Chomsky: "The Death of American Universities"
In a similar manner to Keller's book "Higher Education and the New Society" (2008), here Chomsky addresses the current situation of universities in the U.S., in particular their situation as the result of the pressure put on them by politicians, civil society, and rising costs of education. Quite more descarnate than Keller, Chomsky is very explicit about the urging need to fight against what he calls the "neoliberal assault on universities", as part of the privatizing and corporate model than neoliberal technocrats seek to impose on all spheres of society: health, education, security, food production, the labor market, public services, etc. (For those interested in reading about the threats of neoliberalism to higher education and democracy, an article by Henry A. Giroux can be found here).
As usual, I'll include a few quotes from the article (which can be read complete here) and a short comment in the light of leadership demands and practice in higher education of the context of university education in Costa Rica (which is very similar to what is happening in the U.S., Canada, and all countries neoliberal policies have been taking by storm in the last 40 years).
Chomsky addresses the causes: "When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line.
"The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you’re getting the same phenomenon in the universities."
This precarization of work and not granting labor rights to teachers translates into work overloads, uncertainty towards the future, and a permanent state of laboral "temporariness". In Costa Rica, for example, there are enourmous interests that want university professors to work for short times (similar to freelancing), with periods of unemployment in-between terms. In fact, almost 50% of teachers at the public University of Costa Rica (the most important university in the country) are hired as temps. Some of them have been in this condition for years and years with no hopes of getting a tenure.
He adds, "That’s one aspect, but there are other aspects which are also quite familiar from private industry, namely a large increase in layers of administration and bureaucracy. If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in US industry even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management — a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination."
In fact, this is a phenomenon observed and analyzed by Keller (2008) as well. For Chomsky, these legions of bureaucrats obsessed with red tape, useless paperwork, and imposing their rules on teachers are an instrument to superior interests. Many of them are appointed because of nepotism, are alien to the academy so they don't know nor care about education, and seek to remind teachers "who's in charge", all in the name of "efficiency" and "rules and regulations". This is the case, for example, of the new Minister or Education in Costa Rica: a neoliberal technocrat who claims to have graduated from Harvard, but I digress...
Furthermore, corporate and political interests have a clear agenda: keeping teachers and students under control by exerting power over them. In George Orwell's book, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", during torture, O'Brien asks Winston how the powerful impose themselves over the weak: "by inflicting pain". Pain, in our case, can be physical or psychological. Sometimes pain is not necessary, but the mere ghost of it suffices: fear is more effective, and is thus promoted and enforced as a control policy. Chomsky summarizes it:
"And they were particularly concerned with schools and universities, which they said were not properly doing their job of “indoctrinating the young.” You can see from student activism (the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movements) that the young are just not being indoctrinated properly.
"Well, how do you indoctrinate the young? There are a number of ways. One way is to burden them with hopelessly heavy tuition debt. Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt. It’s a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can’t get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy. They can even garnish social security if you default. That’s a disciplinary technique."
As we can see, teachers receive precariousness, work overloads, petty salaries, payment delays, and lack of recognition (in terms of tenure or academic career), while students have to face the specter of either not getting a degree, or having to deal with an extorting debt for many years to come. Let's keep in mind, however, that getting a degree is no garantee of finding a (well-paid) job. In the U.S., and increasingly in countries like Costa Rica (specially in private universities and graduate programs in public universities), tuition fees are sky-high.
Chomsky hammers on referring to the "luxury" of studying (in the U.S., but more and more frequently in other countries as well): "Just take a look around the world: higher education is mostly free. In the countries with the highest education standards, let’s say Finland, which is at the top all the time, higher education is free. And in a rich, successful capitalist country like Germany, it’s free. In Mexico, a poor country, which has pretty decent education standards, considering the economic difficulties they face, it’s free."
As I mentioned, this also pertains to Costa Rica, but only if we look at undergraduate studies in public universities. For example, my experience as a Forestal Engineering at the Costa Rican Institute of Technology for two years and as B.A. in English student at the University of Costa Rica is of studying practically for free.
Nowadays, nevertheless, even within those "priveged" and specific instances costs are piling up and the prospect of getting a degree although a fairly generalized dream among young Costa Ricans, hits against the brickwall of being accepted into a public university and studying there for five or more years to get a degree, contrasted with the relatively more feasible life plan of paying high tuition but graduating in four years from a private university. Needless to say, many families incur in choking debts in order to have their young graduate, only to face the even starker reality of not finding a job. Many, in fact, graduate and end up working as Customer Service representatives in a multinational company. This is what I call an "internal brain-drain" in Costa Rica. To illustrate, many talented young professionals cannot contribute or even reintegrate what our state has invested in their education, and thus, create a social deficit in terms of social investment as a nation.
Chomsky calls to arms is based on collaborative leadership: it must be teachers, administratives and students (I would add communities and other sectors of civil society) who need to work together to find solutions that benefit society in general and secure higher education as a right and benefit to as many young people as possible:
"I think those are the kinds of things we should be moving towards: a democratic institution, in which the people involved in the institution, whoever they may be (faculty, students, staff), participate in determining the nature of the institution and how it runs; and the same should go for a factory".
These ideas for democratic leadership, as I will call it, Chomsky claims are based on the liberal traditions of the U.S. In this sense, a truly democratic society should fight for a better future and better conditions for professors, students, and citizens in general. As an educational leader who works in a public university without a truly influential position, I see myself as an agent of change. For all that it's worth, teachers, researchers and academics must raise our voice and knock on the doors of civil groups and policy makers.
Is all lost? Not at all: we're still on time to save our universities (be it in the U.S., Costa Rica or Canada) from this neoliberal corporate assault that cares only for profit and not for education or human progress.
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