Disaster Capitalism Comes to Higher Ed

Naomi Klein, author of “No Logo,” and “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” can be likened to the canaries that miners kept in cages down in the deep shaft mines. These canaries would sound alarms when the air would start to be thick with gases, before it was fatal for the miners allowing them to evacuate the mine. In Klein’s latest book, “Shock Doctrine,” she discusses the idea of disaster capitalism, and how has been implemented in many countries using “Shock Doctrine” on the heels of a war, a coup, and a natural disaster.

The idea of shock doctrine was first articulated by Milton Friedman, noted economist and who created the “Chicago School of Economics.” Friedman said that in order to impose economic programs that would be in normal times, not popular with the people, a crisis can be used to impose these programs. Friedman was an advocate that everything should be a component of the market place, all services, and products should be dictated by the market. This includes those things that are normally considered to be in the public domain, like education, transportation and safety. He was for the elimination of public schools and their portfolio turned over to private schools. He also said that there should be no regulation of trade, with no tariffs at all, a world where goods and services flowed back and forth over borders without any inhibiting factors. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it tends to create more poverty for those on the bottom and pushing all of the wealth created by it to the top 1%. We have seen the implications for NAFTA on our manufacturing sector in this country, as more and more jobs are shipped to low wage destinations offshore. Now the idea of Shock Doctrine has come home to public higher education, because of the plunging economy and the lessening of tax revenues by the state.

In the last year or so, for the first time, the impact of decreased revenues on higher education from the state is now being noticed by the public. This is happening even though tuition and fees have been spiking for the last 19 years in Ohio. Now, we are facing more cuts in the SSI, or the State Share of Instruction revenue stream from the state to the Universities. When I was a freshman in the fall of 1973 at BGSU, my tuition for up to 20 hours was $225.00. The state at that time was paying over 70% of the cost of public higher education. Now tuition will increase another 3.5% in the spring, we will be soon at a tuition level of $10,000 if these increases continue. Along with the tuition we have seen increases in fees, some for capital projects like the “Stroh,” others for services like the “shuttle fee.” The transference of educational costs from the public to the private person is a component of the “Shock Doctrine,” because of the ‘budget’ these transfers are explained as necessary to the idea of higher education.

Now we are seeing other components of “Shock” with the announcement last summer of mandatory furlough days for those who make $50,000 or more, now the news of a planned voluntary “University Employee Separation Program” (UESP) for faculty and staff in fiscal year of 2010-2011. This plan is different from many “buyouts” offered to public employees in that it does not offer any “retirement credit” but only money that will be paid out over an undetermined period of time. It is also different from other “buyouts,” that while it seems to be aimed at older faculty and staff, but is also available to those employees with as little of 15 years. This is similar to those programs in the private sector that offer only money with the idea of cutting the overall number of jobs. The other components of this voluntary UESP being, faculty who retire and take the buyout can only teach part-time for the year immediately after the separation. They can only be “rehired” after a ten year period has passed.

Logically, this could make more room for the NTT (non tenure track) professors to become tenured. But using the concepts of the Shock Doctrine, this is an opportunity to decrease the numbers of tenured and tenure track faculty and to increase the numbers of NTT and adjunct faculty, which will lower costs of instruction. Also it could have a chilling impact on academic freedom. In other words, faculty could become more cautious in what they say or write. We could see the evaluation of certain academic programs strictly on the basis of FTE, for some programs and departments, this would be a disaster. This is all part of the drive to make public higher education into a corporate model.

We are already part of the way there with a corporate influenced structure of administration that has been empowered by the state to do what it takes to cut costs; and to further commodify education at a price the market will bear. The ideal corporate model of higher education is a system that caters exclusively to the demands of the market place, and places no financial burden on them. Take a look around, “the canaries in the mine shaft” are sounding the alarm and we are running out of time.