2002-giroux-neoliberalism-corporate-culture-and-the-promise-of-higher-education[1]

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Reading Research Quarterly The most frequently cited journal in its field, Reading Research Quarterly reveals the most effective research-based approaches to literacy instruction. This highly acclaimed journal promotes the lively exchange of information and ideas about literacy theory, research, and practice among learners of all ages.Topics include: Theory and research into practice: Response to literature as a cultural activity Literacy and mascu linities Access to print in low-income and middle-income communities How phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn how to read Genre and other factors influencing teach ers' book selection for science instruction

Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sp here

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H E~ RY

A . GIROUX Pennsylvan ia State University In this article, Henryl Giroux addresses the corrosive effects of corporate cultuTe on the academy and recent attempts by facu lty and students to Tesis t the corp oratization of higheT education . Giroux mgues that neoliberalism is the most dangerous ideology of the GUn-enl historical momen t. He shows that civic discourse has given way to the language of commercialization, pTivatization, and deregulation and that, within the language and images of cmpo'rate culture, citizenship is port rayed as an u tterl)! priva tized affair that produ ces self-interested individuals. He maintains that corpo­ rate cuLtU1'f! f unctions largely to either ignoTe or cancel out social injustices in the ex­ isting social order by overriding the democratic impulses and practices oj civil society th rough an emphasis on the un bridled workings of market Tela/ions. Giroux suggests that these trends mark a haza1-do'Us turn in U. S. society, one that threatens ou r un­ derstanding of democracy and affects the ways we addTess the meaning and purpose of higher education. !\'eollbe ralism is th e defi n ing pol itical econo mic p aradigm of our time ­ it re­ fe rs to the policies and processes whereby a relative h a n dfu l of priva le in te rests are pe rm itted to con tro l as mu ch as possib le of social life in order to max im ize their personal p rofit. Assoc iated ini6ally with Reagan and Thatcher, fo r th e past l\\o d ecades n eolibcralism has b ee n th e dominan t global po litical eco­ nom ic tre nd ado pted by poli tical parties of th e cen ter and much of the trad i­ ti o n al left as well as Lbe right. T h e se partie s a nd Lbe po licie s th ey e nact repre­ ~ent th e immediate inte rests of e x trem e ly wealthy im'eslo rs and less th a n o n e I ho usand large corporatio n s.

- Robe rt W . McCh esney t /-Imvrm{ Edv(aliol1rli Rroin<' Vol. 72 No. 4 Wi nter 2002 Copyrigh l © by the President and Fellows ofHan­ard Co ll ege

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The task ill th e ory no less th an in practice is ... to re illuminate pub li c space for a civil society in coll a pse .... Societ.ies that pretend that market liberty is the same thing as civic liberry and d e pend on consume rs to do the work of citize ns are like ly to achieve n ot uni ty b ut a plastic homogene ity - and ... to give up d e mocracy.... We seem fated to e nter an era in whic h in the space where o ur p ublic voice shou ld be h eard will be a rauco us babble thal leaves the civic souls of na tions fo rever mute .

- Benjamin R. Bar ber 2

The Dystopian Culture of Neoliberalism As the forces of n eolibe ralism a nd corporate c ulture gain ascenda ncy in the U n ite d States, tb e re is an in creasing call fo r people eitJl er to surren der or narrow their capacities for en gaged politics in exchange for market-based val ues, rela tionships, an d iden tities . Marke t force s have rad ically altere d the language we use in bo th representin g an d evaluati ng human beh avior a n d acti on . One consequence is th a t civic discou rse h as given way to the language of commercialism , privatization, a nd d eregula ti on. In addition , individual and social agency are defm ed largely th ro ugh marke t-driven notions of indi­ vidu alism , compeLition , and consumption. Celebrities such as Martha Stew­ ar t, Jane P ratt, George Foreman, and Mic h aeljord an now market th emselves as b rand n ames. The widely read busin ess magazine ,Fast Company devoted an en lire issue to the theme "The Brand Called YOU. "3 No longer defined as a fo rm of self-developmelll, in d ividuality is red uced to the endless p u rsuit of m a ss-m e diated in [erests, pleasures, an d comm ercially produced lifestyles.

One egre gious example of self-marke ting can be observed in two recen t high sch ool graduate s' successful a ttempt to secure corp orate sponsorshi p to pay for the ir college tui tio n an d expenses. just before graduatin g from hig h scho ol in j une 2001, Chris Barre tt and Luke McCabe crea t.ed a we bsite , hrisandLuke.com, offe ring themseh'es up as "walking billboards fo r compa­ nies" wi llin g to both spo n sor th em and pay for Lheir college tuiti o n , roo m, and board. Claiming th at th ey "wo uld p ut corporate logos on their cloth es, wear a com p any's sunglasses, u se their go lf clubs, e at their pizza, dl'ink the ir soda, listen to th eir m usic or drive th e ir cars, " these two you ng men appeared im p ervious to the im plications of defi ning th emselves exclusively thro ugh those market valu es in which buying and selli ng appears to be the primary marker of one 's relations h ip to the larger social order.4 Eventually, First USA, a s ubsidiary of Bank One Corporation an d a leader in issuing Visa credit card s to students, agreed to spo nsor Ch r is and Luke , th u s provid ing them with th e d ubiolls disti nction of becoming the fi rst fu lly corpo r ate spon­ sored unive rsi ty students.

Once Lhe d eal was sealed, Ch ris a nd Luke were featured in most of the ma­ jor m e dia , includin g USA Today, th e New York Times, a nd Teen Newsweek.

H ailed in the press as a heartwarming sto r y about individ ual ingen u ity, busi­ ness acum en, and resourcefulness, ul e re was little criticism of the individual

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Neoliberalism, C01pomte Culture, and the Promise of H igher Education H ENRY A. GIRO UX

and social implications o f wh at it meant for these young people to b oth de­ fin e th eir id en tities as commodities an d p rese nt themse lves sim ply as objec ts lo b e adve rtised an d cons um ed. And, of co u rse, n o th ing was said abou t spi­ ralin g tuition cost.<; co upled with evapora ting fin ancial aid that increasingly p uts high er education out of reach [or working-class and midd le-class youth.

I n a media-saturated society, it appears perfec tly le gi tim ate to assu me th at young peo ple can define themselves almost exclusively through th e aestheti pleasur es of co nsum e rism and the d ictates of commercialism rather than thro ugh a n o tion of pu blic n ess b ased on eth ical norms and d e mocra ti c val­ u es. 5 In sho rt. it ap p ears that a sto ry in wh ic h students give up their vo ices to promo te a corpo rate id eology is viewed in the public media less as a thr eat to dem ocrati c no rms and civic courage th an as an ode to the triumphant wis­ dom of market in gen uity. Equ ally d isturbing is th e assum ptio n on the part of the two studen ts that th eir identities as co rpora te logos is n eithe r a t odds with their role as un iversity students n or incom patible with the role th e uni­ ve rsity should playas a site of critical thinking , d emocratic lead e rship, and public engagemen t. U n daun ted by bl urring th e line between the ir rol e as co rpo rate p itchme n and their r ole as studen ts, o r for th at m alle r about the encroachmen t of advertising into higher edu cation, Chris and Luke d e­ fe nde d theix p ositio n by claimin g, "We wa nt to b e role models fo r oth er ki d s to show that you don 't have to wake u p every d ay an d be like everybody else."6 Afte r Chris and Luke's sto r y ran in the New York Times, a rela te d incident gain ed widespread p ublic attention, pe rhaps inspixed by Chris and Luke's in­ ve n tive entrepe neurialism . A young couple in MOWl t Kisco, New York, at­ tempted to au ction off on Ebay and YallOO the n a mi n g rights o f their soon-to­ be-born child to the highest corporate bidde r. These are mo re th an oddball sto r ies . .As William Powers, a writer fo r the A tlantic Monlhl)~ obse rves, th ese p ub li c nar ratives re present "dark fables about wha t we are beco mi ng as a cul­ ture."7 One wo n de rs where th is type of madness is goi ng to e n d. But o ne thing is clear: As sociCl), is d efined th rough the c ulture and :values of neo­ libe ral ism, th e relationship between a cri tical education , p ublic m o rali ty, and civic responsibility as cond itions for crea ting though tful and e ngaged citizens are sacrificed all too willingly to the in teres t of fin an cial capital an d th e logic of p rofit-m akin g.

This sad an d tragic n arrative suggests that citizens lose their publi c voic e as market libe r ties replace civic freedoms and socie ty increasingly depends on "consumers Lo do the work of citize n s."8 Similarly, as corpora te cultu re ex­ ten ds even d eepe r into t.he basic insti tution s of civi l and political society, the re is a simult.a.neous diminish ing of noncommodified public sphe res ­ those instituLions such as publjc schools, church es, noncommerc ial publi broadcastin g, librar ies, trade un ions, and various volu ntar y institut.ions en­ gaged in d ialogue, ed ucation, ancllearning - th at address the re lationsh ip of the self to publiC life and social respon sibili ty to the broader demands of ci tizenship , as well as provide a robust vehicle for public pa rtic ipa tion an d 427

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Neoliberalisrn, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education HENRY A. G IROU X

d e mocratic cilize nship . As m edia th eo rists Edward Herman and Robert McChesney o bserve , such n o n com mod ified pu blic spheres have played an inva lu able role historically "as places an d foru ms wh e re issues of importance to a poli tical comm uni ty are d iscu ssed and d e bated, and where information is prese nted that is e ssen tial to citizen participation in community life."9 Witho u t the se critical public sph e res, corp orate power often goes unchecked a n d poli tics b ecomes d u ll , cynical, and oppressive. lO But more importantly, in th e absence of such public sp h e res it b ecomes more d ifficult for citizens to ch allen ge the n eoli be raJ myth th at citi zens are merely consumers and that "who lly unregula te d marke ts are the so le means by which we can produce an d d istribute everything we care about, from durable goods to spiritual val­ ues , fro m capital developm ent to social j ustice, fro m profitability to sustain­ able environ m ents, fro m private wealth to esse ntial com monweal."l I As dem­ ocra tic values give way to co mmercial valu es, intellectual ambitions are often reduce d to an instrume nt of the e n tre prene uri al self and social visions are dismissed as hopelessly o ut of date. 12 Pub lic space is portrayed exclusively as an inves tme nt o pp o rtuni ty, and th e public good increasingly becomes a met­ ap hor for p ublic diso rder. That is, any notion of the p ublic - for example, p ubl ic schools, public transp ortation, or pu blic parks - becomes synony­ mous with disrep air, d ange r , and r isk. Within this discourse, anyone who does n o t b e lieve t hat rapacio us capitalism is the only road to freedom and th e good life is dismi sse d as a crauk . H e nce, it is not surp rising that Joseph Kah n , wri tin g in rh e New York Times, argues witho ut irony , "These days, it see ms, only wil d-eyed an archists and Th ird Wo rld dictato rs believe capital­ ism is no t th e h igh ro ad to a b e tter life."l :l Neo1iberalism b as become the most d an gerous ide ology of the current historica l m oment. 14 It assaults alJ things public, m ystifies the hasic contra­ dic ti on be twe en d e m ocratic values and m arket fundamentalism, and weak­ ens an}' viable n otio n of political agency by offering no language capable of connecting private co n side ra tions to p u blic issues. Similarly, as Jean and Jo hn Co m aroff, dis tinguish e d professors of an thropolog), at the University of Ch icago, p oint o u t in "M ille nnial Capitalism: Fi rst Thoughts on a Second Comin g, " neo li b eralism 'works to "displac e po litical sovereignty with the sov­ erei gnty of ' the m arket,' as if the latter had a m ind an d morality of its own. "15 U n der the rul e of neolib eralism, politics are m arket driven and the claims of d e m ocratic citizenship are su bo rdinated to market values. 'What becomes u'o uhl ing under such circumstances is not sim p ly th at ideas associated with fre edom and agency are defin ed th ro ug h th e p revailing ideology and princi­ p les of th e marke t, b ut that n e o li be ra lism wraps itself in what appears to be an unassaila b le appeal to common sen se. As Zyg munt Bauman notes, "''''hat . .. make s the n e o-libe ral world-view sharply d iffe r en t from other ideologies - in d eed, a phe nomenon of a separate class - is pre cisely the absence of questi on ing; its surre nde r to what is se e n as th e implacable and irreversible logic of sociaj reality "J 6 Also lost is the very viabi lity of politics itself. As the

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Co maroffs obse rve, 'There is a strong argument to be mad e that n eolibe ra l ca pita lism in its millennial moment portend s th e d e ath of p olitics by hidi ng its own ideological u n de rpi n nings in the d ictates of econ omic efficie ncy. "17 Define d as the p aragon of all social relations by Friedrich VOIl Haye k, Mil­ lon Friedman , Robe rt Nozick, Fr anci s Fukuyama , and oth e r m arke t fWld a­ me ntalists, neo liberalis m a tte m p ts to el im in ate an e ngaged critiq ue about its most basic p rin ciples and social conseq uences by embracing th e "mar ket as the arbiter of social de stin y. "18 In this instance , neoliberalism emp ties the public treasu ry, h oll ows ou t p ub lic services, a n d lim its th e vocabulary and imagery avai lable to re cognize noncomme rcialized public space , antidem o­ cra tic forms of powe r, an d narrow mod els of in d ivid ual agen cy. It also unde r­ mines th e tra nslating func ti ons of any viable dem oc racy by undercutting the ability of individu als to engage in the co n tinuous tram lation be twee n publi c considera tions an d the p r iva te inte res ts by co llapsing the p u blic into t be real m of the private. As Bau man obser ves, "I t is no lo nge r u-ue th at the . pub­ lie' is set o n colo nizing the 'private .' T h e o ppo site is th e case: it is the p riva te thal colon izes the public space , squeezin g OUl and chasing away everyth ing wh ich can no t be f ully, without residue, tran slated into the vocabu lary of pri­ vate in terests and pursui ts. "19 Dives te d of its po li tical possibili tie s and soci al u n de rpinnin gs, freedo m finds few o p portu n ities fo r translating private wor­ ries into public co ncerns or individ ual d iscon ten t into colle ctive str uggle.2o Within neoliberalism's m arkel-d riven di sco urse, corpo r ate culttu-e be­ ames both the mod el for th e good life and the paradigmatic sphe re fo r d e­ [Ul ing individua l success and fu lli llm enL I use th e term corp om te cu lture to re­ fer to an ensemble of ideo logic al an d institution al forces th at func tions politically and pedagogic ally b o th to govern o rgan izatio nal life th ro ugh se­ n ior managerial con trol and to fashion com plian t workers, d epoli ti cized consumers, and passive citizens.2 1 With in the la ngu age and im ages of co r po­ ra te cu iLw-e, ci tizensh ip is portrayed as a n u tterly p r ivatized affair wh ose aim is to produce comp etitive self-interested indi\rid uals \')ing for th eir own ma­ terial an d ideological gain. 22 Reform ulati n g social issues as strictly private conce r ns , corporate c u lture fun ctions large ly to eith er can cel ou t or devalue social, cl ass-specifi c, an d racial inj u stices o f th e existin g social o r der by ab­ sorbing the democratic impu lses and p racti ces of c ivil society with in na rrow economic relations. Co r porate culture becomes an all-e n compa:;sing h o ri­ zon fo r producing m a rket identities, values, and practices. The good life, in this d iscQurse, "is co nstrued in lerms of ou r identi Lies as co n sume rs - we a re wh at we buy. " 23 The good life now me ans livin g ins ide the wo rld of cor porate brands.

Aceoulllablc only to the bottom lin e of profi tabi lity, corporate c ultu re, and its growin g in l1uen ce in U .S . life h as signaled a r adical sh ift in both the notion of public culture and wh a t constj tu tes the meaning o f ciliLc n ship and th e defense of the pu blic good. For exa mple, th e rap id resu rgence of corp o­ rate power in the last twenty years and the attendant reorientation of culture

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Neolibf'ralism, C07porale Culture, and the Promise of Higher E du cation HEN RY A. GI ROUX

to the demands of commerce a nd regulati on have substituted the language of personal r espo n sibili ty an d p rivate in itiative for th e di scourses of social re­ sponsibility an d p ublic se n /ice. Th is can be see n in the enactment of govern­ men t policies design ed to dismantle state p rotec tions for the poor, the envi­ ron ment, worki n g people , and people of color. 24 This includes not only President George W. Bush's p roposed we lfare bill, which imposes harsl~ worki ng requirements on th e poo r without th e benefi ts of child-care sUbsi­ d ies, but also the di smantlin g of race-based programs such as the Californ ia Civil Righ ts Initia tive and the landmark affirmative action case, HOj)wood us.

Texas, both design ed to eliminate affirmative action in higher education; the reduction of fe d e ral m o n ies for w-b an development, such as HUD's housing p rogram. ;25 the weakening of fede ral legislation to protec t the environme nt; an d a mass ive in crease in state fu nds for building priso ns at the expense of f unding for public highe r education. 26 According to Terrance Ball, profes­ sor of political theory at Arizona State Universi ty, corp orate culture rests on a dystop ian noti on o f wh at h e calls marketop ia an d is ch aracterized by a mas­ sive violatio n of equi ty an d justice. He argues:

stake he re than simply the commodifica tion of lan guage. T h e re is, as Pierre Bo urdieu has a rgued, the em erge nce of a Danvinian world m arked by the p rogressive removal of autonomous sph eres of cultural production such as j o urn alism, p u blish in g, an d film ; th e d estruction of collective structures ca­ pable of counterac ting tile wid espread imposition of commercial valu es and effects of the pu re market; th e crea tion of a global reserve army of th e unem­ ployed; and the subordin ation of nati on states to th e m aste rs of the econ­ omy. Bourdicu is worth q u oting at length on the effects of this dystopian world of n eo liberalism :

T he main 'lhortcom in g of marketopia is its massive and sys tema tic yiolation of a fu n da mental sen se of fairness. Marke topians who ca nnot afford health care, education, police pro tection, and o th er ofli fc ·s necessities are denied a fair (or even minimally sufficien t) share of social goo ds. In deed, Lbey are destitute of eve ry good, excl uded b·om a j ust share of society's b e ll efiL~ and advantages, pUShed to the margins, rendered in visible. They are exclu ded because they lack the resou rces to purchase goods and services th atougbt to be the irs by right.27

I am not suggesting th at neolibe ral capitalism is the e nemy of democracy or th a t marke t invesnnen ts canno t at t.imes serve th e pu blic good , b u t t.hat in (he absence of vibr an t, d emocratic public sph eres, corporate power, when !eft on its own, ap pears to respect few bou n d aries based on self-restraint and the public good , an d is increasin gly un respon sive to tJ10se broader hum an "alues that are central to a democratic civic culture. I beli eve tha t in th e cu r ­ rent histor ical moment n eoliberal capitalism is n ot simply LOO ove r powering but thal "democracy is too weak. "30 Hence, IJ1e increasing in fl u ence of mone\, over politics, corporate in te re sts over p u b lic co n cer ns, an d the grow­ m g tyranny of unchecked corporate p ower an d avarice . Increasing evid ence f the shameless ··grecd-is-good " man tra can be fo und in the co rrup tion and scandals that have rocked gi an t corpo rati ons such as En rOll , WorldCom, Xe rox, Tyco , Wal m art, and Ad elp hia. T h e fallout suggests a widening crisis of confidence in th e United States' economic le ade rship in the world and re­ Oeets comments suc h as those by Gu ido Rossi, a forme r Itali an telecom ch air­ man, who poin ts out th a t "wh at is lacking in tI1e U.S . is a cultu re of shame.

No C.E.O. in tbe U.S. is considered a thiefif h e does sometIl ingwrong. lt is a ki nd of moral can cer. " 31 Clearly, there is more at stake in th is crisis than sim­ ply the greed of a few high-profIle CEOs. More importantly, there is t.he h is­ toric challenge neolibera lism and market fundamentalism p ose to democ­ racy, citizenshi p, social justice, and civic education .

Such comme ntar y reflects a fundamemal sh ift regard in g how we th ink abOUt the relatio n sh ip between corporate cultu re and democracy.32 In wh a t follows, 1 argue that one of tJ1C mos t important indica tions of suc h a chan ge can be seen in lhe ways in wh ich ed ucators are curre n tly be in g asked to re­ th ink the ro le of highe r educatio n . Underlying thi s an alysis is tJ1C assump­ tio n that the struggl e to reclaim highe r educaLion 01 ust be see n as part of a

As a result of th e corpora te takeover o f public life, the maintenance of democratic p ub lic sp heres fr om which to organize the ene rgies of a moral ,·i­ sion loses all relevance. State an d civi l society are limited in their ability to impose or make corporate power accou ntable. As a result, politics as an ex­ pression of democratic struggle is defl ated, and it becomes mOl'c difficult, if not impossible , to address p ressing sodal and moral iss ue s in systemic an d political terms. This suggests a hazardous turn in U.S. soci ety, one that bodt tlneatens our unders tanding of democracy as fundamental to our freedom and the ways ill wh ich we ad dress the meanin g and purpose of public and highe r education . nch ecke d by trad itional forms of state power and rem oved from any sense of place-based aUegiance, n eoliberal cap ita lism app ears more de­ tached than eve r fro m trad itional forms of po litical po wer and e thical con­ sideration s. Public sector activities su ch as transportation (in spite of the re­ cent Amtrak ba il out, an exceptio n to the rule ) , hea lth ca re, and education are no longer safeguarded f rom in cursion s by th e buyi ng and selling logic of the ma rkel. and tlle consequences are evident everywhere as th e language of the corpora te comm e rcial paradigm describes doc tors an d nurses as "seil­ ing " medic al services, students as cus tomers, adm itting college students as "closing a deal," and university p residen ts as CEOS.2R But there is more at

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Fi rst is the destr ucti on of all the collective institutions capable of counterac ting the effects of the infern al machine, prim arily those of the state, reposito r y of all of Ihe universal val ues associated with the idea of the public realm. Second is ule imposition eve rywhere, in the upper spheres of ule economy and the state as at the heart of corporations, of that SOrt of moral Darwini sm that, with the cu lt of the winner. schooled in high er mathe matics and bungee jumpin g, insti­ tu tes the struggle of all against all and cynicism as the norm of all acti on an d be­ haviour.2"

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Neoliberalism, Cmpomte Culture, an d the Promise oj Higher Education HEN RY A. GIR OUX

broader battle over the defen se of publ ic goods and that at th e h ea rt of such a struggle is the need to challe ng e th e eve r-g rowin g discourse an d in­ flue n ce o f n eolibe ralism , cor porate power, an d corporate po litic s. I COn­ cl ude by offe ring some suggestions as to what educato rs can do to reassert the primacy of higher education as an e ssential sp h ere fo r expanding and deepeni ng the processes o f d e mo cracy and civil socie ty. I a lso o ffe r some ideas fo r n ew p laces an d spaces o f re sista n ce in which individua ls and groups can affirm and ac t o n the valu es of critical engagement and ci vic re­ spon sibility to deepen a nd expand the values a nd p rac ti ces of a su bs tantive democ ratic socie ty.

Incorporating High er Education Struggling for democracy is both a politica l an d an educational task. Funda­ mental to the rise ora vib ran t dem ocratic cu ltu re is th e r ecog nitio n that edu­ calion mu st be treated as a publi c good - as a cr uci al site where students gain a p u blic vo ice a nd com e to grips with their own power as in divid ual and social agents. Pu blic and h igh er education can n o t be viewed merely as sites for commer cial investm e nt or for affir ming a n o tio n of the privat e good based exclusively o n the fulfillme nt of individ ua l n eeds. Red u ci ng hig her ed­ ucation to th e han dm aiden of co rpora te cu lture wo rks agains t the cri tical so­ cial imperative of educa ting citize n s wh o can sustain and d evelop in cl usive dem ocratic p ublic sph eres . A long trad ition extencling from T h omas Jeffer­ son to John Dewey and C. Wrigh r Mills extols the impo rtance of ed u catio n as esse ntia l fo r a democratic pu blic life . Sheila Slaughte r h as argued p e rsua­ sively that at th e close of th e nin eteenth cen tury "p rofessors m ade it clear that th ey did no t want to be p art of a cutthro a t capitalism . ... Instead, they tried to create a space between capital and la bor where [they] could su pport a commo n intellec tua l proj ec t directed toward the pu blic goo d. "33 T h e legacy of public discourse app ears to have fad ed as th e U.S. unive rsi t~' reinven ts itself by g iving in to til e demands of th e marke tplace . Venture capi­ talists now scou r co lleges an d un iversi ties in se a rch o f big p r ofit.s made lhrough li cenSing agreemen ts, th e contro l of in te llectual pro p eny rights, and promoting a nd inve sti ng in un iversity spin-off companie s.:!11Tn th e age of money an d profi t, academ ic di scip lin es gain statu re alm os t exclusively through th eir exchange ,"alue on th e market, and stud e nts now r ush to take cour<;es an d receive professional creden ti a ls th a t provide them with the ca­ chet th ey n eed to selJ th emselves to th e highes t bidder. Michae l M. Crow, president of Ar izona State Unive rsi ty, echoes th is shift in the role of higher education by procl a iming, wi th out iro ny, that professors shouJd be labeled as "academic e n trepreneurs." In lighL of his view of th e ro le of academic labor, it is no t s urprisin g th a t h e views knowledge str ic tly as a form of fina nci al capi­ tal. lIe Slates, "We are exp anding what it means LO be a kn owledge en te rp ri s~ .

We use knowle d ge as a form of ven t u re capital. ":l5

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The current de ba te over the refor m of high er ed uca tion appears in diffe r­ nt both to the h istoric fu nction of U .S. un ive rsities and to the bro ade r ideo­ 10<Tical , econo mic, a nd political issu es that have sh aped it. Agai nst th e en­ cr~aching de man d s of a market-driven lo gi c, a number of educato rs h ave argued forcefully tha t high er educati on should be defended as both a public good an d an au to n omous sp h ere fo r th e develo pment of a critical an d p ro­ ductive d emocratic citize n r y. 3(j For m any ed ucators, h igh er educ ation r e p re­ sents a central site for keeping alive th e tensio n be twee n m arke t value s and th ose value s represe n tative of civil socie ty th at cann ot be m easured in n ar­ row comme rcial te rms but are cr ucial to a sllb'l tan tivt' dem ocracy. Cen tral to defending th e university as a p ublic good an d site of cri tical learni ng is th e J't.>cognition th at edu cati on m us t no t b e con fu sed \v:i thjob train in g, suggest­ ing all th e more th at educa tors m ust resis t allowin g com merci al values to sh apc the purpose and m issio n of hig h er ed uca tio n . Ri chard Hoftstad ter, th e renowned Ame rican hi storian, un dersto od the threat th a t corporate valu es pose d to ed ucation and once a rgu ed that the best reaso n fo r supporting hi ghcr ed ucation "li es n ot in the services they pe rform . .. b u t in the valu es they re prese nt."'I1 For Hofts tadter, it was the values of j ustice, freedom , qua li ty, an d th e righ ts of c itizens as equ a l and free h uman b e ings th at were at Ihe h eartofwh a t it me ant fo r high e r educ ation to fu lfi ll its role in educa t­ ing sllIdents fo r the d e ma nds of lead er sh ip, social citizenship , anel d e mo­ cra tic pu blic life.

Th e ascendancy of co rporate cul tu re in all face ts of life in th e U nited States has tended to u p root the le gacy o f demo cra tic conce rns an d rig h ts that has historically defined th e stated mission of hi gh e r educati on. 31l Mo re­ ve r, the growing influen ce o f co rpor a te culture on u niversity life in th ni led States has served to lar ge ly unde rmine the dis tinc tio n between hi ghe r educa tio n and busin ess that educa to rs suc h as TIoftstad ter wanted to preserve . As universities become increasin gly sU'a pped for m o n ey, corpora­ ti on s are more than willi ng to prodd e the n eed ed reso urces, but the costs are troubling an d come with strings attach ed. Corp oratio n s increasingly di ctate th e ver y research Ih ey sp onsor, ancl in some universities, suc h as th e Univer­ sity of Californ ia , Berkeley, business representatives are actu all y appo inted to si t on faculty commitlees that de ter mine how research funds are to be spe n t and allocated. Equa lly disturbing is the emerge n ce of a num b e r of aca­ demics th at e ither hold stoc ks or other financ ial ince n tives in the ver y com­ pan ies !)ponsoring th eir rese arc h. As t h e boundaries be tween publi c values <l nd commercial interests beco me blurre d , many acad e mics appe ar less as disinterested tru th seekers than as operatives for busin ess interests.

But Lhere is more a t Slake than acade m ics selling o ut to the highest co rpo­ rat e bidder. In some cases, ac ad em ic r esearc h is ("om promised, and corpora­ liollS rou tinely cen sor research results that a re a t" odds with t h e ir co mmerc ia l interes ts. For instance , Eyal Press an d Jennifer vVas hbufll reported tha l "in a 1996 sludy published in the Anna ls oj Internal Medicine . .. a senior research

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TI

scholar at Stan ford's Ce n ter for Biom edical Eth ics, . . . Mild red Cho, found that 98 percen t of p apers based on ind ustry-sponsored rese arch refl ected fa­ vorably o n th e d rugs being examined, as compared wit h 79 perce n t of p apers based o n r esearch not funded by the ind ustry. »39 Press an d Washburn also provided examples of compan ies that h ave censored corp ora te-sponsored research papers by r emoving passages that highlighted unfavorable results or negative outcomes.40 It gets worse. As large am ounts of corp orate capital flow into the un iversi­ ties, those a reas of study in th e un iversity tha t d on ' t translate in to substanti al profits get either marginalized, wlderfunded, o r eliminated. Hence, we are witnessing both a downsiz ing in the human ities and the increasing refusal on the par t of u niversities to fund resea rch in servi ces such as p ublic h ealth that are large ly used by peopl e who can 't pay for them . Moreover, programs and courses tha t focu s on areas su ch as critical theory, literature, fem inism , eth­ ics, enviro n me ntalism, postcolonialism, p hilosop hy, an d sociology suggest an in tell ec tual cosmopo li tanism or a concern with social issues that will be ei­ ther eli min ated or technicized becau se their role in th e marke t will be judged as ornamental. Similarly, those working con dition s that allow profes­ sors and grad u ate assis tan ts to commen t exte nsively on student wor k, teac h small classes, take on student advising, coo d uc t indepen d e n t studies, and e o­ gage in collaborative research will be further weakened or elim inated, since they do no t appe ar con sistent wilh th e imperatives of downsizin g, efIicien cy, and cost accounting.4 1 The new corporate un iver sity values profit, co n t.ro l, and efficie n cy, a ll h all­ mark values of the neoliberal corporate eth ic. These far o utweig h consider­ aLions abou t p edagogy or the role of the facu lty in maintain ing some con tro l over what th ey teach. For example, Pat ricia BrodSky, a professor of fore ig n language and literature, tells the story of an enterprising dean at the Un ive r­ sit)' of MissoUJ-i a t Kansas City who info rmed th e faculty ofth e Department of Foreign Lan g uages and Litera tures th at h e wan ted th e m to olfer a series of begi n ni ng language courses in German and Spanish. To save money, he pro­ posed tha t the courses be taught by compu ter in the Jan gu age laboratory rather than be taugh t in a classroo m by a trad itional tcacher. T he word spread quickly among the studen ts tha t the COurse was an easy way to get ten hours' cr edit, an d at one point over fi ve hun d red studen ts en rolled in first­ and second-semester Spanish. There were on ly two part-time instr uctors to handle these st uden ts, an d their role was limited to perfor ming rh e tech n ical task of assign ing g rades p r oduced by com puter-graded exams. It soon be­ came clear that the com pu ter-driven course was a disaster. As Brod sky points out: The me th o d emp loyed wa s to tally passive . S tud en ts d idn ' t spe ak at a ll an d rarely wrote . They looke d at p ictures a nd listened to vo ices say wo rds and sen­ tences. Nor were any gramma tical con ce pts presen te d. Exercises were no t in­ teractive , n o r d id they take advan tage of othe r possibi lities o ffered by com p ute r

Neolibemlism, CorfJomte CUlt1J.r1', an d the Promise of Higher Education H E N R Y A. CIRO UX

tech n ology . The only p lus fo r the stud en t was that they did n' t h ave to show up fo r class at regularly scheduled tim es. The problems wo r~c n e d wh e n students a u e mpted to transfe r fro m the se courses inlo th e main stre am curricu lu m at the third semeste r level, for they h ad learned virtu ally n othin g. T his caused havoc fo r in structors in the third ~emes te r cou rses as well as hardshi p for the stude n ts . T h e ir g raduatio n da tes some times h ad to b e delayed, an d they were justifiably angry at h aving waste d th e ir ti me an d money. It also n ecessitated o ur teaching additional re med ial courses so that th e students could fulfi ll their re­ quirem enl.-t2

Fr om the dean's perspective , the course was a great success. He only h ad to pay t.h e salaries of two part-ti m e facul ty wh ile a huge num ber ofslUde n ts paid fu ll tuit io n . Wh e n the fac ul ty voted to cancel the course because of its obvi­ ous proble ms and fa il ures , the d ean responded by claiming th e faculty did n' t kn ow how to teach an d co n tinu ed the courses by offe ring them under a d if­ ferent program .43 With in th e neollbe ral era of deregulatio n and the tri um p h of th e mar ket many students and their falllilies no longer bel ieve that higher education is aboul higher learn ing, but about gaining a bette r foothold in the job marke t.

Colleges an d universities are perceived - and pe rceive themselves - as train ing gr ou nds for co rpo rate berths. jeff Williams, ed itor of The Minnesota Review, goes even furth er, arguing that un iversities have become licellsed storefronts for brand-name corporati ons. lIe writes : Unive rsities are now bei ng conscrip ted as a latter kind of franchise , directly as tr a in in g g r 01.lI1ds for th e corpo ra te workfo rce ; thi s is m o st o bvious in the g row th of busin ess departme n ts bu t impacts En glisb , tOO, in th e p r o liferatio n of more ··prac tical" degrees in te chnical writing and the like . I n fact, not o nly h as u niversi ty wor k bee n re d irec te d to ser ve corporate-p r ofit age nd as via its gra nt-su pp licant status, b ut uni versities have become franch ises in th eir own right, re configured accord ing to corpo rate man agem en t, labo r, an d con sumer mod els and del ivering a name brand produc t.44

T he "brand namin g " of th e u n iversi ty is also evident in the increasing n umber of endowed chairs funded by m ajor corporations an d r ich corp orate do nors. For exanlplc, N ike CEO Phil Kni.gh t h as donated $15 m iJlion to the University of Oregon for the crea tion of a number of endowe d chairs a cross th e campus, seven of which h ave bee n established, including the Knight Chair for Un iversity Librarian and a Kn igh t Chair designated for the dean of th e Sch ool of Law. The Kn ig ht Chair endowme nt coupled with match ing co n tributions "are expec ted to eventually supp ort a t least 30 n ew endowed chairs."15 In addition, the Knight famil y n ame will appear on a new law sch ool building n amed the Will iam W. Knigh t Law Center, after Phil Knjght's fa ther. The Le go company not only en dowed a chair at t he MIT Media Labo­ ra tory, it also funds a $5 million LEGO Learning Lab. Academic ti tl es not only signal wealthy corporate dOllars' infl uence on un iversities, but h ave al so ser ved as billboards fo r corporations. Some of th e more we ll known include

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Neoliberalism, Corporate Cultw-e, and the Promise of Higher Education H E N RY A. GIROUX

the Gen e ral Mills Chair o f Cereal Chemistry a nd Te chnology at the Univer­ sity of M inn eso ta, Sta n fo rd Un ive rsity'S Yahoo! Chair of Information Man­ ageme nt Sys tems, an d th e U n iversity of Memp his' FedEx Chair of Informa­ tion-Managem e nt Sys te m s.

Corporate givin g th roug h the fu n din g of e ndowed chairs also, in Some in­ stances, gi ve~ bu siness an o pportu n ity to p laya sign ificant role in selecting a faculty m ember. In this way. they can influen ce wha t kin d ofresearch actualh takes p lace u nde r Lh e aeg is ofthe e n d owme nt. For in stance, Km art approved the ap pointm e n t of J. Pat rick Kelly fo r its chair at Wayn e State Universitv.

Kelly worked for years o n join t p roj ects wi th Kmart a n d . n ot surprisingl;" once he occ u pied the chai r h e engaged in r esearc h p rojects that not only benefi ted Km ar t but also saved the co mpan y mill io ns of d o llars. In response to criti cisms ofl-us role as a Kmart resea r ch er, Ke lly argues in an article in the Chronicle ojHigher E ducation th at "Km art's attitude always h as bee n: What did we gel fro m yo u Lh is yea r? Some professors wou ld say th ey do n't like that po­ sition. b u t for me, it's kept me involve d Wilh a m ajor re tail er. an d it 's been a good thing." Kmart d efe nds th ei r influencc ove r t h e chair by cla iming, "We contin ue to u se Dr. Ke lly fo r con su lting as well as training . It's ce rtainly an in­ veslment. and one that we do tap into . "46 T h e tragedy he re is n Ol simply that Kelly defines him self less as an i n d e p e nd en t I'esearch er and cri tical educator than as a KInan e mployee , but h e seems to h ave no clu e wh atsoever about the implications of this type o f encroachment by corporate powe r and values upon academic free d om , respo nsible scholu ly rescarc h, or faculty gover­ nance.

In th e n ame of effic iency, e d ucati ona l co nsultan ts all Ove r the Ullited States ad vise the ir cJienlS to ac t like corporation s se llin g products and to seek "marke t ni ch es" to save th emselves_T h e increased traffic between the world or ventu re ca pi talism and hig h er e ducati on is captured in a rece nt issue of the Chronicle of Higher Educatiol/. 4i Goldie Blu mstyk , a Ch ronicle re po rter, fol­ lowed busin ess consul la nt and ventu re capi ta li st Jon a h Sc hne l of ITt: Ven­ tw-es for fo ur days as h e trave led between South e r n Cali for nia and Pitts­ burgh, Pen n sylva ni a . In t h e co u rse of his trave ls. Sc hne l m e t with deans and a numbe r o f p romising p rofessors at the Un iv(' rsi ty of Californ ia, Los An­ ge les, and Carn egie-Mellon Universitr in order to explo re the possibility of reating spi n-off companies capable of prod uc ing lucrative p rofits for both the involved fa c ulty a n d the universi tY- W ith in lhis d iscourse , the lure of profit is the only cachct that seems to mattcl-. Researc h proj eclS are discussed not in terms o f th eir con tr ibu tio n to the publ ic good or fo r lhe ir potelltial in­ tellectual bre a kth roughs, b ut for what they prod uce and the potential profits they may m ake in tJle comme rcial secto r.

The consequ ences of tran sforming unive rsity research in to a commer­ c ially d ri ve n ente rprise can be see n mOs t clearly ill the profitable bioscience and pharmaceu ti cal in dustries . As David T re nd p oin ts o ut, "T he ove rwhelm­ in g maj ority of research in vesunen t [in the pharm aceu tical industry] has

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gone n o t to saving th e lives o f mill ions of peo ple in the d eve lo pi ng world , but .a wha t have been cal led' lifesty le drugs' [ that treat] such m aladies as impo­ ten ce, obesity. ba ldness a n d wrinkles . . . [eve n th o ugh ] m alaria, tuber­ culosis, and resp ira to ry infec tions killed 6.1 mill io n people last year. "'Ill Researc h in vestment for fi n ding n ew d ru gs to combat the se diseases is mini­ scu le. 'Wh ile p h armace u tical compani es will spe nd m ore tha n $24 billion in research worki n g with un ive rsities to develop high-profit d r ugs such as Viagra, on ly $2 billion will be spe n t on drugs used to combat d ead ly diseases su ch as malaria, even though the dis ease is expected to kill m ore th an forty mil lion Ailican s alon e in lhe n ext tvve n ty years. 49 T he corrosive effects of the influe nce of corpo rate power o n high e r edu cation ca n al so be seen in th e complex connecti ons betwee n unive rsities and co rporatio ns that are devel­ o p iJlg over intellecrual prop e rty righ ts , licensi ng income , an d pate nting aOt>Teemcnts.

O uline cou rses also raise impo rtan t issues abou t highe r ed ucati on and in­ tellectual prope rty, suc h as who own s the ri ghts for co u r se ma terials devel­ oped fo r o n line use. Because of the m arket poten tial of o nli n e lectures and o u rse mater ials, various universities h ave attem pted to claim ownership of slLc h kllowle d ge . T h e passing of th e 1980 Bayh-Do le Ac t and the 1984 Public Law 98--620 by th e U .S. COllgress enabl ed "universiti es and p r ofessors Lo own paten t.s o n discoveries o r invention s m ad e as a result o f fed erally supported researc h. " 50 These laws accorde d u nive rsi ties in te llec tu al p r operty righ ts, with speci.fic r ights to own, lice n se, and se ll th eir pate nts to fir ms for com­ mercia l profits. T he resu ll<; have been far from u nproble m a ti c.51 Julia Po rter Lie beskind p o in ts to three specific are as of co n cern th at are wo rth mention ­ ing.

Firs t, the growth o f pate n lin g by un iversities h as provided a strong in cen­ Li ve "for researc hers to p ursue co mmcrcial p roj ects," especially in lig hl o f th e large p rofits th at can be made b) faeu l ty.52 For instance. in 1995 five fa cu lty me m be rs in the Unive rsity of Ca li fo r n ia system an d a n equa l n umbel- at Stan­ ford Univcrsity earned a total of $69 m ill ion in licensi ng inco m e . An d while it is true that the proba bili ty o f facu lty e arni ng large profits is small , the p os­ sibility for high-p owere d financia l reward s cannot be disco unted in sh ap ing the production o f knowle dge and rese arc h at the un iversity.

Second, paten ling agreemenlS can place u ndue reslrain lS on faculty, espe­ cially with respeCl to keeping th e ir researc h secret an d d elayi ng publicatio n. o r eyen p ro hib iting "publi cati on of rese arch allogcther if it is fo un d to have commercial value . "53 Such secrecy not on ly unde r mines fac ulty collegiality and limits a facu lty mem ber 's willingness to wor k collectively with others, it can a lso dam age fac ul ty caree rs and. m ost importan t, prcven t valua ble r e­ search from b ecoming pan of public knowledge.

Final ly. Lhe on going co mmercializati on o f research p laces u nd u e p l-e ssure on facu lty to pursu e researc h tha t ca n raise revenue and p oses a threat lo fac­ ulty in tellec tual proper tJ' r igh ts. For example , at UCLA, an agreement was

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N eoliberalis11i, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of H igher E duca tion HF.NRY A. GI RO UX

signe d in 1994 lh at aJlowed an o u tside vendo r, O n lin eLearn ing.net, to cre­ ale an d cop yrigh t o n line versions of UCLA courses. The agree m ent was even­ tual ly "amende d in 1999 to affi r m professo rs' r ig h ts LO I.h e basic content of !.heir co urse s .. . [but] u n d e r the am ended con tr act, On lin eLeaming re­ tain red] their righ t to marke t an d d istribule those courses onlin e , whi ch is th e crux of the cop yrig ht disp ute . " ;;1 The debate over intellectual p ro p e rty righ ts calls into qu e stion not onh. lhe in cr easing in fluence ofneoliberal and co rpora te valu es on th e university, hut al so the vital issue of acade mic freedom . As u n ive rsities ma ke more an d more claims on owni ng the contem of faculty no tes, lectures, books, com­ puter fil es, and med ia fo r classroom use, th e fi r st casual ty is, as U CLA profes­ sor Ed Condren po in ts o ut, "t.h e legal protec tion that enables faculty to free ly express th eir views witho u t fear of ce nsorship or ap pro p riation of their ideas. "55 At th e same time, by appr opriati ng prop e rty r igh ts to courses, even for a fee, u n iver sities infringe on the owne rship r igh ts offaculty members by laking from them any con trol ove r how the ir cou rses m igh t be used in the public d om ain .

Within th is corpo ratized regime, man agement m odels of decisionmaking replace facu lty governance. On ce constrained by the co ncept of "shared " governance , ad mi nistrations in th e past d ecade h ave Laken mo re power and reduced facu lty-contro ll ed govern ance insti tu tio n s to advisory status . Given the n arrow n a ture of corp ora Le con cerns, it is not surp rising l11at when mat­ Lers o f accountability become part of the language of ed ucational r eform, they are d ivorced from broader considerations of social resp o nsibility. As corp orate c u lture and val ues shap e university life , corpo rate p lanning re­ places soc ial plann ing, man ageme n t becomes a substi tu te for lead e rship, an d !.he p rivate domai n of in d ividual a chieve m ent re places the d iscourse of public polilics and social responsib iU ty. As the power of h igh e r education is redu ced in its abili ty to make cor porate p ower accoun tab le , it becomes more difficu lt within the logic ofthe bOllo m line fo r fa cuIty, stud ents, and adminis­ trator s to address pressing social and e!.h ical issu es.56 This suggests a p erilous tur n in U .S. socie ty, o n e that threatens both our unders ta nd ing of democ­ racy as fundamen tal lo ou r basi c rig hts a n d fr eedom s and the ways in whi ch we can re think and re-appropria te lhe meani ng, p urpose , and future of higher educa tion .

Higher Education, Corporate Leadership, and the Rise of Ule Academic Manager As corporate governance becomes a cen tral featu re of U.S. h igh er edu ca­ tion, lead ersh ip is being transformed to model the h ighest re aches of co rpo­ rate c ulture. I n a wid e ly read ar ticle, "its Lowly a t th e Top: Wh at Beca me of the Greal College Presidents, " Jay Math ews argues th at it has become in­ creasingly diffi cult to find models of academ ic leaderShip in high er e du ca­

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tion tha t emul ate the great college presidents of the past, many of wh om played an esteemed an d pronounced role in th e drama of intellec tual an d poli tical li fe. Po inting to such national 1um in aries as Charl es Elio t, James Conan t, Robe rt M. H utchins, Th eod ore Hesb urgh, Clark Kerr, a n d , mo re re­ ce ntly, Kjngm an Brewster, Math ews argu es that the latter were powerful in­ tellectuals whose id eas and publica tion s provoke d national d e bates, shaped public policy, and contribu ted to th e intellectual culture of bo th the ir re­ spective u n ive rsities a nd the larger social o rder. Leadership h as taken a dif­ ferent turn un d e r the mod e l of th e corporate u niver sity. Mathews ar gu es, and righ tly so, that Loday' s college presidents are known less fo r the ir in tel­ lectual leadership tban for the ir role "as fundraisers and ribbon cu tLers an d coat h olders, u lli ng a slo t rather than changi n g th e world. "5 7 Academic ad mi nis trato rs today do noL have to d isp lay inte llec t ual reach and civic courage. Instead , th ey ar e exp ec ted to bridge th e wo rld of academe and business. So ugh t after by p rofessional h eacil1unte,-s who wan t candidates l.h at are bo th safe and "m ost Jj kely to sh ine in corp orate b oardrooms,·' the new breed of university p residen ts are characterized less by their ab ililY to take risks, think critically, e n gage im por tant progressive social iss ues, an d provoke nalional debates !.han lheyare for raising m o n ey, prod ucing m edia­ g rabbing public rela tio n s, and lookin g good for p h oto Sh OOlS. 58 As re ported recen tly in USA Toda)\ "m o re and more colleges an d u n iver sities are hirin g presiden ts straigh t from th e b usiness world . "59- To prove t he poin t, USA Today provided th ree high-profile examples: Babson College n am ed a Wall Street veleran as its president, Bowdoin Co llege gave I he j ob to a co rporate lawyer and , in the most fa mous case o f all, Harvard Un iversi ty picked forme r U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Su m mers as its preside n t. Admittedly, the neolibe ral Summers seems to be e qu a lly concerned with en gaging id eas and asking unsettling ques tions as with the more mun d ane task of f undraising .5o The overt co rpora tization of university le adersh ip makes cl ea r th a t what was once part of t he hidden curriculum of h ighe r educati o n - the creepi ng vocational izati o n an d subord inalio n of learn ing to the dic ta tes ohh e marke t - has become an o p e n and definin g principle o f edu calion at all levels of learning. b ) In lh e a ftermath of the U.S. recession an d the ter rorist a ttacks o f Sep­ tembe r ] 1, 200 1, m any coll eges an d universities a re exp erien cing finan cial hard times . T h ese eve nts have exace rbated a downturn in eco n o m ic con di­ tions br oughl on by th e end o f the Co ld War and the dwi n d li n g of gove rn­ me n t-financed defense projects, coupled with a sharp reduclion of state ai d to h igher education. As a result, m a ny colleges and tlnive rsilies are all too happy to allow corp o r ate leaders to r u n th e ir iosti lu tio n s, fo r m business pa n nerships, estab lish cush y re lations h ip s with busi n ess-orie n ted legisla­ tors , and deve lo p curric ular progr ams lailored to the needs o f corpora te in­ lerests. 62 I am not suggesti n g th a t co rporate fun di ng is any less rep r e h ensi­ ble than mi litar v funding as m u ch as I am no ting h ow th e ch a n ging fiscal

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Neoliberalism, Corpomte Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education H EN RY A. GIRO UX

nature of un iversities und erscores th eir growing reli an ce on corp orate models of leadershi p. One crucial exam p ie of this is the in c reasing willin g­ ness on th e p a rt ofle gis]ator s, gove rnm e nt rep r e se ntatives, and high er edu­ ation offi cials to rely o n corp o ra le le aders to establish t h e terms of the de­ bate in th e m ed ia regard ing th e meanin g a nd p urpose of higher e d u catio n .

Bill Gates ,Jack Welc h, Mi chae l Mil ken, Warren Buffe t, and oth e r member s of the Fortune 500 "cl ub" con tinue to be viewed as educational p ro p hets ­ in spite of th e smirched rep utation oHo r me r CEOs such a s Kenn e th Lay of Enron , Al Dunlap o f Su nbeam, and De n nis Koz lowski o f Tyco .63 Ye t, th e only qualifi cations th ey see m to h ave is tha t t h ey have been su ccessfu l in earning huge p rofi ts [or themselves a nd th eir sharehold e r s, while at th e same time laying off th ousands of workers in order to cut costs and raise profits. While Ga tes, Milke n, and others couch th e ir concerns about educa­ tion in the rh e toric o f public se rvice, co rp orate organi za tions su ch as the Commi ttee for Econo mi c Develop ment, an orgalli zati o n of abo ut 250 cor­ porations, h ave been m ore b lun t abo u t the ir inte r est in educa tio n .6'I Not only has t he gro u p arg u ed t.h at social go als and services get in th e way of learning basic skills, b u t also th a t many e m p loyers in the business com m u­ nit)' feel dissa tisfi ed beca use "a large maj ority of thei r n ew hires lack ade­ quate writi ng a n d problem-solving skills. "65 Matte rs of le ad e rship and acc oun tability within neoliberalism and co rpo­ rate cultu re in general rarely includ e broader co n sideratio n s of cth ics, eq­ uity, an d j ustice , an d it is p recisely tb is e lemen t of marke t fu ndame ntalism that corporate leaders often bring to acad emic leadersh ip ro les. Cor porate culture lacks a vision b eyo nd its O 'W11 prag matic inte rests an d seldo m p rovides a self-criticaJ inventor y about its own id eology an d its effec ts on society. It is difficult to imagine such conce rns arising wi th in co rporat.ions where qu es­ tions of co nseq ue n ce beg in and end wi th the bo ttom lin e. For instan ce, it is lear Lh at advocates of neo liberalism , in th ei r d r ive to c re ate wealth for a li m­ ited few, h ave no incentives for taking care of basic soc ial n eeds. T h is is o b vi­ ous not o nly in th e ir attempts to ren der th(' welfar e state ob solete, privatize all public goods, a n d destr oy tradition al sta te-p rotec ted safety nets, but. also in their disregard of th e environme n t, their misal location of resources be­ tween th e p r iva te a n d pu bli c sectors, and th eir relcn tless pu rsuit of p rofi ts. It is precisely this lack of e mphas is on being a public ser vant and an academic itizen lha t is lacki ng in th e leadership mo d els that corpo rate executi ves of­ ten bring with them to th e ir roles as academ ic admin istrators. Unfortunately, it often p ays off.

Neoliberalism tain ts any ci~i c-inspired n oLion of educatio n al lead e rship because it re p rese n ts a ki nd o f marke t f undamen ta lism b ased on the un tram­ meled p ursuit of self-interest - often wrapped up in the post-Sep tember 11 language of patrio ti sm . Con sequently, its co rporate exec lltive s and marke t professionaJs may n ot be the best q u alified to assu me roles of l e ader~h i p in higher education . As market-fu n d mogul George Soros has pointed out, the

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disting uishing feature of m arket fundame ntalism is th a t "morality d oe s not en te r into [its] calculati ons" and d oes not n ecessarily serve the commo n in­ terest, n or is such fun damentalism capable of taking ca re of collective needs a nd ensuring social justice. 56 It is high ly unli kely t.hat corpo ra tio ns su ch as Disney, IBM, Microsoft, or Gene ral Mo tors will ser iously address the p o li tical and social co nse qu ences re garding policies th ey impl e men t that have re­ sulted in dmvnsizin g, dein dustrialization , and the "trend toward more low­ paid, te mpo rary, benefit-free , blue- and white-collar jobs an d fewer d ecen t perm ane nt factory and office jobs: '67 Rather, th e on us of responsibility is placed on educated citizens to recognize th at corpo rate principles of effi­ ci e n cy, accountabili ty, and profit maxi mizati on h ave no t created new j obs but in m ost cases h ave eliminated them (ove r 75 millio n jobs have b een lost since) 973) .68 It is o ur respo nsibili ty to recognize th at th e world p resented to them through al legedly objective reporting is m ed iated - and m anipulated by - a h an dfu l of global media in du stries . My p oint, of course. is that such abse nces in public d iscourse co nstitu te a defin ing prin cipal of corporate ide­ ology, whic h ref'uses to add ress - and must be m ade to add ress - th e scar­ cit)' of moral vision Lhat in sp ires such calls fo r education al reform m odeled after corp o rate reforms implemen ted in the last decade.

Absent from corp orate c ul ture 's invesun e n t in higher edu ca tion is any ana lysis of how power works in sh aping knowle dge in th e in terest of public mo ral ity, how the teaching of bro ad e r social valu es provides safeguards agai nst tu rn ing ci tizen skills in to trai n in g ski lls for Lhe wo rkplace, o r how sc h ooling can h elp stud ents recon cile Lhe see m in gl y o pposing needs of free­ dom and so lidarity in o rd t"r to fo rge a new conception of civic cou rage an d de mo cra tic public life. Kn owled ge as capi tal in th e co rporate model is p r ivi­ le ge d as a for m of inves tmen t in th e economv, but appears to h ave little valu e whe n li n ked to th e power of se lf-d efinition , soc ial responsibil ity, or th e ca­ pacities of individuals to ex pand the sco p e of freedo m , j ustic e, a.n d the o p e r­ ations o f de mocracy.59 Knowledge stri p ped of e thj cal an d political consider­ atio ns offe rs limi ted, if any, insigh ts into h ow un iversities sh ou ld educa te stu d e nts to push against th e op pressive bound aries of ge n der, class, race, and age d ominatio n. No r does such a language p rovide the pedagogical co ndi­ tions for stu dents to crilicalJy engage knowled ge as a n ideology deeply impli­ cated in issu es and struggles concern in g the produ ction of iden tities, cul ­ ture, p ower, and h istory. Education is a mo ral and po litical p ractice and always p resupposes an in troduction to and prepara tion for particular fo r ms of social life, a par tic ular ren dering of wha t comm u nity is, and wh at the fu­ ture might h o ld . If h igh er educatio n is in part about Lhe produc tion of kn owledge, valu es, and identities, then curricu la mod eled after corpo rate culture h ave been enorm ously successful in preparin g students for low­ skilled service work in a society th at has little to offer in the way o f me aning­ fu l employment for th e vast majority of its graduates. If CEOs are go in g to provide some insight in to h ow edu cation sh ould be refor med, they wil1 h ave

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to reverse their tendency to collapse the boundalies between corporate c ul­ ture and civic cultu re, between a society th at defines itself thro ugh the in ter­ ests of corpo rate power and o n e th at defines itse lf thro ugh mo re dem ocra ti c considera tions regard in g wha t consULUtes su bs ta n tive citizenshjp an d social responsibility. Moreove r , they will h ave to recognize tha t th e problem s wi th .S. schools cann ot be red uced to m atters of accountabil ity o r cos t­ effecLiveness. No r can th e solution to such problems be reduced to th e spheres o f man agement, econom ics, a n d tec h nolo gical quick fi xes such as distance educatio n . T he prob lem s of high er ed ucation m u st b e addressed in the realms of values and p olitics, wh il e en gag ing critically the mos t fun da­ mental beliefs U.S. citizens h ave regard in g th e mean in g and pu rp ose o f e du­ cation a n d i ts re la tio nsh ip to d e m oc ra cy.

Corporate Culture's Threat to Facu lty A.-; universities increasingly m o de l th emse lves after corporations, it becomes crucial to u nderstand h ow th e p r inciples o f cor p orate cu1tu re intersect with the mean ing an d purpose o f the tm ivers ity, the role of knowledge prod uc­ tion for the twenty-first cen tury, and the social practices inscr ibed with in teacher-stude nt relatiomhi ps. The signs are n o t enco uraging. In many ways, the cos t acco un ti n g p rincip les of effi cie n cy. calcu lability, p red ic ta bility, and control of lhe corporate order have re str uctured the meani n g an d pu r pose of education. In the never-ending search fo r new sources of reve nue , the in­ tense com p e ti tio n for mo re stu dents , a n d the o ngoin g n eed to cu t co sts, many colleges and university presidents are actively pu rsuing ways to estab­ lish closer t ie s betwee n their respective instin lli ons an d th e bu siness com m u­ nity. Fo r exam p le, in wh at h as become a typi cal slor y, USA Today approving ly reports tha t Br ian Bar efoot, the new president of Babson College, h as th ir ty years of experience a t Paine Web ber a n d Merril l Lync h and will "use his busi­ ness co n tac ts to ge t grad uates j obs, and h e 'll m ake su re the c urr icu lu m re­ flects emplo yer n eeds. "70 The message here is clear: Kn owled ge with a high exchan ge valu e in th e marke t is wha t COUllts, wh ile those fields su ch as the liberal arts and h u m an ities that cannot be quantified in such terms will e i­ ther be und erfunded o r allowed to become largely irrelevant in th e h ierar­ chy of a cademic knowledge.

David L. Kirp su ggests that hiring pa rt-time wo r kers is a form o f ou t­ sourcing , "tJle acad emic equivalen t of tem p agency fi ll-ins, " and as a practi ce under mines the in tellectual culture a n d th e academ ic e n e rgy of hi gher e d u­ cation. 7 1 He sup ports thls charge by claiming: From a purely fin an cial pe rspec tive, it's a n o-b rainer to outsource teachin g, be­ cause it saves so muc h m oney. . .. But the tr ue COSlS to h igh er educa ti on - even ifhard to q uantify - are ver y h ig h. To r ely on contract labor in the classroom creates a cad re of inte r changeabl e instructors with no sustained r espon sib ili ty

Neoliberalism, Corporate Cu lture, and the Promise of IIiglurr Education HENRY A . GIROUX

for th e ir studen ts, scholars willl no a ttachm e n t to the intellectual life of Ihe in­ 72 stitutio n thro ugh which they are passing.

U nfo rtunately, Kirp see ms to suggest tha t the part-t ime wor kers a re as d efI­ cie nt as th e condi tion s tha t create them. It is one th in g to be the vic tim of a system bu ilt o n greed and scand alous lab o r p r acti ces, an d another thin g to rake th e heat for tryin g to m ake a living u n der such conditions - as if all ef­ fo r ts can be m easured sim ply by the n ature of the j o b. T h e re al issue here is th at su ch co nditions are explo itative a n d th at the so luLion s to fi x ing the problem lie no t simply in h iring more full-tim e faculty, but, as Car y Nelso n points ou t, in reformin g "th e entire com plex o f econom ic , social an d p o li ti­ cal forc es ope ratin g on highe r education . "73 I n o ther qua rte rs o f high er ed ucati on , the resul ts of the e m ergence of the corpora te un ive rsi ty a ppear even more ominou s. O ne tellin g example that proved prescie n l look p lace in 199 8 wh en J ames Carl in , a multimillion­ ai re and fo r me r su ccessful insurance executive who h ad b ee n ap po in te d as the ch a ir m a n of th e Massac huse tts Slate Board of Ed ucaLio n , g ave a speec h to the Greater Bo ston Chambe r o f Co mmerce .74 Sign ali ng co rp ora te c ul­ tu re's d islike o f orga n ize d labor an d its o b session with cost cUlting, Carli n la u n ch ed a four-fold a ttac k again st the academic p ro fessoriate. First., he ar ­ gued tha t high er education h as to m odel itself after su ccessful corpo ra­ tio n s, whi ch mea n s that co lle ges and u n ive rsities have to be downsized. Sec­ o nd , h e ech oed the now f am iliar call o n the part of corpo rate c ul ture to a bo lish tenu re . T hir d , h e m ade it clear th at de m oc ratic governance is n o t suitab le for the co r pora te model of the u n iver sity and that facu lty have too much powe r in shapin g d ecisions in the un iversity. Fi.nally, he explicitly condem n ed th ose fo r ms of knowledge whose yalue lies outside of the in­ stru me n tal sphere o f co m mo dificati on. More specifically, Carlin a rgued that "at le ast 50 pe rcen t o f a ll n on-hard sciences research o n Am erican cam ­ p uses is a lot o f foolis h ness" and sh ould b e banned. 7 ;; He furthe r pred icted that "th ere's go in g to b e a revolu tion in higher e ducation. Whether yo u like it or not, it's going to be b ro ken a part and p u t back to gethe r d iffel-en tly. I t wo n ' t be the same. Why sh o uJ d it b e ? Why shou ld ever ythi n g cha nge except for hi gh e r ed uc atio n ?"76 Carlin 's "revolu tion " was spelled o ut in h is call for increasing the wo r kload of professors to [our, th ree-credit cou rses a seme s­ te r, effectively reducing the ti me educators migh t have to d o research or sh a p e in stitutional p ower.

Carlin 's anti-intellectualism and an imosi ty toward edu cators and studen ts alike is simply a m o re extreme example of the forces at work in th e corporate world lhat wo ul d like to take ad vantage of the profits to be made in hig he r educaLion, while simultaneou sly refash ioning co lleges and univer sities in the image of t he new m ulti conglomerate landscape. Missing fr om th is corporate mod e l o f le adersh ip is the recogn itio n th al academic freedo m implies tlIat knowledge h as a cri tical fun ction, t.ha t unpopular an d criLical inte llec t ual in ­

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NfWliberalism, Cmporate Culture, a nd the Promise of H igher Education H E N RY A. G I ROF X

quiry sh ould be safe guarded and ll'eated as an importan t social asset, and that facu l ty in h igh er education are mo re th a n mere fu n ctionaries of the cor­ porate ord e r. Such ideals are at o d d s wi th the vocatio n al function that corpo­ rate culture wan ts to assig n to high e r education.

Wh ile the call to d own si ze h igher education appears to have caught the public's imagi n a tion at th e m ome nt, it be li es the fact th at su ch "reorganiza_ tion" has b een g oi ng on for some time. Jn fact, m o re p rofessors are working part-tim e and at two-year com m u nity co ll eg es th an at any o ili er time in the country's r ecen t h istory. A 200 1 report by the Nati o n al Study of POSt­ secon d ary Facu lty rece ntly poin ted ou t that "in 1998-1999 , less than one­ third of ail fa cu lty m embers we r e tenured . . . [and th a t] in 1992-1993,40 percent of the faculty was classified as p art-Lime and in 1998- 1999, the share had risen to 45 percen t."77 C re ating a p e r mane n t u nderclass of part-time professional worke rs in high e r ed ucation is not o n ly de mo ralizing and ex­ ploitative fo r m any facu lty wh o h a d such j o bs, but suc h policies increasingl} deskill both parti al a nd full-tim e faculty by in cr easi ng the amount of work they have to d o. With less time to prepare, larger class loa ds, a lm ost 110 time for research, and excessive g rad ing demands, many adjuncts run the risk of becoming either demoral ized, in effecti ve, or both. Mic hae l Du hson, writing as an adj unct, cap tures the process in the followin g co mm e nt: [ am an adjunc t. ... I believed cari ng, working hard, doi ng a good job mattered and would add up to someth ing concrete. Instead, I fi nd myself on a wheel that turns but goes nowhere. 1 don 't expect tbis situation to change .... I have watched my self-esteem d rop, drop, drop from doing work tha t is, theoretically, enh an cing the se lf-esteem of my stude n ts. I have seen the tired eyes, the worn clothes, ule anc ien t eyes of long-term adj uncts. I have looked into their eyes as they have fai leel to look back into mine . ... I have known thi rty year old men liv­ ing at home with their parents , forty year old women teaching college and go­ ing hu ngry, unins ured fifty year olds with serious iJln c!ises. I have known ad­ junct teachers wh o hand ou t As and Bs li ke vi tam ins and he lp students cheat 011 their exams so they' ll ge t good cou rse evaluations. . .. J am a dreamer. I am an idealist. I am a victj m. I am a whore. J am a fool. I am an adjunct.;') There is m orc at work here th an despa ir; th ere are the h arsh lessons offi­ nancial deprivation , he avy wor kloads, and pow{'riessness. As po wer shifts away [rom th e faculty to th e manag erial sectors of the u njversi ty, adjunct fac­ ulty increase in n umbe ,· whil e ef fectively bein g rem oved from the faculty go\'­ ernance process. In short, the h iring of part-ti me fac u lty to m inimize costs simultaneo u sly m ax imizes managerial co ntrol ove r [acuity and the educa­ tional process itse lf. As their ran ks a.re depleted, fu li-ti me faculty live under the co n sta nt th.rea t o f either being gi ven h eavier workloads or simply having their tenure COlllracts elim inated or d r asticall y red efined through "post­ tenure reviews." These sU-u ctural an d ideolo g ica l fac tors not onl\' send a chilling e ffec t thro ug h h igh er educa tj on facu lty, th ey also un d("' rmille the collective power faculty need to chaJ lenge the increa sing corporate-based,

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lo p-d own admin istrative structu res that are becomin g comm o nplace man y colle ges an d u nive rsities.

JI1

Corporate Cu lture's T hreat to Stud ents Co r porate culture 's threat to students ",rill also bear th e burden of privatiza­ d o n as h igher e d ucation j oins h ands with th e cor p orate banking wo rld . Lack­ ing ad equate fin ancial aid , students, e specially p oor stude n ts, will increas­ ing ly finance th e h igh costs of their ed ucation through private co r po ration s stich as Citiba nk , Ch ase Manhattan, Marine Mid land, and o ther sanction ed len d ers. Given the huge d ebt such students acc umulate, it is reasonable to as­ sumt, as jeff Williams points out, th at lo ans "effec tively in d e ntur e sm de nts for ten to twenty ye ars afle r graduation and intractably red uce their career choices, fu nneling th em into the corpo ra te workfo rce in order to p ay their loan s. "79 O f course , for many young people caught in the m argins of p over ty, low­ paying j obs, an d the casualties of the recession , the po te ntial costs of higher education, regardless of its status or availab ility, will d issuade them fro m eve n Lhin ki ng about the possibilities of going to coll ege. U nfortunately, as sta te and feder al agen cies a n d university systems direct more and more of their resow-ces such as state tax cred its and sch o larship programs toward middle- and u pper-income students, th e g rowing gap in co llege e n r ollmen ts be tween h igh-inc ome students (95 % enro llment rate) and 10'w-in co m e stu­ dents (75% e nrollment rate) with comparable acad em ic abilities will widen eve n fur th e r. RO I n fact, a recent report by a fe deral advisory committee claimed th at nearly 48 p ercent of q ualifi e d studen ts fro m low-i n come fami­ lies will n ot be attending college in th e fall of 2002 because of rising tuition charge s an d a shortfall in federal an d state gr ants for low- and m oderate­ income stud en ts. T he report claims that "n e arly 170,000 of the top high­ school grad ua tes from low- and moderate-income families are not enrollin g in coll ege tb is yea r be cause they canno t afford to do so. "8t T hose stu d e nts who d o go on to hig he r education will often fi n d the m se lve s in courses bei ng taughL by an in creasi ng army o f part-time and adjunct faculty. Not only do such p o li cies h arm faculty, th ey al so cheat stu den ts. Too m any u ndergradu­ ates throughou t th e natio n 's colleges an d unive rsities oELen fi nd th emselves in oversize d classes taught by faculty who are o verbur de n ed by heavy te ach­ ing. Moreove r, lh ose professors who a re reward ed for bringing in o utside mo ney will be m ore h eavily represen ted in fie lds such as science an d engi­ neerin g, which attract corporate and gove rnment research fun d ing. As Sheila Slaugh ter observes, "P rofessors in fie lds othe r than science an d engi­ neering who attract fu n ds usually do so from found atio n s which account for a re la tively sm all p rop o r tio n o f overal I research fund ing. "82 Neoliberalism 's o bsession with spreadi ng tb e gospel o f the m arket and the value o f corpo rate cul ture through privatization and com m ercialization has

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restruclU red those spaces and places outside of classroo ms in whi ch students spend a g reat deal of tim e . Cor p orations are in creasingly j oin ing u p with uni­ versi ties to privatize a see min gly e nd less array of services that universities used to h andle by themselves. For ex ample, bookstores are now run by cor­ pot'ate co nglomer ates su ch as Barnes & Noble, wh ile compa n ies such as Sodexho-Marriott (also a large investor in the U .S. priva te p rison ind ustry) run a large pe rcen tage of coll ege dining halls, and McDonal d ' s and Star­ bucks occu py p romi nent loca tions on the slUd ent com m ons. In add ition , housing, alu mn i relation s, health care, and a vast array of oth e r cam pus se r­ vices are leased out LO pr iva te in te r ests. One con seq uence is that spaces o nce marked as public an d n oncom modified now have the appearan ce o f shop­ ping m a ll s. David Trend points out that as universi ty se rvices we re pr ivati zed , tud en t uni on b u ildings and cafeterias took on the ap pe arance - or were co nceptu alized from the be ginQing - as shoppin g m alls o r food co u rts, as vendors competed to place u niversity logos on caps, m ugs, and cre d it card s.

T his is a lar ger patte rn in wh a t h as be en terme d th e "Disneyfic ation" of col­ lege life ... a pe rvasive imp ulse toward in fo tai nmen t . . . wh e re learning is "fu n ," the staff "pe rky," where consum er consid e r a tions dic tate the cu rricu­ lu m , whe re presen ta tio n tak es p recede n ce over substan ce, and wh ere stu­ den ts be co me "co nsum e rs. ~8~

The m essage to stude nls is clear: customer sa tisfac ti on is offered as a surro­ gate fo r lear ni ng. and "to be a citizen is to be a co nsumer, and n o thing mo re.

Freedom means free dom to p urch ase. " 84 Ever ywhere stude n ts tw-n olltside of the u niver sity classroom , they are confronted wi lh ve ndors and comm ercial sp onsors wh o are hawki ng credit cards, athl e tic goods, and other commodi ties that o ne associates with the 10­ al shop ping mall. Universiti es and colleges com poun d th is marriage of comme rcial and ed uca t.ion al va lues by sig ning exclusive contracts with Pepsi, Nike, Starbucks. and oth er com panies, further blurring th e d istinc tion be­ tween student and consumer. Colleges and unive rsities do n o t simply pro­ duce kn owledge and valu es for slUde nt s, they al so play an influen ti al role in shaping the ir iden tities. If colleges and universities are go ing to d efin e th e m­ selves as centers of leaching and learni ng vi tal to the d emocratic life of the n ation, they a re going to have to ackn owledge the danger of b ecoming cor­ po rate or simply adjuncts to b ig b usiness. At th e very least, this demands that they exercise th e political, civic , and ethical cou rage needed to refuse the comm ercial rewards that woul d reduce th e m to becoming sim ply a n oth er brand name o r corporate logo.

Corporate Culture, Pedagogy, and the Poli tics of Online Education The turn to downsizing and d eskill in g faculty is also exacerbate d by the at­ te mpt by m an y un ive rsities to expand into th e profitable m arket of distance education. Such a market is all the more lucrative since it is bein g underwrit-

N eolibem lism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Educatioll H E N R Y A . GIRO t'X

te n by the comb in ed arm e d se rvices, which in August 2000 pledged almost $1 bill ion to "provide tax paye r-subsidized un iversity-based d istance educa­ lion fo r active-duty perso nnel and their families. "85 David Noble h as wrinen extensively on the restructurin g of h igh er education under th e imper atives of the new di gital technologies and the move in to distance education . 1£ he is correc t, the n ews is n o t good.

According to Noble. online learning largely functions th rough pedagogi­ cal m od e ls and m e th ods of delivery that n ot only re ly on stand ardized, pre­ package d curriculu m an d me thodological efficiency. but al so reinforce the com m e rcial pench an t toward train ing. d eski llin g , and deprofessionaliza­ tion. With the deskilling of the professoriate there will also he a r ise in th e u se o r pa rt-time faculty, who will be "perfectly suited to th e investor-imagined u ni.ve rsity of th e fu ture . "86 According to Noble, th e growin g influence of these ideo logical a nd methodolo gical tendencies in h ighe r educati on will be exace rbated by th e powerful in fluen ce o f th e military.s7 A5 Noble observes, an education su bsid ized by the m ilitary is like ly to en tail familiar patt erns of command, control , and precisely spe cified per for mance, in accord ance with th e h allmark military proc urement princi­ ples of u nifo rmi ty, sta nd ardization , mod ulari zation , capital in te nsiveness, sys­ tem compa u bilitv, interch angeability, measurabili ty, and accountab ility - in sh o rt, fI model of edu catio n as a machine, with stand ardized products and pre­ scribed p rocess. 88 (e mph asis added)

Teach e rs College preside nt Arth ur Levin e h as predicted that the n ew in­ [ormation technology m ay soon m ake the trad itio nal coll ege and university ohsolete. He is hardly alone in believing th at o n lin e education will either radical! ), alter or replace traditio nal educatio n . A5 Eyal Press a nd Jennife r Washb urn point ou t, "I n recent years academic institutions an d a growing n umbe r of interne t compan ies have been racin g to tap in to the boomin g m arke t in vir tual le arning, wh ich financ ial an alysts li ke Merr ill Lyn ch esti­ m ale will reach $7 b illion by 2003 . " 89 The marriage of corpo rate cult ure , high er education , and th e ncw h igh-speed tec h n ologies also offe rs u niversi­ ties b ig opportu nities to cu t back o n m ainten an ce expe n ses, e liminate e ntire build ings su ch as libraries an d classrooms, and trim lab or costs. Educ a tion sch olars W il liam Massy and Robert Zemsky claim that un iversities must take advantage of t.h e n ew technologies to cu t back on teaching expenditures. As .they put it, 'Wi th labor accounting fo r 70 percen t or more of current operat­ ing cost, the re is simply n o o ther way."90 Reportin g on the coming restrUcturing of the universi ty around onli ne and distance educa tion, the Chmni cle of Higher E ducation claims tl1at th is n ew type of education wi ll p roduce a new breed of fa culty "who hails n ot from ac­ ademia but from the corpo ra te world." Hired more for the ir "business savvy th an their degree, a foc u s o n Lh e botlom lin e is normal; te nure isn' t. " Th is al­ leged celebratio n offacul ty as social e ntrepreneurs appears to offer no apol­ og ies fo r tu rnin g ed ucation into a commercial enterprise and teaching into a

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Neoliberalism, C01porale Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education H EN R Y A . GIRO UX

sales pitc h for profits. As one enLhusiastic d istance ed ucator p u t it for the Chronicle, "l love not only the teaching but th e selling of it. " 91 Universities and colleges across the country are flocking to th e o nline bandwagon. As Press and Washbu rn poin t out, "More than a half o f the na­ tion 's colleges and u niversiti es d e liver so me courses ove r the I n tern et. "9~ Mass-m arketed d egrees and courses are no t o nly be in g offe red by pres tigious unive rsiti es such as Seton H all, Stan ford Un iversity, Harvard U niversity, New School U n iversity, and the U n ive rsity of Chicago, th ey are also givi ng rise to cyber-backed colleges such as the Western Governors Unive rsi ty and for­ profit, stand-alone virtu al insti tutions such as the U n iversity of Phoen ix.

T h is is no t to suggest that online distance education is th e mos t im portant r only way in which compu ter-based technologies can be used in higher edu­ ca tion, or that th e new e le ctronic techno logies by d efault produce oppre ssive modes of p edagogy. Many educators use email, ne tworking, an d web re­ sources in ver y productive ways in their classroo m s. The real issue is whe ther such a tec r.nology in its various pedagogical u ses undermin es h um an free­ dom and deve lopm en t. As Herbert Marcuse has argued, whe n the ration ality th at drives tech no logy is instrum e n talized and "tran sfor m ed into standard­ ized effici en cy .. . libe r ty is confmed to the se lection of the most adequate m eans fo r reaching a goal which [the individ ual] did n ot se l. "93 The conse­ q uence of th e substitution o f technology for pedagogy is that instr um en tal goals rep lace eth ical and politica l consid eratio n s, result in a loss o f classroom con Lrol by teachers, make gre ate r demands o n facul ty time, an d e mphasize standardization and ralion alization of cou rse mate rials. Zygmun t Bau m an unde rscores the threat o f lhis dange r by arguing that when technol ogy is cou­ pled with calls for efficiency, modeled ·on instru mental ration ali ty, it almost always leads to forms of social e ngin eering that au thorize actions tha t become increasingly "reasonable " and dehuma n izin g at the same time.94 In other words, wh en th e new computer tec hnologies are ti ed to narrow forms of in­ strum en tal ra tionali ty, tll ey serve as "moral sleepin g pills " that are m ade in­ creasin gly available by corporate powe r and th e m odern bureaucracy of h igher education . Of th e greatest impo rtan ce here is h ow the culture of in­ strumental ratio nali ty sh ape s inte llectual practices in ways th at un d ermine th e fTee exch a nge of ideas, mediate re lations in ways tha t d o no t require th e physical relations of e ither stud e n ts o r o th er facul ty, and su pport a form of hy­ per-i ndividualism that downplays forms of collegiali ty and social rel ations ame nable to p u blic ser vice .95 The issue h ere is that suc h tech n o logies , wh en not sh aped by e th ical con­ sidera ti ons, collective dialogue , and dialogical approaches, lose wh atever possibil ities th ey migh t have fo r lin king educati on to cri tic al th inkin g and learnin g to democratic soc ial change. 96 ln fact, when b usi n ess values replace th e imperatives of cri Licallearn ing, a class-specific divide begi ns to app ear i.n which poo r and margi nalized studen ts will get low-cost, low-ski lkd kn ow l­ edge and second -ra te degrees from onli ne sources, while th ose students be-

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in g educated for le adership positions ill th e elite schools will be ve rsed in pe rson al and socia lly in te ractive p edagogies in which high-powered knowl­ e d ge, critical thinki ng, and problem-so lving will be a priori ty. co u pled with a h igh-status degree. U nder such circ u mstances , traditional modes of cl ass an d rac ial u'acking will be reinfo rced and updated within the p roliferation of wh at David Noble calls "digital diploma mills. "97 Noble und e rem phasizes, in h is othe rwise excell en t an alysis, all indicati ons that th e drive toward corporatizing the university will take its biggest toll on those seco nd- and third-tier institu tions that are increasingly d efin ed as serving no o th er fu n c­ tion than to train semiskilled and ob edien t workers fo r th e new postin d us­ trialize d o rder. The role slotted for lhese in sti tu tions is d riven less by th e im­ perative s of the n ew digital Lechnologies than by the nee d to reprod uce a ge nd er and class divisio n of labor that supp o rts the neoli be ral global market revolu tion and its rele ntless search for bigger profits.

He ld up to the profit stan d a rd , u niversities and co lleges wi ll increasingly calibra te su pply to de mand , and th e results lo ok o minous with regard to what fo rms of knowledge , pe d agogy, an d research wiU be reward ed and le gi t­ imated. As co lleges and corporations co ll aborate over the content of d egree programs, panicularly with regard to online graduate program s, colle ge cur­ ricula ru n the risk of being nar rowly tailored to the n eeds of specific busi­ n esses. For example, Babson College developed a maste r 's degree progranl in busin ess admin istration sp ecific ally for Intel worke rs. Sim ilarly, the U ni­ ve rsity of Tex as at Aus tin is d eve lo ping an on line maste r of scien ce degree in science , tec hnology, an d co mmercialization that ca ters only to studen ts who work at IBM. Moreove r. the program will only orie nt its kn owledge , skills, and research to fo cus exclusive ly on IBM projects.91l Not only do such cou rses run the risk of be coming com pan y trai nin g worksh o ps, they also ope n up higher educa tion to powerful corporate inte rests th a t have li ttle regard fo r kn owledge tied to the cultivation of an in formed, critical citizenry capable of actively participatin g in and gove rn ing a de m ocra tic soc iety.

As cru cial as it is to r ecognize the d angers in h erent in online le ar njn g and th e ins truc tio nal u se of in for mation tec h nology, it is a lso impo r tant to re co gni ze that th e re are many th oughtful and in te lligent peop le who har­ r ne ss the use o f suc h te chno log ies in ways that can be p edago gi caUy u seful .

Mo reove r, no t eve ryon e who u ses these tech no logies can b e simply dis­ m issed as living in a m iddle-class world of te ch no-e u pho ria in wh ich com­ pu te r s are viewe d as a panacea. An d rew Feenbe rg, a professor a t Sa n Diego State U niversity an d fo r me r disciple of Herbert Marcuse, rej ects th essentiali st vi ew that tec hno lo gy reduces every thing to fu nctions, effi ­ ciency, and raw mate rials, "wh ile th r eatening both spi ri tu al and m aterial survival. " 99 Fee n be rg argu es that the us e of tec h no lo gy in both hi gher edu­ cation an d oth e r sph e res has to be taken up as p a rt o f a larger p r oject to ex­ ten d demo cracy an d that u nder such conditions it can be used "Lo open up new poss ibilitie s for interve nlion." lOO

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NeolibPralism, CorjlOrate CultU1"e, and the Promise of Higher Educatio n H ENRY A. GIROUX

Higher Education as a Democratic Public Sphere Higher educa tio n should be viewed as a resource vital to the d e mo cratic and civic life of th e nati on against the cu r rent onslaught to corpo ratize higher educa tion. H igh er education needs to he safeguarded as a public good agai nst the ongoing a ttempts to Ol-ganize and r u n it like a cor poration, be­ cause, as Ellen Will is po ints out, the university "is th e on ly institution of any size th at still p rovides cul tural dissidents with a platfo r m ." lol But more im­ portan tly, high e r educatio n mus t be embraced as a d emocratic sphere be­ cause it is one of th e few public spaces left wh ere students can learn the powe r of q uestioni ng au thority, recover th e ideals o f e ngage d citizenship, re­ affirm the im p ortance of the p u blic good, and expand th e ir capacities to make a differe nce. Central to suc h a task fo r th e university is the challenge to resis t becom ing a con sume r-orien ted corporatio n more concerned about ac­ coun ting th an acco untab ili ty, and whose m ission, d efi ned la rgely through an appeal to excell ence, is com pre h ended almos t exclusively in terms of a purely in str umen tal efficie ncy. 102 High e r educa tion can be removed fro m its narrow instrum entaljustifica­ lion by encouraging stude n ts to thin k beyond wha t it m eans to simply get a job or be an adroit consume r. Moreover, th e crisis of higher e d ucation needs to be analyzed in terms of wide r con fi g ura tio ns of econ o mi c, political, and social forces that exacerb a te tensions between th ose who value such institu­ tions as public goods and those advocates of n eoliberalism wh o see markeL culture as a maste r design for all human affairs. Educators m us t challenge all attempts on the part of con servatives and liberals to drai n democracy of its substan tive ideals by red ucin g it to the imperatives of hype rcapitalism and the glorification of fi nancial m arkets.

Ch alle nging the e ncroachment of co r porate power is esse ntial if democ­ racy is to remain a defi ni n g principle of ed u ca tion a nd eve ryday life. Part of suc h a chall enge requires educa to rs , studen ts, an d o th e rs to create organi­ zati ons ca pable of mobilizing civic dialogue, provide an alte rn ative concep­ tion o f the meaning and purpose of h igh er educatio n , and develop politi­ cal orga niza tions that can inO uence legislation to chall enge corporate power 's ascendancy over th e institutions and mechan isms of civil society. In s tra tegic terms, revitalizing public dialogue suggests that fac ulty, students, and admi n istrators need to take seriously th e importance of defending higher education as a n institution of civic c ultu re whose pu rpose is to edu­ cate students fo r active and crit ical citize n s hip .l 0~ Such a project suggests that edu ca to r s, stud e n ts , and o thers will have to p rovide the rationale and mobi lize efforts towar d neatin g enclaves o f resi stance , n ew public spaces to co u nter o fficial forms of p u blic pedagogy, a n d insti tutional spaces that hi ghl igh t, nourish, and evaluate the te n sion be tween civil society and cor­ pora te power while simultaneou sly struggling to p rioritize citizen rights over consu me r ri ghts.

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Si ruated wi thin a broader context of issues conce r ned with social respo nsi­ bility, politics, and the dignity of h u man life, h igher education sh ould b e en­

gaged as a site tha t offers students the oppo rtu n ity to involve themselves in tbe d eepest proble ms of society. to acqui re the kno.wled ge, skills, and ethical vocabulary necessary for m odes of cri tical dialogue an d forms of b roadened ci\·ic participation . T h is suggests develop ing pedagogica l condi tions for stu­ d ents to come to terms with their ovm sense of power and public voice as in­ d ividual and social age nts by enablin g them to exami ne and frame criti cally what they learn in th e classroom "wi thin a more poli tical or social or inte llec­ tual understanding of what's going on" in the interface betwee n their lives and the world at large . 10 4 At th e ve r y least, students need to learn h ow to take responsibility for their own id e as , take inte llectual risks, d evelo p a sense of respect for o the rs different from th e mse lves, and lear n h ow to th ink cr iti­ cally in order to function in a wid er demo.cratic cul ture. At issue h ere is pro­ \'iding studen ts with an educa tion that allows them to recognize the drea m and promise of a substantive democracy, particularly th e idea that as citizens they are "enritled to p ub lic services, decent housing , safety, security, support during hard limes, and m ost importan tly, some power over decision mak­ in g. "105 But more is n eeded than defe n ding h igher ed ucation as a vi tal sp h ere in \"hich to d evelop and nourish the proper balance between democratic val ues and market fu nd amen tali sm , between iden tities founded o n democratic principl es and identities steeped in for m s of compe titi ve , self-in terested indi­ \idualism that celeb rate theiT own mate r ial and ideo lo g ical advantages.

Given the curre nt assa~l t by politicians, con se r vative fo unda tio ns, and the media on educa to rs who spoke critically about U.S. fo reign policy in light of the u·agic events of September 11, it is politically cr ucial that educators a t all leve ls of involvement in the acad e my be defended as p u blic intellec tu als wh o provide an indispe n sable service to th e nalio n. 106 Such an appea l cannot be made in the nam e of professio nalism, bu t in te rms of th e civic duty such in­ tellectuals provide. Too m any acade m ics h ave re treated into narrow specia l­ ties that serve lar ge ly to conso lidate autho r ity rath e r t han cri tique its abuses.

Refusin g to take positi on s o n controycrsial issu es or to exami n e the rol e they might play in lesse ni ng h um an suffering , suc h acad emics become mode ls of moral indifference a nd unfortunate examples o f what it means to disconn ec t Jearning [rom public life.

On the other h and, many leftist and liberal academics h ave re trea ted into arcane discourses that offer them mostly the safe gro und of the profession a l recluse. Making almost no connections to audie n ces o u tside of the academ y or to the issues that bear down on their lives, such acade m ics have become largely irrelevant. T his is not to suggest that th ey do not publish o.r speak at symposiums, but that they often do so to lim ited a udiences and in a langu age that is often overly abstrac t, highly aesthelicized, rarely takes an overt pol iti­

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N eoliberalism, Cmporale Culture, and the Promise oj Higher Ed1tcalion H EN RY A . G IROU X

cal po sition, and seems largely in different to broad er public issues. I am re­ min d e d of a story aboUl one r ising "l eft-win g" public re la tio ns intellectual, wh o bera ted one o f hi s co ll eagues for raising some po li ti cal concerns about an au thor that the newly arrived "left" pro fessor h ad read. According to our young ce le bri ty, p olitical d iscourse was not "coo) ," thus affi rming the separa­ tio n of scholarship from commitm e n t, while justifying a form of anti­ intelle ctuali sm th at parades u n d er th e ba nner of cleve r ne ss that threatens no o ne but clearly sells on the market. T his is m o re than academic fluff or the m ark of an im pove rish e d imag in ation; it is irre levance by design.

Engaged in telle ctu al s such as Aru n dhati Ro y, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said , and th e late Pierre Bo urdieu h ave offe red a d iffe ren t and more com­ mi tte d role fo r acade mi cs. Mocking th ose in tell ectuals for whom irony and c1et'e rn e ss ap pear to be th e last refuge o f acad em ic scoundrels who disdain any fo r m of co mmitment, Roy d efe nds the link be tween sch olarship and com mi tme nt as precise ly "uncool," as if bein g fashio nable is the most impor­ tant fac tor for shap in g the ide n tity and work of engage d intellectuals. She wri tes: I rake sides. I take a position. I have a point ohiew. What's worse, I make it clear that I think it 's right an d moral to take th at posi tion , an d what' s even worse, I use everything in m)' power to nagrantly solicit support for that position. Now, for a writer of the twenty-first cen tury, that's considered a pretty un cool, unso­ phisticated th ing to do . . . . Isn't it u-ue, or at least theoretically possible, th at I here arc times in the life of a people or a nation when the political climate de­ man ds th at we - even the most soph isticated of us - ove r tly take sides?107 Noa m Chomsky clai ms th a t "th e social an d inte ll ectual rol e of the university sh o ul d be su bve rsive in a healthy so cie ty . .. [a n d that] in d ividuals and soci­ ety a t lar ge benefit to t.h e ex tent that these li be rator y ideals extend through­ out th e e d u cat ion al system - in fa ct, fa r beyond ."10il Postcolonial and liter­ ar y cr itic Edward Said takes a sim ilar p osition and argues that academics sh ou ld engage in o ngoing forms of p e rman e nt critiq ue of all abuses of powe r and auth o rity - "to en ter into susta in ed and vigorous exchange with th e o u tside wo rld " - as part of a lar ger proj ec t of helping "to create the so­ cial co n di tio ns for th e co ll ec tive produc tion of realist u to pias. "109 Fo llowing Bourdieu and othe rs, T be li eve that inte llec tuals who inhabit o u r na tion's u niversities should rep r esen t the con science o f this society not only becau se th ey shap e th e co ndi ti ons und er which future generations lea rn about th emse lves an d th eir re lati o ns to o the rs a n d the outside world, b u t al so because th ey en gage ped agogical practi ces that are by their very na­ tur e mo ral and p o liti cal, rath e r than sim p ly cos t-effective and technical.

Such p e dagogy. bea rs wi tn ess to the ethical and political dilemmas that ani­ m ate th e broader soc ial lan d scape a nd a re im portant b e cause they provide spaces th a t are b oth comfortin g and unsettling, spaces that both disturb and e nl igh te n. Ped agogy in this in sta n ce not on ly works to shift how students

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think abo ut the issues affec ting their lives and the world at large , b ut p o ten­ tially energizes the m to se ize suc h mom e n ts as poss ibilities for acting o n and t' ngag in g in the wo rl d . T he appeal h e re is no t m erely ethical; it is also an ap­ peal that addre sses the materiality o f reso ur ces, access, and po li tics, while viewi ng powe r as ge nera tive and crucial to any viable notion of individual an d social agency.

O rgan izin g agai nst the co rpora te take over of higher ed ucation al so sug­ gests figh ting to p ro te ct th e jobs o H ull-time facu lty, turning adjunct jobs into fu ll-time p ositions, expan di n g benefits to pa rt-tim e wor ke rs, and puttin g po wer into th e h and s of faculty a nd stu d e nts. Mo reover, suc h struggles must ad dress the exploitative co ndi tio ns u nde r wh ic h many gradua te students work, co ns tituting a de facto army of se rvice wor ke rs who are un d erp ai d , o\'e r worked , and sho r n of any re a l p owe r or b e nefits. l1O Similarly, progr ams in many unive rsities that offer r e medi al courses, affirmative acti o n, and oth e r crucia l p ed ago gical r eso urc es are under massive assault, often by con­ ser va tive tru stees who want to e liminate fro m the un iversi ty a n y a ttem pt to add ress the d eep in equities in society, whi le simultaneo usl y d e ny in g a decent edu cation t.o min oritie s of co lo r and class. For exam p le, th e City U niversity New Yo r k, as a result of a d ec ision made by a board of trustees, has decide d 10 end its com mitment to provide remedial courses for ac ademi cally unprepared stu­ dents, many of whom are immi granls requiring language training before or concu rren t with ente ring the ordinarv academic curriculum .... Consequently ... a growing number of prospective college students are forced on an already overburdened job market. 111 Educ a to rs a n d students need to j o in with comm u nity p e ople and socia l movements a rou n d a common platform that resists the corporatizing of sc h ools, the ro ll-back in basic services, and th e ex p loitation of teaching assis­ tan ts an d adjunct facu lty. But resistan ce to ne o libe ralism and its ongoing on­ sla ugh t against p u blic goods, services, and civic freedom s cannot be limited either to t h e sp h ere of hig her educa tion or to o utrage d faculty. There are several important lesso n s that facul ty can learn from th e growing numbe r of broad-based stu d e n t movements th a t are pro testing neoJjberal global poli­ cies an d the o ngo ing co m me rc ialization of th e u n ive rsity and eve r yd ay life.

As fa r b ac k as 1998, stude nts fro m about one hun d re d co lleges across the United States and Can ad a "h eld a series of 'teach-ins' challe n g ing th e in­ creasing in volvem en t of corpo ration s in higher e ducati on. "I 12 Studen tS fr o m Yal e University, H arvard U niversity, Florida State U nive rsity, and the U niver­ sity of Minneso ta , am o ng other sch ools, o rganized d eba tes , lectures, fil ms, a n d speake r s to exam ine th e m ul tiface te d ways in which corporations are af­ fecting a ll asp ec ts of high e r ed ucation . Wi Lhin the last few ye ars , th e pa ce of such pro te sts on an d off camp uses has grown and spawned a num be r of stu­ d e nt protest groups, includi ng th e U n ited Stud e n ts Against Swe atsh o ps

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(USAS ) , with over 180 North American campus groups, the n atio nwide 180/ Movemen t for Democracy and Education , and a m ulLitu de of groups protest­ ing the policies of the Wo rld T rad e Organizati on (WTO ) and Lh e Inte rna­ tional Mone tary Fu nd. 1l 3 StudenLS h ave occ u pied the offices of u n iversity presid e nts, h eld h unger strikes, blocked traffic in protes ts of the brand-n am e society, co n ducted mass demonstrations against th e WTO in Seattle. and protested the working con­ ditions and u se o f child la bo r in the $2.5 bil li o n d o llar collegiate app are l industry. I n J anuary 2000, stude n ts from the conserva tive Virgi n ia Com m o n ­ wealth U niversity join ed the rising tide of anticorporate pro te st by organiz­ ing a slee p-in "ou tside of the vice p re sid en t' s offlce fo r two nights to pro lest the un iversity's contrac t wi th McD on ald's (th e school promised th e fast-fo od behemo th a twe n ty-year m o no poly ove r th e Studen t Co mm on s). "114 As d i­ verse a s these struggles m ight appear, one o f the comm on threads is their re­ sistance to the in creasin g in cu rsion of corporate power over high er educa­ tion. As L iza Feathe rstone observes: Almost all of the curre nt student strugg les - wh e ther over tui tion in creases, apparel licen ses, socially resp on sible inve sting, McDon ald 's in the studc l1l u n­ ion, the r ighLs of un iversity lau nd r y workers, a d in ing-hall contractor's invest­ men t in private prisons or solidaril")1 with striking studen ts in Mex ico - focus on the reality of th e un iversity as corporate actor.] I"

Many students reject t.he mo del of the unive rsi ty as a b u sin e ss, which in­ creasingly views students as consum ers, the classroo m as a m arketplace, and the public space o f th e uni versi ty as an inve stmen t opportu n ity. Stude nls rec­ ognize that th e corpo rate mode l of leader shi p sh a ping h igh er ed ucation fo s­ ters a n arrow sense of respon sib ility, age n cy, an d public values becau se it lacks a vocabulary for p roviding guidan ce on m aue rs o f j us Lice , e q u ality, fair­ ness. equity, a nd freedom, val ues th at are crucial to the fu nctioning of a vi­ brant, demo cratic cultu re . Stu de nts are refusing to be treated as consumers rather than as m em bers of a u niversity community in which they have a voice iJl helpin g to shape t.he co n d it ions u nde r whic h they learn and how th e u ni­ versity is organized and ru n. T h e alie n a tio n and powerlessness t h at ignited student resi stance in the 1960s appears to be alive a nd well today on co ll ege campuses across the co un try. Feath erstone, o n ce again, cap tures this risi n g anLico rpo rate sentimen t. Sh e writes: "Cam pus democracy" is an increasingly co mmon rallying cry (just as, at major off campus pro tests , d emons trators ch ant "this is wh at d emo cracy lo oks like"). ... Like the idealists who wro te the Port H uron Statement, studen ts are b eing politici led by disapp oin tmen t. J1f, Stude n t resis ta nce to corp orate p owe r has al so man ife sted off campus in struggles for gl o ba l j ustice that h ave taken p lace in ciLi es such as Se attle , Davos, Por to Aleg re, Prague, Me lbourne , Quebec, Gothenb u rg , Genoa, an d New York. T h ese a n Li cor porate struggles n o t o n ly include students, but also

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labo r unions, co mmun ity activis ts, environme ntal groups , an d other so cial movemen ts. The impo r tance of th e se struggle s is in p art that they offer stu­ denLS allian ces with n onstuden t groups, both with in an d o utside of th e U n ited Stales, and poi n t to th e prom ise of lin king a u niversity-based public pedagogy of resistan ce to b roade r pedagogical struggles a nd social move­ ments th at can co llec tively fig h t La ch a nge n e olibe ral policies. EquaJJy im­ po rtant is that these move m en ts lin k learning to social change by making vis­ il51e alternative m o dels of radical d e m ocratic relation s in a wide variety of sites th a t exte n d from the art galle ry lo altern ative m e dia to the un iversity.

Such move ments offe r instan ce s of colle ctjve r esistan ce to the glaring mate­ rial ine q uities and the growi ng cynical be lief !Jut today' s cultu re of invest­ men t and fin ance makes it impossible to address many of th e m ajor social p roble m s fac ing both the U nited States and th e larger wo rld. T h ese new fo rms of p olitics perform an im portant theore tical service by reco g n izin g the link b e tween civic e d ucation , critical pedagogy, and opposition al political agency as p ivo tal to modes o f organ izing tha l challenge the depoli Licization of politics and o pen u p the p ossibil ities for promoting autonomy an d d emo­ cratic social transfor m ation .

Studen ts pro testin g the cor poratization of the universi ty and n eoli ber al­ ism' s assault on public institutions and civi l society both u nde rstan d h ow dom in ant pedagogies work within tll e variou s for mations a nd sites of capital _ p ar ticularly co r porate capital 's use of th e glob al med ia and the sch o o ls' ­ and refuse to rely o n domi nan t source s o f in for m a tion . Such strategies point to an altern ative fo rm of politics o utside of the part)' m achi nes , a p oli ti cs that astu te ly recognizes both the world o f material ine q uality and the landscape of symbolic inequali ty. I 17 In p ar t. th is has re su lted in what Im re Sze m an call s "a new p ub lic space of ped agogy" that employs a variety of old and new me­ d ia includ ing com puters, theater, digiLaI video, m agazines, the In te r n et, and p ho to graphy as a tool for bo th learnin g an d organi7jn g. 11 R Wh ile employing m an y o f the te ch n o logie s used in o nline learning and otl1(:'[ comp uLe r-based education al pro grams, these techno logi es o p e rate o ut of a differenL poli tical an d p edagogical context d esigned to lin k lear nin g to social change and chal­ le nge the often h ierarchical relationsh ips in h igh er education .

H igh e r education and the larger culture are too co rpo ratized to beco me the only sites of learning an d sLr uggl e . New spaces and places of resisLance have to be develop ed , an d th is d emands new fo r ms of pedagogy and n ew sites in which to con duc t it while not ahandon ing traditional sphere s of learning. Th e challenge for faculty i n highe r education is, in part, to fin d ways to con tribu te their knowle d ge an d skills to u nderstandin g how n e o ­ li beral pedagogies create the conditio ns fo r d evalui n g critical le arning and un de rmining viable forms o f political agen cy. Acad e mics, as Imre Sze man p uts it, need to figu re out how neoli beralism and corporate culture "consti­ tute a problem of and for pedagogy." 11 9 Academ ics nee d to be atten tive to the oppositional pedago gi e s p u t into place by various student move m e nts in

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order to judge their "significance ... fo r the shape and function of the uni­ ve rsity curricula today. "120 The challenge here is for facul ty to lear n as much as possible from student move ments abo ut pedagogical app roaches and how these m ovements medi­ ate the fu n damental tension behoVee n the p ub lic values of higher education an d the commercial valu es of corporate culture. If the forces of corporate cu ltu re are to be c h allenged, educators must also e nlist the h el p of diverse co mmunities, foun dations, and social movements to ensure thal public insti­ tutions of higher learning are adequately fu nded so that they will not have to rely o n corporate sponsorsh ip an d advertising reve nues.

Jacq ue s Derrida has suggested in anoth e r context that any viable notion of higher education should b e grou n ded in a vibrant politics, which makes the promise of democracy a matter of concrete urg·ency. For Derrida, making vis­ ible a democracy th at is to come, as opp o sed to that which presents itself in its name, p rovides a refe rent for b oth criticizing e ver ywhere what parades as dem ocr acy and critically assessing the condi tio ns and possibilities for demo­ crati c transformation. De rrida sees the promise of d e m ocracy as the proper articulation of a political elhics an d by implicatio n suggests that when higher educat io n is engaged and articulated th rough th e project o f d emocratic so­ cialtransformation it can fun c tion as a vital public sphere for critical learn­ ing, ethical deliberation, an d civic e ngage me nt. Toni Mo rrison understands something about the fragile nature of the relationship betwee n higher edu­ cation and d e mocra tic public life, and she rightly suggests, given the urgency of the times, the n eed fo r all members of academia to rethink the meaning an d purpose of highe r education. She writes: if the lmive rsit)' does not take seriously and rigorously its role as a guardian of wider civ ic fre edoms, as in te rrogator of m ore an d more co mplex ethical prob­ lem s, as servant and preserve r of deeper democ ratic practices, the n some other regime or m e nage of regimes will do it for us, in spite of us, and without US. 12 1

Both Derrida and Morriso n recogn ize that the prese nt crisis represents a historical o p porlu nity to r e h lse the com monse nse assumption that democ­ racy is synonymous Wilh capi tal ism an d critical citize nship is limited to being an unquestioning consu mer. Mar ke ts need to be que stioned not simply through economic consider ations b ut as a matter of ethical and political con­ cerns. T h e lan guage o f n e o liberalism an d th e emerging corporate university radically alters th e vocab ulary available for apprais ing the meaning of citi­ enship, agency, and civic ,·ir tue. Within this discourse everything is fOI- sale, an d wh a t is not h as no value as a p ublic good or practice. It is in the spirit of such a critiq u e and act of resistance that ed ucato rs n eed to break with the "new faith in the histor ic al in evitability professed by the theorists of [neo-] libe r ali sm [in order J LO inven t new forms of collective poli tical work" to con­ fro nt th e m arch of corpora te p ower. 122 T his will not be an easy task , but it is a necessary one jf de mocracy is to be won back fro m the reign of financial 111ar­

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keD and the Danvi nian valu es of an unbridled capitalism. Academics can contribute to suc h a sU'uggle by, among other things, defe nding higher edu­ cation for th e con tribu tion it makes to the quality of public life, fighting for the c rucial role it plays p e dagogic ally in asserting the prim a cy of democratic valu es over com mercial in lerests, and stru gglin g collective ly to preserve its p oli tical responsibility to provide students with the capacities th ey n eed for civic courage and engaged c ritical citizenship.

The curre nt regime of neoliberalism and the incu rsion of corp o rate power inlo higher education present difficult problems and deman d a pro­ fo un dly com mi tted sense of collective resista nce . Unfortu nate ly, it is n ol a matter o f exagge ration to sugge st th a t collective cynicism has become a p ow­ er ful flxture of everyday life . But rath e r than m a ke despai r co nvincing, I thin k it is all the more cru cial to take seriously Me ghan Mor ris' argume nt th at "th in gs are loo urge n t now to be giving up on our imagination."1 23 Or, more specifical ly, to take up the challenge ofJacques De rrida's rece nt p rovo­ cation thal "we must do and think th e imp ossible. If only the possible h ap­ pened. nothing more wou ld happen . If I only did wh at I can do, I wouldn 't do anythin g. "124

Notes 1. Robe rt W. McCh esney, "Introduction ," in Noam Chomsky, Profit over People: Neoliberal­ ism and Global Ordcr (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), p. 7.

2. Benjamin R. Barber, "Blood Brothers, Consumers, or Citizens? Three Models ofId en­ tity _ E thnic , Comme rc ial, and Civic," in Carol Gould and Pasquale Pasquino, eds., Cultural Jdenlit)! and the Nation State (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield , 2001), p.

65.

3. See Tom Pe ters, ''The Brand Called You, " Fast Compan'y (Augu st/ September 1997), 83-94.

4. This quote is take n from the ChrisandLuke.com website . Retrieved July 2002 , from http ://w·ww.ChrisandL uke .com/ ap .html 5. For a classic crit.iqu e of the brand-name society, see Naomi Klein, N o Logo: T aking A im at the B rand B u llies (New York: Picador, 1999).

6. Cited in Dawn Kessler, "What Would You Do for a Free Ride to College?" Retrieved J uly 2,2002, from h ttp: // www.col1egeboun dmag.com/ side / quickcon nec t 7. Will iam Powers, "The Art of Exploitation," A tlantic Montlily, Re trieved July 2002 , from http://www. th eatlan tic/ p o Ii tic / nj/ powers200 I-08-08.h tml 8. These ideas are taken from Barber, "Blood Brothers, Consum ers, or Citizens?" p . 65.

9. Edward S. H erman and Robert W. McCh esney, Tile Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism (Washington, DC: Cassell , 1997), p. 3.

10. r address this issue in Hen ry A. Giroux, Public Spaces, Private L ives: BC)'ond the Cul/llre of nicislII (Lan ham, MD : Rowman and Littlefie ld, 2001).

I I. Barber, "Blood Brothers, Consu mers, or Citizens?" p. 59.

12. I take up this issue of cynicism in great de tail in Giroux, Puhlic Spaces, Private Lives.

13.Joseph Kahn, "Redrawing the Map, " New 1'011: l l1nes,June 25, 2000. p. 5.

14. T his is a position shared by a number of influe n tial social and political theorists. For example, see Robert W. McCh esney, Corpm'ate I"ledia a.nd the T hreat to D emocracy (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997); Pierre Bourdieu, A cts of R e.sistance against the Tyranny

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32. Critical educators have prOvided a rich histo ry of how both public and higher educa­ tion have been shaped by the politics, ideologies, an d images ofindusu),- For example, see Samuel Bowles and He rbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist Am.erica (New York: Basic Books, 1976); Michael Ap ple, Ideology and CUfflmlum (New York: Routledge, 1977) ; Martin Carno), and Henry Levin, Schooling and Worl: in the DemoC't'atic Stale (Stanford, p. 127. ('A Stanford Uni\'ersi ty Press, 1985); Stan ley Aron owitz a nd H enry A. Giro ux , Educa­ tion Stilhmder Siege (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993) ; Stanley Aronowitz and Wil­ 17. Comaroff a nd Comaroff, MMillennial Capitalism," p. 322. liam DiFazio, The Jo bless Fu/1lre (Min n eapolis: Un ive rsity of Mi nn eso ta Press, 1994); 18.James Ru le, "Markets, in Their Place," Dissf'1I t (Winter 1998), 31.

Cary Nelson, ed., Will Teach Jo r Food (Minneapolis: Universi ty of Min nesota Press, 19. Zygmunt Bauman, T hl'177dividualized Soriely (London: Polity Press, 2001).

1997 ); D. W. Livingstone, Th e r:ducation-Jobs Gap (Bo ulder, CO: Westview, 1998) .

20 . Bauman. The Individualized Societ'y.

33. Sheila Slaughter, "Professional Values and the All ure of the Ma rket," A cadem~ (Sep­ 21 . The classic dominant texts on corporate cui ture are Terrance Dca I and Alan Ken nedy. tember / Oc tober 200 ) , 1.

Corporate CUilU1'C.' The Rites and Rituals oj Corporate Life (Reading, MA: Ad diso n-''''esl ey, 34. An example of how cozy th e rela tionship between ve nture capita lism and the un iver­ 1982) a nd T homas Pe terson and Robert Waterman, I n Search oj Excellen ce (New York: si ty has become can be seen in the story ullcritically re ported in Chronic" ofHigher Edu­ Harper and Row, 1982). I also wan t to point out that corporate cult ure is a dynamic, cation. See Goldie Blume nstyk, "Chasing the Rainbow: A Ve nture Capitalist 011 the ever-changing force. Bu t in spite o f its innovations and cbanges, it rarely if ever chal­ Trail of U ni versi ty-Based Co mpa nies, " Chronicle oj H igher E dumtion, March 15,2002, lenges the centrali ty of the profit motive, or fails to prioritize co mmerci al consider­ pp. A28-A32. atio ns over a se t of values that wouln call the class-based system of capitalism into ques­ 35. Goldie Blume nsryk, "Kn owled ge Is a Form of Venture Capi tal for a Top Columbia Ad­ tion. For a brill iant di scussion of the changing n aLUre of corporate culture in light of min istrator," Chronicle oj Higher EdliCOtiO Il, February 8, 2001 , p . A29. the cultural revolution of th e 1960s, see T homas Frank, TIt~ Conquest oj Cool (Chicago: 36. So me recen t examp les include: Aronowitz and Giroux, Edu cation Still under Siege; U niversity of Chicago Press, 1997).

Randy Martin, Chalk Lines (Minn eapolis: University of Mi nn esota P ress, 1998); Sta nley 22 . Gary Becker captures this sentiment in hjs book, The Economic '1pjJ1'Oach to H uman Be­ Aronowitz. Th.e Knowlf'dge Factory: Dismantling tlU' C01pomte Ul1iversit), and Creating Trtlii havior. H e argues, "We not o nly ought to thin k and act as self-in te rested age n ts, b\lt we H igher Learning (Boston : Beacon Press, 2000); Henry A. Giro ux, Impure Acts: T he Pmeti­ are already acting (if not yet thinking) in precisely those ways. We are each of us self­ ca l Politics oj CnltlJral Si li dus (New York: Ro utledge , 2000). interested calcula tor~ of our own advantage, howev('r much we m ight wish to hide that 37. Ri chard Hofts tad ter, cited in Eyal Press and Jenn ifer Washburn, "The Ke pt Univer­ fac t from othe rs and even (or perhaps especially) from ourselves. " Cited in Terrance si ty," AtLantic M onthly, Mar ch 20, 2000, p. 54. H oftstad te r, with C. De Wi tt Hardy. ex­ Ball, "imagining Marketopia, " Dissent (S ummer 2(01), 78. pands on these views in Tile Development and Swpe oj H igher Education in the United States 23. Alan Brymall, Disney and His Wo rlds (Nl.'w York: Rou tledge, 1995), p. 154.

(New York: Colum bia U niversity Press, 1952); with Walter P. Metzger, The Developmen t 24. Robin D. G. Ke ll ey, Yo ' Mama s D isjimkti011al: Fighting Ihe Culture Wars in Urban Amerim oj Ac.aelemic Freedom in Ihe United Slales (New York: Co lumb ia Un ive rsity Press, 1955) ; (Boston: Beacon Pres~ , ] 997) .

Anti-Intellect ualism in Amaican Life C\lew York: Vintage Boo ks, 1963). A more compli­ 25. HUD re fe rs to th e Depar tmen t of Housing and Urban Development created as a cabi­ cated though ul timately distorting critique appears in Stephen Brier and Roy ne t-level agen cy in 1965. Its stated p w-pose is to create oppo rtunities for home owner­ Rosenzweig, ''The Keyboard Campus, " Nati on, Ap ri l 22, 2002, pp. 29-32. ship, provide hOllsing assistan ce for low-incom e person s, crea te affordable housing, 38. Sec Shei la Sla ughter and Larry L. Leslie, Academic C<tpitalism: Politics, Policies, fmel lhe enforce the nation's housing laws, promote econ om ic growth in economicallv d isad­ 'lItrep remurial UniveHit.y (Baltimore :Johns H opkins Univer~i ty Press, 1997) . vantaged neighborhoods, and alleviate homelessness.

39. Press aDd Washburn, ''Th e Kept University," p . 42.

26. For a con tex t from which to judge tbe eff ects of such cu ts on the poo r and on chil­ 40. Press and Washbu rn . "Th e Kept Un iversity, ~ pp. 39-54. d ren, see T he Slale of America's Children: A Report Jrom the Children's DeJense FU1Ui 41. T his issue is taken \ IP in Mic hael Berube, "Why In effici ency Is Good for Unive r­ (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998). On tJle emergence of th e prison-in dustrial com­ sitie s,"ChrOllicle oj H igher Education, March 27 , 1998 , pp. B4-B5 . p lex and how it diverts money from higher education , see Giroux, Public SjJaces, Private 42 . Patricia P. Brodsky, "Shrunken Heads: The Humanities under the Corporate Model," L ives; Christian Paren ti, L ocke/own America: Police and Prisons in the Age o( Crisis (Lond on: p. 5. Retrieved July 1, 2002, frolll h ttp ://w,,,,w.loui $~ille.edu /jo urnal/ workplace/ Verso Press, 1999 ). patbrodsk). h trnl 27. Ball, Imagining Marketopia," p . 78.

43. Brodsky, "Sbrunken Heads." p. 6. Retrieved July 1, 2002, from http: // W\,/w.lou is\·ille .

28. CEO refers to Chief Exec u tive O fficer, a te l-m designating the primal)' head of an OT­ edu/ journal/workplace/ pa tbrodsky.html ganization. This example is taken from Leys. Markel Driven Politics, pp. 212-21 3.

44. Jeff Williams, JBrave New Unive rsity," College English 61, No .6 (1999), 744.

29. Pierre Bow-dieu , "Th e Esse nce of Neoliberalism," I~ Mo nde D iplomatique, Decem ber 45. Ma ureen Shine, "Knight, Matc hi ng Gifts Endow Re cord Nu m be r of UO Chairs," Uni­ 1998, p. 4. RetrievenJuly 1,2002, from http :// www.e n.monde-diplomatique .fr/ 1988/ versif,v oj Oregon News. Re trieved J uly 1, 2002, frum h ttp://co mm .uoregon .edu/ 12/08bourdic u ncwsrel eases/latest/ june98/ 006 l198 .htmL It should be note d that "th e Gates Foun­ 30. Benjam in R. Barbe r, "A Failure of Democracy, Not Capitalism," New York Times, J uly dation Minority Fellowsh ip Prog ra m spends more on advertising than i t does on the 29, 2002, p . A23. scholarshi ps themselves ." Cited in J e nnife r L. Croissanl, · Can This Campus Be 31. Cited in Tom Turni pseed, "Crime in t.he Suites Enabled by Political Corruption Bought?" Academe (Septem ber/ O ctobe r 2001 ), 3. Reu'ievedJ ul y 1, 2002, from hup: Causes a Crisis ill the Credi bili ty of US Ca pitalism . ~ Common Dreams, Ju ne 29, 2002 , p . www.aaup.org/ publications/Academe01 SO/soOlcro .h tm 1 1. Retrieved J uly 1, 2002, from ww·w.com mondreams.org/views02/ 0629-01.htm oj the Market (New York: New Press, 1998); Chomsky, Profi t over Peoj;ie; Colin Leys, Mar­ ket Driven Politir,s (Lo ndo n: Verso, 2001).

15.Jean Comaroff and Jo hn L. Comaroff, eds. , Millennial Capitalism and the Culture oj Neo­ liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke Un ive rsity PI'e ss, 2001), p. 333.

16. Zygmunt Baum an , In SeaTe!! oJPolitics (Stanford , CA: Stanford Un iversity Press, 1999) ,

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46. Both quotes are cited in Julianne Basinger , "Increase in Num be r of Ch airs Endowed

by Corporations Prompt New Concerns," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24, 1998, p. A53.

47. Blumenstyk, "Chasing th e Rainbow. " 48. David Trend, Welcome to Cyberschool: Education at the Crossroads in the Infonnation Age (Lanham, MD : Rowman and Littlefi e ld, 2001) , p . 59.

49 . T rend, Welcome to Cyberschool, p. 59.

50. Sheila Slaughter, "Professional Values," p. 3.

5 l. For an extensiyc analysis of the issue of intelleclUal property rights and the control ove r academic work in the unjversity, see Coryn ne McShe rry, Who OwIlS Academic Work ?

B attling for Conl'rol of Intellectual Propert), (Cambr idge, MA: Harvard Un iversity Press, 200.2) .

52. Julia Porter Liebeskind , "R.isky Business: Unive rsities and Inte llec tual Proper ty," Aca­ deme (September-October, 2001), 2. Re trieved July 1,2002, from http://www.aaup. org/ p ublication s/ Academe/01S0/ s0011ie.htrn 53. Liebeskind, "Risky Busin ess."

54. Eyal Press and Jennife r Washbu rn , "Digital Diplomas," M other j ones, January/ Februar), 2001, p. 8. Retrieved July 1, 2002 , from b ttp:! /\o\'W\.v.motherjones.com/ mothe r jones/ JFO1/ toe. h tm I 55. Press and 'Washburn , "Digital Diplom as."

56. On th is issue , see Bauman , In Search of Politics.

57. Jay Ma thews, "It's Lowl) at the Top : \-\That Becam e of the Great Co llege Presidents?"

Was hington Post, June 10, 2001, p. B01.

58. Clara M. Love tt, 'The Dumbin g Down of College P residents," ChTOTlicie ofH igher Ednca­ tion: The Chronicle Rc'View, April 5, 2002, p . B20.

59. Jim Hopkins, "U niversities Hire More Executives to Lead," USA Toda)', April 22, 2002, p. lB. 60. Hopkins, "Universiti es Hi re More Executives. " See, for instance , the story on Summers

by Marti n Van Der We rf, "Lawre nce Summers and H is Tough Questions," Chronicle of High er Edu cation, April 26, 2002 , pp. A29- A32.

61. T he re are a number of exce lle nt texts tha t touch on this issue. Some of th ese include Aro nowitz and Gi roux, Education Still u nder Siege; Michael Berube and Cary Nelson , ed s., Higher Education under Fire (New Yo rk : Routledge, 1995) ; Bill Readings, The Uni­ versity in Ru ins (Cambridge. MA: Harvard Unive rsity Press, 1996) ; Slaughter and Leslie, Academic Capitalism; Aronowi tz, The Knowledge Factor),; Geoffrey D. White, ed., Campus, In c.: COlporate Power in the Ivory Tower (Amherst, NY: Promethe us Books, 2000) .

62 . Stan ley Aronowitz, "T he Ne w Corporate Unive rsity," Dollars and Sense, Marc h / April, 1998, pp. 32-35.

63. T he mallY books extolling corporate CEOs as a model fo r leadersh ip in an)' field is too extensive to cite , but one typic al example can be found in Robert Heller, Roads to Suc­ cess: Put into Practice the Best Husiness Ideas of Eight Leading Gurus (New York: Dorli.ng Kindersley, 200 1).

64 . Fo r an exce llent analysis of Mich ael Milken's role in various educatio n projects, see Robin Truth Goodman and Kenneth Saltman, Stra nge L ove: Or H ow We L ea rn to Stop Wonying and Love the Market (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2002).

65. Catherine S. Ma ncgold , "Study Says Schools Must Stre5s Acad emics," New Y()rk T imes, September 23, 1998, p . A22.

66. George Soros, On Globalization (New Yo rk: Pu blic Affairs, 2002), p. 164.

67. Stank), Aronowitz and Willi am De Fazio, "T he New Knowledge Work," in A. H. Halsey, Hugh La uder, Ph illip Brown , an d Amy Stuart Wells, eds., Edu cation: Culture, E conomy, Society (New York : O xford, 1997), p . 193.

460

68 . This is amply documented in J eremy Rifkin, The End of WQ1'k (New Yo rk: G. Putnam Books, 1995); William Wol ma n a nd An ne Colam osca, Th eJudas Economy: The T riu mph ofCajJil.al and the B etrayal of Work (Reading, MA: Addison-'Wesley, ] 997); Aronowitz and DiFazio, The jobless Future; The New York T imes Report: The Downsizing of A me11ca (New Yo rk: Times Books, 1996); Stanley Aronowitz and Jonathan Cutler, Posl-Wo1'h (New York: Routledge, 1998).

69 . Co rne l West, "The New Cultural Politics of Differ ence, ., October53 (Summer 1990),35.

70.Jim Ho pki ns, "U niversities Hire More F...x ecutives to Lead ," USA Today, April 22 , 2002,

p. lB .

71. David L. Kirp. "Higher Ed Inc. : Avoi din g the Perils of Outso urcing," Chronicle Review, March 15,2002, p . B14.

72. Kirp, "Highe r Ed Inc.," p. B14.

73. Cal), Nelson , M anifesto of (l T enured R adical (New York: New Yo rk Un iversity Press, .

199 7), p. 169.

74. I take up Carlin's position in m uch gr eater detail in Hen ry A. Giroux, Impure Acts (New York : Routl ed ge , 2000) , p p . 51 - 54.

75. Carlin, cited in Wijljam H. Ho nan , ''The Ivory Tower under Siege," New York Times, January 4. 1998, p. '!A33.

76. Carlill , cited in H onan . "The Ivo ry Tower under Siege," p. 4A33.

77. Cited in :NEA Highe r Education Research Center, Update 7, No .3 (Jun e 2001) , l.

78. Michae l Dubson , "lnu-oducli on," in Gllosts in lhe Classroom: Stories of College rldjunct Fac­ ult)' - and the Price We A ll Pay (Boston: Camel' s Back Books, 2001) , pp. 9-1 0.

79.JeffWilliams, "Brave New Unjversity," College English 61, No .6 (ju ly 1999), 740.

80. This informatio n is taken from, "Pricing the Poor O ut of College ," New York T i me.s, Marc h 27, 2002 , p . A27.

8 1. Stephe n Bu rd , "Lack. of Aid Will Keep 170,000 Qualified , Needy Students Out of Col­ lege T his Year, Report Warns," Chmnicip. of H ighL'f Edu w tion (June 27, 2002), p . l. Re­ trie\ e d July 1, 2002. fro m hup :/ / chronicle .coml daily/ 2002/06/ 2002062701 n. h nu l.

For a robust argument for making coll ege free for all students, see Ad o lph L. Reed ,Jr., "Free Co ll ege for All ," The Progressive (April 2002 ), 12-14 .

82 . Sheila Slaughte r, "Professional Val ues and the Allu re of the Marke t," A cademe (Se p­ tember/ O ctober 2001), 3-4.

83. David Trend, Welcome to Cyberschool: Education al the Cmssroads in the Information A ge (Lanha m . MD: Rowm an ,md Littlefield , 2001) , p . 55.

84. Cro issant. "Can This Campus Be Bought? " 85. David F. No ble, "The Future of the Digital Diploma Mill ," Academe R7, ;-':0.5 (Se pLCm­ ber-Octo ber 2001) ,29. T hese argumen ts are spe lled out in grea ter de tai l in Dayid F. N o bl e, DigitalDiplomCl Mi lls: The Automal, joll ofHiglurr Edu cation (New York: Monthly Re­ view Press. 2002) .

86. Noble, "Th e Future of the Digital Diplo ma Mill."

87. For an exten sive comme nta ry on the Army' s distance-education program , see Michael Arnone, 'Army' s H uge Distan ce-Education Effort Win s Ma.ny Su p po rters in Ib First Year," Chronicle of HigllCl' Education, February 8, 2002, p p. A33- A35. T bis rughly favor­ able , if no t flan.e ring, piece of re poruJ1g is accompan ied by an otll e r com me ntary on Da\'id Noble in wh ich his views are badly simplified and his profession.al in tegritJ ailed into q uestio n. See J effre) R. Young, "Dista nce-Educatio n Critic' s Boo k Takes Aim a t Army' s Effor ts," Cltronirle of Higher Ed1/ca tion, February 8, 2002, p. A34 .

88. l': ob le, ''Th e Future of th e Digital Diplo ma Mi ll ," pp 29- 30.

89. Both Levine's statement and the following quote can be found in Press and Washburn , "Digital Diplo mas."

90. ~assy and Zemsky, cited iu Press and Washburn , "Digi tal Diplom as," p. 8.

9 l. Noble, "T he Fu ture of the Digital Diploma Mil l."

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Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of H igher Education H EN R Y A. GIROUX

92. Press an d Wash burn , "Dig-i tal Dip lomas."

93. H erbert Marcuse, "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology, " in Douglas Kellner, ed ., Technology, War, and Fascism (New York: Ro utledge , 1998), p. 45 .

94. Zygmunt Baum an, Nlotie171it)' and the Holocaust (Ith aca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) .

112. Short Subjects, "Students Hold T each-Ins' to Pro test Corporate Infl ue nce in H igher Ed ucatio n," Chronicle of lligher Education, March 13, 1998, p. All. Also n ote Pe ter Dreier's com me ntary on stud e nt activism emerging in 1998, in "The Myth of Student Apathy," Nation, April 13, 1998, pp. 19-22.

11 3. for a commentary o n students against swe at~ h op s , see Liza Feath erston e, "Sweat­ 95. J ohn H inkson bri ll iantly explores this issu e in KPerspectives on th e Crisis of the Uni­ shops, Studen ts. and th e Corp o rate University," Croonenbergh's Fly N o .2 (2002), 107­ versity," in Simon Cooper, J oh n Ki nkson , and Geoff Sharp, cds., Selwlnrs and Entrepre­ 11 7. neurs: The University in Crisis (N orth Car lton, Australia: Are na, 2002) , p p. 233-267.

114. Liza Feath ers tone, 'The New Student Moveme n t" Nation, May 15, 2000, p . 12.

96. For a cri tical analysis of the flaws and possibilitjes of su ch approaches in higher edu ca­ 115. Featherston e, 'T he New Stud e n t Movem ent ," p. 12 . tion, see: Trend, Welcome to Cyberschoo~· Andr ew Fccnberg, Questioning TechnOlogy (New 116. FeaLllerstone . "Sweatsh o ps, Studen ts, an d th e Corporate Un iversity," p. 112.

York: Rou tledge, 1999) ; H ubert L. Dreyfus, On the Internet (New Yo rk: Routl edge, 117. 1 h ave taken this idea from Nick Coul d ry, "A Way O u t of the (T elevised) Endgame ?"

2001 ); Mar k Poster, ·What Is Ihe Matter with the In tmltt ? (Min n eapo lis: Universi ty of ~l'lin­ 'pl'nDemocra cy, p . 1. Re tdevedJul y I , 2002 , from http ://www.opendemocracy.net/ fo­ nesota Press, 200 I). rum / slrands_home .asp 97. Noble , Digital Diploma Mills.

118. Imre Szeman , '1 J1lrodu ction: Learning to Learn from Seattle," in Imre Szema n , ed. , 98 . For more d e tail s on th e creation of online degrees fo r corpora tions, see Dan Special Double Iss ue, Learning from Seattle, Review ofEducation, Pedagogy, and Cultural Carne\·ale, "Co lleges Tailor Onlin e Degrees for Individual Co mpan ies, " Chronicle of Studies 24, No. 1-2 (2002) ,5.

Higher Education, J anuary 28, 2002. Re trieved July I, 2002, from h ttp ://chro ni­ 1 19. Szeman , "In troduction ," p. 4. de. com/ cgi2-bin/ prin table .cgi J 20. Szeman, ~ In tro duction," p . 5.

99 . Andrew Feen berg, Questioning TeclmolngJ (New York: Rou tledge, 1999), p. \.iii.

121. Toni Morrison, "How Can Valu es Be Taught in This U n iversityJ" Mi chigan Quarterly Re­ 100. Feen herg, QUPslioniug Techn olog)', p. xv. view (2001), 278 101. Ellen WiUis, Don't Think. Smile: Noles on a Dr'(:nde ofDenial (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 122. Pie rre Bourdieu , A.r.ts of Resistance (New York: New Press, 1999), p . 26. p . 27, 123. Cited in ""'thy Does Nco-Liberalism H ate Kids? The War on YOUtl1 and th e Culture of 102. Bill Readings, Th.e University iT! Rllins (Ca m bridge, MA: Han·ard Un ive rsity Press, Polilics," Rroiew of Eduwtiol1/Pedagogy/Cltltu1·al Sttulies 23 , No.2 (2001) , 114.

1996). As Ron ald Stricklan d p oints out, Readings h as almost n o thing to say about how 124. J acques De rrida, "N o Ooc Is In n oce nt: A Discussion with .1acqu cs abo ut Philosop h)' in the corpor·ate un iversity re p roduces the academic and sodal division of labOl- between the Face of Terro r ," The JrljormrJ.tion Technology, War and Peace Project, p. 2. Retri eved elite and second-tie r universitie.s that is so central to changing glo bal economic land­ July 1,2002, from h ttp: //www.wa tsoninstitute.org/infopeace/ 9 11lderri da_in nocence . scape . See Ron ald Stricklan d , "Gender, Class an d th e Humani ties in th e Co rporate htm l University, " Genders 35 (2002), 1-1 6. Ret.ri evedJ uly 1, 2002, from http://www.gcnders. org/ g35/ g35_s tricJa nd .h tID 103. Th ere are a number of books that take u p the relatio n sh ip between schooling and de­ m ocracy; some of the more impor tant recent critical co ntrib u tions incl ud e Elizabeth A. Kell y, Education, Democrac;', and Pu blic Knoll!ledge (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995); Wilfred Carr an d An tl)OIl), H artne tt, Education and the Stnlgglef 01- Democracy (Philadel­ p hia: Open Un iversi ty Press, 1996); He nry A. Giroux, Border CrOSsings: Cultu.m II Forlm:s and the Politics of Education (New York: Ro utle dge, 1993); Stanley Aronowi tz and Henry A. Giro ux, Pn stTuodern Education (Mi n neap olis: Un iversity of Minnesota J:>ress, 1991) ; Aronowitz an d Gi ro ux, Educnlioll Still m/(ier Siege; an d H enry A. Giroux, Pedagog)' and the Politics of Hope (Boul der , CO: Westview, 1997) . ]04. A conversatio n betwee n Lanj Guiuier and Anna Deavere Sm ith , "Re tl1inking Power, Re thinking T heater, " Theater- 31 , No. 1 (2002), 36.

105. Robin D. G. Ke ll ey, "Neo-Cons of th e Black Nation ," Black Renaissance Noire 1, 1'\0.2 (I 99 7), 116.

106. For an analysis of sllch eVen ts, see David Glenn, "Th e War on Cam p us: Will Acade mi c Free d o m Survive?" Nation, December 3,200 1, pp. 11-14: also see Robin \'\,ilson and An.a Marie Cox , ·Terr orist Attacks Pu t Acad emic Freedom to the T est," Chronicle f)f H igher Education, O ctober 5,2001 , p. A 12.

107. Aru ndhati Roy, PowerPolilics (Cam bridge, MA.: South End Pre ss, 2001), pp. 11-12.

108. Noam Ch omsky, "Paths Taken, Tas1.s Ah ead,·' ProfesSion (2000), 35 .

109. Pierr e Bou rdieu, "For a Scho lanhi p of Comm itmen t," ProfeSSion (2000), 42-43 . ] 10. See Nelson, Will Teach for rood.

111. Cited in Aronowitz , The K nowlRdge Factory, pp. 63, 109-110.

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