Higher Education and Disaster Capitalism in the Age of COVID-19

Foreword 7 Preface 9 A View from Within 17 References 22 Acknowledgments 25 Contents 26 Chapter 1: Introduction: Disaster Capitalism Comes to Higher Education 28 The Eye of the Storm 28 Disaster Capitalism: A Primer 36 Critiquing Neoliberalism in the Context of Higher Education 46 Chapter 2: A Newer Version of an Old Beast: The Higher Education Disaster Before COVID 55 Higher Education, Industry and Profit from the American Colonial Era to the Gilded Age 56 Eisenhower Thought to Add “Academic” in “Military Industrial Complex”: The Interwar Years 61 The Whole World (Was Not) Watching: 1960s–1980s 62 Fire Wall Erodes and Academics Fiddle While Rome Burns: 1980s–1990s 65 Giving Up the Ghost at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century 68 The Great Recession as a Disaster Booster Shot 71 In the Thick of the Currents 76 The Chapters Remaining 78 Chapter 3: Bringing the F.U.D to Thin the Ranks 82 Cuts Cometh Before the Windfall 86 Not Quite Exigent but Close Enough to RIF 93 Grabbing Tenure While They’re At It 103 Never Miss a Chance to “Train Up” Faculty 106 Bringing the F.U.D. to Union Bust 108 Corporate Consultants Behind the COVID Panic Curtain 110 Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing Sometimes Cry Wolf: COVID Losses Not as Predicted 115 Heroes of Their Own Recovery Stories 117 “It Is and It Isn’t the Pandemic”: Speaking out of Two Sides of Administrative Mouths 118 Turns Out the Campus Rich Still Got Richer: Top Hats for Presidents and Coaches 120 We Have Been Here Before Redux 123 A Wicked Web They Weave 125 Chapter 4: “Cut to Grow” and the Spider Web of the New Global TEMPS 130 Remember the GEI Titans: From Chicago Boys to Davos Men 133 The Philanthro-Capitalists Go Back to School 138 Thinking Bigger with Think Tanks 140 Consultocracy and a Millennial Army of Zuckerbergers 144 COVID “Growth Opportunities” for Higher Education 148 ReKoching in COVID 148 Getting Mega: Managing and Mandating COVID Mergers and Acquisitions 155 Growth of Entanglements: A Snapshot of C2i 164 Chapter 5: Laundering Coercion: Restart Planning, “Pandemic Task Forces,” and the Dismantling of Shared Governance 169 Shared Governance Revisited: The Fritz Doctrine 169 The Role of Pandemic Task Forces on Campuses: Things Are Not What they Seem 174 Restart Planning and Invisible Hands: State and Local Limits and Opportunities 176 Chapter 6: Campuses Respond to COVID: “Pandemia” Not Making the Science Grades 179 To Test or Not to Test: That Is the Question 182 A Game of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Who Wins in a Fight for What’s Right? 186 Chapter 7: Online Instruction and the “Hyflex Teaching ‘Shock Doctrine’” 190 Digital Transformations or the End of Higher Education as We Know It 190 For the Love of Online Learning: Online Learning Before the Pandemic, Now, and After 193 The “Hyflex Shock Doctrine” and the True Cost of Online Learning 196 Chapter 8: Ghosts of Intended Consequences: How OPMs’ Stealth Business Model is Redefining Higher Education 204 EdTech Grows Thanks to an Edu-Political Apparatus: And Vice Versa 205 “No, We Are Not an OPM”: On How Snake Oil Salesmen Came to Plunder the Commons (Case 1) 211 On how the “virgin snow” melts “other people’s money” or What do OPMs do 2U? (Case 2) 217 In Search of Accountability 221 Chapter 9: Aspiring Diploma Mills Don’t Stop for Pandemics 226 “Degrees of Deception” 226 The Infrastructure of Deception: The Graduate Degree Market 229 The “Microcredentialing Craze” Grows During the Pandemic 236 Chapter 10: Tuition Increases Also Don’t Stop for Pandemics: Student Debt Realities in the Age of COVID-19 242 The Context: How Did Student Loans Become a Crisis? 243 Pandemic and Student Debt: Where Are We Right Now? 247 The American Dream Illusion: Student Debt and Tuition Increase Consequences 252 Chapter 11: Sacrificial Lambs 256 Heads in Beds: Students at the Mercy of Housing Contracts 257 The Games Continue: Student-Athletes Take the Hit 262 CARES to Grab: Siphoning Relief from Public Higher Education 269 Calling Off the Search for Truth and Meaning: Sacrificing the Curriculum 277 From Silence of the Lambs to Lions at the Gate 284 Chapter 12: Resisting the Spider Web of Pandemic Opportunism 288 Students Demand Justice 289 Campaigning for COVID Relief 290 College Athlete Labor Movement Accelerates 292 Students Broaden the Platform 293 Academic Workers Demand Justice 295 An Academic Labor Reawakening 295 Coalitions, Solidarities, and Organizing for the Common Good 301 Campus Coalitions 302 National Coalitions 304 Organizing for the Common Good 306 Chapter 13: After Shock: Our Stories, Our Future 310 The University of Ruin: What the COVID-19 Disaster Has Taught Us 312 A Different Kind of Disaster Opportunity 319 Call Things by Their Right Names 320 Be Traitors to the Myth, Keepers of the Dream: Identifying as Workers 321 Education or Horse-racing?: Choose Your Side 323 Stop the Bleeding 325 In the Space In Between: Restructure, Redistribute, and Repair 327 Mourn the Loss and Begin Again: This Time, for the People 329 Organize, Organize, Organize to Build a New Kind of Unionism 333 Organize to Build a New Economy 336 Rising From The Rubble 338 References 341 Index 392 This book reveals the layered effects of the corporatization of higher education, situated within the phenomenon of disaster capitalism. The authors argue that higher education administrators have seized on the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to advance a corporate higher education agenda consistent with the principles of disaster capitalism. This crisis deeply impacts what and how students in the United States learn, who gets to learn, and the very mission of the academy. Chapters also address neoliberalism as a policy statement that has reshaped and continues to shape higher education in the United States and in much of Western societies.