There are 1.5 trillion dollars in outstanding student debt. It is not an accident. University professors and faculty are treated like industrial labor inputs. Administrators increase in numbers and payroll to the detriment of the universities ability to meet student needs but in sync with neoliberal and business management ideology.
State governments are intentionally under-funding their universities, blaming deficits that they created by under taxing big corporations and the wealthy.
Macek cites Nancy MacLean's book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, and the multi-decade plotting of major corporations , the Koch brothers and like to take control of State houses in order to push through a backward, reactionary and sociopathic agenda. He lays out his thesis at the beginning and then offers some thoughts on fighting back through direct actions, as was seen in 2012 in Chicago and recently in West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma.
Steve Macek , Professor in Communication and Media Studies at North Central College ,and a member of the Executive Committee of the Illinois American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
Open University of the Left Steve Macek - shmacek@noctrl.edu
Since the late 1960âs, higher education has been under attack from the right as a breeding ground for leftist of various stripes. During this time, weâve witnessed one wave after another of such attacks.
It is not a coincidence that this reactionary public relations campaign against higher education has coincided with the casualization of much of the university workforce, a political attack on the rights of faculty unions and dramatic cuts to government financial support for higher education. Though not as visible or well publicized as the rightâs ideological attacks on the supposed âliberalismâ of the academy, the decline in state support for post-secondary education, the corresponding rise in average tuition and student debt, and the increasing âadjunctificationâ of college instruction have also been part of a carefully coordinated campaign, which is funded and lead by many of the same right-wing organizations and wealthy individuals.
See interview of Chris Hedges on new book âAmerica: The Farewell Tour,â by journalist, Hugh Hamilton for a more pessimistic tabulation of the corporate coup that the education crisis is but one aspect of and where it can lead. https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/438556-america-book-conversation-economy/
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