Where Thought Is the Currency.(Brief Article)

A year ago, I read an article about two scientists who patented their dyslexia therapy (in partnership with their universities), raised venture capital, and formed a company called "Scientific Learning Inc." (New York Times, 14 September 1999). I wondered: For close to 30 years, I have been on the faculty of Teachers College, the School of Education for Columbia University; I have conducted research and have taught this research and the traditions supporting it; I have tried to educate both new researchers and professionals who will use research; I have never thought that any of this could be sold in a mall. Have I been wrong?

As I closed the newspaper a year ago, I shook my head and moved on. I was sure that academics would immediately recognize the multiple threats to critical independence entailed in transforming universities into what a wag might call "commercities." I am now sure that this is not a time for trusting academic common sense. It is a time for resisting ideological choices masquerading as historical necessity. There are some who entertain the notion that their university might become a division of Disney or Microsoft. This might seem far-fetched, but we should pay attention and take a stand. Columbia University announced recently that it had created "Morningside Ventures" to "compete in the commercial marketplace for learning" by building "strategic alliances with businesses"; this is "a for-profit company" needed "to compete effectively and productively." The first instance of this is an agreement between the Graduate School of Business and UNext.com to deliver courses in finances, accounting, and marketing. UNext.com describes itself as "a group of business and academic professionals with a shared vision of the future of distance learning. We are dedicated to building the first-ever online education enterprise focused on high quality education as it is created and taught in respected and distinguished educational institutions" (from their web site). They tout their links with business schools at Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, and the London School of Economics. They talk about their concern with "the individual" even though most of their contracts so far have been with large corporations. They do not mention in any prominent place who their investors are, perhaps because a major one is Michael Milken.

The brave new world of commercial teaching is with us and it cannot be ignored. Even such relatively small institutions as Teachers College are desperately trying to get on the band-wagon (or "the train leaving the station" as another popular metaphor goes), investing time and resources because "the mode of production and consumption of knowledge is undergoing changes no less dramatic than the changes from a pre-industrial to industrial society," to quote another top administrator at Columbia. The tone is messianic and apocalyptic. The future is here and the consequences are obvious: the move from university to commercity is inevitable.

There has been surprisingly little public debate about all this--particularly about the inevitability of the transformation. History is never linear or foreordained. But public acts have now been taken. It is time to mount a vigorous challenge. We are talking here about our collective future and what we bequeath to future faculty members and students.

Arguments affirming the inevitability of the full transformation of the university into a commercity start with a thumbnail history of higher education emphasizing its material ties to buildings and people that limit its reach and impact. In the virtual electronic space, these limits evaporate as it becomes possible to reach thousands upon thousands. Two futures are then imagined: one that envisions freedom and the other, toll-takers. The second future is the one that concerns me here. This is the future in which "the search for knowledge" becomes "knowledge production" and when the distinction between university and business disappears. This, some understand, must mean the end of academic freedom and tenure--after all, employees of Microsoft or Disney do not enjoy either. Why should academics claim these? Are they not clear impediments to efficient production?

One would hope that the new commercities are merely additions to the world of schooling. If so, then there is not much cause for alarm. After all, private, for-profit, technical schools already exist. All large corporations have training departments for their employees. But, we are told, the commercity is not just a new institution within an ever more complex social landscape. It replaces the university because it performs its functions more efficiently. This argument only holds if one narrows one's understanding of what these functions are. It only holds if one radically discounts the value for the polity at large of spaces optimized for critical investigation free from the constraints of church, state, and market.

My statement is organized in four theses: