Higher education stands as a monolith in a dynamic, rapidly evolving society in which access to information has been democratized through technological innovation while much of academia clings to traditional conventions of closed sources of information. The way people work and play have changed, but the way students are expected to learn, for the most part, has not.

2011 Annual Academic Report, “Why Higher Education Must Change”

The ACTA ‘s blog presents a concise version of  the corporate sector’s agenda in public higher education.  In fact, they represent corporate power as influential trustees and alumni. They are usually coy about their 1% bona fides, but their last “Must Reads” post points to what it calls the “Phoenix challenge” to higher education embodied in that company’s “2011 Annual Academic Report.”  The report begins with a neat summary of the ideological and historical overlap between neo-liberalism and academia.

Corporate america is hardly the bastion of democracy, either in the workplace or in its political advocacy, or an exemplar of administrative transparency and open information.  The public sector can be at least as good at reducing costs, if not better, through administrative efficiency.  Still, the report illustrates how the academic desire to promote education outside of its traditional social boundaries, faced with an entrenched bureaucratic culture, turned to technology and a market ideology for a rationale.

It’s a conveniently self-justifying rhetoric for greed.  It also suggests that the roots of the for-profit sector lie deep in the failures and frustrations of (public) U.S. academic culture.  If the last three decades has taught us anything, however, it’s that the unregulated market has only reproduced and exacerbated the very problems it was said to solve.  The for-profits are making education more accessible but also duplicating its high expenses,  student debt, opaque administration and antiquated labor practices.

I was happy to see that the SEIU is taking the lead on organizing in the for-profit university system, although they are a very long way from unionizing any online faculty. Still, both their website, For Profit U, and a recent online seminar, summarized in both Truth Out’s ‘”Good for Wall Street – Bad for Students’: SEIU Hosts Webinar on Predatory, Proprietary Colleges and Universities” and Pittsburgh’s Post Gazette’s “Service union’s criticism rankles EDMC” are a breath of fresh air. I think, though, that they don’t understand the industry.

The Truth Out summary of the for-profit industry’s roots in neo-liberalism, and its use of unethical recruitment practices is right on target. I also think that SEIU has good reason to target EDMC which, as its recent layoff process suggests, seems to have a profoundly paranoid corporate culture.  (Full disclosure: I was recently laid off from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online, which is owned by EDMC.) The tone of the SEIU website seems a little off-putting to me, but the real issue is how the SEIU is portraying teachers.

The seminar participants underplay the role of traditional academics in the for-profit schools, which were largely founded by professors and academics with established careers in the public higher education system. This is a profoundly conservative strain in academia that’s not often discussed.  More importantly,  none of the participants seems to realize that the for-profit system is full of teachers that are, in effect, refugees from thirty years of decline in professional conditions. They are not the enemy of the public good.

The public and for-profit  higher education systems share in the erosion of tenure, the loss of academic freedom of speech and full-time employment. The for-profits, in a sense, are the creation of academics and administrators who felt that the destruction of the old system was going too slowly.  The for profit system is a direct development of  the long-standing desire, largely realized in the public system, to take power away from teachers. The focus on students is laudatory, but the SEIU also needs to focus on the teachers.