CULT 320, Fall 2014

1. CULT 320:
Globalization and Culture
Kara Heitz, 10/28/2014

2. “The university is a critical institution or it is nothing”
- Stuart Hall
"There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either
functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of
generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to
it, or it becomes the 'practice of freedom', the means by which men and
women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the
transformation of their world."
—Richard Shaull
“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be
created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In
that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to
demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that
allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond
boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.”
- bell hooks

3. Questions:
• What are some of the recent trends in higher education in
the U.S. discussed in the readings (for example, tuition
costs, student loans, faculty jobs, administrative costs, role
of corporations, etc.)? How do these trends impact you?
• How do changes in universities and colleges discussed in
the readings relate to neoliberalism? What is meant by the
“neoliberalization” and “WalMart-ization” of the
university?
• What does Giroux believe is this purpose of higher
education? Why should people get college degrees
according to him? Why are you getting a college degree?

4. Individual Writing Exercise
• What are some of the reason that people go
to college?
• Why are you getting a college degree?
• What should be the purpose of college?

5. Recent Trends in Higher Education
• Rising costs of college
• Massive student debt
• Casualization of faculty
• Significant state funding cuts
• Rising administrative costs

15. FACULTY CATEGORIES IN U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (2012-2013)
US Average GMU (%) GMU (#s)
2783
Full-time 50% 44% 1226
Part-time 50% 56% 1557
Tentured or tenure-track 24% 32.5% 903
Contingent (includes GAs) 76% 67.5% 1880
Full-time; tenured or tenure track 32% 898
Full-time; contingent 12% 328
Part-time; tenured or tenure-track < 1% 5
Part time; contingent (includes GAs) 56.0% 1552

17. Average Full-Time Faculty Salaries in the U.S.
(2012-2013)
• All full-time professors, instructors, lecturers (average)
• All institutions - $84,303
• Private institutions - $99, 771
• Public institutions - $80, 578

19. http://chronicle.com/article/2013-14-AAUP-Faculty-Salary/145679/#id=table

20. Average Adjunct Pay
• Adjunct Averages across U.S. (2012-2013):
• $2700 per class (3 credit hours)
• ~$25,000 per year (27 credit hours)
• GMU (2014): $2511-$3948 per class
• NVCC (2013): $1869-$2715 per class

27. “… higher education, in its search for funding, has adopted the organizational
trappings of medium-sized or large corporations. University presidents are now
viewed as CEOs, faculty as entrepreneurs, and students as consumers. In some
universities, college deans are shifting their focus beyond the campus in order to take
on … fund-raising, strategic planning, and partner-seeking duties … Academic
leadership is now defined in part through the ability to partner with corporate donors.
In fact, deans are increasingly viewed as the heads of complex businesses, and their
job performance is rated according to their fundraising capacity” (Giroux, pg. 59)
“The corporatization of schooling and the commodification of knowledge over the last
few decades have done more than make universities into adjuncts of corporate power.
Hey have produced a culture of critical illiteracy and further undermined the
conditions necessary to enable students to become truly engaged, political agents.
The value of knowledge is now linked to a crude instrumentalism, and the only mode
of education that seems to matter is that which enthusiastically endorses learning
marketable skills, embracing a survival-of-the-fittest ethic, and defining the good life
solely through accumulation and disposal of the latest consumer goods. Academic
knowledge has been stripped of its value as a social good. To be relevant, and
therefore adequately funded, knowledge has to justify itself in markets terms or
simply perish” (Giroux, 69)

31. Neoliberalism & Higher Education
• Instrument view of education
– State: workforce development, economic growth, global
competitiveness
– Individual: job training, make money
• The university operating as a corporation
– More decision-making power to “management” (administrators)
– Students as consumers/customers
– Emphasis on fundraising (esp. wealthy individual and corporate
donations)
– High administrative salaries
• Cut costs in areas not central to this mission (“austerity”)
– Massive across the board cuts
– Less money on instruction & faculty
– Cuts to “non-essential” departments (esp. humanities)
– Fewer scholarships, esp. need-based

32. What should be the purpose of
higher education?
• University’s role in democracy?
• Critical citizenship
• Critical pedagogy