Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education

Radical Teacher, Summer, 2005 by Greg Meyerson

UNIVERSITIES IN THE MARKETPLACE: THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

by Derek Bok. Princeton University Press, 2003.

As readers of Radical Teacher no doubt know, most criticisms of the corporate university have come from the left wing of the political spectrum. Derek Bok's book addresses corporatization from the vantage point of his former post as president of Harvard. He asserts that it can distort the purposes of the university, purposes that he defines as the search for truth and the pursuit of excellence. His concerns range from the commodification of college athletics and corporate influence on science to activities like distance education, when done for profit. While the book occasionally sounds like a jeremiad against encroaching commerce, it also sets itself apart from left wing jeremiads, in favor of moderation. Bok thinks that judicious university presidents, along with trustees, can foster elements of commercialization that promote basic academic values while avoiding those that promote secrecy and corruption. But while he wants to offer a dispassionate cost-benefit analysis of the modern university, what we get is a deeply incoherent work that rather startlingly points out the limits of bourgeois self-criticism.

Bok defines commercialization as "efforts within the university to make a profit from teaching, research and other campus activities." He explicitly divorces this meaning of the term from ideological concerns--the influence of the surrounding corporate culture, the accountability movement--and "economizing" concerns, which lead to hiring adjuncts and incorporating business methods (3).

In his analysis of commercializations roots, Bok discredits, or so he thinks, the leftist analysis. His centrist, cost-benefit rhetoric seeks to avoid the extremes--Marxist critique and unbridled market celebration. According to Bok, leftists think commercialization "simply" another attempt by businessmen and lawyers sitting on boards of trustees "to 'commodify' education and research, reduce the faculty to the status of employees and, ultimately, make the university serve the interests of corporate America," "the selfish interests of American business." (6, 8). But "it is one thing to note the effects of the economy on academic institutions but quite another to imagine a plot on the part of business leaders to bend universities to their corporate purposes." Few leftists, I think, would accept the idea of what Bok calls a "national corporate plot."

Having dismissed the radical interpretation in this way, Bok is then free to offer what is in his mind a complex, plural analysis of commercialization, though the analysis is also in a way "simple" in the sense of commonsensical and straightforward--no deep, dark national plots. His "benign explanation" of commercialization is exceedingly friendly to free markets and at one with the depoliticizing imperative of the book. He notes that commercialism can lead to deplorable behavior, behavior at odds with basic values; and one of his central worries is that commercialization can hurt the objectivity of research. As he notes, recipients of corporate funding (he's talking about pharmaceuticals) "vigorously deny" such charges, and most researchers believe that material considerations could not possibly influence their judgment, although a large body of evidence suggests otherwise. Bok himself notes rather straightforwardly that corporations wouldn't contribute so much money "to the education of physicians" unless they expected a "handsome reward" (86-7).

This admission opens up a can of worms. Why does he reject the ethic of professionalism among scientists, an ethic built on the assumption of professional autonomy and commitment to craft and to "basic values," but believe that trustees do not exert significant influence on universities because, among other reasons, they are civic minded? This oscillation between voluntarism and pressures that are strong enough to undermine it characterizes Bok's text.

He imagines the response of university presidents to his cautionary remarks about commercialization, and his call to resist such pressure in the name of "basic values":

   These cautionary remarks could
   provoke a tart response from enterprising
   university presidents who
   are working hard to move their
   institutions into the higher reaches
   of the academic hierarchy. "Such
   high-minded arguments," they
   may declare, "are all very well for a
   former president of a university
   accustomed to a
   secure place in the academic
   firmament and
   buffered from misfortune
   by an endowment that
   approaches 20 billion.
   But how can other institutions
   without these
   assets hope to achieve
   greater eminence unless
   they can pursue every available
   opportunity to gain the resources
   that excellence invariably requires."
   (104)

"This is a valid question," Bok tells us, for "the cards are stacked against any institution that lacks an established reputation and a lot of money." The excellent go to institutions that "already have strong facilities." Government and foundation money flow in the same direction. The graduates of these institutions carry the process forward, so that "the strongest universities tend to perpetuate themselves automatically. Success begets success, which helps to explain why the list of top-rated universities in 2000 looks remarkably like a similar list in 1950 or even 1900" (104).