corporatization of schools

Class warfare indeed. Wealthy citizens built their own private schools back in the day but taking over the facilities expressly designed and created for the not rich by a global corporate class is a new move.  Chomsky: Public Education Under Massive Corporate Assault — What's Next? | Education | AlterNet

A couple of months ago, I went to Mexico to give talks at the National University in Mexico, UNAM. It's quite an impressive university — hundreds of thousands of students, high-quality and engaged students, excellent faculty. It's free. And the city — Mexico City — actually, the government ten years ago did try to add a little tuition, but there was a national student strike, and the government backed off. And, in fact, there's still an administrative building on campus that is still occupied by students and used as a center for activism throughout the city. There's also, in the city itself, another university, which is not only free but has open admissions. It has compensatory options for those who need them. I was there, too; it's also quite an impressive level, students, faculty, and so on. That's Mexico, a poor country.

Right after that I happened to go to California, maybe the richest place in the world. I was giving talks at the universities there. In California, the main universities — Berkeley and UCLA — they're essentially Ivy League private universities — colossal tuition, tens of thousands of dollars, huge endowment. General assumption is they are pretty soon going to be privatized, and the rest of the system will be, which was a very good system — best public system in the world — that's probably going to be reduced to technical training or something like that. The privatization, of course, means privatization for the rich [and a] lower level of mostly technical training for the rest. And that is happening across the country. Next year, for the first time ever, the California system, which was a really great system, best anywhere, is getting more funding from tuition than from the state of California. And that is happening across the country. In most states, tuition covers more than half of the college budget. It's also most of the public research universities. Pretty soon only the community colleges — you know, the lowest level of the system — will be state-financed in any serious sense. And even they're under attack. And analysts generally agree, I'm quoting, "The era of affordable four-year public universities heavily subsidized by the state may be over."

Chomsky talks of the ideal of the universities but I would update that language to saying that universities are trying to manufacture credentials instead of serve people.  It is a power and relationship shift that reveals the economic factors behind it.

"There's, furthermore, no way to measure the human and social costs of converting schools and universities into facilities that produce commodities for the job market, abandoning the traditional ideal of the universities. Creating creative and independent thought and inquiry, challenging perceived beliefs, exploring new horizons and forgetting external constraints. That's an ideal that's no doubt been flawed in practice, but to the extent that it's realized is a good measure of the level of civilization achieved."

Neoliberalism in Action

Should Elite Public Universities Eliminate In-State Tuition? (bigthink.com)

Under current law, the state of Colorado is largely powerless to remedy the institution's dire fiscal situation because of a constitutional amendment that drastically limited the ability of the state to increase its spending, while other legislation required increases in areas other than higher education. The result has been a serious squeeze on university budgets. So perhaps it's time for the legislature to recognize that higher education takes place in a national and global market, consider allowing the university to capitalize on its merits, and turn a vicious cycle of decline into a virtuous circle of excellence. It could do that by simply eliminating the outdated distinction between in-state and out-of-state tuition and allow the university to charge what the market will bear.

All those in-state workers and citizens paid for that university and it was not designed as a profit-making enterprise but as a service. No universal health care but universal access to schools for the wealthy, bailouts for rich banks even if it breaks national economies, and full financial support for those good jobs manufacturing war in the Pentagon.

These are the smart ones?

Related articles

• California Universities' Debt-To-Credential Ratio: See The Worst Offenders (huffingtonpost.com)
• University Of California Board Approves 9.6% Tuition Hike (huffingtonpost.com)
• Why Has College Tuition Risen so Much? Ask the Administrators, Whose Ranks Have Grown 84% Since 1989 (reason.com)
• Ken Allen: Say 'Corporatization,' Not 'Privatization' (huffingtonpost.com)