Week 4
Maximilian Probstel
Section A03

This weeks main reoccurring theme amongst the different articles was how, rather than U.S universities becoming places of further education, universities are being corporatised to make more money. 

The article ‘Why we should fear university, Inc.’ by Fredrik deBoer stood out to me the most, because he clearly highlights the underlying theme of ‘corporatization of universities’. In his article, Frederik deBoer explains how universities spend their money on new facilities that attract the general public. With this being said, universities rather invest in facilities such as a new recreation centre or sports programs, than invest in things such as minority programs. This is because in the eyes of the university, it is more beneficial to invest in facilities, which attract the more general population than invest in specific programs. This results in a big problem for ethnic programs, since these normally get under budgeted. Especially in UC schools, with a high percentage of ethnic students, ethnic programs should therefore be more funded. 

The second article ‘A tale of two campuses’, talks about how differently UC Davis verses UC Berkeley reacted to a student occupy movement, protesting against the increase in tuition. The difference in reaction were the following; whilst UC Berkeley’s chancellor acknowledged this problem by accepting the Middle Class Access Plan, designed to lower university fees for middle-income families. UC Davis instead, reacted to the occupy movement by pepper spraying the students who revolted. 

These articles where very interesting to read, since being an international student, I come from a country where university is still pure academia. These universities do not include facilities such as gyms, pools or other recreation centre. The public universities are very cheap compared to the US. Furthermore, attendance of university undergrads in the U.S is very high. With a high percentage of high school graduates attending university, I can understand how universities have to advertise themselves to receive a higher application rate. In Germany, going to university after high school is not as common. For middle earning jobs such as electrician or middle school teacher, it is more common to do an apprenticeship and then take tests but this takes a maximum of two years. Therefore universities cannot make as much money of students where as universities in the U.S can, due to the high tuition rates and the high applicant number of students.

Question: Would adopting a system of apprenticeships/lowering the amount of years spend in university for professions such as nurse, high school teacher, baker, fireman, be more helpful  in reducing cost of university for people that want to pursue these professions?

 

I picked this image to focus on the issues that come with corporatization of universities. 

Alan, Markow. "A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy movements." IVN.us. N.p., 22 Dec. 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.

DeBOER, Fredrik. "Why We Should Fear University, Inc." The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Sept. 2015. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.

"Cost of Education Father and Son Caricature." Google Search. Google, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.