Monday, October 17, 2005

Privatizing Public Universities

Mikaela says:
The New York Times today runs an article laying out the danger of privatization of America’s state universities. Where taxpayers have traditionally supported higher education, corporations are now taking the lead.

Why should this matter?

  1. Public universities helped create the middle class in America and supported the technological advances that have helped the economy, sure, but more importantly have led to finding cures for disease and improving the quality of life for millions of people. Politically, an educated middle class helps keep democracy strong. Could this be one reason why the establishment doesn’t seem to care about the decline in our universities?
  2. Having corporations support public education means for-profit ventures now define what’s worth learning. As the former president of University of Wisconsin puts it, “America is rapidly privatizing its public colleges and universities, whose mission used to be to serve the public good. But if private donors and corporations are providing much of a university's budget, then they will set the agenda, perhaps in ways the public likes and perhaps not. Public control is slipping away.”
  3. Professors are pressured to do research and downplay their teaching roles and responsibilities. Because of the changing economic imperative to find outside financial support, University Presidents have to spend their time schmoozing with rich donors instead of focusing on education goals – recruiting and retaining good teachers and students and providing the best atmosphere for learning and innovation.

A recent Homecoming Reunion at the General Honors Program at UNM brought home to me this quickly shaping reality.

The University Honors Program (its official name – UHP) since its birth in the early 1980s has been an independent department within the university, with tenure-track faculty with the explicit mission to be interdisciplinary and focused on teaching. Modeled on small liberal arts colleges, the classes are all seminars, limited to 15 students, and graded on an A, pass, or fail scale. On a personal note, the Honors Program is the only reason I had a good education as an undergraduate. I took all the classes I possibly could. The teachers were actually TEACHERS. Classes were discussions of the most important kinds – intelligent, motivated, curious people sitting around hashing out what’s important and what’s just modern circus performance.

UNM’s new president just “found” a bunch of money from corporate donors to fund a renovation of the UHP’s home, expanding the number of classrooms and offices for faculty. In exchange, he is pressuring the UHP to change its grading system to match the University’s, to hire “research” faculty, and to deny tenure to faculty that “only” focuses on teaching.

The sole source of my education and ongoing intellectual pursuits and curiosities is about to get pulled under this wave of privatization pressure.

I fear for the middle class and for higher education. Most of us can’t afford to pay even in-state tuition, and scholarships are drying up, too. Public education at the high-school level and below is being systematically dismantled and undermined by this administration. Even funding toward medical research and technology are now dominated by corporations – these capitalist abstractions with no accountability to anyone that do not see any value to “public good” if there’s no profit motive.

(Check out Charlie Rose’s interview with former Intel President Andrew Grove – who rocks, by the way – on his views about medical research and the danger we’re in. Now that he’s been diagnosed with Prostate cancer, suddenly he’s concerned with public health. Still, he’s got some amazing ideas and a powerful argument.)

So mass epidemics like avian flu, AIDS, and the continued preponderance of new cancers will crop up more and more frequently, and we will rely solely on one corporation’s monopoly – or a few corporations’ oligopoly – to save us? How can that possibly be a good idea, even to rich people who think they’re insulated?

Is an educated populace really so dangerous as to risk our position as “first world” nation for people who care about that? Am I missing something?