NEOLIBERALISM Global neoliberalism and education and its consequences

44 Henry A. Girouxof students as customers and faculty as source of cheap labor is exactlywhat informs the current corporate understanding of the future of highereducation. This model represents the face of higher education in the ageof global capital and market fundamentalism and is less about educationthan about training, less about educating students to be informed andresponsible citizens of the world than about short-term returns on revenue,all the time providing a pseudo-academic warrant to reduce education toan extension of the corporate world. Clearly, this is a view that needs to beresisted if higher education is to retain any democratic value at all.At the same time, while compassion and concern for students andteachers wane, universities are eagerly entering into unholy alliances withbig corporations. No longer content to make their presence felt on collegecampuses through the funding of endowed chairs, academic centers,or research about business issues that eventually are used as case studies,companies such as BMW and IBM are taking their involvement withhigher education to a new level of involvement. When the German automakerBMW contributed $10 million to Clemson University in 2002 tohelp develop a $1.5 billion automotive and research center, Clemson gaveBMW an extraordinary amount of control over curriculum and hiringprocedures. Not only did BMW play a role in developing the curriculumfor the automotive graduate engineering school, but it also “drew up profilesof its ideal students; [provided] a list of professors and specialiststo interview, and even had approval rights over the school’s architecturallook” (Browning, 2006, p. C1). In addition, BMW gave Clemson’s presidenta BMW X5 to drive. In spite of Clemson’s claims that it retains itsindependence as a public university despite its close ties with BMW, candidatesfor the endowed chairs were interviewed by BMW executives and“a network council composed of BMW managers meets monthly to adviseClemson on the curriculum” (p. C6). Thomas Kurfess, the first personhired to fill a BMW endowed professorship, has no reservations about thegrowing corporatization of higher education, noting that “This is a differentmodel. It is nice to be able to show that it’s not just the name beyondthe chair . . . [and have] real ties to industry” (Jaschik, 2006a). A lawsuitcontesting the contract between BMW and Clemson made public a letterwritten by a BMW official who stated that “BMW is going to drive theentire campus” (Browning, 2006, p. C6). At least BMW is honest about itsintentions and the role it wants to play in shaping Clemson’s relationshipwith industry.While the cult of professionalism inspires fear and insecurity in academicsterrified about maintaining tenure, getting it, or for that mattersimply securing a part-time position, university educators also face theharsh lessons of financial deprivation, overburdened workloads, and theloss of power in shaping the governance process. They devote less timeto their roles either as well-informed public intellectuals or as “cosmopolitanintellectuals situated in the public sphere” (Aronowitz, 1998,