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Knowledge for Sale

The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education

Part of Infrastructures

Author Lawrence Busch
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Paperback
$25.00 US
The MIT Press
On sale Sep 19, 2023 | 176 Pages | 9780262549264
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How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this.

A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach.

The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the needs of the market. The market-influenced changes to higher education include shifting the cost of education from the state to the individual, turning education from a public good to a private good subject to consumer demand; redefining higher education as a search for the highest-paying job; and turning scholarly research into a competition based on metrics including number of citations and value of grants. Students, administrators, and scholars have begun to think of themselves as economic actors rather than seekers of knowledge.

Arguing for active resistance to this takeover, Busch urges us to burst the neoliberal bubble, to imagine a future not dictated by the market, a future in which there is a more educated citizenry and in which the old dichotomies—market and state, nature and culture, and equality and liberty—break down. In this future, universities value learning and not training, scholarship grapples with society's most pressing problems rather than quick fixes for corporate interests, and democracy is enriched by its educated and engaged citizens.
Preface to the English Language Edition xi
Acknowledgments xix
The Market for Knowledge 1
Crises 3
Climate change 3
Rising and more volatile food prices 4
Water shortages 5
Rising energy costs 5
Widespread obesity 6
Financial crises 7

Liberalisms and Neoliberalisms 11
Human knowledge is always limited 15
An irrefutable logical model can transcend the limits of human knowledge 15
Institutions must be reshaped so as to fit the logical model 17
The ability of States to intervene in markets must be limited 17
Social justice as both a concept and a set of policies is rejected as a mirage 18
Selves are to be reconstructed as isolated and entrepreneurial 18

Beyond Neoliberalisms 21
The self is social 21
Each institution promotes certain kinds of selves and rejects other kinds 22
People, institutions, and things make society together 23
Communities of scholars and invisible colleges are essential to the creation of knowledge 24
Markets are forms of governance 24
Educated citizens are essential for democracy; without democracy, liberty is illusory 26
Addressing the crises that confront us requires that we imagine, debate, and enact new futures 26

Administration 31
Changing roles and increasing numbers of administrators 32
Shift from academics to managers as administrators 39
Creation of administrative careers 39
Growth in salaries of top administrators 39
Growth in advertising and marketing of universities and research institutes 40
Growth in numbers of part-time and temporary (adjunct) faculty
41 Changing sources of university and research institute financial support 42
Universities by the numbers 43

Education 49
From public good to private good 49
Shift from public support for higher education to individual support 52
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) 55
A decline in foreign language instruction 56
Education solely as a means of maximizing one’s salary 57
Growth in testing and standardizing of knowledge 58
Plagiarism 61
Dumbing down higher education 62

Research 65
Counting publications 65
Counting citations 67
Checking prestige of journals 71
Downgrading of books and book chapters 74
Competing for grants 75
Greater incidence of fraud 77
Ghost and honorary authorship 78
Forced citations by journal editors 79
Rising costs of journals as a few publishers corner the market 80
Conflicts of interest in research 81
Changes in intellectual property rights 84

Public Engagement and Extension 91
Decline in public support 92
Growth of private extension-like services 93
Wider gap between research and extension 93
Decline of public interest research 94
Rise of strongly ideological think tanks 94

Consequences 97
Higher education is being rapidly altered 97
Research is more and more dominated by immediate (often economic) ends 98
Increasing corporate domination of the research enterprise 99
Discouraging innovation and high-risk research 100
The university as a growth machine 101
Isolated scholars and organizational solidarity 101

Can Our Universities and Research Institutes Address These Crises? 107
What kinds of universities and research institutes do we want? 107
How can we grapple with the wicked problems facing us? 108

Remembrance of Things Future: Some Specific Proposals for Change 109
Make universities and research institutes (more) secure places 111
Make universities and research institutes into models of democracy, deliberation, and discourse 116
Help build more sustainable societies 118
Better integrate research and education 122
Recognize the importance of slow scholarship 122
Bring the arts and humanities back in 124
Teach each other and various publics 125
Perform differently 126

Conclusion: Toward a Plural World 131
Notes 135
References 139
Lawrence Busch is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University and the author of Standards: Recipes for Reality (MIT Press).
Lawrence Busch View titles by Lawrence Busch

About

How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this.

A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach.

The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the needs of the market. The market-influenced changes to higher education include shifting the cost of education from the state to the individual, turning education from a public good to a private good subject to consumer demand; redefining higher education as a search for the highest-paying job; and turning scholarly research into a competition based on metrics including number of citations and value of grants. Students, administrators, and scholars have begun to think of themselves as economic actors rather than seekers of knowledge.

Arguing for active resistance to this takeover, Busch urges us to burst the neoliberal bubble, to imagine a future not dictated by the market, a future in which there is a more educated citizenry and in which the old dichotomies—market and state, nature and culture, and equality and liberty—break down. In this future, universities value learning and not training, scholarship grapples with society's most pressing problems rather than quick fixes for corporate interests, and democracy is enriched by its educated and engaged citizens.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Language Edition xi
Acknowledgments xix
The Market for Knowledge 1
Crises 3
Climate change 3
Rising and more volatile food prices 4
Water shortages 5
Rising energy costs 5
Widespread obesity 6
Financial crises 7

Liberalisms and Neoliberalisms 11
Human knowledge is always limited 15
An irrefutable logical model can transcend the limits of human knowledge 15
Institutions must be reshaped so as to fit the logical model 17
The ability of States to intervene in markets must be limited 17
Social justice as both a concept and a set of policies is rejected as a mirage 18
Selves are to be reconstructed as isolated and entrepreneurial 18

Beyond Neoliberalisms 21
The self is social 21
Each institution promotes certain kinds of selves and rejects other kinds 22
People, institutions, and things make society together 23
Communities of scholars and invisible colleges are essential to the creation of knowledge 24
Markets are forms of governance 24
Educated citizens are essential for democracy; without democracy, liberty is illusory 26
Addressing the crises that confront us requires that we imagine, debate, and enact new futures 26

Administration 31
Changing roles and increasing numbers of administrators 32
Shift from academics to managers as administrators 39
Creation of administrative careers 39
Growth in salaries of top administrators 39
Growth in advertising and marketing of universities and research institutes 40
Growth in numbers of part-time and temporary (adjunct) faculty
41 Changing sources of university and research institute financial support 42
Universities by the numbers 43

Education 49
From public good to private good 49
Shift from public support for higher education to individual support 52
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) 55
A decline in foreign language instruction 56
Education solely as a means of maximizing one’s salary 57
Growth in testing and standardizing of knowledge 58
Plagiarism 61
Dumbing down higher education 62

Research 65
Counting publications 65
Counting citations 67
Checking prestige of journals 71
Downgrading of books and book chapters 74
Competing for grants 75
Greater incidence of fraud 77
Ghost and honorary authorship 78
Forced citations by journal editors 79
Rising costs of journals as a few publishers corner the market 80
Conflicts of interest in research 81
Changes in intellectual property rights 84

Public Engagement and Extension 91
Decline in public support 92
Growth of private extension-like services 93
Wider gap between research and extension 93
Decline of public interest research 94
Rise of strongly ideological think tanks 94

Consequences 97
Higher education is being rapidly altered 97
Research is more and more dominated by immediate (often economic) ends 98
Increasing corporate domination of the research enterprise 99
Discouraging innovation and high-risk research 100
The university as a growth machine 101
Isolated scholars and organizational solidarity 101

Can Our Universities and Research Institutes Address These Crises? 107
What kinds of universities and research institutes do we want? 107
How can we grapple with the wicked problems facing us? 108

Remembrance of Things Future: Some Specific Proposals for Change 109
Make universities and research institutes (more) secure places 111
Make universities and research institutes into models of democracy, deliberation, and discourse 116
Help build more sustainable societies 118
Better integrate research and education 122
Recognize the importance of slow scholarship 122
Bring the arts and humanities back in 124
Teach each other and various publics 125
Perform differently 126

Conclusion: Toward a Plural World 131
Notes 135
References 139

Author

Lawrence Busch is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University and the author of Standards: Recipes for Reality (MIT Press).
Lawrence Busch View titles by Lawrence Busch

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