[Corporatization] has saddled us with a higher-education model that is both expensive to run and difficult to reform as a result of its focus on status, its view of students as customers, and its growing reliance on top-down administration.
Not surprisingly, those administrators who occupy the highest ranks in our college and university bureaucracies are those who have professionally benefited the most from corporatization.
I've worked in higher ed for decades, and I can say (anecdotally obviously) that the number one negative change agent was the switch from simply calling them students to 'consumers' or 'customers' depending on which institution you're examining. Many campuses, in my experience, have even just boiled it down to credit hours, instead of even talking about the human people involved.
It has devalued the real purposes of education, and has had the most draining impact on higher education culture that I have ever experienced. It has led to more PR and Marketing dollars, and less dollars for professional development for people who actually impact student success.
[Corporatization] has saddled us with a higher-education model that is both expensive to run and difficult to reform as a result of its focus on status, its view of students as customers, and its growing reliance on top-down administration.
Not surprisingly, those administrators who occupy the highest ranks in our college and university bureaucracies are those who have professionally benefited the most from corporatization.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-corporatization-...