Globalization and Higher Education

2. The Withering of the Professoriate: Corporate Universities and the Internet

c h a p t e r 2 The Withering of the Professoriate: Corporate Universities and the Internet Michael Margolis For anyone who grew up in a small town, the term “Main Street” must evoke memories of warm community gatherings, neighbors who have the time to “pass the time,” and friends coming together. Whether from small town or big city, UC’s incoming students will be able to savor the best of these traditions. Our Master Plan calls for the development of a living campus MainStreet that will serve not only as a social center with shopping, restaurants and recreation but will also provide vital commercial and academic services. Look for a bigger and better bookstore, banking, visitor assistance, counseling and advising centers, and a brightly renovated student union. It’s a legacy, designed by award-winning landscape architects and planners Hargreaves Associates and local partners Glaser Associates, to enhance and extend the quality of life beyond current boundaries. . . . The total cost of MainStreet is about $200 million, and construction will be completed in stages over several years. —Retrieved November 6, 2002, from Brave New Universities For most of the twentieth century, communities of scholars thought the American academy provided some refuge from the vicissitudes of the market economy. Scholars at universities and liberal arts colleges typi- • 24 • cally immersed themselves in study and in teaching. They occasionally turned out a scholarly article, book, or review, but a small minority produced the bulk of these publications. For most, the primary mission of a university remained “the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement” (Newman, 1996). Rhetorically, scholars in the liberal arts and sciences generally embraced the idea that their institutions valued education for its own sake, not necessarily for its immediate utility. Colleges of arts and sciences within the universities provided places where students and faculty could learn together, mature intellectually , and reflect upon how their knowledge ought to affect the conduct of private and civic affairs of the broader society. More lucrative employment might be found outside academia, but it usually offered a less congenial environment for learning (Sperber, 2000). Of course, higher education had a practical side. Specialized programs , schools, or colleges found within and without the universities provided training for various occupations and professions from farming and business through engineering, law, and medicine. Patrons and clients of these institutions—governments, businesses, churches, and philanthropies —expected that graduates would combine the virtues of educated citizens with the practical skills or knowledge necessary to secure desirable livelihoods. And from the final decades of the nineteenth century, American universities progressively leavened Anglo/American ideas that emphasized teaching, learning, and citizenship with continental European ideas of academic research that emphasized the advancement of knowledge (Sullivan, 1999). To be sure, higher education that emphasized training skilled professional and nurturing civic leadership was hardly for the masses. The United States’s official commitment to public education was first articulated in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, but prior to World War II only about a quarter of adults over twenty-five had completed high school and only one in twenty had completed four years of higher education . Nevertheless, the United States generally devoted larger proportions of governmental resources to public education than did its democratic counterparts. Consequently, even before the GI Bill initiated a significant increase in higher education enrollment, the proportion of Americans who were high school or higher education graduates exceeded those of most economically advanced nations not only in 1940 but also throughout the twentieth century. Higher education received a The Withering of the Professoriate • 25 second boost when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, its first orbiting satellite, in 1957. By the mid-1960s institutions of higher learning grew as programs were developed or expanded to meet both the Soviet Cold War challenge and to accommodate the influx of postwar baby boomers . By 1970, 55 percent of adults over twenty-five had completed high school and 11 percent had completed four or more years of higher education. Much of this has changed in recent decades. In the aftermath of a great expansion in the 1960s and early 1970s to accommodate the influx of postwar baby boomers, universities and other higher educational institutions found themselves facing increased costs. They had new facilities and infrastructure to maintain, and they had bid up salaries in order to staff courses for their larger student population or...