority, the
focus must shift from traditional weapons of war to advanced systems that rely
on AI-based (artificial intelligence) weaponry … we must call upon the
government to weave together academia, government and industry for the greater
good” (Rubia 2018).
As to
efforts to build enrollments and earn increasingly scarce resources, Purdue
University launched an online university with almost no input from faculty in
April 2017. Purdue purchased the discredited Kaplan University, and created the
new Purdue Global University. There has been no discussion of the educational
value of online education; considerations of “blended” programs, a mix of
online and on campus class work; subject matter and programs; who will be teaching
the courses offered; and how Purdue Global will survive the growing online
market. If the for-profit experience of former Kaplan University is indicative,
students will not receive a quality education, will incur debts, and will not
secure lucrative employment after they receive degrees.
As to changing curriculum President Mitch Daniels (2018) pridefully declared at a meeting of The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative association, that Purdue is the third most STEM-centric university in the country.
He further declared that liberal arts programs need to change to adapt to STEM needs. He argued that liberal arts education consists of “conformity of thought, intolerance of dissent and sometimes an authoritarian tendency to quash it, a rejection of the finest Western and Enlightenment traditions in favor of unscholarly revisionism and pseudo-disciplines.”
The tenure system, he proclaimed protected “mediocrity,” “illiberal viewpoints,” “conformity of thought,” “shoddy scholarship,” and was “hopelessly abstruse.” The worst problem he said was the traditional liberal arts curriculum was boring: “histories are written without heroes, excitement … glory, the human elements.”
Before heading
the University as Governor, he encouraged “top educational officials” to
suppress the use of Howard Zinn’s book, A
People’s History of the United States, from public schools and university
teacher training institutes. In an e-mail discovered by an enterprising AP
reporter, Daniels wrote upon Zinn’s death that “this terrible anti-American
academic has finally passed away.”
The
Future of the Neoliberal Agenda and Higher Education
With this backdrop, higher education, with Purdue as just one example, is shifting from influence of educators to politicians and businesspersons, decreasing transparency, growing integration with the military/industrial complex, and shifting educational focus from broad-based curriculum to STEM fields.
The new criteria for every program decision as to curricula is employment, not providing knowledge of history, culture, and developing the skills to write, think, and act as informed persons in an increasingly complex world. To evaluate performance, universities create measures, numerical “tests” of performance and outcomes, employing private corporations to measure performance, and increasingly measuring virtually every administrative unit at the university by their capacity to be profitable.
In the end these changes
require wresting any influence over educational policy away from faculty and
students. In the context of a global educational system fraught with
competition over students and scarce resources, market fundamentalism,
including commercial competition for students, the promotion of austerity in
terms of wages and benefits for educational workers, and the privatization of
many institutions and processes within universities, the neoliberal stage of capitalism
has brought the contradictions of global capitalism to higher education.
References
Bangert, Dave. 2019. “Purdue
‘Doubling Down’ on Military Research on Hypersonic Flight, Weapons.” Lafayette Journal and Courier. July 30.
(https://www.jconline
.com/story/news/2019/07/30/purdue-doubling-downmilitary-research-hypersonic
-flight-weapons/1864805001/).
Barrow, Clyde. 1990. Universities and the Capitalist State.
WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Daniels Jr., Mitchell E. 2018.
“Reliberalizing the Liberal Arts.” October 12. (https://www
.goacta.org/publications/re-liberalizing-the-liberal-arts).
Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. UK:
Oxford University Press.
Hershan, Robert and Crystal
L. Lauderdale. 2018. Trends in Higher
Education: 2018 Outlook: The Rising Need for Sustainable Financial, Operational
and Academic Models.
Kauppi,
Niilo. 2019. “Waiting for Godot? On Some of the Obstacles for Developing
Counter-Forces in higher Education.” Globalizations
16(5):745750.
Loss,
Christopher. 2012. “Why the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act Still Matters.”
July 16. The Chronicle of Higher
Education. (https://www.chronicle.com/article/
Why-the-Morrill-Act-Still/132877).
Purdue University. 2019.
“NDIA, Purdue Launching Inaugural Hypersonics Capabilities Conference to
Advance Transformational Military Capabilities.” Purdue Research Foundation News. July29.
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q3/ Ndia,-purdue-launching inaugural-hypersonics-capabilities-conference-to-advance
-transformationalmilitary-capabilities.html).
Rubia, Tomás Díaz de la.
2018. “The New Future of Warfare.” Discovery Park Vice President’s Blog.
October 1.
(https://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/blog/2018/10/
the-new-future-of warfare/).
For more information see:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4153726770392245772/136806380839985774
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