The Environment Where Teaching And Research Occur

I believe it is important to examine the environment where teaching and research occur. The basic assumption is that both tasks seek to discover truths and convey them to a student body that is being taught to evaluate this data via a process of critical thinking. No one argues against this basic principle of learning, but that does not necessarily mean it is occurring. So, the evaluation of the honesty and integrity of the teaching and research that occurs must first offer strong evidence that the stated goal is, indeed, being carried out.

What throws doubt on this stated goal being faithfully executed is the increasing involvement of corporate sponsorship in the teaching of students and the research being conducted. This could not happen without the cooperation of school administrators and that administrative cooperation occurs because the school administrators have determined that the advantages of cooperation outweigh the risks of compromise in teaching the truth and objective non-biased research. The problem with this administrative assessment is that that assessment is based on the goals that the administrators have determined to be in the best interests of the schools.

What has occurred over the years that would make the school administrations increasingly cooperative in working with commercial sources of sponsorship? Most obviously, it is the need for money. Following World War II, the USA via National Institute of Health and National Health Foundation supported the operations of schools to an extent that there was no need to seek outside funding and the process of teaching and research were largely independent of commercial influence. This funding was generous enough to maintain a school’s independence pretty much through the mid 1970’s.

Around this latter period of time, the economy began to erode from greater competition of revived manufacturing centers in Europe and Japan, the inflation from the Vietnam War, the petroleum embargoes from the Mideast and the far higher costs of oil that were subsequently imposed leading to a further aggravation of inflation. What’s worse, the Keynesian responses to inflation and a morose economy were not working leading to an economic model that had been developing over time called neoliberalism. Simply stated, neoliberalism stated that there should be as little government intervention in our economy as possible, jsut about everthing should be privatized, that the market is the most efficient instrument we have in determining value and any transactions that occur will be judged by that process.

The newly elected political leaders were supporters of this view of the economy. President Reagan perhaps best summed up the new perspective by saying the most terrifying words we can hear is that “we're from the government and we’re hear to help”. In that same vein, the new attitude to the economy considers unions distortions of the economy and were targeted to be weakened and eliminated. In short, corporations, particularly big successful ones, were considered the sources of our strength and should have as few regulations imposed upon them so their dynamics would soar. To encourage this process, corporate taxes were drastically reduced and the income of those owning these corporations would also have drastic reductions in their taxes. The reduction in regulations, an economic event, was interpreted by many opinion leads as an extension of democracy, a political event making the economic agenda more palatable for mass acceptance.

What happened under this new economic agenda was predictable. A government believing that it works best when most limited reduced the support for teaching and research in the schools. The schools had to find substitutes for the reduction in funding and corporate sponsorship became the obvious solution. Unlike government funding, however, corporate funding comes with strings attached and those strings were tied to conditions that would increase the possibilities of the corporations to increase their profits, their reason for being.

The schools had to evolve from thinking about their original goals of developing a student body with critical thinking skills to one that works in making their corporate partners comfortable within a university environment. That not only includes a student body that is taught to use the products of the sponsoring corporations, but also developing protocols for research that supports the use of those products. But, that is only a small part of the relationships that developed. The universities began to appreciate the advantages of being bastions of research, a portion of which could lead to product developments across a whole range of disciplines. In that regard and in coordination with legislation that allowed the universities the right to assign federal and state supported projects that could lead to innovative products to be assigned to private corporations.

This legislation had major impacts. On the plus side, it created an environment that led to the quicker commercialization of products. The schools, owning the patents on technology were able to gain an income from royalties received by the corporations gifted with the exclusive rights to produce the particular product. The economic incentives were great enough for the schools to readjust their priorities from teaching and theoretical research to those that had the possibility of new and vast amounts of income to the schools. They no longer sough faculty who would primarily be excellent teachers, but rather those scientists who were most likely to develop new products, write ground breaking papers and enhance the prestige of the schools thereby attracting even more corporate sponsors. The schools became the mirror image of the sponsoring corporations driven by the same quest for maximizing profits. The corporations stayed true to their goals. The schools, no longer abided by their original commitments and strove to define success by the same parameters of the corporations they invited into their home.

Once the schools adopted the corporate sense of profits, tuition even in state supported schools increased dramatically while private prestigious universities had their tuition increase by even more. The number of students increased. The number of tenured faculty with higher salaries and greater input into academic agendas is continuously being paired down replaced by adjunct teachers with low salaries and absolutely no influence in what is taught. We should not lose sight of the direct involvement of corporations and the adoption of corporate values, namely, profits, that now take precedence in higher education, particularly those area where corporate branding exists and product development is involved.

The hard reality is that what has occurred is inevitable in an environment where unfettered capitalism exists. The many economists that state that the neoliberal concept of a “free” market is most efficient and reflects democratic values and should therefore be dominant accept as a consequence of this structure a form of social Darwinism where the strong survive and those that don’t only have themselves to blame. Neoliberalism denies the responsibility of those in political power to create programs that afford opportunities for those attempting to climb the economic ladder, but don’t have the financial means to do so. Those opportunities have been diminished By reduced government funding for educational programs and vastly higher tuition costs. Furthermore, the funding that is available, increasingly from corporate sources is directed at educational goals that meet corporate needs.

A nation founded on democratic principles must have a population that is educated in those principles, sees the values in them in creating a cohesive society, e paribus unum, where in the words of Lincoln, the citizens live in a country of the people, by the people and for the people. Today, we are far closer to a country where the economic elite buy the people and those no longer considered assets in terms of producers or consumers are packed into ghettos of degradation, treated as enemies by local police forces and sent off for incarceration where they are used as cheap laborers to at least make some profit for those who have the resources to direct those in power.

This will remain the case, until the majority of citizens organize enough to overcome a structure that has been created to maintain and extend the morbidly rich fraction of one percent. It was done once in the 30’s and we are in times that call for a recommitment to those policies that put man in control of the economy rather than the economy in control of man.

Regards, Barry