As I have written here and elsewhere, the commodification of higher education (i.e. the creation of an academic marketplace) represents the end of education as we have known it. It is not coincidental that this process occurs in tandem with the development of new media. This does not mean that new media is anti-educational or anti-intellectual, but rather that it alters our notions of thought and information to such an extent as to make schools impractical. Obviously part of this transformation has been the commodification of information as part of the information economy. Colleges are now a segement of the information service industry.
What has been lost/is being lost in this transformation is not all to be lamented.
For instance, certain sexist, classist or nationalist ideologies are being swept away (though perhaps new forms of racism, etc. are being produced). However, one important result I am seeing more clearly now is the shifting relationship between adminstration and faculty. Obviously, this is a relationship that has always had some general tension. However, the creation of an academic marketplace has led/forced administrators to view their institutions in a more commercial sense than had been the case in the past. That is, whatever we may think of the values, in the past, colleges operated upon certain values of Truth, etc. This ethic was something adminstrators and faculty shared. Now that colleges must operate by marketplace logic, the ethical foundation of higher education is erased. Instead we operate in a cynical marketplace.
Within the context of the marketplace, there is no space for acting ethically. Any ethical standard you might uphold would merely be an opportunity for exploitation from elsewhere. For instance, if I were to say my professional ethics tells me that FYC students need to write at least 20 pages and revise and meet with me, what happens when they raise the cap on my class from 20 to 25 or 30 or 35? At what point do I abandon my ethics? Typically we respond by making an ethical argument about pedagogy, the quality of education, etc, but these arguments do not make any sense in the marketplace unless they effect the bottom line. And making that connection can be difficult.
As such, the installation of the academic marketplace (which i sometimes call the "excellent university") means the end of all ethical relationships. That is, for example, the relationship between students and teachers, which was once predicated upon a common belief in ethics surrounding knowledge and Truth (and the teachers' authority in relation to knowledge), is now a relationship between a customer and a service provider. Faculty exchange various commodities from publications to service credits to student-teacher evaluation scores for promotions and raises. Departments exchange FTEs and assessment scores for budgets.
The only way to survive as a human under such conditions is to understand how the commodification of labor works in the marketplace. You need to understand what product it is that you are selling and how much it is worth. I'm not a Marxist so maybe someone can tell me if there's a precise term for this, but I see the academic in a mixed situation. That is, the academic sells information/expertise and labor. This is easy enough to understand though. You get paid X dollars. You work Y amount for that money. If you have 100 students or a 1000 students. It's just like back in high school when I worked the register at the supermarket. I got paid minimum wage. I was only ever going to work so hard and so fast. It didn't matter how far back my line went. Same thing being a professor. Five students outside your door? Sorry my office hours are over, come back next week.
The important thing is that in the marketplace, as an employee you can't care. Caring is for suckers.
Of course it is this absence of ethics that marks the end of higher education. Only an institution that operates on ethical principles can take up the task of pedagogy. I'll have to write about why this is the case some other time. However an institution operating by marketplace logic cannot act ethically (e.g. Enron). You can create laws dictating the operation of the college and you can try to create laws/contracts to force labor from employees, but that is difficult to accomplish, especially in this situation.
Clearly though, this is the agenda of conservative politics, to destroy public education. Why they think this will serve the interests of the ruling elite, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they figure they can just hire college educated folks from Europe or something.
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