Corporatization

From the President: Ethics and Corporatization

Almost every institutional problem we confront in higher education today situates us at the intersection of ethics and corporatization. Should we protect our lower-paid colleagues from pay cuts and furloughs? Should higher-paid faculty and administrators make sacrifices for community members living on the margins? Which is more important—a new campus building or free health care for all employees?

"Universities, the Major Battleground in the Fight for Reason and Capitalism"

Conditions placed on gifts from the BB&T Foundation range from the seemingly benign, funding for faculty and student research and a speaker series, to the sharply contentious, required reading of Ayn Rand.

Is This Curriculum for Sale?

In June 2009, North Carolina’s Guilford College, a small liberal arts college with strong Quaker origins and a decidedly progressive image, announced that it had accepted a large grant from the BB&T Charitable Foundation—$500,000 over a ten-year period. As has been the case at some, but not all, of the colleges and universities that in recent years have received grants from the BB&T Foundation, the money came with specific curricular and extracurricular strings attached.

A Mission of Amenities, Not Education

Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University. Gaye Tuchman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009

The Life and Death of Academic Freedom

The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University. Ellen Schrecker. New York: New Press, 2010.

A Novel Departure

Fight for Your Long Day: A Novel. Alex Kudera. Kensington, MD: Atticus, 2010.

The University as a Sacred Space

Transforming Higher Education: Economy, Democracy, and the University. Stephen J. Rosow and Thomas Kriger, eds. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010.

Academic Mercantilism, Militarism, and Managerialism

Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex. Anthony J. Nocella II, Steven Best, and Peter McLaren, eds. Edinburgh: AK Press, 2010.

State of the Profession: Tapas, Anyone?

For the past thirty years or more, the language of management and business has increasingly dominated the discussion of higher education. Colleges and universities have certainly not been the only institutions affected by the growth of biz-speak and biz-think. “Contributing to economic growth” has become the assumed goal of most of our social, cultural, and intellectual activities.

The Escalation of Business as Usual

Academic plans are swallowing up more of the processes associated with research, teaching, and community outreach as the corporatization of higher education accelerates.

Pages

Subscribe to Corporatization