Resisting Neoliberalism: What are our options?

In the previous four consecutive posts I have traced the modern shift to a neoliberal agenda by both major political parties. I have outlined how that movement away from regulation has transformed tertiary education to a business-oriented framework. I have discussed and provided references that substantiate those claims, and a few references that argue against my claims. This is the fifth and final post of that series (at least for 2020). Before I discuss ways that we might mindfully resist (Ashlee, 2019) some of the negatives, I want to add one more point to ponder.

In her groundbreaking work, Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution (2015), Wendy Brown discusses how neoliberalism has destroyed the political (homo politicus) person in favor of hollowed-out individuals judged in terms of speculative worth/capital (homo oeconomicus). I highly recommend that all student affairs professionals read at least chapters IV and V from that book. There isn’t a better synopsis of why this matters to democracy written anywhere else. Brown deploys a critical Foucauldian framework in a thorough (yet still accessible) explanation of neoliberalism as political rationality. The work isn’t without limitations, but this is neither the time nor place for that critique. To understand the (sometimes frightening) depths of the conversions from non-economic arenas to economic logics this is a must-read. In an interview about the book with Dissent Magazine, Brown said, ‘Even Alan Greenspan says that elections don’t much matter because, “thanks to globalization . . . the world is governed by market forces,” not elected representatives.’ That point is glaringly evident as we navigate through uncharted waters stirred by the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide. In a neoliberal framework people are nothing more than “human capital” and must constantly and consistently (re)create their own present and future values through entrepreneurial activities. Neoliberalism shifts the focus to speculative value (away from current societal value). Ratings, rankings, and potential values are more important than immediate profit or benefit. The outcomes of the neoliberalist philosophical policies are extreme inequalities of wealth, disposable populations, and intimate relationships between finance-capital and states.

I have a bit of a different perspective here because I also have a dozen years’ experience in advanced manufacturing. The ‘movement’ toward measuring and assessing everything in higher education has shifted the focus that we used to have, ‘students as customers’ to one in which students are becoming (or have already become) products. We treat students as customers in the face-to-face (or as Erving Goffman termed these, ‘front stage’) interactions so they acquiesce to becoming products. Students don’t resist. But in our ‘backstage reality’ of a neoliberalistic framework, students are widgets that we package and ship to the corporate customers.

What do we do? As student affairs professionals, and student affairs assessment professionals, what are our choices? While I have 20+ years of experience in those areas, I’m currently working as an assistant professor. As an administrator, I constantly heard faculty’s messages “Vince, you don’t understand how this is affecting us.” They were right I didn’t. To wit, I will describe my actions as a faculty member. This behavior is based on the framework of Krathwohl, Masia, and Bloom’s (1956) Affective Domain Taxonomy. As an online instructor my tactics are to

• coerce students to do the assigned work (receive),
• reflect and discuss with peers (respond),
• classify the importance of the material (value),
• incorporate the material into what they already knew and were doing (organize),
• and then tell me how they will change their behavior by utilizing this new material in practice (characterize).

That is pursuing affective learning outcomes in my coursework, but am I generating data/evidence to substantiate my claim of practicing what I preach? There is no instrument. Qualitative (textual) analysis of students’ data is my only methodology. I am able to show (through substantive effort—across a series of coursework) that this occurs in my online classroom. There is not a shortcut. How do I make my case that the benefit of doing this outweighs the cost incurred?

Student Affairs assessment leaders have an excellent opportunity to lead here. One existing assessment framework developed by the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS) provides excellent opportunities to develop affective learning outcomes, in the form of student learning and development outcomes. In order to accomplish this, we may need to shift our assessment efforts to include series of events after the initial learning-events have occurred. There is also great potential for incorporating affective learning outcomes into CCRs (co-curricular records) which were the subject of a recent Student Affairs Assessment Leaders’ Structured Conversation.

• As an assessment profession, are we able to demonstrate that student affairs programming translates into internalized value(s) (characterization) across campus interactions over extended periods of time? Ensuring that this is occurring, is paramount to beginning some sort of resistance to neoliberalism.
• Another opportunity is to incorporate storytelling into standard assessment practice. That again, requires familiarity with qualitative textual analysis. Kaley Robsham (2016) gives an outstanding overview of how this might contribute to the assessment profession; no need for me to re-invent the wheel here.

There is one final option. As the O’Kanes crooned in the late 80s when they released “Tired of the Runnin’” on an eerily spookily prescient track “Line of least resistance”, we can just embrace neoliberalism. We can admit that our society has (d)evolved to the point where emotions, values such as justice & equity, group & individual identities, group solidarity, and democracy simply have ceased to be important. In that case, we ought to focus on a complete revamp of student development outcomes whereby each student begins to build his/her brand from the moment of arrival on our campuses. Entrepreneurialism should be an all-encompassing paradigm.

In such an environment, return on investment (ROI) is the only metric that matters. As a parting reference, I’m reminded of a Chronicle Influencer List in 2013; Investment advisors such as Mark Schneider should be our student affairs assessment heroes and our student affairs practitioner role-models.

P.S.

I realize that I did NOT address the regional accreditation issue I linked in the previous post. Succinctly, I believe that is not a positive development. National accreditation is simply another neoliberal attempt at reducing regulation. If we learned anything from the for-profit higher education fiasco, it should be that lax standards are not beneficial to our profession.