Higher Education And Corporate Control

Over the last 40 years, we have witnessed a dramatic change in the structure of power in the United States. Since the mid-1970s, a one-sided class war has taken place and the ruling class has been winning. It has altered the relationship between capitalism and democracy, and in turn has subjugated a variety of institutions to the logic of capitalism. Douglas Frazier, former head of the United Auto Workers (UAW), took note of this class war early on, and more recently super-rich investor Warren Buffet has also commented on how his class has waged a very successful class war against the rest of the American population.
Academia has really been slow to assess the changing dynamics of capitalism and the erosion of democracy in the United States. Those who have written about this tidal wave of change have been marginalized by being labeled conspiracy theorists or radicals with an axe to grind - or professors who have not been able to climb the ladder to academic stardom.

One sees little discussion in mainstream academic publications of the profound influence that the Powell Memorandum (1971) has had on key institutions that make up the US cultural apparatus. Powell, who later became a Supreme Court justice, argued in his memo that business had to wage a counterattack against the left in American society. He urged the business community to mobilize and to finance conservative foundations, think tanks, media organizations and endowed professorships in order to advance a cultural war carried out by elites. Powell argued in his memo to the US Chamber of Commerce that business had to retake control over the media and the university as part of an orchestrated campaign to alter social and political discourse in America.

Powell's proposal was certainly ambitious and involved a long battle to bend institutions in the direction of the interests of the business community. This campaign was in direct response to gains made by the social movements of the 1960s and early 1970s and the legislation that was passed in response to these movements. In Powell's vision, the goal was not just to blunt the influence of left and progressive forces in the United States; it was to fundamentally shift the country in a conservative direction by weakening labor unions, attacking the social wage, repressing social movements and recapturing the media and higher education.

What was to transpire over the course of the next 40 years largely followed the outlines of Powell's proposal and dramatically altered the balance of power in the country by eroding democratic institutions and restricting public spaces. It is not an exaggeration to say that during this period, conservatives completely out-organized left and progressive social forces and changed the landscape of social and political discourse. Business ultimately benefited the most from this cultural war, although its major concern was - as always - commodifying more and more areas of life, expanding profitability and reconstituting ideological control, rather than engaging in the politics of morality.
The long-term consequences of this orchestrated campaign have resulted in the degradation of life in the United States as the institutions which previously undergirded the social safety net have come under fierce attack. In the process, the opportunity for the American people to hold the powerful accountable has been reduced to rituals of democracy which are more about form than substance.


We don't have to accept the assault on university ideals and programs as inevitable or as another example of "there is no alternative." Instead we need to forge a common understanding across sectors of the university community to resist corporate takeover of academe. To be successful in this project will require going beyond the academic community and reaching out to students, parents, workers and community members who have been adversely affected by the direction the university has taken. We must indeed see the university as an arena for struggle in order to revive higher education and its ideals and to contribute to the larger struggle for democracy and social justice.

 As Giroux suggests, "Critical thinking and a literate public have become dangerous to those who want to celebrate orthodoxy over dialogue, emotion over reason, and ideological certainty over thoughtfulness."

As someone who has worked in higher education for his entire career, I sense a tremendous unease and decline in morale in academe. Some would say that this is normal because the university has been subject to the same technological forces as any other institution and inevitably this leads to changing the way people work. Surely, there is an element of faculty grumbling about having to do things differently and being subjected to increased scrutiny. But there is more than just this going on in higher education. Running a university like a business degrades all aspects of university life and negatively affects administrators, faculty, professional staff, workers, students, parents and the community. Commodifying education alienates people from each other, from the institution, from their work, and diminishes people's expectations. Corporate logic changes priorities and changes the allocation of resources for the institution.

As Antonio Gramsci reminded us, hegemony is not easily accomplished. It involves social, political and cultural struggle to produce and reproduce the dominant order. According to Gramsci, hegemony is never complete - it is constantly resisted even if only in a fragmented way. Just as there has been a war waged on women and the poor in the United States, there is a cultural war being waged on the ideals of the American university.

Higher education and its professoriate have been targeted because they represent a major reservoir of resistance to corporate control and the erosion of democracy. The last thing that elites want to encourage is a space in which critical thinking is nourished and a liberal arts education is valued. Universities naturally are places where one might find people who are trained to "think big," and who have developed an understanding of the inherent contradictions of capitalism. It is for this reason that a campaign to restructure the academy into a corporate service station has taken place.

In the struggle for hegemony in American society, the university as traditionally understood is contradictory in nature. On the one hand, it has the potential to be a very unique commodity - one which makes bundles of money and one which helps elite ideas and elite ideology become hegemonic. On the other hand, it can play a crucial role in questioning the dominant ideology and producing critical thinkers. The contradictory role played by universities in American society has made higher education an arena for struggle over the last 30 years. Corporate elites seek to enlist the university in its battle to impose its will on the rest of society. They seek to blunt the critical impulses of the university and reinforce its role as a defender of neoliberalism.

The challenge to everyone in academia is to resist corporatization of higher education. We still have the capacity to imagine a different university that contributes to the fight to create a different, more peaceful and more democratic society. The goal should be to build a broader coalition for social justice, to reimagine the future and to create a counter hegemony. To do these things we must firmly reject the current path. We must be clear that the university stands for something greater and more humane than simply being a servant to power.


Extracted from a lengthy article by Peter Seybold Taken from here.

He puts forward a compelling critique of the damage and dangers to the education system as a whole, especially higher education, from the ever-present representatives and cheerleaders of the capitalist system. Well worth reading, if only to confirm already long held convictions.
JS