Week 4

Gabriela Garcia-Mejia

Section A03

Week 4

This week’s readings all discuss the corporatization of the University system and how politicized it is as well as ethical issues that can sometimes emerge. The NY Times piece by Fredrik deBoer titled “Why we should fear University, Inc.” discusses how the university is corporatized because of the way it operates daily. They hire more administrators than they do professors which is counter intuitive since we, as students, are paying for ‘quality education’. Because of this those in charge are more worried about ranks, money and numbers than about the people they are serving. One example deBoer mentions is that at Purdue everything is meticulously built to be aesthetically pleasing for their brochures or tours yet some of those buildings are rarely used by students. I think in all college campuses they try to make students feel as though they have a say in how things are run, and what our tuition money is spent on but we know that’s not the case. At Davis, for example, it feels like there is constant construction and remodeling of buildings but it’s never the buildings that are old and that students always use. Those administrators are projecting an image and ultimately protecting their financial gain and the institution instead of the student body. “Corporate entities serve corporate interests”. (deBoer,2015)

This in turn can also raise ethical issues. In the case of Block Joy, she discovered that embezzlement was taking place but when everyone ignored her and she took it up with the Chair it was in that moment she realized he was also in on it. Another example is if there are complaints of sexual assault one might report it but because that might make the university seem unsafe and give it a bad reputation to prospective students, the complaint just gets pushed under the rug. This not only raises and ethics concern but also shows that students are simply a number to the institution.

Question: If we held elections where the university students voted on which University administrators they wanted, could that be a possible solution?

Resources:

deBoer, F. (2015, September 09). Why We Should Fear University, Inc. Retrieved April 19, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html

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

Mancke, E. (2015, May 28). Universities and corporations: a misguided merger. Retrieved April 19, 2017, from http://nbmediacoop.org/2015/05/28/universities-and-corporations-a-misguided-merger/