Structural Realities of The Neoliberal University

This is a growing list of peer-reviewed essays, books, and articles addressing neoliberal policy in higher education.

In this post: A growing list of peer-reviewed essays, books, and articles addressing neoliberal policy in higher education driven by the need to know how the university got here.
Next week :An introduction to Post-PhD's new resources and community dialog and how to engage with our discourse.
Last week: As Fred Moten and Stefano Harney make clear: the only ethical relationship to the university today is a criminal one.

Context: The driving force behind this collection is the need to know precisely how the university came to this point: a toxic, exploitative environment that is counter-productive to its ultimate goal of the pursuit and safeguarding of knowledge.

These are the peer-reviewed essays, articles, and books that I first read in 2018 for Post-PhD.

Neoliberal policy (though Derek Bok wouldn't necessarily call it that) is the ideological infrastructure of how the university is run today. Former Harvard president Derek Bok's Universities and the Marketplace provides a concise and comprehensive history of the commoditization of the university, beginning at the turn of the 19th century.

Writers such as Marc Bousquet, Henry Giroux, Paulo Fiere, Wendy Brown, and Casey Brienza provide an excellent analysis of the university structure within the context of neoliberalism.

In this particular curation, I provide peer-reviewed articles on these issues, as well as articles from journals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and others to provide a contemporary (recent) context for these issues.

There are a few book recommendations I have, especially for the early texts addressing the problems in the university (which are always contextualized in terms of urgency, i.e., "before it's too late," which I find quaint because it is already "too late" in the terms in which these authors frame it). Nonetheless, these books (which are cited in Moten & Harney's University and the Undercommons) provide a basis for much recent scholarship today.

Methodological Foundations:*

*These readings will be featured in the 12-13-21 post for the guided discussion for December. See that forthcoming post for further details.

Moten, Fred, and Stefano Harney. "The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses," Social Text, 79 Vol. 22, No 2. Summer 2004.

Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. The Crossing Press Feminist Series:1984, 2007

Bousquet, Marc. "The Waste Product of Graduate Education: Toward a Dictatorship of the Flexible." Works and Days 41/42, Vol. 21, No 1-2. 2003.

Structural Realities:

*titles in bold are highly recommended

Bok, Derek. Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education. Princeton University Press: 2003. (review only)

Partial Abstract: Bok defines commercialization as "efforts within the university to make a profit from teaching, research, and other campus activities." He explicitly divorces this meaning of the term from ideological concerns - the influence of the surrounding corporate culture, the accountability movement, e.g. - and "economizing" concerns, which lead to hiring adjuncts and incorporating business methods (3).

In his analysis of commercialization's roots, Bok discredits, or so he thinks the leftist analysis. His centrist, cost-benefit rhetoric seeks to avoid the extremes of Marxist critique and unbridled market celebration. According to Bok, leftists think commercialization is "simply" another attempt by businessmen and lawyers sitting on boards of trustees "to 'commodify' education and research, reduce the faculty to the status of employees...”

Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-wage Nation. New York, NY: New York Univ. Press. 2008

Abstract: Uncovers the labor exploitation occurring in universities across the country. As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees—including the vast majority of faculty—really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce.

Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education—a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher education's corporatization on faculty and students at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.

Bousquet, Marc. "The Waste Product of Graduate Education: Toward a Dictatorship of the Flexible." Works and Days 41/42, Vol. 21, No 1-2. 2003.

Chan, Steven M. Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia. Rowman and Littlefield: 1986. (review only)

Abstract: While much has changed in higher education in the last 25 years, Steven M. Cahn maintains that the important ethical issues (and their appropriate resolutions) have not changed that much at all. That's why there are very few changes in Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia, just released by Rowman & Littlefield in a 25th-anniversary edition.

The book covers teaching (Cahn is unsparing of any faculty members who shirk their duties there), graduate education (which he faults for failing to teach doctoral students how to teach), and personnel decisions, among other topics. On many issues, Cahn makes no apologies for being a bit old school. He advocates traditional letter grades, saying that they promote rigor and healthy competition. And he rejects the criticism that they somehow depersonalize the educational process. "Grades no more reduce students to letters than batting averages reduce baseball players to numbers.”

Donoghue, Frank. The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. Fordham University Press: 2008. (review only)

Abstract: Between about 1950 and 1975 American higher education enjoyed what many have called a “Golden Age” when the revenue and enrollments of colleges and universities grew enormously (Freeland, 1992; Menand, pp. 63–73). During the subsequent silver age of academe, ending in the Great Recession of 2008–9, liberal arts education, particularly in the humanities, rapidly lost favor, according to many observers. Now, in the terms of Hesiod and Ovid, we have entered an academic bronze age, in which colleges and universities increasingly pursue their financial self-interest at the expense of academic values.

An associate professor of English at Ohio State University, Frank Donoghue insightfully analyzes, predicts, and laments the inevitable extinction of the faculty of the humanities—especially literature—at flagship state universities. These faculty are the “last professors,” cast in the traditional mold, at these burgeoning and most “corporate” universities, he maintains.

Miller, Toby. Blow Up the Humanities. Temple University Press: 2012. (review only)

Abstract: A short, sharp, and provocative book, Blow Up the Humanities has esteemed scholar Toby Miller declaring that there are two humanities in the United States. One is the venerable, powerful humanities of private universities; the other is the humanities of state schools, which focus mainly on job prospects. There is a class division between the two — both in terms of faculty research and student background — and it must end. Miller critically lays waste to the system. He examines scholarly publishing as well as media and cultural studies to show how to restructure the humanities by studying popular cultural phenomena, like video games. Miller ultimately insists that these two humanities must merge in order to survive and succeed in producing an aware and concerned citizenry.

Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Harvard University Press: 1996.

Abstract: It is no longer clear what role the University plays in society. The structure of the contemporary University is changing rapidly, and we have yet to understand what precisely these changes will mean. Is a new age dawning for the University, the renaissance of higher education underway? Or is the University in the twilight of its social function, the demise of higher education fast approaching?

Tracing the roots of the modern American University in German philosophy and in the work of British thinkers such as Newman and Arnold, Bill Readings argues that historically the integrity of the modern University has been linked to the nation-state, which it has served by promoting and protecting the idea of national culture. But now the nation-state is in decline, and national culture no longer needs to be either promoted or protected. Increasingly, universities are turning into transnational corporations, and the idea of culture is being replaced by the discourse of “excellence.”

Neoliberal Policy (Impact of):

Brienza, Casey. "Degrees of (Self-)Exploitation: Learning to Labor in the Neoliberal University." Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 29 No. 1 March 2016 DOI: 10.1111/johs12119

Abstract: Much has been written on the neoliberalization of the academy on the one hand and precarious creative labor/work in the culture industries on the other, but there has been comparatively little writing which makes explicit the intimate links between these two sociological phenomena and how they have come to complement and reinforce one another. Taking as a case study a new postgraduate MA course in Self-Publishing, this article aims to fill this gap, arguing that fundamental to learning to labour in the neoliberal university is both ready acquiescence to exploitation and further willingness to self-exploit on the part of both staff and students. Furthermore, incumbents of a profoundly unequal and managerial knowledge hierarchy benefit from the introduction of programmes which neither train students vocationally nor educate them liberally. This, in turn, threatens the autonomy within institutions of higher education while simultaneously undermining future artistic and intellectual flourishing. 

Brown, Wendy. "Neoliberalized Knowledge." A History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History, Vol. 1, No. 1 Summer 2011.

This was one of the first articles I found that explained to me, a humble art historian, exactly how neoliberal, or free market, policy had devastated higher education, transforming it into an adjunct nation. Her writing is clear and cuts through dense theories and realities. I also recommend her more recent writings on neoliberalism, such as Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Zone Books, 2015).

Giroux, Henry. "Neoliberalism's War Against Higher Education and the Role of Public Intellectuals." Límite. Revista Interdisciplinaria de Filosofía y Psicología. Vol. 10, No 34 2015, pp5-16

I find Giroux's writing to be a crystallizing call to action. This essay (and others by him) have been incredibly influential to how I conceive of the activism of public intellectuals, and thus hits at heart of Post-PhD's ethos.

Abstract: Under the rein of neoliberalism, economic and political decisions are removed from social costs, and the flight of critical thought and social responsibility is further undermined by both the suppression of dissent (an assault on higher education as a democratic public sphere) and an ongoing attempt to suppress the work of educators whose work strives to connect scholarship to important social issues and develop forms of critical education whose aim is to translate private troubles into public concerns while promoting what Paulo Freire once education as the practice of freedom. This article examines the related questions of what kind of education is needed for students to be informed and active citizens in a world that increasingly ignores their needs, if not their future, and what role educators might play in this project as public intellectuals. The article argues that it is time for educators to develop a political language in which civic values and social responsibility—and the institutions, tactics, and long-term commitments that support them—become central to invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic engagement, a renewed sense of social agency, and an impassioned international social movement with the vision, organization, and set of strategies capable of challenging the neoliberal nightmare that now haunts the globe and empties out the meaning of politics and democracy.

Key Words: Neoliberalism, Casino Capitalism, Pedagogy, Public Intellectuals, Radical Democracy, Critical Education, Tenure, Market-based Values. 

Smyth, John. The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars, and Neoliberal Ideology. Palgrave Critical University Studies: 2017

This is a book, so I don't have the PDF, but its nonetheless a virtual archive in and of itself, if only for the works cited page. It's rather expensive, so in the future I'll be selecting essays from it to guide Post-PhD's discussions, but if you are fortunate enough to have access to a university ILL, I recommend it.

Review excerpt: In reviewing John Smyth’s latest offering, The Toxic University, we found a personal connection to the arguments put forth by Smyth as he critiques the neoliberalisation of higher education and our complicity as well as agency in this process. As intellectuals whose university is undergoing aggressive neoliberal change, we valued the opportunity to examine Smyth’s work and its parallels with lived reality.

Articles (quick reads):

n/a “How to Fix the Adjunct Crisis.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 30, 2018)

Tamayo, Ana M Fores. “The Adjunctification of Higher Education: Its Dirty Little Secret Exposed” Industrial Worker (Apr 1, 2014)

Swidler, Eva. "The Pernicious Silencing of the Adjunct Faculty." The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 30, 2017).

Dreger, Alice. “Take Back the Ivory Tower.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (Oct 1, 2017)

Conley, Joseph. “Just Another Piece of Quit Lit.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (Mar 8, 2018)

Jaschik, Scott. "New Study Documents Long-term Losses of New Humanities Faculty Jobs." Inside Higher Ed. June 6, 2016.

Warren, Scott. "Future Colleague or Convenient Friend: The Ethics of Mentorship." Counseling and Values: January 2005; 45, 2.

Housekeeping:

This page is continuously updated, all links are to complete PDFs unless marked otherwise. If you would like to submit to this archive, please email postphd@allisonharbin.com with the subject line: "Resources on Neoliberal U" so we know where to categorize it!

*Note: this list is not complete, nor is it necessarily comprehensive, but these are articles that we've found helpful for understanding the economic and structural changes to Higher Education since the 1970s. These resources are US-centric, so help us out if you have good sources from beyond!

“When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” -Audre Lorde