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The Rationality Crisis in US Higher Education

2010; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07393148.2010.498197

1469-9931

Clyde W. Barrow,

Higher Education Governance and Development

Abstract Over the course of the last century, many of the stresses and contradictions of advanced capitalism have been displaced onto colleges and universities, which are now directly attached to the state—whether legally, politically, or financially—as an important component of the ideological and economic state apparatuses. As a component of the ideological and economic state apparatuses, the university is implicated in the state's ongoing fiscal crisis as both a cause of the crisis and a solution to the crisis. The author argues that the possibilities for crisis management within the existing corporate model of higher education have been exhausted in a rationality crisis that threatens to implode the administrative apparatus in higher education. The author calls for a radical reconstruction of power relationships within the university and in its relationships to capital and the state. Notes 2 Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic Books, 1969); Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: Verso, 1978), pp. 1–33. 1 This section is an abridged and revised version of the argument in Clyde W. Barrow, Critical Theories of the State: Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Post-Marxist (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1993), Chap. 4. 3 Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, p. 115, fn. 24, defines an institution as "a system of norms or rules which is socially sanctioned… On the other hand, the concept of structure covers the organizing matrix of institutions." Similarly, David Gold, Clarence Lo, and Erik Olin Wright, "Recent Developments in Marxist Theories of the Capitalist State, Part I," Monthly Review 27:5 (1975), p. 36 fn., observe that the concept of a structure "does not refer to the concrete social institutions that make up a society, but rather to the systematic functional interrelationships among these institutions." 4 Claus Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), p. 37. 5 Claus Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), p. 132. 6 Claus Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984), p. 116 fn.15. 7 Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975), Part 2, Chaps. 1–8. See also, James O'Connor, The Meaning of Crisis: A Theoretical Introduction (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987); Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O'Leary, Theories of the State (New York: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 259–270. 8 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, op. cit., p. 2. 9 James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973). 10 On the continuing relevance of this analysis, see the new edition of this book, James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State, with a new introduction by the author (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002). 11 For purposes of this analysis, federal officials, governors, state legislators, boards of trustees, system offices, and other high-ranking higher education boards are considered state elites, while campus-based administrators are considered state managers. On the distinction, see Barrow, Critical Theories of the State, op. cit., pp. 28–29. 12 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, op. cit., p. 47. 13 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 46. 14 Herbert Marcuse, "Industrialization and Capitalism," New Left Review 30 (March–April 1965), pp. 3–17. 15 Claus Offe, Disorganized Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 303–307; Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, op. cit., p. 47. Offe's and Habermas's hypothesis on the possibility of rationality crisis is non-empirical in the sense that it does not examine the actual rules that govern action in specific state bureaucracies. Thus, they only postulate a hypothetical divergence between the two criteria of administrative rationality. 16 Claus Offe, Modernity and the State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). 17 Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 201–226. 18 Marcuse, "Industrialization and Capitalism," op. cit., p. 6. 19 For background, see John Smyth (ed.), Academic Work: The Changing Labour Process in Higher Education (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995). 20 Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards an Investigation," in Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), pp. 127–186. On the concept of the state economic apparatus and its increasingly important role, see Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: Verso, 1978), p. 170. For this reason, college and university faculty occupy a social location at the nexus of the economic, political, and ideological sub-systems. They not only fulfill multiple functions within the capitalist system, but are peculiarly subject to its many contradictions and, therefore, they are in a position to experience and observe those contradictions in the quotidian; see Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life (London and New York: Verso, 2008). 21 For historical studies, see Clyde W. Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990); Barbara Ann Scott, Crisis Management in American Higher Education (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 1983); David N. Smith, Who Rules the Universities? (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974). On the class war character of institutional responses to the current fiscal crisis in higher education, see the excellent argument by Peter Phillips, "The Fiscal Crisis in Higher Education Protects the Wealthy," The Daily Censored, November 22, 2009, available at: < http://dailycensored.com/2009/11/22/the-higher-education-fiscal-crisis-protects-the-wealthy/>. 22 Kent Halstead, State Profiles: Financing Public Higher Education, 1978 to 1989 (Washington, DC: Research Associates, 1989), p. 41. This concept was first introduced by Morriss L. Cooke, Academic and Industrial Efficiency (New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1910). 23 For empirical documentation, see The Delta Cost Project, Trends in College Spending, Washington, DC, 2009, pp. 14–15, available at: < http://www.deltacostproject.org/analyses/delta-reports.asp>. 24 Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! (Rochester, NY: National Center on Education and the Economy, 1990); Esther Rodriquez, Building a Quality Workforce: An Agenda for Postsecondary Education (Denver, CO: State Higher Education Executive Officers, 1992). 25 Sheila Slaughter, The Higher Learning and High Technology: Dynamics of Higher Education Policy Formation (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), identifies numerous organizations created during this period specifically to promote a new strategic alliance between business, government, and higher education. Slaughter documents how such organizations have argued convincingly that higher education policy should be linked explicitly to the goal of regaining a competitive advantage for American business mainly by promoting "advanced applied technology, technology transfer, and the training of a competitive scientific and professional labor force" (p. 2). See also Clyde W. Barrow, "Will the Fiscal Crisis Force Higher Education to Restructure?" Thought and Action: The NEA Higher Education Journal 9 (Fall 1993), pp. 25–39; Clyde W. Barrow, "The New Economy and the Restructuring of Higher Education," Thought and Action: The NEA Higher Education Journal 12 (Spring 1996), pp. 37–54. More recently, see Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). 27 "Administrators' Views of Challenges Facing Institutions in the Next Five Years," The Almanac of Higher Education, 1992 (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1992), p. 72. 28 Alene Bycer Russell, Faculty Workload: State and System Perspectives (Denver, CO: State Higher Education Executive Officers, 1992), pp. 13–19. 29 Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 21–22, 225–226. 30 For a sampling of the early planning movement, see Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, Meeting Economic and Social Challenges: A Strategic Agenda for Higher Education (Boulder, CO: WICHE, 1992); Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, Joined or Unconnected?: A Look at State Economic Development and Higher Education Plans (Boulder, CO: WICHE, 1992); Richard B. Heydinger and Hasan Simsek, An Agenda for Reshaping Faculty Productivity: State Policy and College Learning (Denver, CO: SHEEO, 1992); D.B. Johnstone, "The Costs of Higher Education: Worldwide Trends for the 1990s," in P.G. Altbach and D.B. Johnstone (eds), The Funding of Higher Education: International Perspectives (New York: Garland Publishing, 1993), pp. 3–24; W.F. Massy and J.W. Meyerson, Strategy and Finance in Higher Education (Princeton, NJ: Peterson's Guide, 1992); D.F. Finifter, R.G. Baldwin, and J.R. Thelin, The Uneasy Public Policy Triangle in Higher Education: Quality, Diversity, and Budgetary Efficiency (New York: American Council on Education and Macmillan, 1991). 31 Mintzberg, Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, op. cit., Chaps. 3–4. 32 Mintzberg, Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Chaps., p. 6. 33 B.J. Loasby, "Long-Range Formal Planning in Perspective," The Journal of Management Studies 4:3 (1967), pp. 300–308. 34 Mintzberg, Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, op. cit., pp. 159–160. 26 I have applied the anthropological concept of a fetish to strategic planning in higher education, because a fetish is an object or ritual that is believed to have magical properties. Thus, a shaman believes that if a rain dance is performed properly, it will rain. However, if it does not rain, this does not lead the shaman to conclude that the ritual is a superstition. It leads the shaman to demand more dancing, or to accusations that the dancers lack the appropriate faith, or that the dance was performed incorrectly in some minor detail. If the shaman is lucky, and the dance continues long enough, eventually it will rain, although not because of the dance; or the entire village may die of thirst and starvation, because they keep dancing, but it never rains. 35 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America (New York: Basic Books, 1982). 36 For example, William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992); Michael Hammer and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (New York: Harper Business, 1993). 37 Aaron Wildavsky, "If Planning is Everything Maybe it's Nothing," Policy Sciences 4:2 (1973), pp. 127–153. 38 Clyde W. Barrow, "The Strategy of Selective Excellence: Redesigning Higher Education for Global Competition in a Postindustrial Society," Higher Education 31:4 (1996), pp. 447–469. See also Clyde W. Barrow, "Social Investment in Massachusetts Public Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis," New England Journal of Public Policy 7:1 (Spring/Summer 1991), pp. 85–110. 39 In June of 1992, the Massachusetts Higher Education Coordinating Council (HECC) adopted "The Mission of the Public Higher Education System of the Commonwealth," which states: "The public college and university system of Massachusetts exists to make accessible to the people of the Commonwealth programs of excellence in higher education." 40 Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Affairs and The University of Massachusetts, Choosing to Compete: Statewide Strategy for Job Creation and Economic Growth (Boston, MA: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1993); Massachusetts Department of Economic Development and The University of Massachusetts, Toward a New Prosperity: Building Regional Competitiveness Across the Commonwealth (Boston, MA: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2002); Massachusetts Department of Housing and Economic Development, Regional Economic Development Framework (Boston, MA: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2009), available at: < http://www.mass.gov/?pageID = ehedmodulechunk&L = 1&L0 = Home&sid = Ehed&b = terminalcontent&f = Framework_For_Action&csid = Ehed>. 41 Commission on the Future of the University of Massachusetts, Learning to Lead: Building a World-Class Public University in Massachusetts (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1989); Commission on the Future of the State and Community College System, Responding to Change: New Directions for Public Colleges in Massachusetts (Boston, MA: Massachusetts Higher Education Coordinating Council, 1992). 42 In line with this commitment, state funding for the UMass System is currently below its 1988 funding level in real dollars. The state appropriation for UMass Dartmouth has fallen from 72% of university revenues in 1989 to 25% of revenues in 2009, see Grant Welker, "A 'Tale of Two Stories'," Fall River Herald News, August 14, 2009, which also reports that "the state's share of the UMass budget has fallen—from $441 million in fiscal 2001 to $310 million in fiscal 2009, when adjusted for inflation." Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack, Campus-wide Town Meeting Presentation (North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, May 14, 2009), available at: < http://www.umassd.edu/chancellor/updates/campus_town_meeting051409.pdf>. Also, Grant Welker, "Another Round of Cuts Coming to UMD," Fall River Herald News, May 15, 2009. 43 "University of Massachusetts Vision Statement" (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees, Revised Doc. T91-107, 1991). 44 Public Policy Working Group, Planning to Plan: A Proposal for Trustee Action (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees, 1992). 45 "The University of Massachusetts Statement of System Priorities" (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees, June 2, 1993). 46 Michael K. Hooker, The President's Action Plan for the Year 2000: Improving Quality and Responsiveness at UMASS Through Restructuring, Reallocation, and Reinvestment (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees, 1995). 47 It is a well accepted principle of state theory that state elites and state managers are self-interested maximizers whose main interest is to enhance their own institutional power, prestige, and financial resources, see Barrow, Critical Theories of the State, op. cit., p. 125. 48 In fact, the New Bedford arts building and the ATMC combined now account for $4.3 million (44%) of a $9.7 million structural deficit in the UMass Dartmouth budget, see Grant Welker, "UMD Still Scrambling Due to Cuts in Funding," Fall River Herald News, May 21, 2009. In the last 20 years, there has not been a single new program, building, or laboratory at UMass Dartmouth has achieved self-sufficiency or evolved into a profit center for the university. Despite this incontrovertible fact, the campus will launch a law school in the fall of 2010 with the promise that it will be self-sufficient and eventually generate millions of dollars in new revenue for the campus even though no public law school in the United States operates without a state subsidy. Outside reviews of the plan estimate that the law school will increase the campus's structural deficit by $2 million to $10 million annually, depending on enrollments, even as faculty were told to adopt a new collective bargaining agreement with no raises, because "there is no money" to fund them, see Jeff Jacoby, "The Price of UMass Law School," Boston Globe, February 7, 2010. 49 See < http://www.umassd.edu/chancellor/strategicplanupdate.pdf>. 50 See < http://www.umassd.edu/chancellor/Introduction.pdf>. 51 Clyde W. Barrow, "Beyond the Multiversity: Fiscal Crisis and the Changing Structure of Academic Labour," in John Smyth (ed.), Academic Work: The Changing Labour Process in Higher Education (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995), pp. 159–178. 52 Clyde W. Barrow, Economic Impacts of the Textile and Apparel Industries in Massachusetts (Boston, MA: Donahue Institute of Governmental Affairs, 2000). 53 Gary Rhoades, Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998). 54 Clyde W. Barrow, "Author's Post-Script," Thought and Action: The NEA Higher Education Journal 16 (Fall 2000), pp. 77–88, available at < http://www.nea.org/he/heta00/f00toc.pdf>. 55 It is not surprising that strategic planning experiments throughout the world have consistently found that people are more productive and more satisfied with their jobs when they operate under their own unit plans instead of externally imposed plans; see B.M. Bass, "When Planning for Others," Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 6:2 (1972), pp. 151–171. 56 One such example is the UMass Dartmouth "Classification and Compensation Specialist," who blocked the hiring of a research associate due to the claim that such an employee belonged in the clerical union. It was pointed out that the Director of the Center for Policy Analysis had authored the language on research associates in the faculty union contract while serving as the union's treasurer, and only then did the Classification "Specialist" reluctantly concede the point, and only after two sponsored research projects had been lost due to the hiring delay. 57 The purpose of the Policy on Policies "is to establish a formal mechanism to create, approve, rescind, and periodically revise campus policies and procedures, including a standardized format and reference numbering system," see < http://www.umassd.edu/policies/policy.cfm>. 58 This process exactly parallels the restructuring of central state apparatuses worldwide, where an internal realignment of power within the state apparatus privileges the institutions, offices, and agencies in closest contact with the centers of the global economy, while subordinating or disempowering those offices and agencies that draw support from domestic constituencies. The offices of presidents and prime ministers, treasuries, and central banks now assume the leading role in state policy, while ministries of commerce, labor, health, welfare, and education, among others, are being subordinated ideologically to the tenets of international competitiveness and further disempowered through budget and staffing reductions, see Leo Panitch, "Globalisation and the State," in Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch (eds), Socialist Register, 1994 (London: Merlin Press, 1994), p. 72. In universities, it is the academic and student divisions that are being subordinated to divisions of administration and finance. 59 Florence Olsen, "Delays, Bugs, and Cost Overruns Plague PeopleSoft's Services," Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22, 1990; "Wendy Leibowitz, "Officials of 7 Large Universities Complain to PeopleSoft About its Programs," Chronicle of Higher Education, December 14, 1999, reports that "the provosts and vice-presidents of seven of the eight 'Big Ten' universities that use PeopleSoft software on their campuses wrote a joint letter to the company last month, complaining that the 'performance of the systems, in terms of responsiveness, is simply unacceptable'." See also John Huston, "Village Dumps PeopleSoft," Oak Leaves (Oak Park, IL), January 14, 2009. 60 Ironically, after the author had completed this paper for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, he received an email from the Accounts Payable Department informing him that "the system will not allow it [his travel] to be approved." Evidently, "the system" at UMass Dartmouth has now commandeered the authority to veto academic travel arrangements even after they have been approved by the department chair and college dean. 61 See Delta Cost Project, Trends in College Spending, op. cit., pp. 17–20, which documents that most increases in higher education spending are due to increased expenditures on operations, student services, and academic support personnel and activities, while direct research and instructional budgets have languished at the same time. 62 It should be noted that any cost-benefits analysis of these policy changes should incorporate the fact that middle managers actually held numerous "strategy meetings" at the expenditure of significant administrative payroll to arrive at these monumental decisions. Those decisions then had to be communicated to faculty, while clerks and faculty had to be re-trained on the new forms and procedures. 63 In an electronic mail received 12-14.09 from Administrative Services, the university explicitly refers to the travel reimbursement system just described as "administrative streamlining," when in fact the new procedure actually costs more money to capitalize, requires more signatures, and takes more time to implement than the previous system, while relying on faculty labor, rather than clerical labor. 64 On December 14, 2009, the Center for Policy Analysis received an official "Bottled Water Reminder" from Michael LaGrassa, Assistant Vice-Chancellor for Administrative Services at UMass Dartmouth, restating "that effective as of July 1, 2009 the University will no longer support with University funds, the purchase of bottled water, associated dispensers or rental of such. This includes small personal sized bottled water as well as jugs of water used in conjunction with dispensers." 65 This alleged savings constitutes approximately 0.51% of the institution's structural deficit. 66 Electronic mail from David Ferguson, Director of Physical Plant to the Campus Community, "Town of Dartmouth Drinking Water Notice," December 5, 2009. 67 The author eventually filed a grievance against the Assistant Vice-Chancellor of Administrative Services on grounds that the Poland Springs decree violated the university's own Policy on Policies, because it had not gone through the review and approval process required by this policy. The grievance was withdrawn after it was agreed that the Center for Policy Analysis would be allowed to provide its employee with Poland Springs water so long as the water was purchased with non-state revenues. 68 University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, NEASC Draft Report: Standard Five Faculty (North Dartmouth, MA: Office of the Provost, 2009), available at: < http://www.umassd.edu/provost/neasc/standard5_11-16-09.doc>. 69 Only a non-academic middle manager would conclude that students chose to attend a college or university because of its enrollment managers or that faculty chose not to write grants because the institution lacks a sufficient number of grants compliance officers. 70 On the concept of a fictitious commodity, see Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1949). 71 Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit (New York: International Publishers, 1974), p. 30. 72 The basis of this distinction is Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin Books, 1978), Vol. 2, p. 208, who observes that "The dimensions assumed by the conversion of commodities in the hands of capitalists can naturally not transform this labour, which does not create value, but only mediates a change in the form of value, into value-creating labour … These third parties will certainly not put their labour-power at the disposal of the capitalists for the sake of their blue eyes. It is similarly immaterial for the rent collector of a landlord or the porter at a bank that their labour does not add one iota to the magnitude of the value of the rent, nor to the gold pieces carried to another bank by the sackful." 73 Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, op. cit., pp. 47–48, identifies motivation crisis as a third crisis possibility within the cultural subsystem, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to address that possibility. The intensification of the labor process in higher education, as in other sectors of the economy, is stressing the balance between work and family (and leisure). Faculty can devote less time to family and personal matters, which contributes to a motivational crisis, or faculty can reconcile the contradiction by attending to family and personal matters, which feeds back into the economic system as sub-optimal performance. 74 Henry Steck, "Corporatization of the University: Seeking Conceptual Clarity," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 585:1 (2003), pp. 66–83. 75 The author recently attended a meeting called by a UMass Dartmouth administrator to discuss the importance of websites as a source of student recruitment, where said administrator referred to students as "human ATMs." 76 Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Education (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000); Henry A. Giroux and Kostas Myrsiades, Beyond the Corporate University: Culture and Pedagogy in the New Millennium (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). 77 Marcuse, "Industrialization and Capitalism," op. cit., p. 13. 78 It is assumed that readers will empathetically recognize equivalent, or even identical processes, at their own colleges and universities. It is hoped that similar case studies will be produced by other scholars as a measure of the rationality crisis throughout the US higher education system. 79 Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation," in Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 128. 80 See Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (New York: International Publishers, 1940). Specifically, on higher education, see Clyde W. Barrow, "What is to Be Undone? Academic Efficiency and the Corporate Ideal in American Higher Education," Found Object 10 (Spring 2001), pp. 149–80; Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State, pp. 175–177; Henry A. Giroux and Kostas Myrsiades (eds), Beyond the Corporate University: Culture and Pedagogy in the New Millennium (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). 81 Clyde W. Barrow, "Trade Liberalization and the Emergence of Multinational For-Profit Colleges and Universities," Global Education 8 (2004), pp. 88–109. 82 Roberta M. Bassett, The WTO and the University: Globalization, GATS, and American Higher Education (New York: Routledge, 2006); Clyde W. Barrow, Sylvie Didou-Aupetit, and John Mallea, Globalisation, Trade Liberalisation, and Higher Education in North America: The Emergence of a New Market Under NAFTA? (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003); Clyde W. Barrow, "Globalization, Trade Liberalization, and the Higher Education Industry," in Stanley Aronowitz and Heather Gautney (eds), Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 229–254.