Abstract
This chapter assesses the contemporary role of the state and the civil society in the continuing contest over academic capitalism in higher education in the United States and globally. Particular attention is turned to instances of resistance to neoliberal policies shaping postsecondary education and training, challenges to increasing levels of tuition and student loan debt, and continuing efforts to address the growing stratification of postsecondary institutions in the United States and other national contexts. A renewed commitment in the United States to realizing the public interest through higher education is evidenced by state efforts to reconsider policies financing the expansion of the for-profit postsecondary sector, the emergence of coalitions in the civil society in support of the DREAM act, and in the efforts of students seeking to shape institutional policies and practices through collective bargaining. The author suggests that, taken together, these nascent shifts in the political economy of higher education point to a variety of emerging transformations, and to the continued significance of the university in the public sphere.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Alexander, J. C. (2006). The civil sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Anguiano, C. A., & Chavez, K. R. (2011). DREAMers’ discourse: Young Latino/a immigrants and the naturalization of the American dream. In M. A. Holling & B. M. Calafell (Eds.), Latina/o discourse in vernacular spaces: Somos de una voz? (pp. 81–99). Lanham: Lexington Books.
Astin, A. W., & Oseguera, L. (2004). The declining “equity” of American higher education. The Review of Higher Education, 27, 321–341.
Avery, C., & Turner, S. E. (2012). Student loans: Do college students borrow too much—or not enough? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26(1), 165–192. doi:10.1257/jep.26.1.165.
Ball, S. J. (2012). Global education Inc.: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. New York: Routledge.
Belfield, C. R. (2013). Student loans and repayment rates: The role of for-profit colleges. Research in Higher Education, 54(1), 1–29.
Beller, E., & Hout, M. (2006). Intergenerational social mobility: The United States in comparative perspective. Future of Children, 16(2), 19–36.
Best, J., & Best, E. (2014). The student loan mess: How good intentions created a trillion-dollar problem. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cantwell, B., & Kauppinen, I. (Eds.). (2014). Academic capitalism in the age of globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Carnevale, A. P., & Strohl, J. (2010). How increasing college access is increasing inequality, and what to do about it. In R. D. Kahlenberg (Ed.), Rewarding Strivers: Helping low income students succeed in college (pp. 71–190). New York: The Century Foundation Press.
Carnoy, M., & Levin, H. M. (1985). Schooling and work in the democratic state. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Carroll, D., & Higgins, A. (2014). A college education saddles young households with debt, but still pays off. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 7/16/14. Retrieved from http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/trends/2014/0714/01labmar.cfm
Clark, B. R. (1983). The higher education system: Academic organization in cross-national perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Clotfelter, C. T. (2011). Big-time sports in American universities. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ehrenberg, R. G. (2000). Tuition rising: Why college costs so much. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ehrenberg, R. G., Klaff, D. B., Kezbom, A. T., & Nagowski, M. P. (2004). Collective bargaining in American higher education. In R. G. Ehrenberg (Ed.), Governing academia (pp. 209–232). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Ehrlich, T. (2000). Civic responsibility and higher education. Phoenix: Oryx Press.
Geiger, R. L. (2005). The ten generations of American higher education. In R. O. Berdahl, P. G. Altbach, & P. J. Gumport (Eds.), Higher education in the twenty-first century (2nd ed., pp. 38–70). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gitlin, T. (2012). Occupy nation: The roots, the spirit, and the promise of Occupy Wall Street. New York: It Books/HarperCollins.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. London: Oxford University Press.
Hoover, E. (2011). Debt protesters denounce colleges for broken promises. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/27/11. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Debt-Protesters-Lament-Higher/129902/
Kirp, D. L. (2003). Shakespeare, Einstein and the bottom line. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Krugman, P. (2013). End this depression now! New York: W.W. Norton (paperback edition).
Krugman, P. (2014a). Why we’re in a new gilded age. The New York Review of Books, 5/8/14. Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/
Krugman, P. (2014b). Does he pass the test? The New York Review of Books, 7/10/14. Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jul/10/geithner-does-he-pass-test/
Leonhardt, D. (2014). Is college worth it? Clearly, new data say. The New York Times (5/27/14). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0
Levin, J. S. (2001). Globalizing the community college. New York: Palgrave.
Marginson, S. (2007). The public/private division in higher education: A global revision. Higher Education, 53, 307–333.
Marginson, S. (2011). The “public” contribution of universities in an increasingly global world. In B. Pusser, K. Kempner, S. Marginson, & I. Ordorika (Eds.), Universities and the public sphere: Knowledge creation and state building in the era of globalization (pp. 7–25). New York: Routledge.
Mettler, S. (2014). Degrees of inequality: How the politics of higher education sabotaged the American dream. New York: Basic Books.
Miller, G. (2014). Presidents, do right by athletes and adjuncts. The Chronicle of Higher Education (6/16/14). Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Presidents-Do-Right-by/147103/
Nicholls, W. J. (2013). The DREAMers: How the undocumented youth movement transformed the immigrant rights debate. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ohr, P. S. (2014). Decision and direction of election. United States Government before the National Labor Relations Board Region 13. Case 13-RC-121359. March 26. Chicago.
Olivas, M. A. (2004). IIRIRA, The DREAM Act, and undocumented college student residency. Journal of College & University Law, 30, 435–464.
Olivas, M. A. (2008). The political economy of the DREAM ACT and the legislative process: A case study of comprehensive immigration reform. The Wayne Law Review, 55, 1757.
Olivas, M. A. (2012). Dreams deferred: Deferred action, prosecutorial discretion, and the vexing case(s) of DREAM Act students. William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, 21, 463.
Ordorika, I., & Pusser, B. (2007). La máxima casa de estudios: The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México as a state-building university. In P. G. Altbach & J. Balan (Eds.), World class worldwide: Transforming research universities in Asia and Latin America (pp. 189–215). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Palacios, M. (2010). The DREAM Act explained. Journal of College Admission, (Winter 2010). Retrieved from http://www.nacacnet.org/research/KnowledgeCenter/Documents/Marketplace/DreamAct.pdf
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Pusser, B. (2004). Burning down the house: Politics, governance and affirmative action at the University of California. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Pusser, B. (2006). Reconsidering higher education and the public good: The role of public spheres. In W. Tierney (Ed.), Governance and the public good (pp. 11–28). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Pusser, B. (2008). The state, the market and the institutional estate: Revisiting contemporary authority relations in higher education. In J. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. XXIII, pp. 105–139). New York: Agathon Press.
Pusser, B. (2011). Power and authority in the creation of a public sphere through higher education. In B. Pusser, K. Kempner, S. Marginson, & I. Ordorika (Eds.), Universities and the public sphere: Knowledge creation and state building in the era of globalization. New York: Routledge.
Pusser, B. (2014). Forces in tension: The state, civil society and market in the future of the university. In P. Gibbs & R. Barnett (Eds.), Thinking about higher education (pp. 71–89). London: Springer.
Pusser, B. (2015). A critical approach to power in higher education. In A. M. Martinez-Aleman, B. Pusser, & E. M. Bensimon (Eds.), Critical approaches to the study of higher education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Pusser, B., & Marginson, S. (2013). University rankings in critical perspective. Journal of Higher Education, 84(4), 544–568.
Pusser, B., Kempner, K., Marginson, S., & Ordorika, I. (2012). Universities and the public sphere: Knowledge creation and state building in the era of globalization. New York: Routledge.
Ratcliffe, C., & McKernan, S. -M. (2013). Forever in your debt: Who has student loan debt and who’s worried? Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. Retrieved from: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412849-Forever-in-Your-Debt-Who-Has-Student-Loan-Debt-and-Whos-Worried.pdf
Rhoades, G. (1992). Beyond “the state”: Interorganizational relations and state apparatus in postsecondary education. In J. C. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (pp. 84–192). New York: Agathon Press.
Rhoades, G. (1998). Managed professionals: Unionized faculty and restructuring academic labor. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Rhoades, G., & Slaughter, S. (2006). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Privatization as shifting the target of public subsidy in higher education. In R. A. Rhoads & C. A. Torres (Eds.), The university, state, and market: The political economy of globalization in the Americas (pp. 103–140). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rhoads, R. A., & Mina, L. (2001). The student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico: A political analysis. Review of Higher Education, 45(3), 334–353.
Rhoads, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (2006). Introduction: Globalization and higher education in the Americas. In R. A. Rhoads & C. A. Torres (Eds.), The university, state, and market: The political economy of globalization in the Americas (pp. 3–38). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rojas, F. (2012). Social movements in the university. In M. Bastedo (Ed.), Organizing higher education (pp. 256–276). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rooksby, J. H., & Pusser, B. (2014). Learning to litigate: University patents in the knowledge economy. In B. Cantwell & I. Kauppinen (Eds.), Academic capitalism in the age of globalization (pp. 74–93). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ruch, R. (2001). Higher Ed Inc.: The rise of the for-profit university. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Slaughter, S. (1990). The higher learning & high technology: Dynamics of higher education policy formation. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Slaughter, S. (2014a). Foreword. In B. Cantwell & I. Kauppinen (Eds.), Academic capitalism in the age of globalization (pp. vii–x). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Slaughter, S. (2014b). Retheorizing academic capitalism: Actors, mechanisms, fields and networks. In B. Cantwell, & I. Kauppinen (Eds.), Academic capitalism in the age of globalization (pp. vii–x). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Slaughter, S., & Leslie, L. (1997). Academic capitalism; politics, policies and the entrepreneurial university. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state and higher education. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Strauss, B. (2015, August 18). Labor board rejects Northwestern player’s union bid. New York Times, B11. Washington edition.
United States Senate, Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. (2012). The return on the federal investment in for-profit education: Debt without a diploma. Retrieved from http://www.harkin.senate.gov/documents/pdf/4caf6639e24c3.pdf
Weisbrod, B. A., Ballou, J. P., & Asch, E. D. (2008). Mission and money: Understanding the university. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
White House. (2014). President Obama speaks on student loan debt. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2014/06/09/president-obama-speaks-student-loan-debt#transcript
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pusser, B. (2016). A State Theoretical Approach to Understanding Contest in Higher Education. In: Slaughter, S., Taylor, B. (eds) Higher Education, Stratification, and Workforce Development. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21512-9_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21512-9_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21511-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21512-9
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)