This is now the fourth in a series of posts on Neoliberalism. I plan to end this series with a fifth post, but for this particular article, I want to examine some threats posed by neoliberalism that are preventing the reclamation of agency. I do need to remind myself that this series of posts was originally conceptualized to be beneficial for people in the student affairs profession and specifically the increasingly important sub-field of assessment (within student affairs). As a quick aside, how many of you noticed this movement, over the past couple of weeks? That is important to us; I’ll revisit it when I write the fifth post.
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Quickly, one paradox inherent to neoliberalism is that competition relies upon quantification and comparison. Once we have succumbed to that tenet, everyone is subject to a stifling cycle of assessment and evaluative monitoring. In itself, that may not seem wrong, but implied in such a model is that we are able to identify winners. Those that do not win are punished; identified as losers. The doctrine1 that Von Mises proposed explicitly to free us from the bureaucratic quagmire of central planning has instead evolved into a powerful replacement.
1Government intervention could not work and would lead inevitably to socialism. Mises elaborated these insights in his Critique of Interventionism (1929) and set forth his political philosophy of laissez-faire liberalism in his Liberalism (1927).
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Neoliberalism has promulgated the privatization and the marketization of higher education. Corporations (that develop tests such as the ACT, the SAT, the GRE, COMPASS, HISET, etc.) have in effect built superhighways that require tolls. State systems have succumbed to the efficiency-thrill of assessing students in order to guide them into appropriate pathways. One such system has gained traction by implementing its tracking tool and sharing it nationwide; that system is highly regarded among its peers1. In essence, deregulation and an ever-increasingly-powerful testing industry have forced higher education systems to sort students into productivity-fit channels. Where do the tolls go? Are we improving the pathways? I don’t believe we are. What is clear is the collectors of the tolls (rent) are now fashioning themselves as entrepreneurs. They are re-classifying rent (unearned income) as earned income. Any spirit of innovation is subsumed by an insatiable thirst for wealth and power. Major corporate-education-entities such as Pearson, have benefited considerably from these changes through the production of educational resources and binding government contracts for delivering core educational services (Hogan, 20162).
1I am not arguing against this system nor this tool, but I want to point out that the last paragraph (on the referenced Website) states as a conclusion: Lastly, always keep the student and employer paramount as you use this tool. Do student affairs practitioners consider employers equally paramount to students? Are we as a profession, aware of the shift in the purposes of higher education to see employers as the chief customers, and students as the widgets being produced?
2Teachers’ Education Review #77 “Are Edu-businesses helping or harming education? [Podcast]. Accessed on 2020/02/29 at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/play-episode/id677691650?i=1000373826649
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How have universities reacted? In the previous post, I outlined a few of the responses with which I have direct experience. Three of those, collectively, pose a great threat to our agency as effective student affairs assessment practitioners: 1) Increasing tuition—puts more burden on our students and effectively denies education to a strata of society; 2) Entering into research partnerships with private corporations, or in our specific case, allowing private corporations to supply us with assessment tools that realign our pursuit of truth as their pursuits of profit; and 3) hiring more and more adjunct, part-time, & short-term employees resulting in a transient workforce; those lessen the resistance to neoliberal policies, and in turn threaten our collective agency for agitation or disruption.
As I outlined in post one, market-driven reforms have been supported by every political party and each presidential administration in the United States since Jimmy Carter’s in the mid 1970s. James Brooks said in his Stranger in the Village essay that “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” That aptly summarizes the second most powerful threat to reclaiming our agency. Neoliberalist ideology has effectively undercut education and transformed it into a business—defined purely through economic terms. Faculty members have been relegated to roles that resemble shopkeepers minding the stores. Students have been reduced at best to the roles of customers, and at worst, widgets for the corporate customers. Will we open our eyes to this reality? Will we continue to invite our own destruction? Will we mindfully resist? Is mindful resistance enough?
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In The Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills called for intellectuals and workers to write, talk, and act in ways that reveal and connect private and public issues, systemic structures, and agentic production modes through radical pedagogical practice1. We must at least mindfully resist. In the current political and social environment we may find that some radical resistance might be necessary. In the next, final post, I will describe some mindful tactics and briefly touch on some that may be considered radical.
1Teaching against hierarchies: An anarchist approach. California State University, Monterey Bay Digital Commons, Faculty Publications and Presentations. Accessed on 2020/02/29 at https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=hcom_fac