Looking to the Past to Solve Higher Education's Problems

I’m wrapping up Jeffrey J. Selingo’s College (Un)bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students. Selingo is rather blunt in his appraisal of American higher education, calling it “broken.” He writes:

Like another American icon—the auto industry in Detroit—the higher education industry is beset by hubris, opposition to change, and resistance to accountability. (p. x)

Drawing parallels between Detroit and the higher education “industry” is an interesting idea worth exploring another time, especially given the long-standing description of universities as mini-cities or “cities of intellect.” For now, my focus is on the idea that higher education is broken and the solutions that have been offered to fix it.

Selingo isn’t unique in criticizing higher education. It’s become a bit of a fad in popular media. Within the last five years alone, writers have questioned the value of a college degree; decried inefficiencies in university spending; linked college to the maintenance of class inequalities; and extolled the virtues of new technologies, namely Massive Online Open Courses, in disrupting (and, therefore, saving) a system on the verge of self-destruction. Many of these writers reach a similar conclusion: there is urgent need to “reinvent,” “re-imagine,” “rethink,” or outright “revolutionize” higher education.

In response to this call to action, a plethora of people have suggested that higher education needs to develop “new business models” in the face of mounting financial challenges. For example, writing for Educause Review, Christine Flanagan argued that college and university leaders “should not invest dollars trying to advance the existing model,” but rather learn “the tools, skills, and experience to envision, test, and implement new business models” (p. 14). Unsurprisingly, many of the new models are derived from the experiences of corporations, including using new technologies to lower labor costs and boost productivity, diversifying revenue streams for long-term sustainability, and catering to consumer demand in order to best competitors.

What I find interesting is that there is a general acceptance that colleges and universities have been operating with some common, dysfunctional business plan in the first place. No one seems to register that viewing colleges and universities as businesses became widespread relatively recently in the history of higher education. And no one seems willing to believe that the issues higher education faces are linked to the diffusion and popularization of this view.

Corporatization and marketization have been happening in higher education since the late 1970s and early 1980s. We’ve experienced at least 30 years of creeping private industry money and management norms, and the result is not greater efficiency or effectiveness. The problems higher education confronts today are worse than in the 1970s. Ignoring this fact, a cadre of zealous reformers is trying to sell the idea that we need colleges and universities to be more business-like in their operations. In an era when evidence-driven reform is all the rage, why are more people not asking for evidence that corporate culture and business-derived solutions are working?

While I'm perhaps dangerously sympathetic to the idea that genius inventors are going to revolutionize learning and credentials, my inclination is toss out the window the idea that higher education needs a new business model. I believe we need to revive the view of colleges and universities as institutions. This is certainly not the first time higher education in America has experienced a major legitimacy crisis. It is still among the best systems in the world because it has proved capable of responding to challenging circumstances. At risk of sounding overly nostalgic, I think we need to look to the past for solutions to higher education’s current problems.

There was a time when residence halls were not resorts—they were cinder block dormitories. Students were not consumers—they were pupils and expected to take ownership over their learning, its successes and failures. There was a time when higher education was not seen as an individual investment in “human capital”—it was a vital public good that propelled America’s prosperity. There was a time when higher education was affordable. Not coincidentally, this time was when the state, with taxpayer money, subsidized our public colleges and universities.

Now, obviously, there are some issues with the portrait of higher education’s past I painted above. Not everything about the past was so rosy—completion rates were low, discrimination was rampant. The demographic realities of today are very different from those of yesteryear. Some people will also be uncomfortable with using institution as a guiding concept. After all, institutions are seen as overly rationalized (or, in the eyes of some, thoroughly unrationalized) bureaucracies or sites of Foucauldian discipline. I like the idea of institution, rather than business, because it conveys simplicity and public support.

The point is that there is something to be said for seriously challenging the “new business model” rhetoric. We hesitate to call public high schools businesses because there is still a fleeting belief in the collective, public responsibility of providing education to young people. Why should higher education be so different?

The “innovators” will call me idealistic and risk-averse. They will shake their heads and announce, “The system must change!”

I agree. I’m just not convinced that business models can fix a system that is so “broken” precisely because we applied business models to non-profit and publicly-supported institutions.

The Dangers of Scholar Speak

Without giving it a second thought, I filled in the comment box to a friend’s Facebook post and hit “Enter.” And then I re-read what I typed, cocked my head to one side, and said, “Huh.” We’ve all been in this position, of course: wishing we would have given a comment a second thought or, better yet, just moved on with our lives and not commented. This situation, for me, felt slightly different in that the reason for my reflective pause was not that I wrote something ill-advised or incoherent. Rather, I was profoundly taken aback by how academic-y it sounded. And not in a good way. 

Here I was, late on a Monday night, when most people are perhaps enjoying leisure time, debating with another scholar-in-training about whether the rhetoric of a politician was “neoliberal” or deserving of some other descriptor/concept. The fact that I spent my free time this way wasn’t really the issue. I’ve long realized my version of a “good time” can, at times, be baffling. Part of the reason I pursued a PhD program in the first place was because academic work stopped feeling like work a few years ago. It’s fun, almost a game, which is problematic in its own right.

What threw me for a loop about this seemingly innocuous event was that it brought together in a perfect storm the very worst of “scholar speak.” I’m including a few choice excerpts below, followed by a quick rundown of the main issues I noticed. This is more of a cathartic, self-deprecating exercise. I can’t claim to speak for anyone but myself. At the end of the exercise, it could be apparent that these issues are inevitable—part of the socialization process inherent to advanced study. However, it could be instructive for others, or start a conversation amongst those of us undertaking doctoral work to think about how we express ourselves.

The excerpts:

“Well, I don't think it loses its meaning. I just think in the case of Turkey, in particular, you have to be prepared to contend with its contradictions. The Turkish approach to economic development under AKP has been undeniably neoliberal. However, political exigencies occasionally lead to strange state intervention in markets, which run contrary to the overall project (e.g., alcohol ban). The same thing happens in the US. But I think the tension is especially strong with a party attempting to reconcile capitalism and Islam.”

“I actually think we're on the same general page here, although I'm referring more to neoliberalization as a process, or as it actually exists, in the words of Jamie Peck, as opposed to a concept. I'm familiar with Tugal's book, but haven't read it. I would be curious to see the argument. I don't doubt that the AKP has found a way to make Islam and neoliberal capitalism compatible. Such is the evidence. My guess would be that there are still inherent tensions at play, which have to be managed, probably discursively. But this is the case in many places.”

Issue #1: Performance

Part of being an academic is having knowledge, competency, or expertise. For a variety of reasons that aren’t central to this conversation, scholars have become more specialized in their pursuit of expertise. We find what few remaining niches are left in our field, stake our claim, and start mining for “original” research that will set us apart from the other accomplished, smart people. This is partly why, despite having no pre-existing connection to Turkey, I exerted a great deal of effort learning about it. On some level, I do this because I think it’s important to know. Beyond learning, I also spend a lot of time demonstrating my knowledge because it’s expected of me and good for my career.

That’s the tricky thing about expertise: it must be enacted. In academe, I can’t simply say I’m an expert in education policy or economic development. I have to prove it, typically through writing journal articles, book chapters, monographs, or presenting at conferences. The reality is that only a very few pieces of research are all that important or necessary. We can’t argue that there is copious demand for academic articles, but that hasn’t slowed the steady increase in articles published each year. (See the graphic below from Altmetrics.) I suppose the logic is that, if I find it interesting, so must someone else.


We young scholars especially go to great lengths to perform our expertise. In performing, we sometimes fall victim to replacing doubt or speculation with false conviction, or mask uncertainty with abstract argumentation. We often don’t have a full sense of what we are talking about, but admitting to not knowing something seems rather defeating. The danger is that we “play the part” and eventually reach comfort with pretense.

Issue #2: Poetics

Part of the scholarly craft is making use of words to convey ideas. Choices must be made about which words to use, and how to arrange them in ways that achieve desired outcomes. The quality of these choices is used to evaluate our work. How strong is the argument? Is it convincingly presented? Clarity is not always a top concern here, as sometime we select words because they are en vogue or reflect that we are well read on some topic. Before long, sentences include a dozen clauses and are chock full of jargon like “dialectical” and “fiduciary.”

We see this all the time in journal article titles, which make use of strategic language to increase the likelihood of acceptance or readership. I can’t remember all of the times in which I’ve read half of an article, only to find that it says virtually nothing about sexy concepts that are used in the title. To be fair, many of us are grappling with complex social phenomena for which there is no clear language. We do the best we can and often recognize that our wording can be diversely interpreted. Sometimes we even invent entirely new words (I admit that this is a favorite pastime of mine). The danger is when our language becomes so esoteric that only a few others can translate what we’re saying.

Issue #3: (Re)production

In a PhD program, you read—a lot. You are expected to master certain bodies of research according to the demands of your discipline, program, and/or adviser. Over time, it’s easy to read some of the same scholars and ideas over and over again, to the point that they seem like truth. Enough people have cited this book or article, we reason, that it must be getting something right. The ideas are constantly at the forefront of our minds, making it easier to find evidence of them on a regular basis and marginalize alternatives.

Within the circles we run, we make recourse to these scholars and ideas to legitimate what we’re saying. This is why, for example, it’s almost impossible to escape Foucault or Bourdieu references in education research. Want to give your article greater currency? Throw in a Foucuauldian concept (my favorite is governmentality; see above for invented words). It’s not enough to simply use someone’s idea—we have to explicitly drop their name. Before long, academic work can feel a lot less like a creative enterprise and more like artful regurgitation. It’s important, of course, to pay homage to our intellectual forbears and give credit to others’ work. The danger is that our scholarship becomes stale and our writing reads like a list of names and concepts to “fit” within disciplinary currents.

My Facebook comment included many of these issues, but it probably wasn’t my worst offense. It was enough to cause me to seriously rethink the way I express myself. Perhaps more importantly, it raised questions about how pursue academic work with honesty, integrity, and authenticity. I’m not suggesting we dumb down our writing, and I understand some of these issues arise as a result of normal limitations. Consider it a call to critically assess whether, like me, you sometimes are guilty of “scholar speak” and how we might all change for the better.

"Innovation" and University Legitimacy

A recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has written an economic development plan that turns all 64 campuses of the State University of New York into tax-free zones. This means that companies that move into these zones would pay no sales, property, or business taxes for 10 years, and employees would pay no income taxes. The rationale for this idea is that it would encourage businesses to set-up shop around the state’s universities and drive the translation of research into products, thereby promoting economic growth. 

North Carolina's Research Triangle Park 

New York is not alone it attempting to place universities at the center of regional innovation hubs, which might be defined as institutionalized partnerships between public universities and private industries to capitalize on their respective expertise and assets for economic value creation. These public-private partnerships are not simply linking two discrete sectors, as suggested by the hyphenated name, but rather represent a new structure in academe, with its own jargon, goals, rationales, resource base, and specialized workforce. The collaborative process not one in which university researchers sit in their labs and churn out knowledge products that a nearby company buys and develops. Rather, private companies use funding to set the research agenda; faculty members build careers around the needs of spin-off companies; and universities own equity in ventures they helped to launch. The line between university and business, public and private, non-profit and for-profit is intentionally made obsolete. 

The National Science Foundation supports the establishment of innovation hubs by funding what they call I-Corps Nodes, which they say “work cooperatively to build, utilize and sustain a national innovation ecosystem that further enhances the development of technologies, products and processes that benefit society.” The University of Maryland, Virginia Tech University, and the George Washington University received $3.75 million to become nodes in a regional innovation network. According to a news release about the award, the goal is to “find the best entrepreneurial student and faculty researchers and help them bring discoveries to market.” NSF is thinking even bigger, funding many nodes and facilitating many networks as “the foundation of a national innovation ecosystem and focus on the front-lines of local and regional commercialization efforts."

In some ways, university-based innovation hubs are an exciting development because they may just be responsible for making discoveries that tackle some of society’s biggest problems. However, there are also several downsides to these arrangements to consider, starting with two assumptions that underpin the whole notion of marrying university research and business creation. The first assumption is that problem-solving is best accomplished through the private sector and taking ideas to market. The second is that the private sector is the source of solutions and not the origin of problems. This assumption is particularly tenuous in light of the myriad products developed for the defense industry. Both assumptions have an ideological basis in the effort to discredit government as inefficient and ineffective, positioning corporations in negative relation to the bureaucratic welfare state. In this way, we should not think of innovation hubs as entirely distinct from other forms of privatization.

Privatization is clearest when we consider Gov. Cuomo’s plan. Of course, a tax-free zone is a monumental incentive to locate a business near a university. However, it effectively means that the private sector can harness the research and development (R&D) capabilities of universities, some of which are publicly funded, without giving money back through taxes. The reduction in costs by outsourcing R&D and not paying taxes certainly facilitates the accumulation of profit, but questions remain about whether there is any presence of the “public” in the objectives, processes, or outcomes. There are also lingering questions about who or what, precisely, stands to benefit. Universities may generate some revenue from licensing intellectual property and equity ownership, but it is hard to tell if this revenue amounts to much because we don’t have a good sense of how much is being spent to build and administer innovation hubs. There is also some research suggesting that only a handful of institutions (e.g., MIT, Stanford) make much money from their entrepreneurial ventures.

Why, then, are universities seemingly so eager to partner with the private sector and position themselves as innovation hubs? Positioning, I think, is a key part of the decision. Far more lucrative than money to universities is the symbolic value of showing that research money is not being wasted—that universities are relevant and even necessary to propel economic growth. In an era when people are regularly critiquing universities for their inability to control costs, their inefficient preoccupation with traditions, and their lack of success at creating and transferring usable knowledge, it is no stretch to claim that public higher education is in the midst of a legitimacy crisis.

Universities are desperately seeking legitimacy, and what better way to do it than by orienting what they do to innovation? The legitimating logic, then, for many institutions has been to constantly extoll their contributions to business growth, job creation, and national economic competitiveness. It is no coincidence that the I-Corps Node news release quoted Congressman Dan Lipinksi: “given the size of the federal investment in research—$60 billion annually—the American people should be getting even more new companies and jobs for their money. I-Corps represents a low-cost way to get us across the much-discussed ‘Valley of Death’ that separates laboratory discoveries from profit-making companies that boost economic growth and American competitiveness.”

In its drive to be seen by taxpayers, consumers, and other stakeholders as legitimate, universities have symbolically and structurally emphasized anything that connects them to the “economic imaginary” of the knowledge-based economy. At every turn, university presidents are highlighting the businesses created at their institutions, and organizational change is justified with language of “innovation and entrepreneurship.” The legitimacy conferred by these efforts may be an important short-term survival mechanism, but the long-term returns could be marginal and forever change the philosophical moorings of higher education and the key actors involved in its governance. Once the “innovation ecosystem” is in place, it may be impossible to tell where the campus ends and corporation begins. It's possible that the campus-corporation distinction was myth to begin with, but if there ever was purposeful distancing between the two, a drastic new approach is being taken, and I venture to guess many of us who work, teach, and study at universities, while perhaps somewhat conscious of it, do not fully grasp its pervasive influence.