Student Activist Resources
 for Challenging Corporate Control of Universities

 
 

To make this site look dynamic and exciting, here's some of today's news:

So, here's my little webpage. Eventually, I'm actually going to put something useful here. Meanwhile, here are a couple of links to webpage I actually spend time working on:
Beyond those two organizations, I also work with the 180/Movement for Democracy and Education. This group, which agitates for real democracy on campuses by challenging the de facto corporate rule, is one of the best new groups to come out of the student movement in the past few years (in my more or less humble opinion).
I plan to make this page a resource for student activism. All I need is some free time, energy and creativity to make it useful.  Unfortunately, I'm short on all three just now.  But read below to find the beginnings of this page.

Fight the Corporatization of Higher Education!

What does corporatization have to do with your average student?
It's really a question of access.
When democracy fails and corporate bigwigs call the shots, students lose out.  Resources which should go to education are transfered to corporate profiteering, with the result that students pay more for less education.  And those who can't afford it are simply closed out.
Tuition is rising at over twice the rate of inflation.  The quality of education is falling.  The vision of education as a center for free thinking minds to challenging old ideas has almost faded as universities are turned into job training centers for major corporations or into lilly-white clubs accessible only to the wealthiest of families. 

Want to learn more about the corporatization of higher education?
Start with an article by Lawrence Soley: The Selling of the Academy
Then read the Nov., 1997 issue of Multinational Monitor: University, Inc.

  • Serving Two Masters: University Presidents Moonlighting on Corporate Boards by Kevin Kniffin
  • Editorial: The Corporatized University

    • Another overview article is Degrees of Influence: The Corporatization of Higher Education, from Sojourners Magazine By Kristine Jensen.
    Neils Burger makes some good points on the problems with a lack of democracy in his essay, Corporate Logic and the Authoritarian University.
    And lest you think that corporatization is only happening in the U.S., here's a pamphlet from Ontario Public Interest Research Group's Anti-Corporate Rule Action Group: The Corporate Free Campus Project.

    Here is a page of news articles and editorials about Conflicts of Interest in University Research (under construction)

    Interested in challenging corporatization and undemocratic practices at colleges and universities?
    Here are three primers on researching corporate connections to your school:

    Brief Guide to Researching Your Campus by Rich Cowan
    How to Investigate Corporate/Military Research at Your University! by the UW-Madison Alliance for Democracy
    The Pros and Cons of Corporate-University Research by the UW-Madison Alliance for Democracy
    A great resource is this book:
    Leasing the Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia, Lawrence C. Soley, South End Press, Boston, 1995.
    It describes how corporations have taken over many facets of universities, including research, curriculum priorities, investments, and trusteeships, and how universities are sacrificing education to corporate interests.

    Here are some of my own thoughts on the news of the day. (August 9th)

    Finally here is a page of useful activist links I put together a year or two ago.

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    Site created July 13, 1999. Last updated August 9, 1999. Contact me.

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