From public good to private good. Higher education has shifted from a public good provided by the State to a private good provided based on consumer demand (see Box 4). Hence, higher education is no longer regulated by direct State intervention but from a distance, through the market. Student choice is made central; responding to students’ preferences is a requirement for a successful university. This is one reason that private for-profit organizations like the US-based University of Phoenix were created. They are able to capitalize (literally!) on the notion that higher education is solely an investment in one’s self, an investment designed to enhance future earnings. Put differently, higher education is viewed as little different from investing in the stock market or a business. Indeed, investment banker Merrill Lynch, in a report titled The Book of Knowledge, estimated that the “education and training industry” alone is now worth $2 trillion (Moe, Bailey, and Lau 1999).
Newcastle University, with its main campus in England, provides an excellent example of the institutional transformation underway. A glossy brochure promoting the university is titled “The Idea of a World-Class Civic University.” In it, Vice-Chancellor Chris Brink briefly discusses Cardinal Newman’s argument for a broad-based liberal arts education (from which the brochure’s title borrows) and von Humboldt’s emphasis on research driven by curiosity. However, it then redefines the notion of a public good: “However, we believe that our role in the knowledge economy is not only to create knowledge and educate students. Universities are not there simply to confer a private benefit; they should also serve as a public good. For us the question is not only ‘What are we good at?,’ but also ‘What are we good for?’” (Newcastle University 2013, 3). He then provides a response. The response is defined in terms of publications, citations, and “reputation and esteem indicators,” as well as (re)defining the university in terms of the supply and demand for knowledge.
It is important to recognize in this statement what would have been an anathema 40 or 50 years ago. First, providing students with an education and engaging in research along the lines described by Newman and Humboldt, respectively, are now viewed as private goods. The idea that society as a whole might benefit from these actions is dismissed; these goods are implicitly regarded as the result of a sound investment of and in human capital. Second, the quality of research is defined in terms of easily measured New Public Management indicators. Third, the civic mission is actually reduced by redefining it in terms of well-defined problems facing society. The question “What are we good at?” suggests that the university is merely one among many transposable tools available to society to advance predetermined societal goals. The notion that curiosity-driven research of the sort advocated by von Humboldt might lead to public or civic goods by identifying otherwise unrecognized problems or redefining the way in which we understand our world is at least implicitly dismissed. Instead, most of the research projects currently underway that are noted in the brochure address issues of immediate public concern: computer-assisted learning, personalized medicine, the use of bacteria in medical treatments and improvement drug development, among others.
None of this is to suggest that the research cited in the brochure is of poor quality or unbefitting of a university. However, it does suggest that, even at a major British university, the emphasis has shifted toward the neoliberal approach to education and research.
Clearly, when tuition rates in public institutions are low, the private sector has little or no opportunity to compete. Hence, private for-profit tertiary education used to be limited to specialized technical training. However, as tuition has risen, private for-profit universities have flourished. They tend to offer education on the cheap, with part-time faculty and minimal or no campuses, laboratories, or library facilities. Although some of them have done well financially, many have poor records of student placement. Others have violated various laws with respect to loans (Blumenstyk 2011) and recruiters’ claims (Mytelka 2010). Their students also had lower pass rates on licensing exams than those from nonprofit schools as well as higher student loan debts for bachelor’s degrees (Government Accountability Office 2011). Similar for-profit institutions have opened in Britain and continental Europe, although as of yet on a smaller scale.
However, the restructuring of English universities has promoted for-profit universities: It enhances the market for such private education, which will undoubtedly now be much less expensive than that offered by English universities. Among the likely beneficiaries is BPP University College. Like the University of Phoenix, it is part of the Apollo Group, a US company with a heavy investment from the Carlisle Group, a private equity firm (Finlayson 2010).
Shift from public support for higher education to individual support. As a result of the shift to a “user pays” model, students in many nations are now increasingly saddled with extraordinarily high loan payments when they graduate. In the United States, rising tuition (the result of declining state appropriations) has put students into considerable debt. The approximately $1 trillion in total student debt now exceeds consumer debt (Washington Times 2012). This has several effects. First, it means that students are pressured to choose their majors to a great extent based on expectations of future earnings; after all, they will need to pay back these loans during the most productive years of their careers.1 One US national study found that more than half of seniors chose their field of study based on their “ability to find a job” (National Survey of Student Engagement 2012).
Second, many students are now forced to work as many as 30 to 40 hours per week while attending the university to limit the size of their loans. This includes not only conventional jobs but also selling blood plasma, performing erotic acts on the web, selling eggs and sperm at fertilization clinics, and paid participation in drug trials (Troop 2013). As a result, they have less time for intellectual work.
Third, because universities have been forced to raise tuition as State funding has declined, the proportion of total costs borne by students continues to rise. This is particularly true in the United States, but it is also the case in many other nations. Furthermore, there is at least some evidence that the heavy financial burden has a direct effect on educational performance for about one-third of undergraduates (Sander 2012). In addition, students report refraining from the purchase of required materials due to the costs of education (National Survey of Student Engagement 2012). Ironically, students report a shift away from entrepreneurial activities on graduation as a result of the large loans that must be repaid (Louis 2013). In summary, shifting the burden of higher education from public tax-based support to individual support often financed by student loans has been a costly failure for both the students involved as well as nations as a whole.
Recently, England changed its way of financing higher education such that it looks much like that in the United States. As the Browne Report (Browne 2010) noted,
What we recommend is a radical departure from the existing way in which HEIs [Higher Education Institutions] are financed. Rather than the Government providing a block grant for teaching to HEIs, their finance now follows the student who has chosen and been admitted to study. Choice is in the hands of the student. HEIs can charge different and higher fees provided that they can show improvements in the student experience and demonstrate progress in providing fair access and, of course, students are prepared to entertain such charges.
In short, the entire system has been reorganized so as to allow the State to operate at a distance. The report is replete with emphasis on “value for money,” “student choice,” “greater autonomy for institutions,” and so on. In point of fact, however, education has been redefined as an economic investment for each student. In keeping with the neoliberal perspective pioneered by Gary Becker, students are to be treated as investors of human capital seeking a monetary return in the form of higher salaries. The more debt they incur, the more obsessed with the monetary rewards of a university degree they will be.
At the same time, the report is silent on the notion that education should prepare students for citizenship in a democratic society, allow them to appreciate the arts and humanities, or provide them with critical thinking skills. Moreover, the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines are to be subsidized even as support is eliminated for the humanities and social sciences, thus violating the market-based notion on which it is claimed that the new system is based. The alleged freedom of choice for students now glosses over the substantial differences in costs across disciplines. Moreover, individual student loans not yet paid are only erased 30 years after graduation. In short, many students will have passed much of their lives in substantial indebtedness.
Furthermore, the Browne Report (Browne 2010) notes that “[w]e recognise that public investment in higher education is reducing.” Yet it fails to ask the obvious question: Why is this the case? Instead, through the use of the passive voice, a reduction in State support for higher education is described as a natural phenomenon. Indeed, the idea that higher education is a public good is abandoned; it is to be practiced instead as another investment subject to the discipline of the marketplace.
Finally, the entire project is based on the fallacious argument that students can make a meaningful choice when provided with more information about universities (apparently in the form of salaries of graduates in various fields). Students often do not know what kind of education they want and are even less likely to know what kind of education they require. Were they to know this, they would not be in need of that education. Moreover, student choice depends in part on the ability to live in a different city; some students may lack that ability for a wide variety of reasons. In addition, predictions about the state of the job market are usually only valid for a few years; hence, the well-paid job now may be the poorly paid one at some point in the near future. Furthermore, student choice may force some institutions to close and still more to reduce the number of subjects taught as a result of declining demand, thereby reducing student choice. Finally, only in textbooks are markets perfect; the report suggests this by noting that subsidies may be required to ensure that there are sufficient entrants (to meet the needs as defined by government bureaucrats) into certain professions.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The development of MOOCs has been heralded in the United States by a wide range of university administrators as well as state and national legislators. MOOCs, it would appear, are the answer to rising tuition: One finds the best teachers in the world and allows them to teach tens of thousands of students all at once. But all of this fails to recognize that so doing will create (or perhaps re-create) a two-class system for university education; those who can afford it will continue to attend real universities and pay high tuition. They will get the advantages of direct interaction with faculty, access to library facilities and laboratories, and interaction with other students. In contrast, those who cannot afford it will use MOOCs.
Even more problematic is that those at the bottom of the income ladder are usually the least prepared for MOOCs. They often lack the study skills and background knowledge needed to succeed with college-level work (Carlson and Blumenstyk 2012). Indeed, although vast numbers of students have registered for MOOCs, there is at least some evidence that they tend not to be interested in pursuing degrees, but rather in learning specific skills, and that the vast majority of them drop out before the course has ended. In short, although there may well be a role for MOOCs in higher education, that role is likely quite limited.
Of course, none of this is to suggest that information technologies cannot be successfully used by universities that have classrooms and face-to-face interaction among teachers and students. As I note below, such technologies give universities an opportunity to end the rather ineffective lecture system.
A decline in foreign language instruction. Just as global communications are growing in scope and declining in cost, US universities have reduced foreign language requirements and, in some cases, gutted foreign language departments. Ostensibly, this is justified by the widespread use of English as the lingua franca for the world of commerce and low enrollments in (the no longer required) foreign language courses. Hence, foreign language courses are seen as having high costs and few benefits. However, as a consequence of this, US students are (1) less likely to understand foreign cultures, (2) more likely to be seen as arrogant and/or ignorant interlopers, and (3) less likely to appreciate how language shapes our world.2
In much of the non-English-speaking world, one finds a somewhat different situation. English-language courses tend to be exceedingly popular, in large part due to the global adoption of English as the language of commerce and increasingly of science. At the same time, instruction in other languages is now seen as far less important. This is not only problematic for small linguistic communities such as speakers of Finnish or Slovene, where there have always been few non-native students, but also for far larger language communities such as the Francophone world. As Michael Edwards, an Englishman recently elected to the Académie Française notes, “French philosophers and scientists are increasingly writing in English in order to be published worldwide. But if they write in English, they will cease to think in the characteristic way the French think. A whole treasure of the mind will be lost” (quoted in Metcalf 2013).
Moreover, given the dominance of English in some institutions in non-English-speaking nations, it has become the language of university instruction. Hence, INSEAD, France’s premier business school, conducts nearly all of its instruction in English; its website is also entirely in English. As the website states, “To be admitted to the MBA Programme, a candidate must be fluent in English. English certification must be sent with your application” (INSEAD 2013).3 Similarly, Wageningen University (The Netherlands) conducts all courses as well as all administrative matters in English. Much the same is true of the top universities in the Arab world (Hanafi 2011). Also nearly all Indian universities provide instruction largely in English.
The consequences of this are somewhat paradoxical. At the moment in history when the world has become so much smaller as a result of global trade, nearly instant Internet and telephone connections, and rapid, relatively inexpensive air travel, it would appear that overcoming cultural differences by learning other languages would be a high priority. Instead, we find that language instruction is becoming more limited and the cultural diversity embedded in language being squandered. Furthermore, because the elite institutions in non-English-speaking nations are much more likely than others to use English as the language of instruction, they extend the already wide gap between elites and the general population.
Education solely as a means of maximizing one’s salary. Of late, some have taken the market approach to its obvious conclusion, estimating the “monetary value added” by obtaining a degree in a given field of study. For example, the state of Tennessee has started to produce average first-year salaries by subject for each program at each state university (Berrett 2012). Since then, they have been joined by several other states, posting the data on CollegeMeasures.org. Even on its own terms, the project has significant weaknesses. Among other things, it only includes those graduates who remain in the state. In addition, it assumes that first-year salaries are a good estimate of future earnings. Even the president of College Measures admits that “the data he’s publishing is best viewed with a critical eye” (Dwoskin 2012).
In a slightly different vein, Texas A&M University has begun to calculate the monetary value added by each professor. Specifically, the university now weighs salaries “against students taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained” (Simon and Banchero 2010). Not surprisingly, those in the humanities generally tend to provide the least value added, even sometimes producing negative values. Some legislators have suggested that such subjects would be best removed from the curriculum so as to focus more on education that would enhance one’s future salary.
Growth in testing and standardizing of knowledge. As State financial support for teaching (including teaching assistants) has declined and pressure to apply for extramural grants has increased due to budgetary pressures, the use of standardized (and usually multiple-choice) tests has increased. This is especially true for entry-level courses, where class size can reach or exceed 1,500 students. Hence, it is all too common to find upper division and even doctoral students who cannot write a grammatically correct sentence, argue for or against a particular position, critically analyze various perspectives, or form an argument for their own view.
Moreover, as has already been the case for elementary and secondary education in many nations, pressure is building to use similar standardized tests at universities for both national and international comparisons. The claim is that standardized tests would give future students more information, enabling them to decide which university to attend, as well as providing a means to evaluate the quality of university education nationally as well as at particular institutions. All of this assumes, of course, that there is a “level playing field” from which students take these tests; yet national, cultural, regional, class, income, and other differences play a major role in test-taking success (Christou 2010).
Even were we to exclude that concern, most standardized tests tend to measure one’s knowledge of “the facts” at a particular point in time and space. Moreover, many of “the facts” change over time; one need merely pick up a 10-year-old textbook to see how much that is the case. In addition, standardized tests poorly measure critical thinking, creativity, and nonmathematical problem solving—precisely the skills and abilities essential to grapple with complex problems in a rapidly changing world.
Yet even if such tests were adequate measures of student achievement, they would have the effect of overly standardizing higher education and focusing it on certain subjects and not others. In addition, it is unclear what pedagogical purposes are served by such tests. Their impact on learning has been well documented; they transform education into a “teach to the test” exercise (Apple 2006). As such, they sharply reduce creativity for faculty and students and leave little room for new knowledge. As Henry Giroux (2013) puts it, “[t]he ‘disimagination machine’ … functions primarily to undermine the ability of individuals to think critically, imagine the unimaginable, and engage in thoughtful and critical dialogue: put simply, to become critically informed citizens of the world.”
Recently, EdX, a nonprofit firm founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed automated software that it claims can grade essays. It is available for free to any institution that wishes to use it. EdX’s president argues that it is an excellent pedagogical tool, as it would allow students to write essays repeatedly until they get them right. The software requires that human teachers grade the first 100 essays; it then uses artificial intelligence to take on the grading process. Assuming that it works as claimed, this software poses three related problems. First, it demands a curriculum that is highly standardized, such that hundreds of students answer the same questions. Second, it is tailor-made for those who wish yet another means to audit the performance of faculty. Third, it precludes creativity, for both faculty who might wish to teach in a creative manner as well as students who might wish to answer the questions in novel ways (Markoff 2013).
The situation in England is similar, although the organization of higher education there allows greater control by the central government. Although the new approach described in the Browne Report claims to reduce bureaucracy, in point of fact it establishes a new bureaucracy, the Higher Education Council (HEC).4 The HEC is an independent entity that invests in “high-priority courses,” ensures equity of access, sets quality standards, promotes competition for students, and resolves disputes between students and universities. In short, the HEC has the power to manipulate the newly created markets for higher education from behind the scenes to produce marketable skills based on labor market forecasts and create what its officials—rather than scholars or students—consider a “quality education.”
Indeed, the United Kingdom has been active in the promotion—through educational standards, exhortations, and funding—of “enterprising education,” a new form of partnership between business and government. Although linking work to education is hardly a new approach, the new partnerships go much further: “Thus the state is able to work at promoting, glorifying and embedding the values … of ‘flexibility’, ‘self transformation’, ‘competitiveness’ and ‘market responsibility’ closely associated with neoliberalism through placing enterprise at the heart of the curriculum in both practical content and overarching ethos” (Mccafferty 2010, 542–543).
Plagiarism. Cheating and plagiarism have surely occurred as long as teachers have required students to complete assignments of one sort or another. However, the shift in university education from citizenship and culture to preparation for a well-paid job has brought with it enormous pressure on students to plagiarize. This has been compounded by the need for many students to work long hours while attending the university. Moreover, the rise of the Internet, although not directly connected to neoliberal policies, has made plagiarism easier by bringing into existence many businesses that thrive on it. One example should suffice to make the point, although there are many similar “services” on the web. “Lashzone” provides original papers, lab reports, and other class assignments. As they note on their website, “We offer professional assistance on post-secondary homework, assignments, essays, lab reports, assignment revision ... etc. You get the idea? We already got the degrees you are trying to get and will proudly assist you in getting one too. ... Whether it is mathematics, chemistry, literature, programming or philosophy, we have got a person for it” (Lashzone 2013).
They also attempt to relate to students in their advertising by noting that students are under considerable pressure as a result of both educational and work requirements. Students can purchase assignments from Lashzone that are written specifically for them. Hence, they do not involve directly plagiarizing from someone else’s work, usually by copying parts of papers that appear on the web. Instead, they involve hiring ghost authors who write the paper based on the student’s initial assignment.5 They do this for a fee, thereby once again separating those who can pay from those who can’t.
Moreover, ghost authoring is now a global business—and a highly profitable one at that. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of websites now exist with names like Assignment Expert, AssignmentsWeb, eHomework, and AssignmentHelpWorld that are easily accessible to students and directly encourage plagiarism. Because these businesses are entirely unregulated, the quality of the work done doubtless varies; caveat emptor prevails. Moreover, writers are generally poorly paid, even though the companies may charge students rather hefty fees. Because both the writers and the companies they write for are scattered around the world, legal action against them is nearly impossible (Bartlett 2009). Yet their very existence is largely due to the excessive focus on value for money in higher education.
Dumbing down higher education. In summary, the combined effects of (1) working long hours while going to school so as to minimize the size of student loans, (2) the shift from students as learners to students as customers, (3) the common use of student evaluations to assess teaching, (4) the reduction in the numbers of permanent faculty teaching as well as the decline in support for teaching, and (5) the low priority that teaching has in many if not most research universities have each had the effect of dumbing down higher education. After all, “...a regard for the intellectual merits of the programme is pitted against the need to dumb down standards and the appeal of the course to the requirements of the market” (Hyde, Clarke, and Drennan 2013, 45). As a result, according to one recent longitudinal study of US undergraduates, students now spend about half as much time studying as they did in the 1960s, 32% did not take a single course that required reading more than 40 pages per week, and half did not take any course that required more than 20 pages of writing over the course of the semester (Arum and Roksa 2011).