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Debt and Taxes: Can the Financial Industry Save Public Universities?
Abstract
This article examines the limitations of tuition (higher personal debt) as a mode of funding public university systems and, also, the widespread resistance to any tax increase by citizens with falling or stagnant income and growing burdens of debt. It argues that the questions of debt servitude and tax resistance must be considered together if public universities are to regain taxpayer support and become, once again, drivers of greater economic and social equality. © The Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved.
... In effect, there is a polarization of jobs, which, paradoxically, has gone hand in hand with the maintenance of demand for higher education. At the same time, the growth in 'privileged' jobs has not kept up with the number of graduates, but the anxieties created by changing labour market conditions maintains pressure to secure formal qualifications which, if they will not guarantee advantaged employment, at least provide the best opportunity of avoiding disadvantaged employment (Meister 2011;Brown, Phillip, and Lauder 2011). ...
... Public funding of higher education at state universities has thus declined in the United States and has increasingly been replaced by student fees, which, in turn have grown significantly, not simply to replace lost funding but as a means of expanding university revenues (Meister 2011;McGettigan 2013). Similar developments have occurred in the United Kingdom, albeit with a more recent origin and more decisive effect. ...
... Similar developments have occurred in the United Kingdom, albeit with a more recent origin and more decisive effect. In the United Kingdom, the recent dramatic reduction in direct public funding (by a factor of 82%) shifts the cost from current tax-payers to students via a system of debt financing in which universities increase their revenues at the cost of the students they teach, a process of financialization that began earlier in the United States (Meister 2011) and which has had earlier analogues in other sectors (Krippner 2011). ...
This article takes a historical approach to the rise and fall of the public university, relating its fate to specific developments in public policy. Particular attention will be paid to the United Kingdom since it has developed an explicit drive towards the marketization of higher education in the context of an earlier commitment to public higher education, although the latter was initially first developed in the United States. Both countries are typically characterized as liberal policy regimes and therefore the article considers how wider social structures are implicated in recent changes to higher education. In particular, the article addresses how the functions of the university and its corporate form are being transformed and relates this to wider developments in the nature of the corporation and the relation between business and citizenship (or market and democracy).
... Graduates on average earn more than non-graduates (Barr 2004). However, this differential is itself class, race and gender dependent (Egerton and Savage 1997;Green and Zhu 2007;McGettigan 2012;Meister 2011). As graduate earnings are so unequal, it is wrong, even above a repayment threshold, that graduates should re-pay the flat cost of their education in addition to general taxation, if, by general progressive taxation, they will pay more if they earn more anyway (Brown, Lauder, and Ashton 2011). ...
UK media coverage of global university league tables shows systematic bias towards the Russell Group, although also highlighting tensions within its membership. Coverage positions UK ‘elite’ institutions between US superiority and Asian ascent. Coverage claims that league table results warrant UK university funding reform. However, league table data for all years to 2012 (when major funding reforms were implemented – most radically in England) do not show either US superiority or Asian ascent. Citation bias defines media content. Text itself is structured by three discursive ‘ratchets’: highlighting US successes but never failures, rising Asian institutions but never falls, and claiming that UK results warrant the same policy irrespective of whether results improve or worsen. These combine with selective doubt by ‘elites’ who question but are not questioned. These four discursive mechanisms fabricate an illusory threat of global competition. This threat is then used to warrant neo-liberal policies at home.
... 1 Student debt has also inspired a great deal of important critical analysis, including works by Adamson (2009), McClanahan (2011), Meister (2011, and Williams (2006), among others. 2 I allude here to Berlant's (2011: 95-120) discussions of attrition. ...
This essay explores how the entrepreneurial university works and how we work in it. It examines the role of our own attachments to and investments in its sustenance as well as how we work, or might work, with, in, and against its temporalities, shaped as they have been by financialization. Our practices of investment in the academy take place in an institutional and political economic context in which entrepreneurialism has become a dominant “best practice,” a compromised condition of possibility that is supported by our future-oriented, high-risk speculative efforts. Recognizing that a number of theorists suggest a turn to present-oriented lateral movement and relationality, as a tactic for not only survival but also intervention in relation to entrepreneurialized capitalism, this essay explores what these spatiotemporal tactics might look like as an institutional practice.
... 3. The exception in the USA is California and its Master Plan for public higher education which was also first initiated in the 1960s and is now widely judged to be dismantled. See Meister (2011). 4. For a recent discussion of Clark Kerr's legacy see the special issue of Social Science History 36(4), 2012. 5. Brown and Casson (2012) argue that the introduction of higher overseas student fees in 1980 ...
Public higher education has a long history, with its growth associated with mass higher education and the extension of a social right to education from secondary schooling to university education. Following the rise in student numbers since the 1970s, the aspiration to higher education has been universalized, although opportunities remain structured by social background. This paper looks at changing policies for higher education in the UK and the emergence of a neoliberal knowledge regime. This subordinates higher education to the market and shifts the burden of paying for degree courses onto students. It seeks to stratify institutions and extend the role of for-profit providers. From a role in the amelioration of social inequality, universities are now asked to participate actively in the widening inequalities associated with a neoliberal global market order.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have—in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens—to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
The politics of knowledge making in the humanities and humanistic social sciences were profoundly impacted by the social, political, and cultural movements of the 1960s. Disciplinary foundations, including the subjects and objects of knowledge, as well as the locations of knowledge, were questioned and shaken. The hegemony of "the West" was subject to sustained critique. New disciplinary and sub-disciplinary formations arose, including cultural studies, feminist studies, and various "identity"-based studies, and these were institutionalized in various ways in various locations. One such project that arose in the late 1980s, the World Literature and Cultural Studies program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, not only sought to intervene in disciplinary character, but also experimented with new approaches to pedagogy and intellectual authority. The fiscal crisis in US universities tempered many of these experiments, and over the course of those two decades universities increasingly adapted themselves to a more purely economic logic, greatly narrowing the imaginative and liberatory field of possibility that the earlier trajectory had unleashed. In the wake of massive student protests in recent years, however, new pedagogical practices are once more on the agenda. Greater attention to and participation in these developments might prove to be a useful response to the current crisis.
During a recent half-sabbatical, I held a fellowship at the National Humanities Centre in North Carolina. The NHC—in the Research Triangle Park between University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University in Durham, and North Carolina State University in Raleigh—is a humanities outpost in a beautiful pine forest within a research and development hub that stretches for miles. Across the road from its entrance is the controlled access gateway to one of GlaxoSmithKline's two enormous pharmaceutical research facilities in the Park. Many other r&d enterprises in biotech, high tech, and other industries fill the RTP, mostly hidden by the trees, many invisible at the end of long restricted-access drives. This is the face of knowledge production in the twenty-first century, one might say: concealed in its locations as well as in the dissemination of the research it carries out; accountable to CEOs and shareholders, not to the public; invisibly intermeshed with university applied research facilities, tech transfer offices, and university educational facilities that "socialize" the costs not only of considerable research but also of worker training to "subsidize private profits," as David Shultz notes (np). The NHC was established in 1978, and it provides a stimulating environment for humanistic research, with highly functional and efficient administrative and library infrastructure supporting the work of its annual group of fellows. Despite massive cuts in government support for the humanities in the U.S., the centre has managed to survive for over thirty years, supported by the active and agile fundraising of its director, advisory board, development office staff, and benefactors. The fundraisers have increasingly turned to private foundations and philanthropists, reflecting the shift in fundraising sources and patterns treated in a Globe and Mail series beginning 29 October 2011 with "Save the world inc." (Saunders). The NHC's physical infrastructure is aging, and one can only hope that it will still be providing an infrastructure for humanities scholars thirty years from now.
The current NHC Director, Geoffrey Galt Harpham, is a vigorous advocate for the humanities, evident in his most recent book, The Humanities and the Dream of America, and a companion article ("From Eternity to Here") in a 2011 special issue of Representations on the corporate university. In these twinned publications, Harpham traces the American history of the humanities within a changing political, cultural, and financial environment much as Daniel Coleman and Smaro Kamboureli track the history of the humanities since the Massey report (1949-51) along with the rise of "research capitalism" in Canada in the introduction to their collection Retooling the Humanities: The Culture of Research in Canadian Universities (1-39). The parallels between the studies are striking, despite certain key differences between the Canadian and American trajectories: most notably the American triumphalism of the vision of achieving a "stronger, freer social order" through investing in universities in the 1947 Truman Report, Higher Education and American Democracy ("From Eternity" 45), and the more embattled nationalist emphasis on developing an "autonomous culture" in response to the "'American invasion'" in the Massey report (1949-51) (Coleman and Kamboureli 14). The similarities are not surprising, given long-established cross-border business and capital networks now becoming more deeply integrated through the negotiations for a common North American security perimeter. Coleman and Kamboureli point out that the launch, in 1983, of the Canadian Corporate Higher Education Forum (C-CHEF) at Concordia University created an entity identified as a "'sister organization of the Business-Higher Education Forum in the USA.'" C-CHEF was established to put "'major Canadian public and private corporations in contact with the presidents, principals, and rectors of Canadian universities'" and to promote "'mutual understanding'" between university and industry: a goal it thought might be better achieved "by working in camera" (21).
Like Harpham, Coleman and Kamboureli emphasize that there was "no 'golden age' when the university purveyed neutral and universally beneficial knowledge" (17). Nevertheless, their parallel studies analyze "critical moments" (Coleman and Kamboureli's terms) in the movement away from emphasis in the Massey and Truman reports on the education of citizens as a national good, as well as the integral role of the humanities in that endeavour. For example, Coleman...
The precarity of the humanities today is symptomatic of the broader reassessment of the value and utility of the public university. This helps explain the prevalent role of humanists in the recent struggles for public education, but it now also demands from humanists a new level of institutional engagement and reflexivity about the conditions of their labor. REPRESENTATIONS 116. Fall 2011 (C) The Regents of the University of California. ISSN 0734-6018, electronic ISSN 1533-855X, pages 1-18. All rights reserved. Direct requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content to the University of California Press at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI:10.1525/rep.2011.116.1.1.
The current student debt burden is an unsustainable outcome of the government’s abdication of responsibility to secure access to higher education. Andrew Ross analyses the factors behind the funding crisis and suggests some ways to reestablish an affordable education system.
Martin McKee and David Stuckler watch aghast as American examples are followed to destroy the European model of the welfare state
Christmas is a time to count our blessings, reflecting how they came to be. For people living in England this reflection is more relevant than ever, as the coalition government paves the way for the demise of the welfare state. This statement will be seen by many as reckless scaremongering. The welfare state, not only in Britain but also throughout western Europe, has proved extremely resilient.1 How could any government bring about such a fundamental change?
Over Normal by Stanley Donwood/www.slowlydownward.com
To answer this question it is necessary to go back to the 1940s, when Sir William Beveridge called for a national fight against the five “giant evils” of want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness.2 His call secured support from across the political spectrum. Although he sat in the House of Commons as a Liberal, his plans were implemented by a Labour government, and continued under successive Conservative ones.3 The reasons for such wide ranging support varied but, for many ordinary people, the fundamental role of the welfare state was to give them security should their world collapse around them.
There were good reasons to seek security. The British people had just emerged from a war that had shown that, regardless of how high they were on the social ladder, they could fall to the bottom in an instant. The death and destruction of war were not the only threats; a serious illness could blight a family’s prospects. People wanted to be sure that they would not be on their own if disaster struck, and they were prepared to ensure this through taxes and insurance contributions. They were, literally, “all in it together,” accepting rationing …
What's new for 2008? From 2007 to 2008, average real income per family declined dramatically by 9.9% (Table 1), 1 the largest single year drop since the Great Depression. Average real income for the top percentile fell even faster (19.7 percent decline, Table 1), which lead to a decrease in the top percentile income share from 23.5 to 20.9 percent (Figure 2). Average real income for the bottom 99% also fell sharply by 6.9%, also by far the largest year-to-year decline since the Great Depression. The sharp fall in top incomes is explained primarily by the halving of realized capital gains in 2008 (relative to 2007) due to the stock-market crash. Indeed, including realized capital gains, the top decile income share dropped from 49.7% in 2007 to 48.2% in 2008 while excluding realized capital gains, the top decile income share actually slightly increased from 45.5% in 2007 to 45.6% in 2008 (Figure 1). Perhaps surprisingly, the fall in top income shares from 2007 to 2008 is less than during the 2001 recession, in part because the Great recession has hit bottom 90% incomes much harder than the 2001 recession (Table 1), and in part because upper incomes excluding realized capital gains have resisted relatively well during the first year of the Great Recession. What will happen to income concentration next? The Great Recession has obviously continued into 2009 and average incomes will fall further in 2009. What will happen to top income shares in 2009? The stock market and corporate profits partial recovery in 2009 should 1 This decline is much larger than the real official GDP growth of 0.4% for several reasons. First, our income measure includes realized capital gains while realized capital gains are not part of GDP. Our average real income measure excluding capital gains decreased by 5.2% (instead of 9.9%). Second, the total number of US families increased by 1.7% from 2007 to 2008 mechanically reducing income growth per family relative to aggregate income growth. Third, from 2007 to 2008, the real GDP deflator increased by only 2.1% while the Consumer Price Index increased by 3.8% (those indexes move closely in the long-run but with some discrepancies in the short-run). Finally, nominal GDP increased by 2.6% while the total market nominal income aggregate we use increased only by 0.1% (when excluding realized capital gains), in part because government transfers (excluded from our measure) grew much faster than market income.
Forty-nine of the U.S. states have balanced budget requirements, and every state acts as though bound by such constraints. These constraints create fiscal volatility - the states must either cut spending or raise taxes during economic downturns, while doing the opposite during upturns. This paper discusses how states should cope with fiscal volatility on both the levels of ordinary politics and of institutional-design policy. On the level of ordinary politics, the paper applies principles of risk allocation theory to conclude that states should primarily adjust the rates of broad-based taxes as their economies cycle, rather than fluctuating public spending. States should raise their tax rates during economic downturns and lower them during periods of growth. On the level of institutional-design policy, the key question is how we define terms like “tax cuts” and “tax hikes.” By adopting a new baseline for defining these terms, states can increase the likelihood of using tax rate adjustments to cope with fiscal volatility rather than (more harmful) spending fluctuations.
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.
The View from 2020: How Universities Came Back
- Christopher For
- Newfield
For the essential data see Christopher Newfield, " The View from 2020: How Universities Came Back, " Journal of Academic Freedom 2 (2011): 3–4, 7–8, http:// www.academicfreedomjournal.org/VolumeTwo/Newfield.pdf.
The Value of Higher Education Made Literal Fish's article is a critique of the Browne Commission
- Stanley Fish
Stanley Fish, " The Value of Higher Education Made Literal, " New York Times, December 13, 2010. Fish's article is a critique of the Browne Commission Report on Higher Education in the UK.
The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century Some of Shiller's arguments derive from the seminal work of Kenneth Arrow on sec-ondary markets that share the risk of changing income distributions. See, e.g
- Robert Shiller
and Robert Shiller, The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century (Princeton, 2003). Some of Shiller's arguments derive from the seminal work of Kenneth Arrow on sec-ondary markets that share the risk of changing income distributions. See, e.g., Kenneth Joseph Arrow, Essays on the Theory of Risk-Bearing (Amsterdam, 1974).
New Data Show that California's Income Gaps Con-tinue to Widen Policy Points, California Budget Project
- California Budget
California Budget Project, " New Data Show that California's Income Gaps Con-tinue to Widen, " Policy Points, California Budget Project, June 2009, http:// www.cbp.org/pdfs/2009/0906_pp_IncomeGaps.pdf.
Embarrassment of Riches Caixin Online
- Andy Xie
Andy Xie, " Embarrassment of Riches, " Caixin Online, February 1, 2011, http:// english.caing.com/2011-02-01/100223434.html.
Why is UC Borrowing 7 Million to Fund the On-Line Edu-cation Pilot Project? " Remaking the University
- See Wendy
- Brown
See Wendy Brown, " Why is UC Borrowing 7 Million to Fund the On-Line Edu-cation Pilot Project? " Remaking the University, http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-is-uc-borrowing-7-million-to-fund.html.
0: E-Learning in the Digital World, " in this issue. For the changing role of humanities in making the university experience count as an " education, " see Geoffrey Harpham From Eternity to Here: Shrinkage in American Thinking About Higher Education
- Suzanne Guerlac
Suzanne Guerlac, " Humanities 2.0: E-Learning in the Digital World, " in this issue. For the changing role of humanities in making the university experience count as an " education, " see Geoffrey Harpham, " From Eternity to Here: Shrinkage in American Thinking About Higher Education, " in this issue.
The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History—and How We Can Fight Back
- Alan Michael
Alan Michael Collinge, The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History—and How We Can Fight Back (Boston, 2009).
Subprime Opportunity
- Lynch
- Engle
- Cruz
Lynch, Engle, and Cruz, " Subprime Opportunity. "
A Closer Look at UC's 'Tuition-Free Golden Past' and Who's Financially Hurting Today The Berkeley Bloga-closer-look-at-the-tuition -free-golden-past-of-the-university-of-california-and-whos-financially-hurting -today
- Bob Jacobsen
Bob Jacobsen, " A Closer Look at UC's 'Tuition-Free Golden Past' and Who's Financially Hurting Today, " March 31, 2010, The Berkeley Blog, UC Berkeley Newscenter, http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/03/31/a-closer-look-at-the-tuition -free-golden-past-of-the-university-of-california-and-whos-financially-hurting -today/.