Neoliberalism Goes to College: Higher Education in the New Economy

Abstract

The ascendancy of neoliberalism and corporate culture in every aspect of American life not only consolidates economic power in the hands of the few; it also aggressively attempts to break the power of unions, decouple income from productivity, subordinate the needs of society to the market, reduce civic education to job training, and render public services and amenities an unconscionable luxury. But it does more. It thrives on a culture of cynicism, insecurity, and despair. Conscripts in a relentless campaign for personal responsibility, Americans are now convinced that they have little to hope for—or gain from—the government, nonprofit public organizations, democratic associations, public and higher education, or other nongovernmental social agencies. With few exceptions, the project of democratizing public institutions and goods has fallen into disrepute in the popular imagination as the logic of the market and increasing militarization of public life undermine the most basic social solidarities and blunt intellectual curiosity and conviction. The consequences include not only a state representative of a few elite, corporate interests, but also the transformation of a democratic republic into a national security state. Philosopher Susan Buck-Morss comments on this loss of democratic control:

But there is another United States over which I have no control, because it is by definition not a democracy, not a republic. I am referring to the national security state that is called into existence with the sovereign pronouncement of a “state emergency” and that generates a wild zone of power, barbaric and violent, operating without democratic oversight, in order to combat an “enemy” that threatens the existence not merely and not mainly of its citizens, but of its sovereignty. The paradox is that this undemocratic state claims absolute power over the citizens of a free and democratic nation.³

The single most important question for the future of America is how we treat our entrepreneurs.

—George Gilder¹

A new form of domination is emerging in our times that breaks with the orthodox method of rule-by-engagement and uses deregulation as its major vehicle: “a mode of domination that is founded on the institution of insecurity—domination by the precariousness of existence.”

—Zygmunt Bauman²