Challenging the Commodification of Education

by John T. McNay, Academe Blog:  https://academeblog.org/2019/05/23/challenging-the-commodification-of-education/

Image: theodysseyonline.com

The growing obsession on the part of college and university administrations with secrecy, which I address in my recent Academe article, “Ohio AAUP Chapters Contend with Secretive Searches,” is indicative of a larger issue. The continual adoption of corporate models is undermining the academic mission at our institutions. Even corporations, when they allow themselves to get involved in too many things that are peripheral to the core business, ratchet their businesses back to focus on their core business.

Here is the important thing: This refocus on the academic mission is the kind of innovation that our institutions should begin to explore. What passes for “innovation” is too often just an acceleration of running down the same rabbit hole that is destroying higher education.

One of the truly frustrating things about working for reforms in higher education is to get college and university administrators to put education first and not allow the resources of the institutions to get hijacked for other purposes. The inability to focus on the real problems is widespread and yet the solutions are right there before everyone’s eyes. They only require the courage to address them.

The pressure to treat our public colleges and universities as though they were corporations designed to produce profits does a great deal to undermine the academic mission and take attention away from the institutions’ reason for existing. Top academic administrators are thoroughly sucked into this vortex for several reasons, including that their training is designed to make them fit the corporate model.

Take one of the most popular handbooks for administrators, Business Practices in Higher Education: A Guide for Today’s Administrators by Mark A. Kretovics. The book’s introduction makes it clear where the author stands:

It is my contention that higher education is an industry and that individual institutions have operated like a business. Our core business practice just happens to be that of educating students.

I think this commodification of education is in great part what has gone wrong. It distorts what is actually a pretty simple function, teaching and research. It also tends to remove the focus from educating students to all of the other peripheral functions of the university and promotes the idea that all of these activities—construction, education, non-academic staffing, teaching, athletics, restructuring, real estate development, research, and climbing walls—are all of roughly the same value. Higher education is a public good, not a widget.

Guest blogger John T. McNay is a professor of history at the University of Cincinnati at Blue Ash and is past president of the UC AAUP chapter and current president of the Ohio AAUP conference.