Recent Events Indicate
a Rise in Higher Education
Currently, there have been events that have taken place at two
large North American universities. These events portray that we
have entered a new era in higher education, one that is rapidly
drawing the halls of academe into the age of automation.
In mid- summer the UCLA administration launched its historic
"Instructional Enhancement Initiative" requiring computer web sites
for all of its arts and sciences courses by the start of the Fall
term, the first time that a major university has made mandatory the
use of computer telecommunications technology in the delivery of
higher education. In addition, UCLA has spawned its own for-profit
company, headed by a former UCLA vice chancellor, to peddle online
education.
Recently, in Toronto, the full-time faculty of York University,
Canada's third largest, ended an historic two-month strike having
secured for the first time anywhere formal contractual protection
against precisely the kind of administrative action being taken by
UCLA. Significantly, at both UCLA and York, the presumably
cyber-happy students have given clear indication that they are not
exactly enthusiastic about the prospect of a high-tech academic
future, recommending against the Initiative at UCLA and at York
lending their support to striking faculty and launching their own
independent investigation of the commercial, pedagogical, and
ethical implications of online educational technology. This fall the
student handbook distributed annually to all students by the York
Federation of Students contained a warning about the dangers of
online education.
At the outset of this new age of higher education, the lines have
already been drawn in the struggle that will ultimately determine
its shape. On the one hand, university administrators and their
myriad commercial partners, on the other those who constitute the
core relation of education: students and teachers. At UCLA, the
administration launched their Initiative during the summer when many
professors are away and there was little possibility of faculty
oversight or governance. UCLA administrators also went ahead with
its Initiative, which is funded by a new compulsory student fee,
despite the formal student recommendation against it.
Similarly, the initiatives of the York administration in the
deployment of computer technology in education were taken without
faculty oversight and deliberation much less student involvement.
What is driving this headlong rush to implement new technology with
so little regard for deliberation of the pedagogical and economic
costs and at the risk of student and faculty alienation and
opposition? A short answer might be the fear of getting left behind,
the incessant pressures of progress. However, the universities are
not simply undergoing a technological transformation. Beneath that
change, and camouflaged by it, lies another: the commercialization
of higher education.
The identification of the campus as a significant site of capital
accumulation, has created a change in social perception which has
resulted in the systematic conversion of intellectual activity into
intellectual capital and, hence, intellectual property.
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