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Foundations of Corporatization:
Lessons from the Community College
Juli A. Jones
San Diego Mesa College
| A CENTRAL PARADOX in the history of American higher education has been that we want a liberal arts education that is also somehow practical. Thus Thomas Jefferson, in founding the University of Virginia, advocated "an useful American education."1 The American emphasis on utility and practicality in education was expanded over the course of the twentieth century, particularly in the development of community colleges with their dual mission of liberal arts education and vocational training. Because of their mission and their dependence on local funding and community requirements, two-year colleges have been especially vulnerable to the pressures of corporatization. While the effects of corporatization are not always recognized at the four-year level, university colleagues need only look to the community college experience to find many examples of problems that they will inevitably share. |
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Today, most college students receive their history education, particularly their survey courses, at community colleges. We provide the foundation for many students who become history majors, and the only history education that many citizens will ever have. In my state of California, the community college system is the largest system of higher education in the world. However, the funding crisis that fuels corporatization is particularly acute at the community college level; our funding is significantly below national levels, below our state university system levels, and below our K-12 rates. Yet our transfer students have similar or better grade point averages than traditional four-year students. At the same time, funding and admissions challenges for universities have forced growing numbers of students to community colleges where funding has continued to decline.2 |
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The adoption of business models in higher education has been a particular challenge for community colleges. Students demand education for economic success and quick progress through convenient programs, not education for citizenship. The focus on efficiency and productivity is also shared by college administrators. In a 1994 survey of two-year faculty conducted by the Organization of American Historians, most respondents reported that their administrators insisted on greater productivity through raising class size and promoting student retention at any cost, including lowered academic standards.3 |
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While there are many problems resulting from business model education, I believe that the most significant community college concerns regarding corporatization are 1) the use of contingent faculty; 2) outcomes assessment initiatives; 3) pressure to base curriculum and other decisions on a "students as customers" model; and 4) faculty governance. |
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1) The use of contingent faculty is particularly problematic at community colleges, where a 2006 American Historical Association report found that 68% of community college historians were employed there as part-time faculty. Despite a California state mandate to achieve a goal of 75% full-time faculty, colleges around the state, as elsewhere throughout the nation, have been unable to make substantive improvements. Inability to replace retired faculty, loss of tenure track lines, and lack of funding for hiring generally are all contributing factors. Colleges therefore must rely on overwhelmed adjuncts, some of them graduate students at local universities. These undervalued and underpaid members of our profession are often dedicated, excellent teachers with good history training who are doing quality work in spite of everything. Their poor pay requires many to take overloaded schedules with no job security, without basic support such as office space, pay for office hours, library or internet privileges, and of course without benefits. They may face a lack of academic freedom or pressure to inflate grades or water down curriculum in a business model environment where the customer (student) is always right.4 |
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The reliance on part-time faculty is part of a deliberate strategy to lower costs, regardless of frequent justifications of such hiring practices on grounds of "flexibility." While it is true that some departments and programs need to hire specialists and need the flexibility of hiring adjuncts, the overwhelming majority of adjuncts at community colleges are teaching the standard survey courses. Such use of contingent faculty splits the professoriate, making it harder to unite and giving administrators more control over academic affairs, hiring, programs, class size, workloads, and schedules. Furthermore, this trend impacts full-time faculty to a very significant degree. Because of fewer full-time and tenure track hires, full-time faculty must assume an increased administrative and service workload; some must also take on overload sections. Colleges can keep full-time compensation low since they can always hire part-time faculty from the huge pool of contingent labor.5 This situation is detrimental to faculty, students, and the quality of education provided at our institutions. |
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2) The recent emphasis on outcomes assessment initiatives demonstrates the devaluation of the educational experience. This emphasis is based on the demand for accountability and the goal is to produce "student learning outcomes" through an assessment process usually measured by quantitative means. The push for measurable learning outcomes stems from accrediting agencies and legislatures who now place more reliance on "outcomes" than on traditional standards such as quality of faculty, full-time/part-time ratio, soundness of policy, governance, and finances. Ironically, these demands for accountability seldom acknowledge inadequate funding or the challenges of student diversity, especially at the community college level. As a result of outcomes assessment drives at many institutions, faculty stand to lose control over syllabi, course requirements, and evaluation in clear violations of academic freedom.6 |
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3) Along with these trends goes the pressure to base curriculum and other educational decisions on the "student as customer" model, a model particularly popular at community colleges identified as open-door institutions. This business-oriented model also draws support from those concerned with revenue loss and the need to create flexible, efficient programs tied to market demand. One of the most significant trends in the drive to meet customer demand is the push to develop distance/online education. This format allows colleges to do more for less (and with less). Efficiency can be obtained through the use of technology, fewer faculty, and reliance on adjuncts. In the business model environment, it is not surprising that college administrators seek to develop profitable online courses while controlling intellectual property rights to course materials. They say that convenience is better for students than ongoing personal contact with faculty and that instructors are merely "content providers," easily interchangeable. Of course such a philosophy encourages students to see grades and degrees as commodities and to devalue the process of education, development of analytical skills, and the traditional liberal arts.7 |
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We also see the use of business model management through the selection of business leaders as college board members and presidents, growing organization and administration size, and greater reliance on management in academic affairs. Furthermore, the push for revenue and results leads to demands on administrators to eliminate academic programs and courses with low enrollments in order to invest in developing more popular programs. These programs (usually vocational/technical) are most often staffed by contingent faculty.8 |
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4) Finally, corporatization at community colleges can be seen clearly in conflicts over faculty governance. In the business model, faculty are commodities to be used in pursuit of flexible, "results driven" education. Administrators are managers who will see that business goals are achieved; their decisions make shared governance with faculty unnecessary. The reliance on part-time and overburdened full-time faculty and lack of tenure track hires facilitate arguments for needing managerial college governance with full-time efficient managers who can devote themselves to achieving administrative goals. In this environment, faculty-elected chairs are replaced by business-oriented managers with few to no academic credentials or experience.9 |
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Are there solutions to the problems illuminated by the community college experience? Many observers note the importance of labor union activism, both on the local and state levels. Others, including Gerda Lerner, advocate an ongoing continuing education effort to inform the public and government leaders about the dangers and pitfalls of corporatization activity. James Andrews has argued that professors must take the lead on their own campuses and through their professional organizations.10 As former chair of the AHA-OAH Joint Committee on Part-time Employment, I am proud to say that both organizations have passed resolutions setting standards for part-time employment and calling for revitalization of tenure. Our resolutions are being used by department chairs nationwide in lobbying administrators for improved working conditions and history education. Most important, we must continue to work with history colleagues at all levels of higher education and with our professional organizations to reaffirm the meaning and measure of a liberal arts education. |
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Notes
1. Thomas Jefferson to John Bannister, Jr., 15 October 1785, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 8, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 636.
2. Linda Collins, "Shared Governance in the California Community Colleges," Academe 88, no. 4 (July 2002), Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.
3. Charles A. Zappia, "Academic Professionalism and the Business Model in Education: Reflections of a Community College Historian," The History Teacher 33, no. 1 (November 1999): 57, 62–63; Nadine Ishitani Hata, "Introduction" in Nadine Ishitani Hata, ed., Community College Historians in the United States (Bloomington, IN: Organization of American Historians, 1999), 19.
4. Robert B. Townshend, "Data on the Corporatization of Higher Education," American Historical Association, unpublished document, December, 2006; Collins, "Shared Governance"; Jennifer Washburn, University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 203–204.
5. Washburn, University, Inc., 204, 206–207; Collins, "Shared Governance"; John S. Levin, "Faculty in the U.S. Community College: Corporate Labour," Management in Education 19, Issue 3, (2005): 9.
6. Collins, "Shared Governance."
7. Washburn, University, Inc., 220; Andrews, "Corporatization"; Levin, "Faculty," 8, 10; Zappia, "Academic Professionalism," 58.
8. Washburn, University, Inc., 205–206; James G. Andrews, "How Can We Resist Corporatization," Academe 92, No. 3 (May-June 2006), ERIC, EBSCOhost.
9. Andrews, "Corporatization"; Zappia, "Academic Professionalism," 62; Washburn, University, Inc., 205.
10. Andrews, "Corporatization."
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