January 26
GUEST: David Schultz, Professor
of Political Science at Hamline University and Minnesota
School of Law, three-time Fulbright scholar, and author of
numerous books quoted in The NY Times, Washington Post and The
Economist, talks about how colleges became corporatized and
lost their soul.
Free
Speech and Academic Freedom in the American Corporate
University
Are colleges in the US really non-profits? Or do they hoard their money and pay their presidents like rich CEOs?
Do colleges profit by paying faculty and staff less each year? Are college teaching adjuncts little more than Uber drivers when it comes to wages and benefits? David Schultz gives us some fascinating statistics about our neoliberal colleges and universities.
The biggest problem is that our country spends so much on weapons (at least half of the entire federal budget) that there is little left over for higher education. Other developed economies haven't turned their institutions of higher learning into neoliberal corporate entities. Who pays, because our college are only affordable to the wealthy? Why the students do, over decades of paying off loans for their college years. What is going on is debt servitude.
Canadian colleges charge about $5,130 per year for all tuition and fees. That is relatively high compared to EU countries. Other developed democracies just don't drive their students into debt. The only country that does this is the US Empire, which has been spending all its funds on military invasions and occupations ever since the Second World War.
The costs our empire are staggering. No universal healthcare, no daycare, no higher education, no nursing homes. And then there are the other costs: The elimination of free speech on campuses, and the sending of our young men and women abroad to kill and be killed in our senseless wars. Our neoliberal system has been broken for some time. It has long ago given up on being "of the people, by the people, and for the people," and our institutions of higher learning have paid the price.
