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Is it possible to educate yourself? Weigh in on self-teaching in the Education area of Table Talk

Confessions of a stair mistress
By Elizabeth B. Krieger
While other students scarf chips, sling back beers and study, a growing tribe of compulsive exercisers pursues the perfect workout
(01/04/98)

Crisis in English
By Christopher Shea
When the Modern Language Association convenes this year, highbrow literary questions will take a back seat to a thorny debate about the ongoing dearth of jobs
(12/24/98)

Zen and the art of employee maintenance
By Chris Colin
What is the sound of one hand filing? Or, can the Buddha help the temp workers of the world?
(12/23/98)

The Marxist Wall Street couldn't ignore
By Annalee Newitz
How did an English doctoral dropout like Doug Henwood become the first anti-capitalist pundit for the CNN crowd?
(12/21/98)

Slaves to the game
By Isaac Zaur
Once the violent world of video games seeped into our friendships, there was no going back
(12/18/98)

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Ostensibly as a result of such fears, the Business-Higher Education Forum, an arm of the nonprofit American Council of Education, is promoting more face-time between businesses and universities. Judy Irwin, acting director of the forum, sees the new corporate interest in universities as a kind of survival instinct on the part of corporations as well. Many companies are dissatisfied with today's graduates, she maintains. If colleges aren't preparing students for the work force, the knowledge chasm that results could harm American businesses.

"Businesses need to have college graduates who are coming into their employment of a certain caliber. They are not going to change the curricula, they may make suggestions because businesses are increasingly concerned that the college graduates they are getting are technologically competent, but don't have good communications skills, can't do analytical thinking, can't work in teams and don't have the same work ethic as they have seen in prior years," Irwin says.

Irwin's own eloquence notwithstanding, her emphasis on economic competitiveness, training and research and development partnerships is disheartening, and even antithetical to the notion that education is to better oneself and, in turn, the greater society. When those who claim to support students start recasting graduates as products, and when universities become the middleman whose job is to deliver the products in four years, the message sent is undeniable. Businesses are, in Irwin's words, "suggesting" that they want the "critical thinking" of liberal arts education -- but will they embrace critical thinking that becomes explicitly anti-corporate? Unfortunately, institutions of higher education seem to be increasingly willing to take suggestions from corporations, especially when it involves what universities used to call dollars, but now call "revenue enhancement."

For all the bridge-building doublespeak offered by Irwin, some companies involved say there are serious risks as they scurry to find niches in the academy (and the academy scurries to make room for them). Cybermark, a high-tech business in Tallahassee, Fla., develops smart cards, student identification cards that can also provide banking, long-distance, library, dining hall and, in the case of Florida State University, credit card services. Some schools pay for the smart cards' installation, which can range from $100,000 to $1 million, by contracting out portions of the card. The card seems promising, a fairly unobtrusive way of offering students convenient service, reducing theft and fraud and saving money.

"There is a risk if administrators don't take great care and responsibility in these relationships," says Chris Corum, a spokesman for Cybermark. "Where it can be successful is where the card is looked at first as a student service and second from a financial perspective. If it is just a business or financial decision, then probably there are serious risks, because the institution risks selling its soul to help a budget crisis."

Too late, says David Noble, a professor of history at York College in Ontario. Higher education has already moved on to purely financial considerations -- especially with the burgeoning of research and development deals that are changing the face of intellectual property. Since control, ownership and copyright of the fruits of academic labor have entered the marketplace, Noble argues that the losers are faculty, students and the ideals of disinterested inquiry. If that inquiry carries a corporate logo, the time-honored claim of university independence is compromised.

Noble, who has written two scathing articles about the shotgun wedding of higher education and corporations (the first, "Digital Diploma Mill," was commissioned by the Nation, but spiked), says schools have left behind education in the constant chase for dollars. The commodification of university research is nothing new, helped by deep corporate pockets and the University-Small Business Patents Procedure Act (commonly known as the Dole-Bayh act), a 1980 law allowing universities to sell the findings of government-sponsored research. But Nobel warns that university instruction -- the very thing that makes college college -- is following the same route.

Prepaid professorships -- known as endowed chairs -- are increasingly being funded by corporations that have a stake in the outcome of the research. At Oregon State, the Nor'Wester Brewing Company sponsors the "Nor'Wester Professorship in Fermentation Science" in the Department of Food Science and Technology. In the same vein, the Carlson Travel Tour and Hospitality Professorship is designated to research issues of interest to the travel industry at the University of Minnesota.

Sometimes corporations attempt to influence who holds endowed professorships. When United Parcel Service and the University of Washington were in negotiations in 1996 for a $1.5 million endowed chair in occupational orthopedics, UPS proposed Stanley J. Bigos, a researcher who studied back-injury claims against the Boeing Company in 1991. Bigos claims that it was not working conditions -- i.e., lifting heavy objects -- that had fueled those claims. For a company whose workers lift constantly, Bigos was UPS's dream candidate. But negotiations broke down when Washington said Bigos would have to be approved through normal channels. A year later, UPS dropped the proposal, saying it was no longer interested.

"The commercialization of the university signals the end of the university," Noble says. "The commercial ethos will obliterate the heart and soul of the institution."

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Turning the campus into a company town