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I

VICTORIA SIT

THE EROSION
OF THE UNIVERSITY
AS A PUBLIC SPHERE
I
n the interest of handing power over to the free market
to allocate goods and services, neo-liberal states have been
privatizing, deregulating and reducing the role and size of
governments in various sectors. The university has historically been exempted from this process, based on the widely accepted notion that education is a public good with
benefits accruing to the whole community. However, with
the rise of knowledge capitalism, where information and
highly skilled human capital are the primary means of production, turning control and ownership of public universities over to the free market has become a priority for both
governments and businesses. Consequently, a comprehensive system of policies and programs is being used to reorient the goals of universities toward the market and also
to impede the ability of universities to cultivate an educated citizenry committed to democratic values. Under these
circumstances, higher education is increasingly fitting the
criteria of a private good, lending legitimacy to the calls for
less government intervention.
N E O - L I B E R A L E D U C AT I O N A L R E F O R M :
PROGRAMS AND POLICIES

Neo-liberal policies and programs regarding higher education operate to fulfill either one of two main goals.1 The
first is the privatization of public education. This is largely
achieved by legislating tax cuts, which lead to a decrease in
tax revenues and a subsequent reduction in the amount of
financial support that governments are able and willing to
provide to public universities.
With funding from all levels of government on a continual decline and no end in sight, universities have few alternatives other than turning to private sources of revenue in
order to balance their budgets. Today, the private sector
penetrates public universities in many ways such as
fundraising, the outsourcing of services to private companies, university-industry research partnerships, corporate
sponsorship, and advertising on campus spaces. Governments further assist the privatization process by increasing
the proportion of public spending directed towards student
financial aid and loans and decreasing the proportion
allocated to university operating grants. By changing the
recipients of public funding from institutions themselves to
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private individuals, governments deepen the reliance of

universities on the private sector.
The second objective is the creation of an iron cage of
economic rationality and standardization, which functions
to regulate the production of human capital in the public
education system.2 Performance indicator systems, which
assess both the responsiveness of academic programs to
the demands of the market and their cost-effectiveness,
are frequently created and implemented for the purpose
of allowing the state to effectively steer from a distance.3
The performance indicators used are usually measurable
and comparable criteria such as enrolment numbers, the
employability of graduates and costs of instruction per
capita. How well a university can demonstrate financial
accountability and fiscal health to state policy-makers
through these indicators determines the amount of public
funding it will be awarded,
As a result, universities face tremendous pressure to
internalize the cost-saving, market-oriented agenda of governments in order to improve their performance on the
indicators. University administrators are restructuring academic departments and streamlining or cutting programs
to achieve greater efficiencies, as well as re-allocating
resources to programs that attract more students and
impart graduates with marketable skills that guarantee
employment. Overall, institutions of higher education are
operating more and more like for-profit corporations, with
governance and curriculum structures also being re-organized to correspond with management principles and budget techniques adopted from private businesses.
These changes in revenue sources and administrative
processes are causes for alarm because they prompt a
transformation of the core functions of the university. The
ongoing process of privatization increases the influence of
businesses over the production and ownership of knowledge, allowing them to ensure that the products of university research have market value and serve to reproduce the
status quo. The rationalization of academic and financial
operations makes it possible for governments to bring universities objectives in line with their own goal of fulfilling
the markets demand for a flexible and highly skilled labour
force. The university is becoming more like a business, as

E N B R E F Historiquement, il est admis que les universits contribuent au

bien public. Pourtant, lavnement du capitalisme du savoir et des gouvernements no-libraux fait que tant les gouvernements que les entreprises
accordent la priorit au transfert du contrle et de la proprit des universits publiques au march libre. Un systme intgr de politiques et de programmes rorientant les buts des universits vers le march nuit la capacit des universits de poursuivre des valeurs dmocratiques. Les forces du
march vincent la recherche par la rflexion et lducation en culture
gnrale, de sorte que les universits ne peuvent esprer appuyer la fois
les activits dmocratiques et lconomie capitaliste. Cette transformation
fait quon peut maintenant poser largument que les tablissements dtudes
suprieures sont devenus un bien priv, plutt que public.

goals like making profits, training workers and contributing

to a competitive national economy take precedence over its
traditional purposes of serving as a site for a public sphere
and democratic education.
THE UNIVERSITY AS A PUBLIC SPHERE

Brian Pusser makes the argument that the higher education

process activates the public sphere, as conceptualized by
Jurgen Habermas: a space where public interaction, conversation and deliberation can take place, and where the
nature of the state and private interests can be debated and
contested.4 What makes the university an ideal site for the
generation of critical perspectives is the fact that historically it has been administered by a public board of governors.
The institutional autonomy it has enjoyed has enabled the
university to freely examine, critique and contest the
actions of the state and private entities. Through its
research and teaching functions, the university has been
able to produce knowledge for the common good and
encourage the democratic participation of educated citizens who have the capacity to engage in rational debate in
pursuit of the public good.
Knowledge for the common good is a product of reflective inquiry, a research process that investigates the major
issues impacting the wider society, such as poverty, class
divisions and the labour movement, with the goal of finding ways to improve the human condition.5 The production
of knowledge for the public good, which may question,
contradict or condemn state and business practices, rests
on the safeguarding of institutional autonomy, which in
turn preserves academic freedom. Only under these circumstances can it be guaranteed that the research undertaken is truly independent of state and market influences
and that the processes and findings of the research will
always be made public and accessible. The free circulation
of knowledge, both within the university and within the
larger community, makes possible the rational, political
debates that characterize a democratic public sphere.
The education of responsible citizens who have the
capacity to advocate for the public good is contingent upon
exposure to a liberal education, associated with the disciplines of the arts and sciences. Liberal education consists of
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an introduction to a wide range of disciplines that teach

humanistic values and concepts, such as ethics, social justice, beauty and truth, with effect of develop[ing] the
breadth, serenity, and solidity of mind.6 Liberal education
can be equated with democratic education in the sense that
it produces responsible citizens who are concerned with the
values central to democracy and who are instilled with the
ability to argue for social progress, equality and justice.
In the humanities and social sciences, students are
trained in the art of reasoned inquiry as they are exposed
to opposing ideas and concepts and learn how to analyze
their theoretical strengths and weaknesses in order to come
to an informed understanding.7 In an era where public
opinion is too easily mediated by mass media, conflicting
information, unsubstantiated arguments and propaganda,
the capacity to subject all arguments to thorough examination and recognize inconsistencies is a skill essential to a
strong, deliberative democracy. Education in the liberal arts
and sciences also provides students with an understanding
of the social processes that shape the society they live in
and invites them to theorize alternative systems, leaving
them with the confidence to engage in rational debate
about the kind of society they want to shape.8
F R O M P U B L I C G O O D T O P R I V AT E G O O D

Unfortunately, neo-liberal educational reforms are eroding

the conditions that have allowed for democratic research
and education. With privatization, state and market
influences intrude on the institutional autonomy of the
university, jeopardizing the integrity of the research being

conducted. The percentage of research projects that can

be characterized as reflective inquiries is on a decline as
public research grants increasingly favour endeavours in
science, engineering and medicine at the expense of the
research in the humanities and social sciences. Private
grants are similarly reserved for applied research projects
that result in the discovery of new facts, products or
processes that can be licensed or patented. The production
of knowledge for the public good is also hindered by
public-private partnerships in research and other forms of
privatization, which may interfere with the ability of universities to pursue more democratic priorities and deter
faculty from taking stances that oppose the status quo.
Confidentiality agreements that restrict the publication
of research and allow findings to be suppressed are not
uncommon in commercial science.9 Without open debate
and accountability, knowledge produced in universities
can easily be distorted and become counterproductive to
encouraging political contest in a public sphere.

Knowledge is being transformed

into a commodity and, just like
other goods and services, its
value is now being judged by
its exchange value in the market.
Meanwhile, the subjugation of the operations of the university to the iron cage of economic rationality is causing
the relevance and importance of liberal education to be
called into question. Knowledge is being transformed into
a commodity and, just like other goods and services, its
value is now being judged by its exchange value in the market. The market system of education devalues humanities
and social sciences in favour of academic programs that
will prepare students for the world of work and involve
professional and technical training components, opportunities for cooperative education, and access to future
employers. When outcomes are quantified and measured
on standardized performance indicators, programs such as
business and information technology fare far better than
programs like philosophy and sociology, and thus are allocated a greater proportion of resources. Instead of educating future citizens of a liberal democracy, the function of
the university is becoming the training of highly skilled
workers for a knowledge-based economy.
Using the economic models of cost-benefit analysis,
neo-liberals are making the case that the benefits of higher education now re-defined as higher economic productivity and greater individual prosperity accrue more to
the individual and private entities than to society, and thus
higher education should be a private investment.10 The
erosion of public support for higher education is thus justified by the inability of the university to produce a public
good a public sphere in the face of market pressures.
The processes of higher education are being reformed in
accordance with neo-liberal principles, and the universitys
resulting role as a mechanism for personal advancement11
is being used to legitimize those same principles.

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The erosion of public support for

higher education is justified by the
inability of the university to
produce a public good a public
sphere in the face of market
pressures.

VICTORIA SIT received her B.A. in Sociology at York University and is currently pursuing her M.A.
at the University of Western Ontario.
Notes
1 George Martell, introduction to Educations Iron Cage and Its Dismantling In The New Global Order
(Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2006).
2 Ibid., 7.
3 Larry Kuehn, The New Right Agenda and Teacher Resistance in Canadian Education in Educations
Iron Cage and Its Dismantling In The New Global Order, ed. George Martell (Ottawa: Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2006), 135.
4 Brian Pusser, Reconsidering Higher Education and the Public Good: The Role of Public Spheres in
Governance and the Public Good, ed. William G Tierney (Albany: State University of New York Press,

CONCLUSION

Neo-liberal policies and programs are opening up universities to external market forces and also giving rise to an
internal market culture, resulting in the dramatic shift in
the functions and purposes of the university. As Rosenzweig puts it, the values of the market are not the values
of the university,12 and the way that market forces have
pushed out reflective inquiry and liberal education demonstrates that the university cannot support democratic
endeavours and the capitalist economy simultaneously.
Democracy is about open, rational debate and autonomous
political contest in the interest of coming to a consensus
about and promoting the common good over individual
gains. In contrast, the system of capitalism has as its ultimate goal the exercise of individual, economic freedom.
The contradictory nature of the two philosophies makes it
impossible for the university to produce research and education that serves both systems. I

2006), 18.
5 Tom Pocklington and Allan Tupper, No Place to Learn: Why Universities Arent Working (Vancouver:
UBC Press, 2002), 6.
6 Eric Gould, The University in a Corporate Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 2.
7 Paul Axelrod, Values in Conflict; The University, the Marketplace, and the Trials of Liberal Education
(Quebec: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002), 36.
8 Gould, 181.
9 Pocklington, 147.
10 Karen M. Whitney, Lost in Transition; Governing In a Time of Privatization in Governance and the
Public Good, ed. William G Tierney (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006).
11 Gould, 55.
12 Quoted in Henry Steck, Corporatization of the University: Seeking Conceptual Clarity. Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science 585 (2003): 68.

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