Neoliberal Capitalism: Where There Is Little Difference Between Marketing And Education

Today, where products are integral to the educational process, such as endodontic instrumentation systems, marketing (branding) of those products becomes a significant part of the educational structure. That marketing has become contiguous with the educational system results from a mentality that claims the market is the most accurate way to judge the most cost effective and efficient way to determine the best products and services. It assumes that those making judgments have complete knowledge of all the alternatives and are perfectly rational in their utilization of that complete knowledge.

No mention is made of the market power of wealthy corporations that can spend great amounts of money to distort the underlying assumption that the markets are perfect reflections of complete knowledge appraisal by perfectly rational individuals. The philosophical basis for this mentality is founded on a concept defined as neoliberalism that under ideal circumstances might function as claimed, but in reality only leads to concentrations of wealth and power that is inevitably expressed as greater inequality for most citizens and increasing authoritarianism to maintain this type of market mechanism.

A good example of the neoliberal structure of academia is observed in its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. Research universities based on public funding (our tax dollars) have developed knowledge that has the potential to result in innovative drugs being produced. At this point it is advantageous for pharmaceutical corporations to reach agreements with these universities to work together in the pursuit of commercial applications. The universities will receive royalties from owning the patents on any commercially successful products developed. The sponsoring pharmaceutical corporation will have assigned to it exclusive marketing rights in exchange for their funding of the expenses of commercial development going forward. The relationship might actually include the creation of a private company with the main researcher being the CEO receiving financial support from both the university and the sponsoring corporation, in effect, the recipient of two sponsors with strong allegiance to both.

What has occurred under these circumstances is a transition from a university focused on the impartial discovery of information funded by public dollars with that information entering the public domain without any restrictive covenants to a commercial one where profit becomes, if not the only focus, the main one. Within this new environment, any information developed is shared among the involved partners, but now restricted in its public dispersal. Information that originally became part of the public domain is now proprietary and can no longer be shared among colleagues who are not part of the group. A colleague is now a potential competitor.

In the development of the products data may be produced particularly from clinical trials that question its effectiveness and potential harm, data that can be manipulated to emphasize the positive while obscuring the negative. In an ideal world one would hope that our morality would prevent such events from occurring. However, once the focus is on potentially immense profits that incentive has often been proved too strong to prevent such self-serving corrupt behavior. Major pharmaceutical companies have paid heavy fines for just such behavior, but compared to the profits made, the pharmaceutical companies simply mark it up as the routine cost of doing business. That they were able to get this far down the road is a testament to their impact on regulators and regulations that supposedly have the power to intervene at least at the stage of clinical trials.

The manipulation of data to convince a regulatory agency to approve or disapprove either the entry of a pharmaceutical product into the market or continue its presence in effect is a marketing effort. Indeed, once accepted into the market, all the techniques for its widest dispersal are used. Rewarding physicians for writing prescriptions, rewarding known opinion leaders for their testimonials, having leading academics sign their names to ghost written articles by the industry are all part of the marketing strategy. Yes, what originally starts out as a scientific endeavor becomes an overwhelming marketing endeavor. That is what produces the profits and that is what in our economic environment will be emphasized .

Compared to the pharmaceutical industry, the dental industry is small potatoes with endodontics being an even smaller part. Nevertheless, the endodontic education the students receive in the dental schools is all about branding and in that regard the profit-seeking corporations incentivize school administrators to choose their systems to exclusively teach the students by offering the greatest amount of corporate sponsorship (bribes). From the outset, the relationship between the corporations and the dental schools is based on mutual economic benefits. Within that “academic” environment, the students will receive information that supports the selection of that particular brand of endodontic instrument and it is highly unlikely that any research produced by faculty in that university will second-guess that choice. Such an event would be at cross-purposes, a situation that is not likely to be approved by school administrators.

Today for comparative information to be trusted, it must come from researchers who have no relationship in anyway directly or indirectly to any individual or institution that have relationships with sponsoring corporations. These are conditions that are almost impossible to find today. Those defending the status quo are generally those who gain advantages from the present state of affairs and are subject to the same questions regarding their impartiality. It is the nature of the system and it won’t change until we first change the environment. At a minimum under the present conditions, strict rules should apply to the effective enforcement of mandatory conflict of interest statements with strong punishments for those who do not fully comply. The onus is on the researchers, the corporations that support the research and the universities that have ratified the corporate/academic complex. It is all about trust and that must be earned on a daily basis.

If we think of the marketplace that includes the education the students receive as well as the results of that education, we can measure its integrity by evaluating the freedoms gained by some and the freedoms lost by others. Exclusive access to the student body increases the freedom of the sponsoring corporations to be present in a non-competitive environment as it reduces the freedom of the student body to a wider range of data. Exclusive access imposed by the schools increases the freedom to compel a student body while restricting the student body’s ability to resist such actions.

From a larger perspective, the entire concept of rewarding exclusive access based on corporate largesse gives the corporations freedom to gain access that other less financially endowed corporations cannot afford reducing their freedoms while recognizing the fact that the what determines access is not based on the advantages their product is offering. In short, if one must pay for access, we are not dealing with a free impartial market that will magically determine what is best. Base on the present day rules of the market, it is skewed to the already successful furthering their power and wealth and further entrenching themselves as the elite in the present status quo.

Rules of the market are also applied in the lobbying tactics of major corporations, to reduce regulations, corporate taxes as well as the income of those who own the corporations. To the extent corporations are freer of regulations and the effectiveness of their paid lobbyists they have increased freedom from those minimized or eliminated regulations, lower corporate and individual taxes that in turn reduce the freedom of others who now have fewer resources for a safer and cleaner environment, public funding for the common good, less resources for health care and general public support. A balancing act Is always present and under today’s structure, it is the wealthy corporations with the aid of the judicial and legislative branches of government that is gaining more freedoms at the expense of the rest of us.

Regards, Barry