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20 - Corporatization of Higher Education

A Crisis of Labor and Democracy

from Part V - Labor and Democracy Sectoral Case Studies: Platform Workers, Higher Education, and the Care Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2022

By
Risa L. Lieberwitz
Edited by
Angela B. Cornell  and
Mark Barenberg
Angela B. Cornell
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Mark Barenberg
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

Concepts of labor and democracy have infused the theory and practice of higher education in the USA since the development of the modern university in the late 1800s and the early 1900s.Higher education’s social role in promoting the common good in a democratic society is linked to its internal labor model that provides faculty with academic freedom and collective self-governance. These are contested institutional goals and structures, however, in tension with the competing use of higher education to serve the private interests of industry. This chapter explores the ongoing push-pull between private economic interests, on the one hand, and higher education’s contribution to wider democratic political culture and its correlative internal commitment to its faculties’ academic freedom, tenure, and rights to govern jointly with administrators, on the other.

Keywords

higher educationpublic missiondemocracyfaculty laboracademic freedomshared governanceneoliberalism
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Labor and Democracy , pp. 318 - 333
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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