At 08:59 AM 1/28/97 -0800, you wrote:
RE: University, INC.
The Corporate Takeover of the Academy
I am an editor at the University of California Press. I am interested in
commissioning a book about the corporate takeover of the academy: the way
that universities have been transforming themselves and their curricula to
be "competititive" in the marketplace and to attract research and funding
dollars from corporations.
etc.
Here is an example of a myth in its nascent state: the Academia, like a
Victorian virgin, being raped and ravaged by corporate interests. A
consortium of distinguished professors with the aid of a distinguished
academic publisher are going to tell us how that virtuous and pristine
institution is being corrupet by monied interests...
In reality, if I can use the Spanish Civil War analogy, there might be four
columns marching on Madrid, but there is also the fifth column inside the
city, and that fifth column works very hard to turn the city over to
Franco's forces. That is, there might be some corporate attempts to
takeover the academia, but the major thrust to institute that takeover comes
from within.
It is a well known fact that certain professions, such as physicians, use
organizations (hospitals, HMOs) as a platform to launch their own
professional projects (see for example, Magali Sarfati Larson, _The Rise of
Professionalism_, Berkeley, U of Cal Press, 1977; Andrew Abbott, _The System
of Professions_, Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1988; Douglas R. Wholey, Jon
B. Chirstianson Susan M. Sanchez, 1993, The Effect of Physician and
Corporate Interests on the Formation of Health Maintenance Organizations,
_American Journal of Sociology_, 9(1):164-200). The lattter work is quite
interesting because it demonstrates that corporations, that are often third
party payers for medical services, may exert a _positive_ role by providing
checks and balances against excessive control of the health care market by
the supply side (doctors).
My own research on nonoprofit organizations (__Making Friends in the
Market__ and _Garbage Cans, Framing, and the Construction of Public
Benefit_) shows that professional service providers may use such
organizations as a platform to create a market and secure funding (and their
own occupational autonomy as well) for the services they offer. The
interesting part of this process is that these professionals use the image
of public service associated with nonprofit instituitions as a form of
marketing device that gains them respectability as dedicated public servants
rather than self-serving peddlers of professional commodity.
The same holds for the academia, as many academics use that institution as
an institutional platform to launch their personal career projects. While
at this time I have but anecdotal evidence to support that claim, I am prety
sure that every reader will be able to find at least one example of the
anecdotal characters I describe below in his/her own department.
First, Professor Organizer, who some time in his late adolescence or early
adulthood made a wrong career choice and instead of becoming a business
manager, chose a non-marketable field (such as philosophy, classcial
literature, or sociology). Since the only way up in those fields is
entering a PhD program, Mr. Organizer enters this career path. He/she might
not be a good scientist in the "traditional" sense of the word, but his real
strength lies in schmoozing, networking, and cutting deals. He does not
have much to say by himself, but he is good at circulating the ideas of
others. He/she pulls togetehr discussion groups, seminars, conferences,
edited volumes and what not to give other a forum to express their opinions,
to be heard. For that, the others (including students and college
administrators) love him. In exchange, some of the splendor of the ideas
preseneted on a forum falls on the forum organizer, who becomes a respected
academician even though he does not have any original work and his only
contribution to science is that of a business agent or publicity manager.
As time passes, Professor Organizer establishes him/her-self as a succesful
business manager of academic speech. Since academic splendor of the
Organizer is essentially a residual of the splendor of the work of others he
manages to publicize, it follows that the higher the volume of work that
passes through the Organizer, the greater his splendor.
I call it the "MIT principle of earnings," "MIT" standing for
"mosquito-in-take." It is a well known fact that mosquitos have no ability
to suck, their feeding depends on the pressure of blood in the vessel they
manage to tap into -- the higher the pressure, the more they take in, even
to the point that their own body blows up from the bllod pressure if they
tap into a vein.
The same principle characterizes the academic work of the Organizer. At
certain point, the volume of work that passes through him/her becomes so
large, that he cannot
