Factors That Support Dental Education In The Schools And Continuing Education

In discussing these issues we must appreciate the differences between an education that does not apply to products and the ones that do. Without a commercial incentive education is not subject to the influences of corporate and academic profits and the education that proceeds is far more open to an unbiased dialogue. The same cannot be said where an end product is being marketed. With the clear understanding that corporations and academic institutions have developed a mutually beneficial financial relationship that limits the information on what to use, prohibiting any data that would undermine that ultimate goal, under these conditions, marketing is an accurate description of what is called the educational process. Unlike non-commercial education, any education that entails the conditioning of the student body to be more receptive to a particular corporate brand and technique is motivated by both a corporate and academic strategy to maximize profits. How is this strategy implemented?

The dental schools in concert with the corporations competing for exclusive access to the student body make their decisions on the instrumentation system being taught based on the most generous corporate sponsorship. The mandated employment of an instrumentation system based on the greatest financial offers eliminates any critical analysis of the chosen systems substituting at best some general platitudes upon which they claim a particular system was chosen. Without exercising critical thinking and the prohibition of any faculty student who would like to take that tract, in those areas where commercial interests are at stake, the education the students are exposed to is more accurately described as indoctrination. Please note the strong correlation between marketing and indoctrination.

This state of affairs is readily apparent with a good deal of literature covering the process. In response, the schools rationalize their corporate relations by developing a theme based on academic capitalism where the schools have adopted the same corporate values to maximize profits, a necessity that has resulted from a reduction in public support over the years. The transformation of a school whose traditional goals, at least stated as such, to foster the development of critical thinking skills are now replaced by a program that conditions the students to be future consumers of the sponsored products. Such a transformation required several steps including:

. The reduced influence of the faculty, overpowered by school administrators whose main goal is to make their institutions as profitable as possible.

. The emphasis on those faculty members who are deemed most successful in financially enriching the schools.

. A faculty passive enough to go along with these transformations.

. School administrations that can threaten job security for those who object to these transformations.

. The sweetening of faculty incentives with corporate financial rewards to the majority of teachers including those who do comparative research studies.

One might think that conflict of interest might come into play, but given our human talent to rationalize any position as justification of its implementation, one can argue that there is no conflict of interest where the financial survival of the university is at stake. The schools’ preservation supersedes all other previous traditional approaches to teaching and without adhering to the present day demands, the schools wouldn’t even exist. Hence, there is no conflict of interest and the corporate academic relationship should be accepted because there is no other viable alternative. And, that is indeed the case as long as the schools are considered an extension of the market where profits determine the value of everything and the concept of critical thinking is not deemed important enough by those in control of public funding to offer support to preserve such independence.

The market, and the schools being clearly part of the market, cannot point to a source of profit where a free open debate determines what is taught. Yes, full open debate might lead to innovations that spur greater future profits, but that is a time consuming and unpredictable process and the last thing already successful corporations want to confront is unpredictability. To avoid such possibilities, the powerful corporations simply control the marketplace with their exclusive access bought by their sponsorship an obvious example. So bribery, otherwise known as sponsorship, is legitimate and rationalized as a necessity. That the students are deprived of an unbiased education is totally acceptable, a top down authoritarian process that dulls the potential creativity of the students, breeding cynicism that on the one hand can lead to rejection of such a system and, on the other hand, can lead to the further extension of such an authoritarian approach by those students who accept that this is the way the game is played and do their creative best to extend the top down hierarchy to control an academic environment that follows the dictates of maximizing profits as the prime directive.

The true reality is that a university that is structured as a market place is prone to chicanery, most evident in the pharmaceutical industry where academic studies noting at times the lethal downsides of medications are suppressed or written about in such a way that the dangers are obscured. That too, is inevitable when maximizing profits is the only goal. Enlightment takes second place to profits. Capitalism puts us into a bind. The advantages of capitalism are based on the innovations and lower costs that result from competition. A consequence of the capitalistic system is the emergence of powerful winners further strengthened by mergers and acquisitions that destroy the competition that fostered capitalism’s successes and when we talk about success we refer to the benefits that accrue to society from innovative products addressing our needs at ever reducing costs. That state of capitalism no longer exists in many areas including the airline industry, telecommunications, banking, industries concentrated enough for the few remaining giants to cooperate among themselves to prevent competition that would lead to effective market choice.

The problem is further compounded by these same corporations constituting the donor class to both political parties having undue influence in the legislation that is passed rendering laws that favor their concerns over the rest of society. We should all realize that such legislation favoring the donor class represents a fraction of one percent of the electorate providing undeniable evidence where real power lies. Rather than a government of the people, by the people and for the people we have a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. I suspect the worst is yet to come. I’d love to be proven wrong. Time will definitely give us the answer.

Regards, Barry