This book reveals the layered effects of the corporatization of higher education, situated within the phenomenon of disaster capitalism. The authors argue that higher education administrators have seized on the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to advance a corporate higher education agenda consistent with the principles of disaster capitalism. This crisis deeply impacts what and how students in the United States learn, who gets to learn, and the very mission of the academy. Chapters also address neoliberalism as a policy statement that has reshaped and continues to shape higher education in the United States and in much of Western societies.
Author(s): Marina Vujnovic, Johanna E. Foster
Series: Palgrave Critical University Studies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 426
City: Cham
Foreword
Preface
A View from Within
References
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Disaster Capitalism Comes to Higher Education
The Eye of the Storm
Disaster Capitalism: A Primer
Critiquing Neoliberalism in the Context of Higher Education
Chapter 2: A Newer Version of an Old Beast: The Higher Education Disaster Before COVID
Higher Education, Industry and Profit from the American Colonial Era to the Gilded Age
Eisenhower Thought to Add “Academic” in “Military Industrial Complex”: The Interwar Years
The Whole World (Was Not) Watching: 1960s–1980s
Fire Wall Erodes and Academics Fiddle While Rome Burns: 1980s–1990s
Giving Up the Ghost at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
The Great Recession as a Disaster Booster Shot
In the Thick of the Currents
The Chapters Remaining
Chapter 3: Bringing the F.U.D to Thin the Ranks
Cuts Cometh Before the Windfall
Not Quite Exigent but Close Enough to RIF
Grabbing Tenure While They’re At It
Never Miss a Chance to “Train Up” Faculty
Bringing the F.U.D. to Union Bust
Corporate Consultants Behind the COVID Panic Curtain
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing Sometimes Cry Wolf: COVID Losses Not as Predicted
Heroes of Their Own Recovery Stories
“It Is and It Isn’t the Pandemic”: Speaking out of Two Sides of Administrative Mouths
Turns Out the Campus Rich Still Got Richer: Top Hats for Presidents and Coaches
We Have Been Here Before Redux
A Wicked Web They Weave
Chapter 4: “Cut to Grow” and the Spider Web of the New Global TEMPS
Remember the GEI Titans: From Chicago Boys to Davos Men
The Philanthro-Capitalists Go Back to School
Thinking Bigger with Think Tanks
Consultocracy and a Millennial Army of Zuckerbergers
COVID “Growth Opportunities” for Higher Education
ReKoching in COVID
Getting Mega: Managing and Mandating COVID Mergers and Acquisitions
Growth of Entanglements: A Snapshot of C2i
Chapter 5: Laundering Coercion: Restart Planning, “Pandemic Task Forces,” and the Dismantling of Shared Governance
Shared Governance Revisited: The Fritz Doctrine
The Role of Pandemic Task Forces on Campuses: Things Are Not What they Seem
Restart Planning and Invisible Hands: State and Local Limits and Opportunities
Chapter 6: Campuses Respond to COVID: “Pandemia” Not Making the Science Grades
To Test or Not to Test: That Is the Question
A Game of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Who Wins in a Fight for What’s Right?
Chapter 7: Online Instruction and the “Hyflex Teaching ‘Shock Doctrine’”
Digital Transformations or the End of Higher Education as We Know It
For the Love of Online Learning: Online Learning Before the Pandemic, Now, and After
The “Hyflex Shock Doctrine” and the True Cost of Online Learning
Chapter 8: Ghosts of Intended Consequences: How OPMs’ Stealth Business Model is Redefining Higher Education
EdTech Grows Thanks to an Edu-Political Apparatus: And Vice Versa
“No, We Are Not an OPM”: On How Snake Oil Salesmen Came to Plunder the Commons (Case 1)
On how the “virgin snow” melts “other people’s money” or What do OPMs do 2U? (Case 2)
In Search of Accountability
Chapter 9: Aspiring Diploma Mills Don’t Stop for Pandemics
“Degrees of Deception”
The Infrastructure of Deception: The Graduate Degree Market
The “Microcredentialing Craze” Grows During the Pandemic
Chapter 10: Tuition Increases Also Don’t Stop for Pandemics: Student Debt Realities in the Age of COVID-19
The Context: How Did Student Loans Become a Crisis?
Pandemic and Student Debt: Where Are We Right Now?
The American Dream Illusion: Student Debt and Tuition Increase Consequences
Chapter 11: Sacrificial Lambs
Heads in Beds: Students at the Mercy of Housing Contracts
The Games Continue: Student-Athletes Take the Hit
CARES to Grab: Siphoning Relief from Public Higher Education
Calling Off the Search for Truth and Meaning: Sacrificing the Curriculum
From Silence of the Lambs to Lions at the Gate
Chapter 12: Resisting the Spider Web of Pandemic Opportunism
Students Demand Justice
Campaigning for COVID Relief
College Athlete Labor Movement Accelerates
Students Broaden the Platform
Academic Workers Demand Justice
An Academic Labor Reawakening
Coalitions, Solidarities, and Organizing for the Common Good
Campus Coalitions
National Coalitions
Organizing for the Common Good
Chapter 13: After Shock: Our Stories, Our Future
The University of Ruin: What the COVID-19 Disaster Has Taught Us
A Different Kind of Disaster Opportunity
Call Things by Their Right Names
Be Traitors to the Myth, Keepers of the Dream: Identifying as Workers
Education or Horse-racing?: Choose Your Side
Stop the Bleeding
In the Space In Between: Restructure, Redistribute, and Repair
Mourn the Loss and Begin Again: This Time, for the People
Organize, Organize, Organize to Build a New Kind of Unionism
Organize to Build a New Economy
Rising From The Rubble
References
Index
