Marmol, E., Hill, D., Maisuria, A., Nocella, A. J., & Parenti, M. (2015). The corporate university: An e-interview with Dave Hill, Alpesh Maisuria, Anthony Nocella, and Michael Parenti. Critical Education, 6(19), 1-25. (original) (raw)
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Comparative Literature Association of the Republic of China, 2015
This paper looks to outline some theoretical and intellectual resources to challenge the hegemony of the corporate university. Even though the reality of the corporate university is ubiquitous and widespread, this piece gives some indication as to how to subvert the contemporary ways in which corporate universities function.
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Policy Futures in Education, 2004
The term 'corporate university', which has come into wide use in the last decade, is applied to three kinds of organizations: (1) established, mainstream, non-profit universities adapting to economic and technological pressures by adopting managerial practices of modern for-profit corporations; (2) newly established, highly innovative universities that operate as for-profit corporations, but satisfy the political and legal requirements for university status, and meet the standards of accrediting bodies (e.g. the University of Phoenix); and (3) new educational organizations operating within, and providing education and training services for, for-profit corporate firms (e.g. Marriott University). Organizations of types and provide a different 'product' than traditional universities, but nonetheless are subverting traditional academic practices in areas of recruitment and retention, academic standards, pricing, and managerial culture, thus making mainstream institutions corporate universities of type (1). This article offers a framework for understanding corporate universities as 'shadow institutions', an analogy with shadow cabinets, or shadow governmentsin-exile. The framework draws on three connotations of the word 'shadow': corporate universities exist in the shadow of, or are obscured by, mainstream universities; they reflect, or form a shadow image of, these mainstream universities in certain formal respects; and they foreshadow or pre-figure mainstream universities of the future.
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The ability of a university to educate students to be responsible and informed citizens in the future has been undercut by the market-inspired, neoliberal attempts to commercialize universities and to turn them into suppliers of proprietary knowledge. The paper focuses on a critique of the ongoing erosion of an important cultural function performed until very recently by the Western universities, which is democratization of social life through development of critical thinking, imagination, and through cultiva- tion of social and humanistic sensibility. We attempt to diagnose the causes of erosion, the consequences of it and to design a possible future social function of a contemporary university as a counterbalancing agency and a testing ground for civic training. The paper opposes a commonly accepted belief that the university should be changed through the corporate market model and presents theoretical research with references to empirical data gathered by other authors.
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urrent trends of capitalist globalization and neo-liberal policy are transforming public institutions such as universities. As the voices of corporate capital become strongly registered within the university practices of governance, teaching, research, etc., academe is becoming corporatized and universities are becoming key ancillaries of production.' One site where the voices of corporate capital may hold sway is the university board of governors, the highest level of authority within Canadian universities.s Although research has established a pattern of cross-membership between university boards of governors and corporate boards of directors, studies have relied on data from the 1970s and earlier.3 Here, we analyze the network of ties between the top 250 Canadian corporations and Canadian university boards of governors in 1976, when the current wave of globalization and neo-liberalism was just beginning to build, and 1996, the most recently available data at the time of writing. Our objective is to map the structure of corporate-university relations at the level of governance boards, as a means of highlighting the changing architecture of capitalist-class power in the field of higher education. Such a mapping project, however, must first consider the context of contemporary relations between corporations and universities.
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This essay reviews recent books and articles that examine the politics and economics of the restructuring of public universities in the United States. The author weaves the arguments together to point to several prominent trends: increased corporatization of university governance and increased dependence on the market for resources previously provided by the state, reduction of full-time faculty in favor of instructors and adjuncts, dramatic growth of administrative personnel, and mounting student debt. The history of these developments is explored by examining the roots of the political attacks on the public university.
Review Essay: The Coming of the Corporate-Fascist University?
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