critical university studies
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Critical university studies (CUS) is a new field examining the role of
higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after comple ...
in contemporary society and its relation to culture, politics, and labor. Arising primarily from cultural studies, it takes a critical stance toward changes to the university since the 1970s, particularly the shift away from a strong public model of higher education to a neoliberal
privatized Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
model. Emerging largely in the United States, which has the most extensive system of higher education, the field has also seen significant work in the United Kingdom, as well as in other countries confronting neoliberalism. Key themes of CUS research are
corporatization Corporatization is the process of transforming and restructuring state assets, government agencies, public organizations, or municipal organizations into corporations. It involves the adoption and application of business management practices and ...
, academic labor, and
student debt Student debt is a form of debt that is owed by an attending, formerly withdrawn, or graduated student to a lending institution, or to a financial institution. The amount that is loaned, often referred to as a ''student loan'' or the debts may be ...
, among other issues. Like those doing research under the banner of
critical legal studies Critical legal studies (CLS) is a school of critical theory that developed in the United States during the 1970s.Alan Hunt, "The Theory of Critical Legal Studies," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1986): 1-45, esp. 1, 5. Se DOI, 10.1 ...
(CLS), scholars of Critical University Studies often have an activist bent. CLS and CUS both analyze powerful institutions in order to draw attention to structural inequalities and embedded practices of exploitation and marginalization. In addition, both fields seek to move beyond abstract theorizing, targeting institutional practices and making proposals for policy changes. In contrast to CLS, which has roots in elite institutions like Harvard and
Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
, CUS largely comes out of public colleges and universities. While CLS has tended to seek remedies in the legal system, CUS has gravitated toward student and labor union movements. Moreover, CUS has emphasized investigative reportage and exposés of current institutional policies and practices alongside academic work. Rather than a uniform group, CUS includes a range of scholars, critics, and activists, among them tenured professors, graduate students, and adjunct instructors.


History

The term ''critical university studies'' was first defined in print by Jeffrey J. Williams in a 2012 article in ''
The Chronicle of Higher Education ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals (staff members and administrators). A subscription is required to re ...
''.Williams, Jeffrey J.
An Emerging Field Deconstructs Academe
" ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'', February 19, 2012.
The piece, "An Emerging Field Deconstructs Academe", describes the "new wave of criticism of higher education" that came to the fore in the 1990s and has gained momentum in the ensuing decades. This new work has primarily come from
literary Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
and cultural critics, as well as those in
education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
, history,
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
, and
labor studies Industrial relations or employment relations is the multidisciplinary academic field that studies the employment relationship; that is, the complex interrelations between employers and employees, labor/trade unions, employer organizations, a ...
. As Williams notes, criticism of higher education has a strong tradition, and scholars like Heather Steffen have traced CUS's lineage at least to the early 20th century, for example to
Thorstein Veblen Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism. In his best-known book, ''The Theory of the Leisure Class'' ...
's ''The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men'' (1918) and
Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in sever ...
's ''The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education'' (1923), which criticize the influence of business principles and
Gilded Age In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1877 to 1900, which was sandwiched between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Wes ...
wealth on the emerging university system. In addition, the 1960s saw a great deal of criticism of social institutions, and much focused on university campuses.
Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...
(SDS) started with a strong statement about higher education, and anti-war and
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...
protests were a major presence on US campuses. The
critical pedagogy Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture. It insists that issues of social justice and de ...
movement, inspired by
Paolo Freire Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work ''Pedagogy of the Oppressed'' is generally considered one of the found ...
and furthered by
Henry Giroux Henry Armand Giroux (born 1943) is an American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth s ...
and others, arose from this moment. The
feminist movement The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement, or feminism) refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality between men and women. Such ...
also played a role in criticism of the university during the 1960s and 1970s, with activists like
Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the ...
calling for "a women-centered university." In 1980, the
Bayh–Dole Act The Bayh–Dole Act or Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act ( Pub. L. 96-517, December 12, 1980) is United States legislation permitting ownership by contractors of inventions arising from federal government-funded research. Sponsored by senat ...
granted universities the right to patent their inventions, thereby encouraging them to conduct research with business aims in mind. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, critics began to address the new direction of higher education, often coming from the graduate student unionization movement. Some met in conferences such as “Reworking/Rethinking the University” at the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
(2008–11), or came out of groups such as Edu-factory, which was inspired by the Italian autonomist movement. This first wave of CUS publications addressed the corporatization of higher education, along with the exploitation of academic labor and the rise of student debt. Key texts from this period include Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie's ''Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University'' (1997), David Noble's ''Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education'' (2001), Marc Bousquet's “The Waste Product of Graduate Education” (2002) and ''How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation'' (2008).Walker, Katherine, and Benjamin Mangrum.
Rebuilding out of the Ruins: An Introduction to 'The Academy and Its Futures'
" Ethos Review 1, no. 2 (Fall 2014).
In addition, ''Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement'', edited by Benjamin Johnson et al. (2003), Stefano Harney and Fred Moten's “The University and the Undercommons" (2004), Williams’ “The Post-Welfare State University” (2006) and “Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture” (2008), and Christopher Newfield's ''Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class'' (2008).Williams, Jeffrey J.
Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture
” ''Dissent'' Fall 2008: 73-78.
More recently, a second wave of CUS scholars have widened the field's scope to address issues including universities’ reliance on proprietorial technology, the dominance of entrepreneurial values, and
globalization Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
. Notable texts in this vein include Newfield's ''The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them'' (2016), Michael Fabricant and Stephen Brier's ''Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education'' (2016), Benjamin Ginsberg's ''The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters'' (2011), Robert Samuels’ ''Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free: How to Decrease Cost and Increase Quality at American Universities'' (2013). In addition, Jacob Rooksby's ''The Branding of the American Mind'' (2016), Avery Wiscomb's “The Entrepreneurship Racket” (2016), and Heather Steffen's "Inventing Our University: Student-Faculty Collaboration in Critical University Studies” (2017). In addition, after Britain adopted neoliberal policies and raised tuitions from minor fees to major levels, critics such as Stefan Collini, in “Browne’s Gamble” (2010), and Andrew McGettigan, in ''The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets, and the Future of Higher Education'' (2013), focused on the United Kingdom. Meng-Hsuan Chou, Isaac Kamola, and Tamson Pietsch's edited volume ''The Transnational Politics of Higher Education'' (2016) looks at globalization.Chou, Meng-Hsuan, Isaac A. Kamola, and Tamson Pietsch.
The Transnational Politics of Higher Education: Contesting the Global/Transforming the Local
'. London: Routledge, 2016.


Key themes

Although continually responding to new trends in higher education, Critical University Studies has so far concerned itself with several key themes: *
Privatization Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
and Corporatization: CUS research shows the various ways that public investment in universities has decreased as costs have been shifted to students and their families. As a 2014 report from public policy organization Demos shows, state funding for higher education has progressively decreased since the 1980s. At the same time, universities appear to be acting more and more like corporations, enhancing managerial administration, cutting full-time faculty labor, and treating students like customers. The result is a higher education system that functions as “a mercantile market rather than a public realm apart from the market,” with those attending reconfigured “as job seekers rather than as citizens” — a dramatic alteration from the
liberal Liberal or liberalism may refer to: Politics * a supporter of liberalism ** Liberalism by country * an adherent of a Liberal Party * Liberalism (international relations) * Sexually liberal feminism * Social liberalism Arts, entertainment and m ...
humanistic university of the postwar US.Williams, Jeffrey J. “The Need for Critical University Studies,” in
A New Deal for the Humanities: Liberal Arts and the Future of Public Higher Education
'. Edited by Gordon Hutner and Feisal G. Mohamed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016. 145-157.
*
Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...
: According to the New Faculty Majority, a US-based adjunct advocacy group that formed in 2009, three quarters of college faculty are now off the tenure track, with no access to the job stability that universities historically provided. Of this group, over half are adjunct or part-time workers, positions characterized by low wages and lack of
job security Job security is the probability that an individual will keep their job; a job with a high level of security is such that a person with the job would have a small chance of losing it. Many factors threaten job security: globalization, outsourcing ...
. CUS takes issue with this new norm of precarious labor, as well as with the increasing burden on graduate students to take on heavy teaching loads. As such, CUS has organic connections to graduate student unionization and adjunct labor organization efforts. * Student Debt: In 2015, 68% of graduating students in the US left college with some student loan debt. This marks a dramatic increase from student debt during previous eras of higher education, a development that CUS attributes to the effects of neoliberal policies on universities. For one thing, higher education now tends to be framed as a private endeavor rather than as a public service, a shift that has resulted in reductions to state funding and subsequent increases in tuition costs. Since 1980, the cost of a college degree has increased nearly 1000% (while the price of consumer goods has increased only about 250%). This has been exacerbated by a shift in policy for for-profit institutions: Since the late 1990s, they have been able to receive up to 90% of their funding from federal aid, and they now represent around 25% of loan debt. In addition to raising awareness about the issue of growing student debt, CUS scholars push for policy changes, such as loan forgiveness and debt-free college. * Globalization: American universities are increasingly being exported to locations around the globe through the opening of satellite and affiliate campuses. This practice—exemplified by schools like
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...
, Carnegie Mellon University, and Duke University—often seems to be profit-driven rather than beneficent, with universities receiving large sums of money from local governments in exchange for the presence of the school's brand. For many scholars, the so-called “global university” is merely a perpetuation of Western
hegemony Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one State (polity), state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over oth ...
. *
Innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entit ...
and Entrepreneurship: A new wave of CUS research has drawn attention to the increasing emphasis that universities place on values of innovation and entrepreneurship. While this focus may seem harmless or even beneficial to students, CUS scholars point out the damaging effects of structuring student's college experience around these buzzwords. Both terms reflect the infiltration of a business mindset into academics, with “innovation” often entailing the mechanization of teaching and a subsequent increase in inequality among student populations. Similarly, entrepreneurship encourages students to adopt a corporate work ethos, with science and tech companies—and increasingly Silicon Valley billionaires—reaping the benefits of student labor.


Influence

Critical University Studies research has contributed to student and faculty movements across US campuses, including the aforementioned New Faculty Majority, the graduate student union movement, Oregon's CORE faculty-student advocacy group, and the Occupy Student Debt Campaign (on which cultural critic Andrew Ross has worked). CUS scholars often publish outside of traditional academic outlets, through blogs like Michael Meranze and Christopher Newfield's Remaking the University, as well as through contributions to new media like Jacobin, the
Los Angeles Review of Books The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 2012. ...
(LARB), Salon and
HuffPost ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
. Through such non-traditional outlets, as well as through book publications and academic journal articles, CUS has helped to bring issues like student debt into the mainstream political conversation.


Unionization

Alongside CUS criticism and activism in the 1990s, U.S. campuses saw a rise in unionization efforts. This culminated in a 2000 decision by the
National Labor Relations Board The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Na ...
(NLRB) that graduate employees were protected by the National Labor Relations Act and could unionize. Union efforts proliferated following this decision, with organizations like the
United Automobile Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico) ...
(UAW) and the
Service Employees International Union Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a labor union representing almost 1.9 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States and Canada. SEIU is focused on organizing workers in three sectors: healthcare (over half of members ...
(SEIU) allying with graduate students and adjunct instructors in the fight for employee status and collective bargaining rights. Despite setbacks, including a 2004 reversal of the 2000 ruling, student and adjunct unions have made significant headway. In August 2016, the NLRB reversed itself again, ruling that graduate research and teaching assistants at private universities do have the right to unionize (UAW vs. Columbia).


Developments

The journal ''Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor'', co-founded by Bousquet, stemmed from early efforts in the field and continues to publish open-access issues around themes of academic labor and higher education activism. In addition, 2015 saw the formation of ''Academic Labor: Research and Artistry'', a journal devoted to issues of tenure and contingency in the university. In book publishing, The Johns Hopkins University Press initiated a book series on Critical University Studies, edited by Jeffrey J. Williams and Christopher Newfield, and In the UK, Palgrave also launched a series on CUS, edited by John Smyth. On the whole, the stance of CUS against the status quo of US universities puts it at odds with individuals and administrators who are in favor of the continued privatization, corporatization, and globalization of the university. Scholars like Williams, Steffen, and others continue to call for the incorporation of CUS into the undergraduate curriculum, encouraging students to think critically about the institutions in which they find themselves.Samuels, Robert.
Introduction: Teaching Critical University Studies
" ''Radical Teacher'', Spring 2017.


References

{{Reflist


External links

* Newfield, Christopher, and Michael Meranze
Remaking the University
* McGettigan, Andrew
Critical Education
* Williams, Jeffrey J.
Higher Exploitation: An Interview with Marc Bousquet
. Minnesota Review (71-72): 101-122, Winter-Spring 2009. Critical theory Cultural studies Higher education