Both public and private universities have been gradually moving toward market-driven models, creating a “gilded age.”
Challenging the Corporate University
Recent transformations and restructuring within higher education — along with profit-making, exploitation of labor, and revenue-generating goals of the university — have disproportionately impacted marginalized and contingent faculty, staff and impoverished students. More recently, the economic turmoil incurred due to the coronavirus pandemic has provided an opportunity and an excuse for university boards and administrations to restructure and treat universities like a volatile market. The move toward corporate models in these institutions weakens the fundamental notion and purpose of higher education. In this new Truthout series, we will ask: What are the challenges, realities, symptoms, and failures of corporatized colleges and universities? Who is impacted and how? And how can we move forward toward a more equitable and liberatory era in higher education?