Week 4 | Sabrina Chou | A03

Sabrina Chou
Week 4 
Sec A03

Corporatization of the University

This week’s readings focused on the topic of the corporatization of the university. Of the five readings, I was mostly shocked by Whistleblower by Amy Block Joy and Unmaking the Public University by Christopher Newfield. Block Joy narrated her experience in being interrogated by the police after sending letters to her supervisors upon discovering an embezzlement at UC Davis. Unmaking the Public University writes about how the university is now being viewed as a “privatizable knowledge factory”, in which the students were “buying a private good” in order to obtain higher incomes that would later benefit both themselves and society. It also states that private universities were influenced by changing business practices, one of which included the outsourcing of services such as student dining, leading to the over-saturation of private companies taking over. Furthermore, in A Tale of Two Campuses, UC Davis was described as the school which chose to ignore the issues leading to the Occupy movement, budget cuts in higher education, and instead publicized the damages caused by the protest. 

Being a UC Davis student, I was dismayed to discover that our school contained such dark and unimaginable secrets. Yet, I understand that this phenomenon is merely part of an emerging pattern present in all universities, as stated in Newfield’s work. Because of the economic ideals now rising to the primary concern of all universities, it is almost inevitable the schools not be driven by privatization. However, I am hopeful that there will be stands against this corporatization of the university, such as Amy Block Joy’s, in which she chose to fight the economic ideals.

Question: Why is it that these economic goals are taking over the overall goals of universities?

References: 

Joy, A. B. (2010). Whistleblower. Point Richmond, CA: Bay Tree Pub.

Markow, A. (2011). A tale of two campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to occupy movements. IVN. Retrieved from https://ivn.us/2011/12/19/a-tale-of-two-campuses-berkeley-and-davis-respond-to-occupy-movements/ 

Music, I. I. (n.d.). The Exchange University: Corporatization of Academic Culture. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-exchange-university-corporatization-of/9780774815703-item.html

Newfield, C. (2011). Unmaking the public university : The forty-year assault on the middle class (1st Harvard University press paperback ed.). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.