Academic Barbarism, Universities, and Inequality

Abstract

Recent work by economists such as Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz, and others has fleshed out the claim that the academic industry is perpetuating inequality. Their work points to further crossovers between the meritocratic educational practices of the academic industry—what I am calling academic barbarism after Henry and Benjamin—and the neo-liberal economic practices of hedge funds and investment banks that have contributed more directly to heightened levels of inequality. Piketty reveals that the universities consistently at the top of the rankings tables are the universities with the largest endowment funds. The top 8 US universities in terms of endowments are invariably Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Chicago, and Pennsylvania with endowments ranging from about $30 billion to $7 billion. It is also no surprise that these universities are invariably inside, or close to, the top 10 universities in the university rankings tables year after year.¹ We must also remember, as Joseph Stiglitz informs us, that many of the US “ for-profit schools” are “owned partly or largely by Wall Street firms” (2013, 244). It is no surprise then that the returns on endowments have been “extremely high” in recent decades. Piketty reminds us that the “higher we go in the endowment hierarchy, the more often we find” (2014, 449) what are called “alternative investment strategies” or “very high yield investments such as shares in private equity funds and unlisted foreign stocks (which require great expertise), hedge funds, derivatives, real estate, and raw materials, including energy, natural resources, and related products.”