Abstract
In the last four decades higher education around the globe has been subjected to a continuous process of reforms as governments have sought to reduce public spending by capitalizing on new commercial opportunities related to education, research, and service in the global knowledge-led economy. Reform efforts have been informed by the dominant economic discourse of neoliberalism originating in the 1970s and the associated discourses of “new public management” from the 1980s. As increased competition represents improved quality in neoliberal discourse a major objective of the reforms has been to implement competition for extramural funding and market-oriented behavior as a way to increase productivity, accountability and control. In the United States in particular, the direction of change has been oriented toward the culture, practices, policies and workforce strategies characteristic of the business corporation which has been seen as an institutional entity providing the basic standards of financial and administrative efficiency. As a result the university is transforming from an educational community with shared governance into a top-down bureaucracy increasingly managed as a traditional profit seeking corporation in which faculty has no meaningful and effective voice. With a focus on the restructuring of higher education in the United States the purpose of this chapter is to examine how the corporatized public research university came about, its distinctive features, and to consider the costs and benefits to the public good of commercializing teaching, research, and service. In so doing the chapter reviews diverse literatures on higher education, academic capitalism, and the corporatized university.
The author’s interest in the topic is related to the fact that the restructuring of American higher education in many ways has served as a model for reforms in higher education in Denmark.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Presently student loans amount to an alarming all-time high of $1,43 trillion. For the current magnitude of loans see e.g. www.usdebtclock.org
- 2.
Further specification of changes over time in tuition and relevant comparisons can be found in Blumen- styk (2015, pp. 52–54).
- 3.
References
Aronowitz, S. (2000). The knowledge factory: Dismantling the corporate university and creating true higher learning. Boston: Beacon Press.
Ball, S. T. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215–228.
Barrow, C. W. (1996). The strategy of selective excellence: Redesigning higher education for global competition in a post-industrial society. Higher Education, 4, 447–469.
Barrow, C. W. (2010). The rationality crisis in U.S. higher education. New Political Science, 32(3), 317–344.
Blumenstyk, G. (2015). American higher education in crisis? What everyone needs to know. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boesenberg, E. (2015). Survival in the new corporatized academy: Resisting the privatization of higher education. Work, 25, 16–36.
Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the marketplace: The commercialization of higher education. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Bush, V. (1945). Science, the endless frontier; a report to the president on a program for postwar scientific research. Reprinted July 1960. Filiquarian Publishing, LLC./Qontro. Printed in Great Britain by Amazon.
Carlin, J. F. (1999). Restoring sanity to an academic world gone mad. The Cronicle of Higher Education, 46(11).
Collins, R. (2002). Credential inflation and the future of universities. In S. Brint (Ed.), The future of the city of intellect: The changing American university. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Deem, R. (2001). New managerialism, academic capitalism and entrepreneurialism in universities: Is the local dimension still important? Comparative Education, 37(1), 7–20.
Duderstadt, J. J. (2004). The changing nature of research and the future of the university. In L. L. Weber & J. J. Duderstadt (Eds.), Reinventing the Research University. London: Economica.
Ebersole, M. C. (1979). The distinctive motif of American higher education. The Journal of Education., 161(4), 5–19.
Furedi, F. (2011). Introduction to the marketization of higher education and the student as consumer. In M. Molesworth, R. Scullion, & E. Nixon (Eds.), The marketization of higher education and the student as consumer. London: Routledge.
Giroux, H. A. (1999). Vocationalizing higher education: Schooling and the politics of corporate culture. College Literature, 26(3), 147–161.
Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Chicago: Heymarket Books.
Gumport, P. J. (1993). The contested terrain of academic program reduction. Journal of Higher Education, 64(3), 283–311.
Gumport, P. J. (2000). Restructuring: Organisational change and institutional imperatives. Higher Education, 39(1), 67–91.
Gumport, P. J. (2002). Universities and knowledge: Restructuring of the city of intellect. In S. Brint (Ed.), The future of the city of intellect: The changing American university. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Gumport, P. J., & Pusser, B. (1995). A case of bureaucratic accretion: Context and consequences. The Journal of Higher Education, 66(5), 493–520.
Kauppinen, I., Coco, L., Choi, H., & Brajkovic, L. (2016). Blurring boundaries and borders: Interlocks between AAU institutions and transnational corporations. In S. Slaughter & B. J. Taylor (Eds.), Higher education, stratification, and workforce development: Competitive advantage in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, Springer, Higher Education Dynamics, 45. Dordrecth: Springer.
Kezar, A. (2004). Obtaining integrity? Reviewing and examining the charter between higher education and society. The Review of Higher Education, 27(4), 429–459.
Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39–81.
Lave, R., Mirowski, P., & Randalls, S. (2010). Introduction: STS and neoliberal science. Social Studies of Science, 40(5), 659–675.
Lewis, H. R. (2006). Excellence without a soul: How a great university forgot education. New York: PublicAffairs, A Member of the Perseus Book Group.
Minsky, L. (2000). Dead souls: The aftermath of Bayh-Dole. In G. D. White & F. Hauck (Eds.), Campus Inc.: Corporate power in the ivory tower. New York: Prometheus Books.
Newfield, C. (2003). Ivy and industry: Business and the making of the American university, 1880–1980. London: Duke University Press.
Newfield, C. (2004). Jurassic U: The state of university-industry relations. Social Text 79, 22(2), 37–66.
Newfield, C. (2008). Unmaking the public university: The forty-year assault on the middle class. Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press.
Newfield, C. (2010). The end of the American funding model: What comes next? American Literature, 82(3), 611–635.
Noble, D. (2002). Digital diploma mills: The automation of higher education. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Palmadessa, A. (2015). Academic capitalism and the social charter between the university and the public. Higher Education in Review, 11, 45–61.
Press, E., & Washburn, J. (2000). The kept university. The Atlantic, March 2000 Issue.
Readings, B. (1996). The university in ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rhoades, G. (1998). Managed professionals: Unionized faculty and restructuring academic labor. New York: State University of New York Press.
Rhoades, G. (2013). Disruptive innovations for adjunct faculty: Common sense for the common good. Thought and Action, 71, 71–86.
Sauntson, H., & Morrish, L. (2011). Vision, values and international excellence: The “products” that university mission statements sell to students. In M. Molesworth, R. Scullion, & E. Nixon (Eds.), The marketization of higher education and the student as consumer. London: Routledge.
Schultz, D. (2015). The rise and coming demise of the Corporate University. Academe, 101(5), 21–23.
Slaughter, S. A. (1985). From serving students to serving the economy: Changing expectations of faculty role and performance. Higher Education, 14, 41–56.
Slaughter, S. (1988). Academic freedom and the state: Reflections on the uses of knowledge. The Journal of Higher Education, 59(3), 241–262.
Slaughter, S. A. (1993). Retrenchment in the 1980s: The politics of prestige and gender. Journal of Higher Education, 64(3), 250–282.
Slaughter, S. A., & Leslie, L. L. (1997). Academic capitalism: Politics, policies, and the entrepreneurial university. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Slaughter, S. A., & Leslie, L. L. (2000). Professors going pro: The commercialization of teaching, research, and service. In G. D. White & F. Hauck (Eds.), Campus Inc.: Corporate power in the ivory tower. New York: Prometheus Books.
Slaughter, S. A., & Rhoades, G. (1996). The emergence of a competitiveness research and development policy coalition and the commercialization of academic science and technology. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 21(3), 303–339.
Slaughter, S. A., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state, and higher education. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Soley, L. C. (1995). Leasing the ivory tower:The corporate takeover of academia. Boston: South End Press.
Sperber, M. (2000). Beer and circus: How big-time college sports is crippling undergraduate education. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Steck, H. (2003). Corporatization of the university: Seeking conceptual clarity. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 525, 66–83.
Steck, H., & Zweig, M. (2000). Take back the university: Only unions can save academic life. In G. D. White & F. Hauck (Eds.), Campus Inc.: Corporate power in the ivory tower. New York: Prometheus Books.
Steger, M. B., & Roy, R. K. (2010). Neoliberalism: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Szelényi, K., & Goldberg, R. A. (2011). Commercial funding in academe: Examining the correlates of faculty’s use of industrial and business funding for academic work. The Journal of Higher Education, 82(6), 775–802.
Valsan, G., & Sproul, R. (2008). The invisible hand behind student evaluation of teaching: The rise of a new managerial elite in the governance of higher education. Journal of Economic Issues, 42(4), 939–958.
Washburn, J. (2005). University Inc,:The corporate corruption of higher education. New York: Basic Books.
Yoder, B.L. (2012). Engineering by the numbers. American Society for Engineering Education. Retrieved from: http://www.asee.org/paperand-publications/publications/college-profiles/2011-profile-engineering-statistics.pdf
Zemsky, R., & Duderstadt, J. J. (2004). Reinventing the research university: An American perspective. In L. L. Weber & J. J. Duderstadt (Eds.), Reinventing the Research University. London: Economica.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Christensen, S.H. (2019). Costs and Benefits of Commercializing Teaching, Research, and Service in the American Corporatized University. In: Christensen, S.H., Delahousse, B., Didier, C., Meganck, M., Murphy, M. (eds) The Engineering-Business Nexus. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99636-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99636-3_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-99635-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-99636-3
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)