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The Crisis of Higher EducationJohn Evans

It was bound to happen sooner or later with only four directions for expansion: alarger population buying the same amount of stuff, an equivalent population buying

more stuff, companies that sell stuff fighting for a greater percentage of the marketshare, or, taking a path of lesser resistance, entering new markets so as to market stuffyet-to-be-marketed. Thus the public becomes the private, late stage-capitalismpermeates present-stage academia, the Socratic vision of the university starts tosmolder, students become consumers and knowledge becomes a commodity, (in moreways than one), that is measured, first and foremost, in terms of return on investment,as are matters of large and small scale education policy alike. Its a realm wherehyperbole is almost impossible; the situation such that it displaces equal volumes ofridiculous and inevitable, rendering nearly any conceivable thesis, short of a necessarilyfar-flung solution, somewhat less insightful than the observation that the sky is blue.The crisis of capitalism is the crisis of education, only more so, as the relationship is

self-reinforcing and cyclic, one lending momentum to the other only to receive its owndividends in terms of additional mass and velocity. There are no frictional losses for anobject in freefall in a vacuum. Liberal Arts education is doomed; elite universitybusiness schools have become the de facto mode by which meritocracy replaceseugenics; tenured economics professors are the 21stcenturys new prostitutesuperheroes. One has a better chance of changing the color of the sky than of slowingthis rocket-powered glacier.

What began as a morbid curiosity that prompted me to start reading theChronicle of Higher Education on a daily basis has developed into a full-blowndepression bordering on despondency. Steven King would nauseate himself to thepoint of dry heaves trying to write those articles. Never mind the fact that I am currently,at age forty, paying for three college educations simultaneously - my wifes (the onlyone with a practical economic application), one begun nearly a decade ago on the otherside of the planet, and the one currently in progress all while employed at a privateuniversity. Not only do I not want to write this paper, I dont even want to be a studentright now. Or a teacher. Because what kind of person goes to great lengths toresearch a subject, then substantiate and document the futility of that exact sameresearch? And yet, Ive chosen my subject in much the way that a motorist who isneither firefighter nor paramedic slows to observe a traffic accident. Obviously, theirony is wasted on me, and thats more than a little ironic. A smattering of theses:

1. Universities sell earning potential, not education. This is a market-drivendecision.

2. For-profit universities often behave in much the same way as speculativefinancial instructions.

3. An incestuous, self-reinforcing relationship has developed between speculativefinancial institutions and academia at large.

4. With a glut in direct government funding, public universities are forced to employpolicies wherein market forces and the academic interests of students areperpetually at odds.


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5. University diplomas and Nike shoes are made in much the same way.6. The spectacle of education is at an all-time high, but in Hong Kong its upside

down.7. The university is an ideological state apparatus that instructs via both prescribed

learning material and example. Given present trends, we can anticipate that

universities will begin to turn out a less-informed electorate unlikely to forgo itsown short term goals for the greater good of the community as a whole, i.e., bydesign, universities will be both financed and populated by people too selfish anddumb to vote in accordance with societys best interests.

8. For those who do not enter with a substantial lead already established, the bestway to win the student game is to change the rules, or ignore them completely.

1. When one considers that in the United States a typical employee might workat as many as 13 jobs before the age of 30,1 it becomes evident as to why manylearning institutions currently find themselves in a reactionary position, pressured toidentify trends in the evolving job market as quickly as possible so as to supply

increasingly specialized programs of study. In the most developed economies,agricultural production can employ less than 3% of the population, manufacturing isgiving way to service-oriented industries that, in turn, are becoming more and moreknowledge based with the increasing infiltration and influence of financial capital. Thethree traditional roles of education: knowledge creation, knowledge transmission andknowledge conservation2 are in danger of a 2/3rds reduction, as, due to austeritymeasures, larger class sizes and greater demands made of professors, researchprograms suffer; and knowledge conservation most notably culture-specific forms ofknowledge fall victim to the proliferation of objective ranking systems and theirattendant levels of standardization.3 In much the same way that a German bank mightmandate austerity measures to the detriment of social programs within the EU, thepurveyors of student loans are now eradicating the humanities via a system wherein auniversitys ranking is based on its students ability to repay their school loans. Just asin the case of the EU, these measures are peddled under the guise of a post-ideologicaleconomic necessity in which the only definition of value is financial value.

According to neo-liberal economics, the provision of education as a publicgood paid for through taxation is unjustified. It is replaced by anargument for placing education on a user-pays basis, and deregulationeducational institutions so that they can vie for the educational dollars ofstudents (or clients).

4This oftentimes leads university administrators to believe that in order to survive

they must become customer-focused business enterprises so as to appease the

1Neubauer, 8.

2Ibid, 17.

3A inquiry into the impacts of the Bologna Process in particular, though beyond the scope of this paper,

nonetheless represent a promising avenue for additional research in this area.4

Tiffin, John and Rajasingham, Lalita. In Search of the Virtual Class: Education in an Information Society. London:

Routledge. 1995. As referenced in Yang, 276.


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educational marketplace.5 With students as consumers, market forces influence, if notdictate, policy, and courses with low enrollment are often cancelled while any coursewith sufficient student interest, no matter how inane the subject matter, is deemedeconomically (and therefore academically) justifiable, as economic standards becomethe new academic benchmarks.6

2. If one can make the allowance that the United States is the most completemodel we have, thus far, of late-stage capitalism run amuck, or at least that it serves asthe epicenter for many worldwide economic trends, by virtue of such things as theextortive nature of private health insurance, the disproportional voice of giantcorporations in terms of political influence, the dissolution of discourse and diversity ofopinion through consolidation of the news media, the ability of banking interests toactually procure public funds as a safeguard against privately assumed risk, etc., onemight also accept that the phenomenon of American, for-profit colleges exemplify anextreme example of these similar market forces influence on academia. There isanecdotal evidence within the generalization, of course, like the story of a 14-year-old

A student pulled from the floundering Detroit public schools who was contacted by afor-profit recruiter and encouraged to falsify his age on his enrollment documents. Inless than a year he ran up $13,000 in debt.7 There is the example of BridgepointEducation, owner of Ashford University and the University of the Rockies, whoseamazing profitability, which increased from $4 million in 2007 to $216 million in 2011,can be attributed largely to aggressive telemarketing and a labor model in which 50 full-time faculty members instructed in the neighborhood of 90,000 online Ashford students,while at Bridgeport as a whole, in 2009 for example, less than $700 was spent on eachstudents instruction, (for comparison, a nearby public university spent over 17 timesthat much).8 The profitability of the low-overhead labor structure is easy to explain, butthe effectiveness of the recruiting can be attributed, in no small part, to the fact thatmany of these for-profit colleges actively recruit former sub-prime loan marketers totarget a demographic that closely resembles many of their former clients. So how is thisallowed to continue? The first hint might be that 75% of students enrolled at for-profitcolleges are enrolled at for-profit colleges owned by Wall Street banks or private equityfirms, and, like a Wall Street bank, these for-profit colleges enjoy the sort of regulation(or lack thereof) that allows them to continue to collect government grant money (almostentirely from the GI Bill) regardless of student graduation rate and to simply purchasefinancially failing, yet accredited, universities to circumvent the accreditation processthemselves.9 Like many other industries, for-profit universities have a revolving doorwherein former legislators are appointed to the board of directors and employed aslobbyist many, well-paid lobbyists, as the industry as a whole spent over $16 onlobbyists in 2011.10 Campaign contributions were difficult to track due to Americas

5Currie, Jan. Globalization Practices and the Professoriate in Anglo-Pacific and North American Universities.

Comparative Education Review. 1998. pp 15-29. Ibid.6

Docherty, 1.7

Parker, 2.8

Ibid, 4,5.9

Ibid, 9.10

Ibid, 8.


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pivotal Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, but it goes without saying that they areinfluential. For example, during the Republican primary in 201?, Mitt Romneycomplimented one of his major donors and the co-chairman of his Florida fundraisingteam, Bill Heavener, (the owner of Full Sail University), for helping to hold down thecost of education. It should be noted, however, that a 21-month degree in video-game

art at Full Sail costs more than $80,000, and that this level of tuition is not uncommon.

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3. It might be noted that not all of this behavior is specific to for-profituniversities. For example, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Americas 34

th president, served aspresident of Columbia University following his role as Supreme Allied Commander inEurope. But during his time at Columbia he was criticized by faculty for his involvementwith large business, and neither accepted campaign contributions from the universitynor, while president, received representatives lobbying for legislation favorable to theuniversity. His salary was, one might assume, commensurate with or slightly betterthan other university presidents of the period. He had no financial incentive to increaseenrollment or minimize the teaching staff. He held no stock in the university.

But by 2008, even Columbia University had begun to slip. In that year, its currentpresident, Lee Bollinger, took home $1.38 million in total compensation, becoming theIvy Leagues highest paid president. Two years later, he began serving double duty asChair of the Federal Reserve Bank board of directors in New York. 12

For comparison, The CEO of the for-profit University of Phoenix received $25million in 2011. His counterpart at Strayer Education collected $41.9 million, while theformer CEO of Kaplan University left with a $76 million severance package.13

If these sorts of salaries seem reminiscent of those often scrutinized by theOccupy movement, one might venture that the relationship between banking andeducation is sufficiently incestuous to as to render the correlation somewhat more thancoincidence. Once again, the relationship goes two ways: just as banking and financepropagate the spread of for-profit universities, many reputable, even esteemed,institutions of higher learning are playing a role in the legitimization of highly-leveraged,speculative, casino investment.

In what has become widely known as the Inside Job Effect, the scrutinysurrounding one particular professor featured in the documentary has led to a closerexamination ofhow objective research conducted by many economics professorsmight be skewed by personal financial interests. This effect, as summarized in theColumbia Daily Spectator:

In 2006 the Iceland Chamber of Commerce paid ColumbiaBusiness School professor Frederic Mishkin $134,858 to co-author areport on Icelands economy and banking systems. In the report, titledFinancial Stability in Iceland, Mishkin painted a bright picture of thecountrys economic future, but he did not disclose who was paying him towrite it.

11Ibid, 7.

12Lee Bollinger, Wikipedia.org.

13Parker, 8.


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Although Icelands economy does have imbalances that willeventually be reversed, financial fragility is not high and the likelihood of afinancial meltdown is very low, Mishkin wrote.

Two years later, Icelands economy collapsed. Its major banksfailed, its currency lost much of its value, and thousands of citizens lost

their jobs.

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Of course, it is extremely doubtful that a more pessimistic report would havemade a substantial contribution toward preventing the crisis, but the implication of aconflict of interest a way to skew research for a known profit while those farther downon the socio-economic food chain assume more resultant financial risk is clear. Andthis potential conflict of interest is, it would seem, fairly widespread. The dean ofColumbias business school, Dean R. Hubbard, once an economic advisor to GeorgeW. Bush, currently collects $250,000 a year as a member of the board of directorsMetropolitan Life. This friendly relationship between bond raters, bankers andregulatorsand the objective academic economists who are trusted to assess andevaluate their decisions has, at the very least, an air of subtle collusion, but without a

mandate to require the disclosure of potential conflicts of interest in academic papers,those who review the academic work (for example other academics, politicians, thenews media, etc.) are at a severe disadvantage when evaluating the objectivity of theanalysis submitted. And as for self-policing by other academics in the field, here are theresults of an informal study in support of a push for non-binding guidelines presentedand adopted at the American Economic Association annual meeting in January of 2012.They are, undoubtedly, sufficiently shocking to quote at length.

(Gerald) Epstein and (Jessica) Carrick-Hagenbarth analyzed the publicappearances and commentary and scholarly writings that were producedbetween 2005 and 2009 by 19 prominent economists 18 from academeand one from a research institute. [] They found that, of the 19 scholarsstudied, 13 did some work for private financial institutions. Two were co-founders and held key positions in such firms. Another economist workedfor two banks as president of one and director of another. Eight servedon the boards of directors of private financial firms, whilst two wereidentified as consultants or affiliated experts for firms.15Given that these were prominent economists, the implication in the text being

that many held positions at Harvard, Princeton or Stanford, with the potential toinfluence, if not world-wide or national economic policies, at least the economic policiesof the private (profit-driven) institutions with which they moonlighted, it seems clear thatfull disclosure of vested interests would be a top priority. It was not:

Seven of the economists including a president, several trustees andthose who served on the boards of directors of private financial firms failed to mention their relationship to these firms during nearly 80 mediaappearances. While one economist divulged his or her dealings in all 25appearances, three others did so only occasionally in one-third of the 63op-eds and interviews.16

14Poliak and Roth, 1.

15Barret, The Inside Job Effect, 2.

16Ibid, 3.


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All of this, unfortunately, prompts the question of why when the AmericanSociological Association, the American Psychological Association and the AmericanStatistical Association have long had ethical codes that demand avoidance ofconflating influences, and the resolution of situations that even appear to promotebias17 did the American Economic Association adopt nonbindingguidelines

concerning disclosure only, begrudgingly, over eighteen months after the release of anembarrassing documentary that severely damaged public trust? One explanation mightbe that it didnt happen earlier because, in the case of economics, the stakes are farhigher in terms of money and influence. However, the most common argument against,as presented in op-eds in the New York Times, among others, is that guidelines wouldbe meaningless without the ability to sanction.18 The argument, so it goes, is thateconomics is the study of incentives and how they affect human behavior, and why, inthe absence of incentives, would a bunch of economics professors be expected tobehave contrary to their best financial interests? Why would the gurus of an academicfield in which much of human behavior is reducible to mathematical modeling behave soas to create an outlier in their own data set: In this case the ideology justifies the

behavior that substantiates the ideology.

4. Obviously, external market forces can influence internal university policy. Thetemptation here, in this context (a philosophy paper) is to try to systemize theseinteractions into some sort of structural relationship, but the best I can do right now is totry to highlight the similarities between this structural relationship and a pile of spaghettiwherein each intertwined pasta strand possesses one academic end and one financialend. The economic answer (and one that Marx would appreciate), however, is thatthese market forces are amoral, and doing exactlywhat they are designed to do.Heres another brief example.

The Charles G. Koch Foundation, a philanthropic foundation spearheaded by thesame billionaire brothers who, in large part, underwrite the Tea Party, has a little-knownhistory of making long-term contributions as large as $10 million and more to publicuniversities such as the University of West Virginia, Utah State University, GeorgeMason University, Clemson University and Florida State University. What strings areattached to these gifts? In at least three of these cases, the text of the grantagreements gives the foundation a say in reviewing applicants for faculty positions. 19

According to an article on the subject in Inside Higher Education:The goals and objectives of these grants were to support research intothe causes, measurements, impact and appreciation of economicfreedom, with faculty hired with this money expected to advance theunderstanding and practice of those free voluntary processes andprinciples that promote social progress, human well-being, individualfreedom, opportunity and prosperity based on the rule of law,

17Marshal, 2.

18This logic is great. Another popular example: Why introduce gun control measures when 100% enforcement is

clearly impossible?19

Berrett, Not Just Florida State, 1.


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constitutional government, private property and the laws, regulations,organizations, institutions and social norms upon which they rely.20This same article goes on, as one might expect, to document numerous cases in

which university officials denounce the implication that the Charles G. Koch Foundationmight have any influence on specific hiring decisions or research findings. Cary

Nelson, the president of the American Associations of University Professors, hadanother take on wording of the grant agreement summarized above and the Kochbrothers potential agenda, however.

Although the Koch Foundations objectives are written so as to soundupbeat and cheerful, they amount to code words calling for the dismantlingof the welfare state. [] Economic freedom. Sounds like mom andapple pie until you realize it means the government shouldnt collect taxes,and free voluntary processes means buy health care on your own if youcan afford it.21This is how Robyn Blummer, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, assessed

the context of the Florida State grant in an editorial that was republished in the

Huffington Post: Their ultra-conservatism needs a veneer of intellectual credibility,which is why for decades the brothers have lavished resources on a host of think tanksand academic institutions that are willing to make a case for anything a billionairewithout a conscience would want.

22But what of innovative, self-initiated policy choices that exceed the domain of

what might be considered ethical university governance?It is pretty much common knowledge that the threshold for entry into the most

selective universities is that the applicant must be either extremely smart (regardless ofbackground), rich and smart, or extremely rich (and potentially dumb as a bag ofhammers).23 Legacy, cronyism, the promise of financial contributions none of thesethings are exactly breaking news. For every rich kid that gets into a selective university,theres a corresponding poor kid who doesnt.Again, thats not news. Whats news isthat now the dumb rich kids are actually being recruitedusing the smart kids money asmatter of policy.

A 2012 survey of affluent students and their parents asked the question Whichattributes would make me consider a school that was not my first choice? The firstplace response was Offers a good scholarships and financial-aid packages.24 Ingeneral, there are need-based scholarships, academic achievement scholarships andmerit scholarships; this is where the merit scholarships come in. Though there is nouniversal definition for a merit scholarship

25 one might make the assumption that onecomponent criterion is academic merit. However, a 2011 U.S. Department of Educationstudy found that almost 20 percent of full-time college students who were receiving

20Ibid, 1.

21Ibid, 1-2.

22Ibid, 2.

23George W. Bush went to Yale.

24Carey, 2.

25 Leadership scholarship seems to code word for a scholarship used to recruit exceptional athletes of mediocre

academic achievement to Division III athletic programs. This is pretty standard practice among small colleges in

the American Midwest.


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merit aid had entered college with a combined SAT score below 700, and forty -fivepercent of had scored below 1000.

26 A feature in the Chronicle of Higher Educationsummarized the situation nicely.

And when colleges need to decide exactly how much money to throw atwhich stupid sons and daughters of the rich, for-profit consultants with

sophisticated pricing algorithms are standing by. In marketing its services,one industry leader, noel-Levitz, cites a client college that generates morethan $10,000 more per student from freshmen with the lowest levels ofacademic achievement than from those with the highest.27But, unfortunately, this is not a new trend, and even at public universities the

percentage of students receiving non-need-based aid is rising faster than the funds setaside for students who actually require financial help. The article continues:

In 1995, 43 percent of students attending private colleges received need-based aid. By 2007, that percentage had declined slightly, to 42 percent.The proportion receiving so-called merit aid, by contrast, jumped from 24percent to 44 percent, nearly doubling in just over a decade. 28

In the end, and in the absence of an institutional (corporate) conscience, simplemarket forces prevail. With the ability to redirect federal subsidies made to theuniversity itself, thereby redirecting taxpayer funds to replace institutional funds, $5000invested in the direction of an academically limited student of means willing to pay thefull balance of his or her tuition bill is going to yield a greater return on investment thanthe $20,000 that might be required to subsidize a student of limited means with need-based aid. This forces lower-income students to borrow more, work more at theexpense of study time or, predictably, attend lesser universities. And thus the gapcontinues to widen

5. It is difficult to discuss the impacts of globalization on higher education withoutan analysis of various trends in global population dynamics, but that is exactly what I amgoing to attempt to do, not because these dynamics lack importance, but because, atthis point, the scope of this paper has gotten a little out of hand and I need to try to limitmy analyses to only the most direct relationships. Popular discourse also includes anongoing discussion about things like ebbs and flows in information, feed-back and feed-forward loops, simultaneous convergence and divergence, complex systems andaccelerated change, but lets try, once again, to limit the scope to that of theoverwhelming propensity for increasingly larger sums of accumulated capital to affecthigher education in increasingly horrifying ways, full stop. Enter globalization (negativedefinition). According to Manfred Stegner, in his book Globalization: A Very ShortIntroduction, the third stage of globalization, which much of the developed world iscurrently exiting, consisted of the transformation from manufacturing economies intoservice-oriented economies dominated by finance; the extension of integrated regionaleconomies; and the widespread dissemination of neo-liberalism as a dominant

26Carey, 2.

27Ibid,2.

28Ibid.


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ideology. His analysis, as it appears in Ten Globalization Challenges to HigherEducation Quality and Quality Assurance

29, continues:The fourth stage, which we appear to be entering, is characterized bygreater parity in the movement of finance capital and labor application (butnot necessarily labor itself) through the globalization of service functions;

higher functional interdependence of both nations and regions; a re-nationalization of identities and re-definition of people mobility rights; andpersistent engagements of national, regional and global authorities todeal with systemic issues, such as environmental threats.Given that one might take the English language as the de facto means of

communication for global business, and thus neo-liberalism, the particular instance ofEnglish language instruction (and more specifically the instruction of English as asecond language) might make for an interesting case study of globalization in action.

The situation is this: Given that the neoliberal agenda has placed moreemphasis on institutional autonomy, in that it treats higher education as a commodity ina competitive marketplace, public institutions are subsequently stripped of state or

national funds (traditionally excised from income tax), and, thereby forced to reduceoverhead costs, search for other sources of funding (as previously discussed) orprioritize some programs to the detriment of others so as to compete for private grantsor better meet the evaluation criteria for various objective ranking systems. Enter, byway of illustration, a living example, a young graduate from a prestigious university witha degree in Creative Writing. Even with a large scholarship and full-time employment,he is still deeply in debt, a product of income inequality: his Ivy League tuition costsconstitute a much greater percentage of his income than that of many of his classmates,(who have the financial resources to simultaneously pursue various unpaid internshipsat publishers and magazines). Though his degree is a terminal degree in the arts andwould have been sufficient for a tenure-track position fifteen years previous, variousrating systems that tabulate the percentage of a university staff with PhDs now excludehim from this particular marketplace, a marketplace that, one should note, is currentlyshrinking faster than the polar ice caps. He is, therefore, relegated to the position ofadjunct lecturer at a community college, paid by the classroom contact hour so that thecollege can avoid the overhead cost of private health insurance. He moves to SouthKorea, a country with socialized healthcare and a strong national university system, soas to pay his school loans. He looks on in horror as a university rating system heavilyinfluenced by financial institutions initiates the elimination of the German, French,Dance, Political Science, Traditional Art and Philosophy departments from hisuniversity. Class sizes rise as colleagues in other departments are encouraged to teachadditional classes for an overtime rate less than a third of their salary wage. Seekingother options, he is accepted to a PhD program in Australia, assured that a fullscholarship plus stipend is forthcoming, only to watch his scholarship fall victim toausterity measures. Meanwhile, a branch campus of his university hires Philippineinstructors to teach Basic English courses at a still lower pay rate. When theseinstructors complain about living conditions and mandatory curfews, their numbers arereduced and a portion of their course content is relegated to video interaction with

29Neubaur, 7.


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Philippine instructors still residing in the Philippines.30 Our subjects in-progressphilosophy degree, in a marketplace soon to be devoid of philosophy departments,represents expenditure with almost no chance of a return on investment. Still, he paysit gladly. It could happen. The theoretical motivations for this hypothetical, perpetualstudent / teacher will be discussed in 7.

With the motivations and mechanisms for low-overhead established, thesystemic propensity toward falling pay rates substantiated and promises of ametaphorical equivalence with Nike shoes (as worn by sports stars such as MichalJordan and Wayne Rooney) delivered, enter a discussion of commodity fetishism (laterDebord definition) in education.

6. Question: Who got the best grades and test scores, went to the mostprestigious university, landed the highest-paying job, married the most beautiful womanand now lives in the largest apartment in all of Korea? Answer: Your mothers bestfriends son.

Sometimes what makes a joke funny is that it takes the truth, then makes it even

more true. Of course, the important part of this sequence, its catalyst, is the grades andtest scores that lead to just the right university -- as it has long been known thatuniversities are brand names in and of themselves. The average person off the streethere in Korea could probably name three or four Ivy League schools, or the SKYuniversities, or at least affirm that Oxford and Cambridge are very old, gothic andimpressive. A sweatshirt with Princeton on the front will do almost as much toestablish ones social status-on-a-glance as a car with a three-pointed star on the hood.Couple the desire for these status symbols with a healthy dose of parental anxiety andits all the explanation you need to understand why 72% of high school seniors in HongKong go to private tutors and over 90% of primary school students in Korea attendhagwans.31 But how, in a world of commodity fetishization, with Oh Sung Sik on thedownside of his franchise career, does one go about differentiating between tutors? InHong Kong, where they have actually taken a page out of the K-Pop playbook, the mostsuccessful tutoring franchises are marketed in accordance with the teen-idol image.The celebrity Tutor Kings and Queens dress in designer clothes with elaboratehairstyles and can be seen driving Italian sports cars. They adhere their images tobusses and billboards, sometimes dressed in black ties and ball gowns, at othersposing with machine guns, rocket launchers and other sophisticated weaponry. Theirstatus has been compared to that of rock stars: students purchase pens, ring bindersand folders with their faces on them.32 It is the ultimate inversion of status acquisition.Image is purchased; education is delivered.

30Not that I mean to pick on the Philippines here, or to imply that Philippine teachers are any less qualified, only to

highlight that, given the prevalent wage disparity between Korea and the Philippines, Philippine instructors can be

employed, or even outsourced, in much the way that many call centers for American-based companies are located

in India. Additionally, it might be noted that many students choose to visit the Philippines for their English

language instruction. According to McGeown, over 24,000 people applied for study permits in 2012, up from just

8,000 in 2008.31

Sharma, 2.32

Ibid.


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Meanwhile, and again, families spend a substantial portion of their income tosubsidize this glamorized academic arms race, and social inequalities continue to widenas lower income households struggle to keep up.

7. Most dangerous is the prevalent assumption that public education is not a

vital component of cultural identity and social stability, but a private economic matter ofpersonal choice. There is no short-term economic return on investment from a well-informed electorate, only an effectively manipulated one, and a vital component of thistransformation is the packaging of systematic inequalities, or grossly skewed realms ofopportunity, as innate, natural parameters within an inalterable, inevitable capitalisticsociety. Furthermore:

Behind this view stands the model of education that devolves theresponsibility for the common good to the aggregate of atomized individualchoices. This approach breeds a spirit of completion among the differenthigher education sectors, driving institutions toward the supposed rewardsand incentives of the market place and away from the traditional concept

of an academic community of scholars dedicated to the pursuit oflearning.33Gone is the metaphorical equivalent of the separation between church and state:

the separation between unchecked capitalism and higher education. The subjectmatter, of course, was always present in the past for example the virtues of selfinterest within the context of capitalist society and the concept of institutionalizedinequality is nothing new, but the difference now is the level of interaction and mutualreinforcement. The fact that fathers and mothers who go to Oxford breed children whogo to Oxford is a well-documented social progression, which, historically, has alwayshad an intertwined, self-reinforcing, economic component.34 The difference now is thatthis component has infiltrated academia to such a large extent as to exaggerate alreadyexisting inequalities and, through its very structure, actually validate the inevitability ofthese inequalities in the process. Because, to draw upon our friend Ranciere a bit, Whois the student to be in a position to question the teacher? Zizek explains it thus: Thereduction of higher education to the task of producing socially useful expert knowledgeis the paradigmatic form of Kants private use of reason that is, constrained bycontingent, dogmatic presuppositionswithin todays global capitalism.35 Furthermore,not all students are limited to the text at hand; institutions instruct, first and foremost,through example. Do as I say, not as I do has evolved into Do as I both say and do,i.e. perpetuate social / economic inequality. What academia has become is both amicrocosm of the larger crisis of capitalism and a sub-system serving to reinforce thegreater atmosphere. The student, as subject, (or the typical instructor, for that matter),now has far diminished means at his or her disposal to resist this exploitivearrangement specifically because the means of resistance (or even identification) havebecome the sole property of those who benefit most from the current system.

33Smolicz, Jerry Jaroslaw. Globalisation and Higher Education: A Comparison of Educational Privatization in

Poland, Iran, Australia and Philippines. World Studies in Education. 2000. As referenced in Yang, 279.34

Honestly, I got pretty tired of reading articles on this subject. If one craves a bit of entertainment, the 7-Up

documentary series does a good job of humanizing the phenomenon.35

A Permanent Economic Emergency, p4.


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In the end, soft repression in the form of indoctrination is far more costeffective than other forms more easily identified and opposed. This is the point whereeconomic self-interest and the concept of ideological indoctrination overlap.

8. Call it globalization, privatization, austerity measures or just the impacts of

market forces and the neo-liberal agenda in general, or all of the above, but one thing isfor certain: the concept of a traditional university is a thing of the past. The humanitiesare fading and entire departments are disappearing; social security nets in Greece havea brighter future than Philosophy departments in America. Professors are beingreplaced by adjuncts, and adjuncts are being replaced adjuncts from other countries, oronline learning options, or online learning options employing adjuncts from othercountries. The campus is no longer a public space. How does an adjunct with little orno job security resist these trends, via the internet, from another part of the world? Orconduct meaningful research? Or represent a diversity of opinions while employingstandardized teaching materials? To rehash an old refrain, this is a systematic problemthat originates outside of academia, and yet academia has lost much of its ability to

catalyze material (or even conceptual) change. The first step, one might argue, asmore of a stop-gap or band-aid measure, would be to isolate academia from marketforces to the largest extent possible: regulate or even abolish for-profit universities(both where they already exist and where they inevitably someday will); enforce anti-conflict-of-interest measures foralluniversity staff; establish something akin to anacademic minimum wage corresponding to different levels of research, education, andteaching experience; enforce a system wherein all non-need-based merit aid awardsare made on an income blind bases, independent of any knowledge of familybackground, blah, blah, blah, the list goes on. Fat chance without some kind of Socraticphilosopher king running the show, and it just so happens that the sys tem isnt turningout philosophers any more. Whats necessary, therefore, is to redefine success on thepersonal level, so as to, therefore, redefine academic success and broaden the scopeof reasonable academic pursuits. Give this a try and maybe the philosopher kings willbegin to develop in a generation or two. As it stands, the current system:

does not necessarily cater to non-economic needs. The need toprovide for ourselves, to give, create and invent, to do things for ourselvesand one another [arguably, the marked does not encourage selflessness(giving to others, doing good to others), unless it is also profitable] allthis is subverted by the market, since such profound needs cannot beexpressed through the markets crude calculus.36But what about a different sort of calculus, one that does not rely upon the

neoliberal sequence of education leading to wealth leading to options in themarketplace leading to happiness? Because, as it stands, this sequence could morereasonably be reduced to one in which a student, burdened by the impending doom ofschool loans, is left with little option other than to choose both the university and themajor that are statistically most likely to yield the quickest return on investment: its not acase in which the goal is to explore the myriad options of the marketplace, but to placeacademic bets so as to minimize the possibility of financial ruin. Needless to say, in thissystem, the smart money is not on the arts or humanities and, therefore, not in a

36Yang, 274.


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diversity of knowledge or the varying points of view necessary to initiate the sort ofdiscourse that might lead to long-term change.37 To exacerbate matters, there is aconsiderable movement within the American legislature that specifically target majorssuch as sociology and political science for a reduction in federal funding and the systemwherein Korean universities are effectively rated by banks based on students ability to

repay school loans in a timely manner is well known.

38

In short, if one capitulates to thereality that economic criteria are the basis on which most matters of academic policy arecurrently being made, one must necessarily recognize that the economic criterianecessary to justify a diverse spectrum of fields of study is also missing.

This is where the idea of public works and equivalent costs enters the picture: forexample what personal increase in income would be necessary to offset the loss of apublic good that can be used for free such as a park.39 Only, in this case, the publicgood is not a matter of social programs or infrastructure, but that of a socially engagedsociety, or at least a civic-minded, politically engaged electorate. How much morewould the average person pay in order to have a vibrant artistic presence in his or hercommunity, or a diversity of opinions so as to initiate lively, informed debate? Likewise,

what material rewards would a serious student be willing to forgo so as to explore amore holistic approach to education, (and its attendant immaterial benefits and qualityof life rewards)? In much the same way that the loss of clean air or a public park canbe quantified in terms of personal opportunity costs, a re-prioritization of the allocationof funds in higher education based on a system in which a monetary valuation of adiverse population in which individuals well-educated in the arts and humanities arerepresented is necessary.

It has been demonstrated in numerous studies that the correlation between acountys per-capita income and the happiness of its citizens is either non-existent, or, atbest, does not yield a greater correlation than the link between happiness and thecountrys emphasis on (i.e. tax commitment to) education, healthcare, social programs and public works.40 How, then, does one explain why governments and universitieshave become so willing to embrace an ideology wherein the value of education isassumed to correlate directly with the magnitude of future earning potential?

One explanation might be that the crisis of capitalism and the crisis of highereducation are one in the same.

37Obviously, this is a bit of a generalization: the idea of a human rights lawyer able to repay her school loans, or of

a social worker with a graduate degree is not unheard of, but even in these instances a homogeneity of (privileged)

socio-economic background is the rule. I would be extremely surprised if a top-tier American university has turned

out a modest-means PhD level graduate in Special-Needs Education since the bankruptcy laws were changed so as

not to excuse school loans, though there could be an instance or two. Likewise, no one is making the case that a

civic-minded stockbroker is a categorical impossibility, just a relative statistical improbability.38

Baskin, 1. There are countless other articles on this subject, but after a while reading them just got too

depressing.39

The ideas to follow are to a large extent a recontextualizaton of those expressed in: Davis, The Political

Economy of Unhappiness.40

All agree, however, that rising income inequality is sure source of unhappiness on a national lever. These

studies are everywhere. One is Frank, Robert, Income and Happiness: an Imperfect Link. The New York Times,

March 9, 2008.


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Basken, Paul. Senate Moves to Limit NSF Spending on Political Science, TheChronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2013. http://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Moves-to-Limit-NSF/138027/.

Berrett, Dan. The Inside Job Effect. Inside Higher Education. April 19, 2011.http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/04/19/economists_start_probing_their_own_ethics

Berrett, Dan. Not Just Florida State Inside Higher Education, June 28, 2011.http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/28/koch_foundation_gifts_to_colleges_and_universities_draw_scrutiny

Bidwell, Allie. Online Programs Reject Students to Avoid Costly State Approval, ReportSays, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2013.http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Programs-Reject/138021/.

Carey, Kevin. Too Much Merit Aid Requires No Merit. The Chronicle of HigherEducation, February 18, 2013. http://chronicle.com/article/Too-Much-Merit-Aid-Requires/137365/.

Davies, William. The Political Economy of Unhappiness. New Left Review71,September-October 2011.

Dillion, Ariel. Education in Platos Republic. Paper presented at the Santa ClaraUniversity Student Ethics Research Conference, May 26, 2004.http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/dillon/education_plato_republic.html.

Docherty, Thomas. Margret Thatchers Legacy Divides British Higher Education, TheChronicle of Higher Education, April 12, 2013.http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/margaret-thatchers-legacy-divides-british-higher-education/32157

Frank, Robert, Income and Happiness: an Imperfect Link. The New York Times,March 9, 2008.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09view.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Kolowich, Steve. Faculty Backlash Grows against Online Partnerships. The Chronicleof Higher Education, May 2, 2013. http://chronicle.com/article/Faculty-Backlash-Grows-

Against/139049/
http://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Moves-to-Limit-NSF/138027/http://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Moves-to-Limit-NSF/138027/http://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Moves-to-Limit-NSF/138027/http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/dillon/education_plato_republic.htmlhttp://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/dillon/education_plato_republic.htmlhttp://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/dillon/education_plato_republic.htmlhttp://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Moves-to-Limit-NSF/138027/http://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Moves-to-Limit-NSF/138027/


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Marshall, Lewis. Disclosure= Resolution: Academic economists and the global crisis.The Stanford Progressive. July, 2011. http://www.stanford.edu/group/progressive/cgi-bin/?p=1685

McGeown, Kate. The Philippines: The worlds budget English teacher. BBC News,

Philippines. November 12, 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20066890

Neubauer, Dean. Ten Globalization Challenges to Higher Education Quality andQuality Assurance. http://www.eastwestcenter.org/education/international-forum-for-education-2020/education-leadership-institute/current-institute

Parker, Chris. For-Profit Colleges Only a Con Man Could Love Barbarians in theIvory Tower. Village Voice, August 1, 2012. http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-con/.

Poliak, Shira and Roth, Sammy. Inside Job sparks three separate reviews of

disclosure policy. Columbia Daily Spectator. April 14, 2011.http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2011/04/14/%E2%80%98inside-job%E2%80%99-sparks-three-separate-reviews-disclosure-policy

Robinson, William I. Global Capitalism: The New Transnationalism and the Folly ofConventional Thinking. Science and Society, Vol 69, No. 3. July 2005, 316-328.

Sharma, Yojana. Meet the tutor kings and queens. BBC News online. November 27,2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20085558

Yang, Rui. Globalisation and Higher Education Development: A Critical Analysis.International Review of Education, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1025303303245#page-1

Zizek, Slavo. A Permanent Economic Emergency. New Left Review64, July-August2010.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-con/http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-con/http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-con/http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-con/http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-08-01/news/for-profit-colleges-con/

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