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Higher Education and the Politics of Need

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The University Becoming

Part of the book series: Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives ((DHEP,volume 6))

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Abstract

Relying heavily on the work of Georges Bataille, who proposed that political problems result from luxury, not necessity, this chapter makes four major arguments. First, attending to the problems of the economy should raise questions about the expenditure of excess wealth, not utility. Second, competing claims about higher education appear to, but do not actually, deal with utility. Third, higher education should not be understood as a need, but as a luxury that must be spent uselessly; instead of diminishing it value, this understanding should allow us more freedom with which to think about educational problems. Last, in proposing an understanding of higher education as “useless,” the chapter challenges readers to the possibility of a view of a sovereignty from utility, a freedom that sees the pervasiveness of, but also fragilities within, capitalism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977): 128–135, 128.

  2. 2.

    Ibid., 132.

  3. 3.

    Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Volume I, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1988).

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 12 (emphasis in original).

  5. 5.

    Ibid. (emphasis in original).

  6. 6.

    See generally, Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar, Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 2006, c. 1968), 165.

  7. 7.

    See Milan Zafirovski, “Classical and Neoclassical Conceptions of Rationality: Findings of an Exploratory Study,” The Journal of Socio-Economics, Vol. 37, no. 2 (2008): 789–820, 790.

  8. 8.

    Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, ed. Frederick Engels, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York: International Publishers, 1967, c. 1861), 35–6.

  9. 9.

    See E. K. Hunt and Howard J. Sherman, Economics: And Introduction to Traditional and Radical Views, 4th ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 102–3.

  10. 10.

    John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (New York: Prometheus Books, 1997, c. 1936), 96–7.

  11. 11.

    See Grahame F. Thompson, “Where Goes Economics and Economies?” Economy and Society, Vol. 26, no. 4 (1997): 599–610, 606.

  12. 12.

    Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. and trans. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 116.

  13. 13.

    Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. I, 20.

  14. 14.

    Bataille, Visions of Excess, 118.

  15. 15.

    Thompson, “Where Goes Economics,” 606.

  16. 16.

    Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. I, 29.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 132. Though, Bataille may be working with a contradiction here, since he stated earlier that Protestantism, especially its Calvinist strain, supported capitalist interests by promoting doctrines about hard work and individual initiative (see pp. 122–27). So, the construction of churches promoting such doctrines may indeed be deemed productive consumption under capitalist logic, if we are to recognize the need of any capitalist interest to reproduce itself.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 132.

  19. 19.

    Abraham H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychology Review, Vol. 50, no. 4 (1943): 370–96.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 13–14, emphasis in original.

  21. 21.

    I cite here just a small sample of such (more or less) competing philosophies of higher education, ones that collectively form a genre with a long history. See Ronald Barnett, The Ecological University: A Feasible Utopia (London: Routledge, 2017); Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (London: Routledge, 1995, c. 1936); Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979, c. 1798); Simon Marginson and Mark Considine, The Enterprise University: Power, Governance, and Reinvention in Australia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000); John Henry Newman, The Idea of the University (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982, c. 1852); Ronald Nisbit, The Degradation of the Academic Dogma: The University in America 1945–1970 (New York: Basic Books, 1971); Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993, c. 1918); Jennifer Washburn, University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (New York: Basic Books, 2005).

  22. 22.

    See World Bank, Higher Education (October 5, 2017), https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/tertiaryeducation (Retrieved April 26, 2020).

  23. 23.

    KGUN 9 On Your Side, “UArizona Announces Pay Cuts, Furloughs for all Faculty, Staff,” April 17, 2020, https://www.kgun9.com/news/coronavirus/uarizona-announces-pay-cuts-furloughs-for-all-faculty-staff (Retrieved April 26, 2020). It is important to note here that the University of Arizona has an endowment worth over $1 Billion (US).

  24. 24.

    For just a couple, though perhaps contradictory examples, of waste arguments, see Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2018); Mark R. Reiff, “How to Pay for Public Education,” Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2014): 4–52.

  25. 25.

    See generally, Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades , Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

  26. 26.

    This logic is likely supported by the (previously?) universally accepted platitude that education produces human capital. See Gary Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, third ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), xxi. For an opposing argument, see John Marsh, Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Out of Inequality (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011).

  27. 27.

    Briefly, the Florida performance-funding model works by requiring the Board of Governors to withhold a proportion of each institution’s budget that cumulatively equals the amount of new money allocated by the legislature for this purpose, thus creating an overall pot of performance funding. Currently, the universities are given up to 10 points for performance on each of 10 metrics (e.g., graduating students in 4 years, percentage of students with high entrance-exam scores, employment rates of graduates, etc.). The points are awarded either for meeting certain standards of “excellence” for each metric or for significantly improving performance from the previous year on each metric. The universities are then ranked, and those having at least 55 points get back their share of performance funding, and those in the top of the rankings receive extra funds. See Florida Board of Governors, Board of Governors Performance Funding Model Overview, November 2019, https://www.flbog.edu/wp-content/uploads/Overview-Doc-Performance-Funding-10-Metric-Model-Condensed-Version-1.pdf (Retrieved September 1, 2020).

  28. 28.

    For example, Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, has recently informed the state’s universities to withhold spending (the same proportion across the board) because of budget shortfalls resulting from the pandemic. See Orlando Sentinel, “DeSantis’ Plans to Rework State’s $93.2B Budget Could Violate Constitution ,” June 17, 2020, https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-coronavirus-florida-budget-desantis-20200617-uzmnositmjhbnlt3slmt2f5d7q-story.html (Retrieved September 1, 2020).

  29. 29.

    See Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, “The Kept University,” Atlantic Monthly (March 2000): 39–54. Despite being 20 years old, this is still one of the best exposés of this kind of waste.

  30. 30.

    Gary Rhoades and Sheila Slaughter, “Academic Capitalism, Managed Professionals, and Supply-Side Higher Education,” Social Text, 15, no. 2 (1997): 9–38, 15.

  31. 31.

    Alexander does not say, but of the market incentives and dynamics he speaks of we can point to policies associated with the new public management movements that gained authority in the political regimes of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the United States.

  32. 32.

    See F. King Alexander, “The Silent Crisis: The Relative Fiscal Capacity of Public Universities to Compete for Faculty,” The Review of Higher Education , 24, no. 2 (2001): 112–129, 117–18.

  33. 33.

    Zac Anderson, “Rick Scott Wants to Shift University Funding Away From Some Degrees,” Herald-Tribune (October 10, 2011). http://politics.heraldtribune.com/2011/10/10/rick-scott-wants-to-shift-university-funding-away-from-some-majors/ (Retrieved April 29, 2018).

  34. 34.

    Shelia Slaughter and Gary Rhoades have pointed out better than anyone else, in my opinion, the vast amount of wasted resources institutions spend on technology transfer and academic capitalism; see Academic Capitalism and the New Economy.

  35. 35.

    See, for example, Michelle Asha Cooper, “Investing in Education and Equity: Our Nation’s Best Future,” Diversity & Democracy, Vol. 13, no. 3 (Fall 2010), https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/investing-education-and-equity-our-nations-best-future-0 (Retrieved April 26, 2020).

  36. 36.

    Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 30.

  37. 37.

    Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. I, 25.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 118–19.

  39. 39.

    Bataille, Visions of Excess, 118.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 120–1.

  41. 41.

    The militarization of police forces provides an example of how much surplus wealth goes into ensuring political violence.

  42. 42.

    Bataille, The Accursed Share Vol. I, 187.

  43. 43.

    Nancy Fraser, “Talking About Needs,” Ethics, 99 (1989): 291–313, 292–6.

  44. 44.

    Bataille, The Accursed Share Vol. I, 31.

  45. 45.

    See William Pawlett, “Utility and Excess: The Radical Sociology of Bataille and Baudrillard,” Economy and Society, Vol, 26, no. 1 (1997): 92–125, 95.

  46. 46.

    See Ben Fine, “A Question of Economics: Is It Colonizing the Social Sciences?” Economy and Society, Vol. 28, no. 3 (1999): 403–425, 404. See also Introduction to The Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology, third ed., ed. Daniel Hausman (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2–3. For my argument about how higher education produces the very economists who “economize” the social world, see Benjamin Baez, “An Economy of Higher Education,” in Joseph Devitis, ed., Contemporary Colleges and Universities : A Reader (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 307–321.

  47. 47.

    According to Pawlett, even Marx presupposed such a theory. See Pawlett, “Utility and Excess,” 93–4.

  48. 48.

    See Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics? A Text on Elementary Mathematical Economics (New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984), 23. See also, Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, The New Capitalists: A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings (New York: Random House, 1961), 2–3.

  49. 49.

    Marx, Capital, 571.

  50. 50.

    Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. I, 57.

  51. 51.

    Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Volumes II & III, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 218.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 197.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., 198.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 199.

  55. 55.

    Pawlett, “Utility and Excess,” 101–2.

  56. 56.

    Bataille, The Accursed Share Vol. II & III, 294–295.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., 315.

  58. 58.

    Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production, trans. Mark Poster (New York: Telos Press, 1975), 25.

  59. 59.

    Williams, Marxism and Literature, 133–4.

  60. 60.

    See, generally, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R, Lane (London: Penguin Books, 2009, c. 1972), 247–50; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, c. 1980), 461–73.

  61. 61.

    Doreen Massey, For Space (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2005), 9.

  62. 62.

    See Bataille, Visions of Excess, 97.

  63. 63.

    Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 279–83.

  64. 64.

    Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, U.S: Harvard University Press, 1996), 175.

  65. 65.

    Gary Rolfe, The University in Dissent: Scholarship in the Corporate University (London: Routledge, 2013), 36.

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  1. Department of Educational Policy Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Benjamin Baez

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  1. Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Søren S. E. Bengtsen

  2. Center for Educational Development, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Sarah Robinson

  3. Department of Communication, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Wesley Shumar

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Baez, B. (2021). Higher Education and the Politics of Need. In: Bengtsen, S.S.E., Robinson, S., Shumar, W. (eds) The University Becoming. Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69628-3_3

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