Chomsky: How America's Great University System Is Getting Destroyed

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/chomsky-how-americas-great-university-system-getting



On hiring faculty off the tenure track

That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call “associates” at Wal-Mart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line. The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you’re getting the same phenomenon in the universities. The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank when they were advising their investors on where to invest their funds), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence.

This idea is sometimes made quite overt. So when Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called “greater worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, that’s very “healthy” for the society, because if workers are insecure they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health. At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan’s comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed. Well, transfer that to the universities: how do you ensure “greater worker insecurity”? Crucially, by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb than can be sawed off at any time, so that they’d better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more. That’s the way you keep societies efficient and healthy from the point of view of the corporations. And as universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is exactly what is being imposed. And we’ll see more and more of it.

That’s one aspect, but there are other aspects which are also quite familiar from private industry, namely a large increase in layers of administration and bureaucracy. If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in US industry even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management—a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities. In the past 30 or 40 years, there’s been a very sharp increase in the proportion of administrators to faculty and students; faculty and students levels have stayed fairly level relative to one another, but the proportion of administrators have gone way up. There’s a very good book on it by a well-known sociologist, Benjamin Ginsberg, called The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (Oxford University Press, 2011), which describes in detail the business style of massive administration and levels of administration—and of course, very highly-paid administrators. This includes professional administrators like deans, for example, who used to be faculty members who took off for a couple of years to serve in an administrative capacity and then go back to the faculty; now they’re mostly professionals, who then have to hire sub-deans, and secretaries, and so on and so forth, a whole proliferation of structure that goes along with administrators. All of that is another aspect of the business model.

[postulater]

1. Wow, 'greater worker insecurity'!

That right there tells me how wrong capitalism is for people.

[rwsanders]

49. Polar opposite of FDR's plan within a second bill of rights...

Based on his "Four Freedoms" including Freedom From Want.
Greenspan is sick.

[KG]

2. Chomsky knows what time it is...

[xchrom]

4. ...

[jsr]

42. Yep.

[merrily]

54. Wish he'd lend his watch to some people.

[reformist2]

3. If you aren't a superstar prof bringing in millions, you can forget tenure.

They don't care how well you teach, it's how much research you do.

And perhaps more importantly, it's not really how much research you do, it's how many research dollars you bring in. If your research for some reason doesn't attract the dollars, they aren't interested.

It always comes back to money these days.

[Helen Borg]

22. AbsoluteLy true

My brother talks about this all the time. He is a tenured professor, but keeps complaining at how faculty are treated. If you bring no money, they'll make your life miserable, even if you are tenured. If you have no tenure, then they will get rid of you for sure.

[Divernan]

5. Full professors whoring themselves out like one-sided expert witnesses

The reason the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the only state in the union which does not place an extraction tax on frackers (even Palin's Alaska & Bush's Texas chose to impose this kind of tax) is that the frackers successfully funded "research" projects by some Penn State professors which concluded that such a tax would keep drillers out of the state. So ridiculous even on the face of it, since all knew that the Marcellus Shale in PA is the mother lode for frackers. So we PA taxpayers subsidize Penn State & the university turns around and not just allows, but encourages its faculty to be bought off to screw us taxpayers out of the extraction tax on fracking.

These corporate funded studies are not peer reviewed but are presented to policy makers and the public with the imprimatur of the universities.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-03/penn-state-faculty-snub-of-fracking-study-ends-research.html

A natural-gas driller’s group has canceled a Pennsylvania State University study of hydraulic fracturing after some faculty members balked at the project that had drawn criticism for being slanted toward industry.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, which paid more than $146,000 for three previous studies, ended this year’s report after work had started, said Kathryn Klaber, coalition president.

The earlier studies were co-written by former Penn State professor Tim Considine, an economist now at the University of Wyoming who has produced research on economic and energy issues under contract to trade associations. The first study, in 2009, initially failed to disclose its industry funding and was used by lawmakers to kill a state tax on gas drillers. It was characterized as advocacy for producers by groups such as the nonprofit Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center in Harrisburg.

Two Schools

The University of Texas at Austin is reviewing a February study on fracking after reports said the professor who led the project is on the board of a gas driller. State University of New York at Buffalo trustees are reviewing a report on the school’s Shale Resources and Society Institute. In May, the institute issued a study on the environmental record of fracking in Pennsylvania that drew attention to the role of gas companies in creating the institute, according to a Sept. 12 memorandum.

[Enthusiast]

10. +1 an entire shit load!

[adirondacker]

34. Been there, seen it. Thanks for the knowledge. nt

[MisterP]

35. that's why it's so *vital* to insist that any inspection of where a science's money is coming

from be called PoMo antifa woo as often as possible

[LuvNewcastle]

6. Excellent article. I especially like this part:

"The idea that labor should meet the conditions of “flexibility” is just another standard technique of control and domination. Why not say that administrators should be thrown out if there’s nothing for them to do that semester, or trustees—what do they have to be there for? The situation is the same with top management in industry: if labor has to be flexible, how about management? Most of them are pretty useless or even harmful anyway, so let’s get rid of them."

People forget who actually gets things done in society. It's the workers, not management. Management is as much a hindrance as an asset respective to accomplishment. Why shouldn't the doers be the ones who set priorities? At the very least, workers should have a strong voice when the important decisions are being made. The system we have in America today is all about making profits for the people at the top -- nothing more. When people wonder about the source of our problems in this country, they should remember that simple fact.

[Enthusiast]

8. Yes. It's one hell of a good article. People! Recommend this.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

46. When I was in academia, we used to say:

"All these meetings that the administrators call and the paperwork they require interrupt our work of class preparation, grading, and research. But the administrators think that calling meetings and making us fill out forms IS their work."

[Enthusiast]

7. Once again. This post should have hundreds of recommendations.

People, come on!

[xchrom]

9. it's not 'sexy' enough for most people. nt

[Enthusiast]

11. They need to change their priorities.

[riderinthestorm]

16. I kick every education thread I see when I'm on DU but there's definitely a lack of interest here

K&R.

I love these kinds of posts. I think the adjunct professors are moving towards unionizing. That MIGHT spur some catalyst for change for the lopsided system as it currently stands

[CK_John]

12. I've asked before if Princeton will be around in 5yrs? I'm glad Chomsky admits there is a problem

but...

The real reason is productivity of the Cyber-era is not creating jobs for the population.

With half the graduates out of work or in McJobs it is obvious education will be cut, and the jackals have moved in to pick the bones of the education system.

[DhhD]

19. Your Reply is the real meaning of Trickle-Down, in my opinion.

[noiretextatique]

13. yet another emo fire bagger disparaging american greatness

[xchrom]

14. !

[Dustlawyer]

15. BP funded several marine biology departments to buy their studies of the Gulf after

the spill. Their reports make you want to drink the Gulf waters it is so positive while the Dolphins are sick, the Tuna have heart damage, crabs born with 1 or no claws, and eyeless shrimp!
We are going to have to take a stand at some point to stop the tide of change the 1% are making to cement their control over everything!

[raouldukelives]

17. K&R nt

[rurallib]

18. Nothing helps "worker insecurity" better than destroying unions

now that that project is nearly complete the destruction and reformation of many things can go on.

My curiosity makes me wonder if full professors will become individual businesses unto themselves selling their skills to universities a semester at a time. And will the whole administration be third-partied out to a management company.

Thus, like so many companies that have a "brand" but don't actually make anything themselves, universities will become a "brand" but will actually just be a cover company.

Maybe I will find it all in the article when I fully read it.

[DhhD]

24. During the Reagan Administration, this was called the reconstruction era.

Segregation has been going on a long time.

[groundloop]

20. Another issue... profs who bring in big research dollars are often not good instructors

I've experienced this, and my son is experiencing it right now. The high profile researchers (who bring in big money to the universities) are often very arrogant and self centered and could basically not care less about how good of a job they do instructing. They won't go out of their way one little bit to help students learn, it's a sink or swim atmosphere and it shouldn't be like that.

[malaise]

21. Here's the problem

When University administrations across most of the globe decided to cut full time contracts and benefits for ancillary workers, academics and administrators remained silent. Most did not see the neo-liberal business model which was staring them in the face which was going on in other institutions as well.

Then it came for the teaching assistants and assistant lecturers. Now the neo-liberal virus is a pandemic - destroying everything it touches.

Great read from Chomsky but some of us saw this coming and were ignored even by colleagues.

[yardwork]

23. Thank you for posting this.

[northoftheborder]

25. Excellent article.

I see here a reason for sky-high tuition costs: the huge bureaucracy in the administrations of universities.

[FarCenter]

26. Research and education should be split

Research should be done in research institutions and education, especially undergraduate education, should be done in educational institutions.

[Jefferson23]

27. Highly recommend. I love this man...K&R for Professor Chomsky.

I never heard of this book, called The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (Oxford University Press, 2011)


also* And another technique of indoctrination is to cut back faculty-student contact: large classes, temporary teachers who are overburdened, who can barely survive on an adjunct salary. And since you don’t have any job security you can’t build up a career, you can’t move on and get more. These are all techniques of discipline, indoctrination, and control. And it’s very similar to what you’d expect in a factory, where factory workers have to be disciplined, to be obedient; they’re not supposed to play a role in, say, organizing production or determining how the workplace functions—that’s the job of management. This is now carried over to the universities. And I think it shouldn’t surprise anyone who has any experience in private enterprise, in industry; that’s the way they work.

[Jackpine Radical]

28. I parted ways with Academe in the 80's after some years of floating around

as a non-tenure-tracked academic staff "temp." That was the fate of a lot of people of my academic generation. I was even publishing some "low-budget" research (easier to do in psych than in many other fields), but it didn't help much because it wasn't bringing in big grants, so I finally gave up the ghost and retreaded myself as a clinician.

Having watched what has been happening in the universities in succeeding decades, I can't say I've regretted that choice. Faculty work overloads, poor pay scales for that level of education, etc.

[Igel]

29. Meh.

As usual, he tilts at his usual foes and forgets that those foes may like what they do but also have good reasons for what they do.

Large class size? In '77 I was in freshmen classes at a small 4-year school. My humanities class had 40 or 50. My freshmen classes otherwise had 350-400.

The sophomore classes had 40-50 or more. Some were in large lecture halls. What he's seeing is an elite school adopting non-elite practices, and he's noticing the change for the first time. (He does that in linguistics quite a bit. What doesn't fit doesn't exist; what isn't important to him isn't.)

But he's also missing the reason for the need for flexibility. That's this idea brought in by students and parents and politicians that the academy needs to be responsive to demands. Reduce the core courses--have more flexible requirements. Fads and trends make class sizes unpredictable, makes staffing levels in departments sometimes out of whack.

So in the late '80s and early '90s there was a huge demand for Russian courses. History, language, culture. The small program I was in went from having a TA for 1st year and a TA for second year, with a professor for 3rd and 4th year, to having 5 TAs for 1st year (and my 8 a.m. class had 35 students in it on the first day!). The following year there were 5 1st year TAs and 3 or 4 2nd year TAs. The Russian history prof taught not a general history intro class and 15 Russian history students but two sections of 80 or 90 students. Etc.

Five years later the school was down to 1 first year TA, 1 second year TA, and the Russian history prof was back to a general "European history" class and 10-15 students in his Russian history class.

A different school 5 years later saw the English dept. swamped. Average class size was huge. "My" dept. had an average class size of < 20, and that included averaging in a 150-student introduction to whatever class. Lots of classes with 5-10 students, and if you cancelled them the tenured faculty would have no courses. The administration was scavenging money to hire faculty, and that meant TAs and adjuncts. Why? They'd learned that if they hire tenured faculty demand would probably shift and they'd be stuck with another dept. with huge class sizes and two depts. with ridiculously small class sizes.

Having a required curriculum a la '50s and early '60s got around this problem. But lots of people wanted flexibility for their students, and that requires flexibility on the part of faculty and universities. They want their kids to get good grades and demand good grades, so faculty are stuck dealing with complaints and having the provost get involved and the "customer's always right." Parents want their kids to be job-ready when they graduate, and that means workplace skills. Critical thinking is hard and requires a lot of facts, a lot of training, and kids really can't learn it much in high school (requires too much background, overhead, self-inhibition) and don't have the factual background to learn it in college. (Or the self-discipline.)

[tiny elvis]

47. thanks for the capitalist machine perspective

too many squiggly organisms here lowing about irrelevant, simple minded human needs

will no one think of the machine's administrative needs?
the superior machine logic of subjection will surely make barely cognitive humans realize who serves who

computer says, 'meh'

[woo me with science]

30. K&R

[moondust]

31. What about administrators?

Are they taking any cuts? Or behaving like good little CEOs and pocketing the "bonus" money they've "earned" by turning the faculty into beggars and raising tuition to astronomical levels?

[llmart]

33. From my experience at a university.....

the tenured professors are extremely well-paid and get tremendous benefits. I know whereof I speak. I do payroll/benefits for faculty. This is not to say the administrators aren't also well-paid with great benefits, but it's difficult for me to feel sorry for tenured professors. The people I feel sorry for are the underlings/staff (like myself) who are overworked and many times part time with no benefits. The part time instructors and teachers are paid very little also and are usually working other jobs outside the university to supplement their incomes.

[moondust]

36. Do you happen to know

the approximate percentages of part-time instructors and teachers without benefits, tenured professors, administrators, etc. in higher ed and how that has changed over the years? I guess I'm curious if the numbers sort of correspond to other economic disparity trends of the past 30-40 years, i.e. wealth and income increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few at the top.

[llmart]

38. I have not done any research on this.....

but the percentages at our university have to meet union guidelines. Our tenured professors are union and some of the part time lecturers are as well. Once a year I have to furnish a report to the union with the data on how many part time instructors we employ, how many part time teaching staff are union, and how many full time professors we have and what their pay is. The union contract dictates the percentages.

[certainot]

45. does your university's sports teams broadcast on right wing radio, like many? see post below

[llmart]

48. That particular post is very disjointed.....

and I have no idea what he/she is talking about, but, no our university doesn't advertise on rw radio.

Furthermore, I would question that poster's statements that the universities are destroying themselves. In looking at the list presented, some of those universities are highly regarded and growing. Our student enrollment is the greatest it has ever been.

[Enthusiast]

52. The post makes a signifcant point.

The Ohio State University example one. The radio in that town is a shit bed of right wing claptrap.

[llmart]

56. That may be true.....

but it won't "destroy" Ohio State. Don't forget that there are plenty of rightwingers in the general vicinity of OSU.

I am in no way defending advertising on right leaning radio or the fact that universities have become "big business". I also admire a lot of what Noam Chomsky has written and/done. My original intent on replying in this thread was to point out that not all professors are underpaid and undervalued by the university and only administration gets the big bucks. The majority of the people I run into outside of work don't even realize that there are differences in who is a professor and who is an instructor and who is a teacher and who is a lecturer. They think if someone is standing up in front of a classroom, they are a "professor". Also, many of our administration were professors at one time and may even still teach a course. I do wholeheartedly agree that there are, in my estimation, too many administrators and yes, they do get paid the big bucks, but I've also felt that way for many, many years about public school administration.

[certainot]

57. rw radio is ALEC's best weapon for attacking and privatizing education. and it's not about advertiz

advertising on rw radio, it's about endorsing it with the association. probably close to 40% of RW radio stations depend on those associations for a good part, maybe a decisive part of their profits.

the scott walker emails have numerous egs of the way walker/ALEC used and were dependent on rw radio for selling and excusing their policies and attacking their opponents. two of the loudest of those megaphones have WI U badgers mascots hanging from them, including the big limbaugh station in madison.

it's absurd, and repeated all over the country. look at many of those states defunding and privatizing education and you'll find many rw stations riding college sports mascots.

[liberal_at_heart]

32. K&R

[bbgrunt]

37. k and r. Faculty no longer have much say in even curriculum matters.

[Doremus]

39. k&r

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

40. Chomsky just doesn't get it. The only thing that matters is that a small group of people

get to profit financially. Whatever can be done to funnel more and more money to fewer and fewer people must be done!

[blkmusclmachine]

41. ,

,

[Lifelong Protester]

43. K & R

[certainot]

44. universities are also destroying themselves by supporting rw radio. they take a few thousand

dollars for renting their sports mascots to a right wing radio station, the radio station puts the mascot on it's megaphone to increase it's community cred and significantly improve its appeal to advertisers, and then the station spends 24/7 bashing public education, teachers, their unions, 'intellectualism', science, liberal potential chancellors, help elect regents and representatives that want to defund and privatize education and raise tuition, and stop legislation that would increase funding.

here's a list of 70+ major university football programs that broadcast on 170 limbaugh (28% of his) stations https://sites.google.com/site/universitiesforrushlimbaugh/

the total rw stations that piggyback our state funded colleges, including for basketball and stations that don't headline limbaugh, is probably close to 40%.

they're all pissing on their mission statements.

[Enthusiast]

53. +1 a whole bunch!

[fleabiscuit]

50. The Trilateral Commission!

“…At the liberal end of the spectrum, there’s a book called The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission, Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, Joji Watanuki (New York University Press, 1975), produced by the Trilateral Commission, an organization of liberal internationalists. The Carter administration was drawn almost entirely from their ranks. They were concerned with what they called “the crisis of democracy,” namely that there’s too much democracy. In the 1960s there were pressures from the population, these “special interests,” to try to gain rights within the political arena, and that put too much pressure on the state—you can’t do that. There was one special interest that they left out, namely the corporate sector, because its interests are the “national interest”; the corporate sector is supposed to control the state, so we don’t talk about them. But the “special interests” were causing problems and they said “we have to have more moderation in democracy,” the public has to go back to being passive and apathetic. And they were particularly concerned with schools and universities, which they said were not properly doing their job of “indoctrinating the young.” You can see from student activism (the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movements) that the young are just not being indoctrinated properly….”

Ah, the Trilateral Commission. I was wondering why David Simon might be pinning 1980 as the start of the shit.

David Simon at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017176030

[BlueStreak]

51. And don't overlook the impact of the Koch brothers buying off departments lock stock and barrel

This is happening all over the country and has barely been reported.

[merrily]

55. ...

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

Gordon Gekko, character in the movie Wall Street.


Universities are not immune.