How College Became a Commodity
Market-based thinking is at the heart of how academe thinks of itself. That’s a travesty.
[...] "The neoliberal economists won: education became a commodity, and a large swath of the reshaping of higher education that economists like Buchanan and Devletoglou championed took place. But to their intellectual descendants, the economic disciplining of higher ed has not gone far enough: Federal and state governments still “waste” precious taxpayer dollars on a dysfunctional and possibly even pointless enterprise structured around “bad incentives,” clinging to economically “worthless” subjects, and defined by the charade-like pretense of learning." [...]
David Sessions is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Boston College. Correction (1/15/2020, 5:30 p.m.): A previous version of this essay suggested that Cracks in the Ivory Tower does not consider the cheap labor that doctoral programs provide. The text has been updated to clarify that it does. For the original article, visit: https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/how-college-became-a-commodity