Draft:Academic Capitalism

• Comment: Reads like an essay or a journal, not an encyclopedia article which summarizes secondary sources. The term does appear to be used, so a separate article may be warranted. C F A 💬 17:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

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Academic Capitalism is the theory that universities can compete with private industry and entities, seeking new products/technologies which can then be patented and be exploited for profit. It includes scientific research, economic profit maximization, and innovation.

History

The influence of profitable research by universities began in World War II, and was the beginning to the relationship between universities and federal agencies, the most prominent of which was the Department of Defense. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman refer to this era as "the academic revolution" which was characterized by the increase of institutions, students, graduates, and professors. The GI Bill sent more than two million veterans to college increasing the popularity of higher education. Government funding also aided in the growth of popularity as the National Defense Education Act of 1958 allocated financial support to students for the first time. According to Louis Menand, the aim behind this expansion was "meritocracy, the opening of opportunities to talent". The passage of the New Deal further strengthened the support in higher education and towards the end of this expansion, civil rights and feminist movements provided the way for racial minorities and women to attend colleges and universities. With this increase of students and universities there was a motive to unify the curriculum. Roger Geiger calls this "an implacable movement towards common academic standards that created a national ideal of education that was adopted by the majority of universities."

The second period of change began in the mid-1980s with lasting changes still seen today. The growth of endowments and philanthropic contributions were used to update and improve infrastructure. The push toward academic capitalism began in the context of corporate philanthropy and business investments in higher education that were often tied to specific research objections and to workplace development. These investments introduced corporations into higher education allowing their power to dictate the knowledge that was being produced.

By the early 1990s, neoliberalism gained popularity in most Western industrialized economies. "neoliberalism emerged as a set of economic policies and political strategies in the 1970s and 1980s designed to revitalize capitalist accumulation in the wake of the stagnation and crisis of the Keynesian welfare state." Neoliberalism aimed to promote the interests of capital and the importance of profitability and competitiveness by limiting state intervention, deregulating markets, and ultimately prioritizing individualism, competition, and entrepreneurship. The emergence of neoliberalism transformed economics from a standpoint of social welfare for the public, to enabling the individual as an economic actor while also supporting the privatizing, commercializing, and, deregulating, state functions to promote the new economy in global market. These alterations to society slithered into the operations of higher education.

Terminology

The first condition of academic capitalism is the inequality of institutions. Christopher Newfield writes that, "the purpose of privatization is to move resources toward those willing to pay for them, which in practice mean giving more to those with more and giving less to those with less". Within the context of enrollment, wealthy institutions predominantly enroll white students, making the exception to achieve diversity goals backed with funding awards.

Academic science is claimed to be more and more structured along the lines of the classic capitalist workplace. It is argued to be illustrated though the dilemma of 'relevance of a discipline' and the 'utility of a course' which separates major or learning trajectory does not promise wealth and success, it is perceived as useless and irrelevant. Researchers argue that this further shows the way in which capitalism has infiltrated education as norms and priorities of the market shape the values within institutions. The dominant discourse to the importance of knowledge in the status quo rests on the value that knowledge supplants physical capital as the source of present and future wealth. Because the aim of knowledge is to sustain and expand the rule of capital, it is important that it feeds the ethics of competition on which capitalism survives.

Competition is a core aspect of education and one of the main areas that showcases the emergence of academic capitalism. Not only does competition find its way into the peer relationships inside classroom as they fight for higher grades, good remarks, acceptance in high ranked schools, etc., but also feeds into the wider economy as an indicator of national competitiveness. Capitalism thrives on competition between cooperations and other economies which results in education becoming a means to participate in the market, and enhance one's own as well as the 'nations's' economic prospects which is in face enhancing the profit of private capital.

Opposing Views

Academic capitalist expands revenue sources for higher education during times when state budgets are tight. The authors also note the trend of increasing professionalism in administrative support for new economy activities. Unfortunately, these same new layers of administration contribute to the rising costs of higher education, in some cases negating the revenues from academic capitalism.

References

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