Stanley Fish, “Neoliberalism and Higher Education”, wrote
that few of his colleagues had ever come across the term “neoliberalism” or
knew what it meant.
According to Fish,
neoliberal principles are embedded “in culture’s way of thinking [and its]
institutions.” While the term neoliberal is not frequently used, its supporters
“mime and extend neoliberal principles on every opportunity.”
On university campuses in a relatively brief time this
ideology has changed the mission of academy from an institution searching for
the truth to a marketplace.
Privatization is the cornerstone of neoliberalism.
Privatization is touted as the silver bullet that will solve the funding woes
of “social security, health care, and K-12 education, the maintenance of
toll–roads, railways, airlines, energy production, and communication systems.”
According to them, the private sector can run them cheaper and more
efficiently.
Americans, puzzled as to why Europeans tolerate being
taxed so heavily, ask why do Europeans support such an expensive welfare state?
The answer is that much of Europe is based on communitarianism, a philosophy
that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community rather
than like the U.S. where individualism is taken to an extreme.
Critics of neoliberalism such as Noam Chomsky argue that
neoliberalism benefits the rich and increases inequalities “both within and
between states.”
Cash strapped public universities, after years of
resistance, have succumbed to the failed philosophy of the Reagan Revolution
and reproduced a new narrative that claims that the “withdrawal of the
percentage of a state’s contribution to a college’s operating expenses”
actually increases demand for the “product” of higher education which will
lower the cost of delivering it without the need to raise taxes.
Meanwhile, in order to offset the lack of public funding,
administrators have raised tuition with students becoming the primary consumers
and debt-holders. Iinstitutions have entered into research partnerships with
industry shifting the pursuit of truth to the pursuit of profits. To accelerate
this “molting,” they have “hired a larger and larger number of short-term,
part-time adjuncts.” This has created large armies of transient and disposable
workers who “are in no position to challenge the university’s practices or
agitate for “democratic rather than monetary goals.”
The problem is aggravated by the fact that most
administrators do not know what neoliberalism is. Many come out of the
humanities and the arts and those coming out of the social sciences have a
rudimentary knowledge of economics.
Neoliberalism in order to grow must build a
justification. Take the case of Shirley V. Svorny, a Professor of Economics and
former chair of the department. In a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed piece titled,
“Make College Cost More” (November 22, 2010), Svorny argued that “Artificially
low fees attract some students to higher education who simply aren’t suited to
the academic rigors of a university.”
Svorny blamed unqualified students for tuition increases.
As insulting as her premise is the controversy was
ignored by the administration and the faculty who increasingly retire to their
“professional enclaves…” concentrating on their specialties that lack “a clear
connection to the public interest.”
Most public colleges and universities are nonprofit
institutions in name only. They are marketplaces pursuing neoliberal agendas. “Forty years of privatization, stagnant
wages, a weak economy, a lack of jobs, and budget cuts have forced college
administrators to find alternative forms of funding.”
The market logic is omnipotent. It guides faculty,
academic managers and managerial professionals seeking commercial gain related
to academic and nonacademic products. Faculty and students are rewarded, and
programs are developed whose purpose it is to generate revenue with little
attention paid to “pedagogical or knowledge-related outcomes.”
Few studies are available on the effects of neoliberal
discourse on the behavior of students. Research on the motivation, scope, and
how they shift institutional priorities are rare. Even Alexander W. Astin’s
(1998) study fails “to connect [the theme] to the rise of academic capitalism
or the power of neoliberalism.”
Essential to understanding students’ motivations is
knowing the pressures of conformity. The Italian intellectual Antonio Gramsci
called it the hegemonic project, i.e., the process where the ruling class’s
ideas and beliefs become the common sense values of society. Through this
process, neoliberalism becomes internalized and unequivocally accepted.
From my experience, the hegemonic process has had a
profound impact on administrators, professors and students in making their
choices. Students select majors and research topics in terms of marketability.
In my opinion, this mindset spells doom for students at
the lower margins as well as ethnic studies programs. Since the 1990s, this has
become very noticeable with many new faculty lacking communitarian values
common to those in the 1970s.
The importance of the common good has given way to what
is good for me, which overemphasizes personal autonomy and individual rights.
Asking what promotes the common good is less common.
Neoliberalism also interferes with understanding or
dealing with community needs. This is very noticeable among recently hired
faculty members. They participate less in student events and faculty
governance.
According to Gramsci, the bourgeoisie establishes and
maintains its control through a cultural hegemony, Therefore, it is natural
that new professors who have spent most of their lives in the academy adopt the
culture of the university. For them, bourgeois values represent the
"natural" or "normal" values of society.
Forty years ago, these bourgeois ideas were countered by
a few ideological members who sought to
construct an academic community. These dissidents heavily influenced
intellectual discourse. This potential for political or ideological resistance
has weakened, however.
In today’s academy, ideology is passé. There is
noticeably less concern for the common good and more with the individual
product. New faculty spends less time in the department and more time
visiting colleagues in their discipline
than meeting with students or Chicana/os studies faculty.
The first thing some new faculty complain about is the
size of their offices. When it is explained that we have small offices by
choice – the students have a reception area in exchange for a reduction in the
size of our faculty offices – they ask who made this decision? The conversation
is about their product and its value.
Other faculty members spend more time in departments of
their discipline, although many of these departments have refused to accept
them as permanent members. It is the product that is important and they believe it is enhanced by associating with
scholars outside the Chicana/o community.
Part timers often do not want to do anything to damage
their product. Take the UNAM (National University of Mexico) controversy: they
ignored the political ramifications of neoliberalism. It did not matter to
them. Neither did the human rights atrocities in Mexico, i.e., the disappearance
of the 43 normalistas.
They are not sellouts in the popular sense of the word.
They care about the issues as long as they do not affect the value of their
product. Economics for them is an ideology and supply and demand are the only
important factors in their decisions, Ultimately what is important is
sustaining the value of the product they are selling.
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