Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement [Paperback]

Benjamin Johnson (Editor), Patrick Kavanagh (Editor), Kevin Mattson (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415934842 | ISBN-13: 978-0415934848 | Publication Date: February 2, 2003 | Edition: 1

Steal This University explores the paradox of academic labor. Universities do not exist to generate a profit from capital investment, yet contemporary universities are increasingly using corporations as their model for internal organization. While the media, politicians, business leaders and the general public all seem to share a remarkable consensus that higher education is indispensable to the future of nations and individuals alike, within academia bitter conflicts brew over the shape of tomorrow's universities. Contributors to the volume range from the star academic to the disgruntled adjunct and each bring a unique perspective to the discussion on the academy's over-reliance on adjuncts and teaching assistants, the debate over tenure and to the valiant efforts to organize unions and win rights.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Anyone with an interest in the future of American higher education will benefit from reading this collection of provocative and often brilliant essays. There are lucid and cogent analyses of the excessive and often corrupt influence of corporations on curricula and research, profiteering by academic entrepreneurs, the imposition of a demonstrably flawed corporate structure on the academy, and the overuse and abuse of poorly paid contingent faculty. The volume concludes with a call to recapture the university for the good of our students and our society..
–Jane Buck, Ph.D., National President, American Association of University Professors

The strength of the book is in the very readable essays of those authors who are working as or are organizing graduate asssistants, adjunct faculty, or tenure-track faculty. It is an accessible anthology for undergraduates as well as graduate students....this volume has a great deal to offer..
–Journal of Higher Education

About the Author

Benjamin Johnson is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. Patrick Kavanagh is a Staff Representative for the Communication Workers of America in Newark, NJ. Kevin Mattson is Associate Professor of History at Ohio University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (February 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415934842
• ISBN-13: 978-0415934848
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,705,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a reader too reactionary, October 6, 2004

By 

B. Oelberg - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement (Paperback)

a reader, you are clearly ignorant of the realities of adjuncting and grad school, and why it is not acceptable for universities to make hefty profits off of their students and then turn around and pay adjuncts and grad students sub-poverty wages. The class I'm teaching right now at a state college pays $2800. I'd have to teach ten classes a year to make $28k! Four and four is the 'normal' load...lets see *you* teach four classes and then come home and read a little critical theory so you can finish your Phd. What a reader sees as 'back to the sixties' and hostility is really a struggle by working people to make a living doing something they believe in, and what they believe in is being gutted of learning content and franchised and commercialized by corporations. Yes it's true, a reader, and you shouldn't make light of the struggle of working people and intellectuals to fight for the power of education. Pendejo.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a cogent and clear analysis of the university from the academic worker's p.o.v., December 31, 2006

By 

Stephamm "Stephanie Barbe Hammer" (LA and Riverside, CA and Whidbey Island WA,USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement (Paperback)

Of the books I have read thus far on the corporatization of the university, this is by far the clearest and most direct. Steal this University has some poignant essays in it, in particular the one by the MFA artist who has spent years as a freeway flier in Southern California. Also very enlightening is the essay on the "merit system" for tenure line and tenured profs, and not only, how unfair it is (which I, as a UC employee already know), but actually how expensive and inefficient it is to run.

What I think is missing from the book (and from others like it) and what another reviewer has commented upon is the student perspective and the other odd market forces at work, as well as the ongoing mystery as to why higher education gets more and more expensive for the student, while the pay-scale for everyone other than top administrators seems frozen or going down.

The final issues seem crucial to get answers to, if we are going to have any chance of improving the status quo.

4.0 out of 5 stars Who Are the Perpetrators?, December 10, 2006

By 

K. C. Huseonica "Karen & Art Huseonica" (Maryland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement (Paperback)

This collection of essays is well organized to outline the key higher education issues of corporatization, organizing, what it's like to be a non-tenured faculty member unsure of their next contract.

Casual labor is here to stay, but solutions to current problems are few and far between. Tenure battles, personal stories of anguish, and barriers to unionization provide the reader a thorough and actually entertaining escape from their own problems resulting from the increased use of contingent faculty.

Although it appears as that the University of Phoenix is being singled out as the great perpetrator, the fact the students have a choice is overlooked. There are more University of Phoenix style schools out there, some of which are being organized with tremendous entrepreneurial funding sources and will probably eclipse Phoenix.

The diverse array of assembled writers and editors adds variety and perspective to this book.