Last Week a Time Magazine poll of about 100 university presidents revealed that almost all of them believe that the Trump Administration is “at war with higher education.” From the attacks on DEI, student activism, and free speech, it’s easy to see why. All of this is also happening in the context of the increasing corporatization of higher education, in which administrators and politicians exert control through bureaucratizing higher education. 

To talk about the corporate university under Trump, Douglas Haynes is joined by Becky Dolhinow, Mike Gavin, and David Schultz. They discuss the history of public higher education in the US, ponzi austerity, the unrealized dream of inclusion for women, people of color, and other marginalized groups within the academy, and the flurry of institutional neutrality statements that came out of student-led pro-Palestine protests on college campuses last year.

Schultz lays out what he calls the two models of higher education: the Dewey model in which universities exist to educate the next generation of citizens to the Horace Mann model in which schools exist to produce the next generation of workers. And the Mann model has been in ascendance since the ‘70s. 

Dolhinow says that in the age of the corporate university, schools work very hard to protect their image by marketing themselves on “top 10” lists and promoting their ROI to potential students. She says colleges find student activism a threat to their image and so they track and crack down on student protest.

We haven’t fully addressed the reality that white supremacy undergirds higher education and that the decades-long challenge to DEI has only become full-fledged under Trump. He says we need to reimagine higher education so that colleges and universities provide education and equity to their students.

Dr. Rebecca Dolhinow is Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Cal State University-Fullerton and the author of the article, “Activism on the Corporate Campus.” 

Dr. Michael Gavin is the President of Delta College and the leader of a national coalition of college presidents and higher education leaders called Education for All that is resisting anti-DEI legislation.

Dr. David Schultz is Hamline University Distinguished Professor of Political Science in St. Paul Minnesota. He is the author of more than 45 books on various aspects of American politics and law. He has also written on the rise of corporate universities for more than twenty years. 

Remix of a George Mason University building (CC BY 2.0), a student protest sign (CC BY 2.0), and a graph of student loan debt (CC BY-SA 4.0). 

The post The Corporate University under the Trump Administration appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.