The Ever Extending Power and Influence of Corporate America In Education and Beyond

Corporations and universities have been developing ever deeper ties over the past several decades. Those favoring these relationships cite the more rapid commercialization of knowledge leading to profitable product development, a source of income for the involved faculty, the schools and the sponsoring corporations. These relationships have had a far greater impact on the faculty and schools than the corporations. For the corporations, their goal is to always seek greater profits and will foster any relationships that support that goal. The faculty and universities, on the other hand, have traditionally had a different mandate, to increase the knowledge base for the common good in an academic environment that encourages open communications and cross fertilization to better enhance serendipitous discoveries.

What has changed as a result of the corporate/academic marriage? For one, the universities are adopting the goal of corporations, seeking profit above all else. What evidence exists to validate that charge?

. An increase in student tuitions far beyond the rate of inflation

. An increase in student admissions

. A faculty that cannot freely communicate with their colleagues due to the need to protect propriety information in the development of corporate sponsored research and products

. A faculty that spends more time on the corporate agenda than teaching

. The replacement of respected tenured teachers with a far less expensive non-tenured faculty that is poorly paid and overworked

. The acceptance of some faculty, those most known as opinion leaders, putting their names on ghost written papers that reflect corporate bias

. The power of corporations to have the final say on what is published or not

. Corporate influence in the protocols for research that favor the results that they want to see

The observation of all these trends are based on the corporate ability to bend the university policies to their will, something that is made far easier because the universities seeing the economic benefits for themselves have too willingly abandoned the concept of a university as a forum for discovery to be shared for the common good and a site for developing the student body’s unbiased critical thinking skills. In short, the student body is paying more and more to receive an education that is geared to the needs of the corporation. If the schools were true to their traditional role, they would be emphasizing the priority of critical thinking skills. That has been replaced by the new need to cater to corporate interests. What has taken its place derives from defining the student as a consumer and what the student is guided to consume are the concepts, products and services that enhance corporate interests.

The most basic philosophical concept that corporations want is a student body that adopts the belief that the market is the only valid vehicle in determining value. This is a crucial concept for corporations because it rationalizes the abandonment of anything that pertains to the common good such as progressive taxation, inheritance taxes, pollution regulations, social security, and a host of other government sources of assistance. The advocates of the market as the most efficient indicator of value is based on competition, that the results of that competition will produce products, services and policies that are best for the country. In an idealized state that might actually be true. In reality, those supporting the market concept are already the winners of capitalist competition. Their goal is not to foster competition, but to eliminate it. The so-called free market is entirely dominated by the winners. They have the financial means to buy out any emerging threats, strategy most noted in Facebook’s acquisition of companies that may have had the ability to compete. The same is true for Amazon and Microsoft. And in those fields where smaller companies compete, there are always the dominant present winners that have the greatest ability to be the most effective marketeers assuring that their message is the one most heard.

The concept of a free market is belied most obviously in the pharmaceutical industry. Competition would realistically reduce the cost of medications. Yet, the major pharmaceutical companies don’t compete on that basis. Rather, they invest heavily in attaining political influence via campaign contributions, buying the legislation that gives them the freedom to prolong patents, apply them to new uses and charge any price they choose, all with government acceptance if not outright approval. Clearly, here, the market is addressing a small group of morbidly rich corporate owners rather than the needs of the citizens. Not exactly the broad-based efficient economic apparatus its advocates claim it to be.

So, the market as presently constructed and controlled is geared to prolong and increase the power of those who are most powerful today. Those with the means to effect legislation without consulting with the citizens are making sure that the conditions being legislated give them more room to further enhance their wealth and power. Lower corporate and personal taxes on the wealthy give these institutions and individuals far more financial reserves that they loan back to the government banking the interest they receive further increasing their wealth. It has been pointed out that the interest they receive is a higher percentage than the growth of the economy leading to a greater concentration of wealth over time.

Given the reduced tax base that has resulted from lower corporate and personal taxes on the wealthy, governments have far less ability to support academic research and have forced those institutions to seek other sources of funding, namely, corporate sponsorship that comes with strings attached. Those seeking the elimination of social security and a general undoing of the social safety net are those who have accumulated enough wealth for themselves and the subsequent several generations of their offsprings to live in unimaginable luxury. They are detached from the concepts of democracy this country was founded on. It brings to mind the fundamental question: Is the economy made for man or is the presence of man there for the betterment of the economy meaning in this context that small number of people that control the economy?

Unfettered capitalism throughout the history of the United States have subjected major portions of our population to tremendous hardships for the profit of the few. There have been periods where reformists have introduced legislation to mollify the plight of the workers and the increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of the few, the most noticeable being President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression. Throughout the 1930’s Roosevelt introduced legislation that increased the power of unions, raised taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, introduced social security and other forms of legislation that led to a general improvement in the security of its citizens.

Interestingly, after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 our enemies encountered a united United States with minimal dissension from within. And we remained united for the most part for the next 25 to 30 years after which we have seen an increasing amount of internal dissension for a host of reasons including the Vietnam War that a good portion of the wealthier portion of our population managed to avoid, the hollowing out of our industrial base resulting in the economic degradation of large part of our citizenry, namely the non-college educated who had previously been part of a robust middle class employed in manufacturing that was transferred abroad, a result of globalization that further concentrated the nation’s wealth into the hands of the few, and the financialization of our economy dominated by institutions that based their profits on speculation rather than investing in the means of production once again further concentrating wealth into the hands of the few and then producing the great recession of 2008 where the financial sector was bailed out by our taxes.

Those accumulating such wealth recognizing a growing opposition to the factors that are producing such devastating effects on those who were formerly members of the middle class seek to neutralize and redirect this understandable anger by those who are not the cause of the problems in the first place redirecting that anger to immigrants, Muslims, Jews, liberal institutions and progressive legislators, racial history, sexual designations, reproductive rights, the legitimacy of elections, the validity of the news media, the legitimacy of the judicial system and the concept of the United States being a white Christian nation, all emotional issues that obscure the real reasons for our maladjusted society. As the conditions that caused the problems mount and the anger grows the misdirection has become a necessary tool of the morbidly wealthy taking on an increasing radicalism that today endangers the continuance of our country as a functioning democracy.

The causes of our dilemma are obvious to anyone who wishes to dispassionately examine them. The solutions are also obvious, although the opposition represented by the major corporations and those who own them is monumental. Nevertheless, at a minimum the degradation of any part of our citizenry is not the answer. Time is getting short. We are either going to pull together as a united nation or we are going to let those who will only make things worse take further control.

Regards, Barry