No subject

past thirty years is effectively driven by the administrators you are talki=
ng about, who typically give themselves three-figure salaries. They come in=
, you see, in the wake of economic
 crisis, in order to make the university *more efficient* -- ha ha, which i=
s apparently why there is a tuition spike after every major recession, incl=
uding a large one right now. The administrators go before Congress every co=
uple years to raise the level of
 the loans that will be guaranteed by the government, and they use the proc=
eeds, along with corporate partnerships and financialized endowments, to pr=
eside over vast expansions.<br>
<br>
I think the research university should be identified as the central institu=
tion of the neoliberal knowledge-based economy. The sea-change was the Bayh=
-Dole Act in 1980, which allowed for the patenting of publicly funded resea=
rch. Corporations as well as government
 could then scale back their large laboratories and practice what's now cal=
led &quot;open innovation,&quot; where relatively small amounts of seed mon=
ey are enough to catalyze research processes whose results can be selective=
ly acquired by buying out the relevant patents.
 In a society where, since Reagan, only business is recognized as a value, =
this transformation of scientific research was enough to justify running th=
e entire university like a corporation. The star system, the corporate part=
nerships, the precarization of academic
 labor, the competition for the revenue stream of student loans, and more r=
ecently, the franchising of major university brands in Asia, are all among =
the results. For what? is the best question. In my view, very sadly, it's f=
or reducing knowledge to nothing
 more than a function of capitalism.<br>
<br>
The best book I've found on this is, fittingly, entitled Academic Capitalis=
m, by Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades. It's serious, anything but simplis=
tic, a very impressive and wide-ranging piece of scholarship, check it out:=
<br>
<br>
<a href=3D"http://books.google.com/books?id=3DY-mISmAUa38C&amp;printsec=3Df=
rontcover" target=3D"_blank">http://books.google.com/books?<u></u>id=3DY-mI=
SmAUa38C&amp;printsec=3D<u></u>frontcover</a><br>
<br>
Another good one is Chris Newfield's Unmaking the Public University, partic=
ularly the chapter &quot;Facing the Knowledge Managers&quot;:<br>
<br>
<a href=3D"http://humanities.wisc.edu/assets/misc/FacingKnowledge.pdf" targ=
et=3D"_blank">http://humanities.wisc.edu/<u></u>assets/misc/FacingKnowledge=
.<u></u>pdf</a><br>
<br>
Finally, my own attempt to sum these things up:<br>
<br>
<a href=3D"http://autonomousuniversity.org/content/silence-equals-debt" tar=
get=3D"_blank">http://autonomousuniversity.<u></u>org/content/silence-equal=
s-<u></u>debt</a><br>
<br>
No one yet has the solution to these problems, but the good thing is, over =
the last five years people have finally started to ask the important questi=
ons and to begin mobilizing around those questions. Student loans and corpo=
ratization are issues in themselves:
 but they are also part and parcel of a larger problem, which is the neolib=
eral development model. It can't address the problems of inequality and eco=
logical unsustainability, and as long as it rules over the universities, we=
 will get nothing substantial from
 them. A great loss, I'd say.<br>
<br>
in solidarity, Brian<br>
______________________________<u></u>_________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href=3D"mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au" target=3D"_blank">empyre at l=
ists.cofa.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href=3D"http://www.subtle.net/empyre" target=3D"_blank">http://www.subtl=
e.net/empyre</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear=3D"all">
<br>
-- <br>
David Golumbia<br>
<a href=3D"mailto:dgolumbia at gmail.com" target=3D"_blank">dgolumbia at gmail.co=
m</a><br>
</div>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href=3D"mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au" target=3D"_blank">empyre at l=
ists.cofa.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href=3D"http://www.subtle.net/empyre" target=3D"_blank">http://www.subtl=
e.net/empyre</a><br>
</blockquote>
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