Customer Reviews

Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a very interesting book on a very important subject: the reduced funding (over multiple decades) for public higher education. All seem to agree that what was once seen as a public good is now seen, largely, as a private good. In general, those with college degrees make more money than those without such degrees. Thus, they pay more taxes. Hence it should be simple common sense for states to support their institutions of higher education because the end result (assuming that the graduates remain within the state) will be enhanced tax revenue which will offset the cost of education. This is a no-risk, sure-thing proposition. And yet, public support for public higher education has diminished. One straightforward answer to this situation is that if, indeed, a college degree will lead to manifestly higher income there is no need for the taxpayer to subsidize this process at former levels. Individuals will be willing to pay for this private good and the states will get the enhanced tax revenue anyway. The wide availability of student loans makes this an even easier decision.

In the absence of approximately one-third of their former state support, what are public universities to do? They do whatever they can. They gin up elaborate extension programs; they establish cash-cow professional programs. At the top publics they mimic the activities of top privates. They raise tuition. They seek a greater number of (usually out-of-state) `full-payers'. They conduct major development campaigns. They build incubators to facilitate tech transfer and acquire patent income. They `commercialize' in multiple ways. They achieve budgetary flexibility by hiring part-time or long-term, non-tenure track faculty. This enables them to react to enrollment spikes and enrollment dips without challenging the institution of indefinite tenure.

Some of the steps that have been taken have simply brought public higher education into line with its own possibilities. Some, however, have been detrimental to education. Commercialization in particular has, in some of its forms, been very detrimental to both public and private higher education.

Christopher Newfield's take on all of this is one involving a large, master narrative. Essentially, he argues that the reduction in resources can be traced to a coordinated plan to reduce the opportunities of a multiracial middle class in order to cement a conservative hegemony which would be threatened by the attitudes and impulses of that middle class. That middle class is imagined to have benefited in particular by new curricular additions within the postwar university, especially the culture-based studies within the arts and humanities. The conservative attack has functioned like a neutron bomb--destroying cultural study but not harming technocratic content (thus hitting the arts and humanities, but saving the sciences, engineering and the professional schools).

This is a fascinating argument and the author pursues it by looking at certain issues, events, books, individuals and legislation in great detail. Those examinations constitute the book's greatest strengths. It is up to the reader to decide just how important those individual items (e.g. the Clinton withdrawal of the Lani Guinier DOJ nomination) are, in the larger scheme of things.

It is certainly the case that there are other large narratives that one might consider. For example, with the vast expansion in college attendance we have seen a comparable expansion of student interest in vocational education. The (comparable) reduced interest in the arts and humanities may not be because of the attacks on their curricula by Lynn Cheney or David Horowitz but rather because of the desire by first-generation college students to see their degrees yield high-paying jobs. The fact that reduced support for public education has led to higher tuition is a part of this picture. With costs rising students do not have the luxury of pursuing high-risk fields, e.g. in the arts, or low-income fields, e.g. public interest law. At the same time, the vast expansion of federal loans has enabled institutions (including the top, already-wealthy ones) to raise their tuitions. Students who could afford to study at public institutions take out large loans and study at distinguished private institutions. Their loan burdens thus `reduce' their choices. Harvard's largest undergraduate major in the college is Economics, not some area of cultural studies, and many of its students aspire to Wall Street wealth, despite the fact that Harvard is very well supported indeed and its faculty is not known for its overweening conservatism.

Readers can decide for themselves whether or not the conservative assaults on certain aspects of public education were sufficiently coordinated and sufficiently effective to actually do the damage that Newfield claims. There is a sense of conspiracy here that will not ring true for all. One would wonder, e.g., why certain undeniably-blue states (in the northeast, e.g.) have not been great supporters of public education. Have they been overwhelmed by the arguments of Dinesh D'Souza and Roger Kimball?

It is also the case that the author fails to distinguish between political conservatives and academic conservatives. When I entered the profession in the late 60's I was surrounded by individuals who voted either democrat or socialist but who were rigidly meritocratic in their professional lives. These individuals were just as sceptical of growing `60's' elements in the university as the political conservatives. Along that same line, the point is often made that academics tend to be politically liberal but personally conservative. Newfield's research does indeed suggest that when faculty interest is at stake, faculty behavior can align very nicely with the deleterious aspects of commercialization which he and others (including political conservatives) deplore.

Newfield writes of `cultural warriors' and their assault on the multiracial middle class students, who were enlivened and enriched by cultural studies and aided by affirmative action, but the picture that he draws is incomplete. He attacks Allan Bloom, of course (dwelling on his thought rather than his lifestyle) but fails to mention E. D. Hirsch at all, despite the fact that Hirsch's writings on cultural literacy were seen as central elements of the culture wars. Hirsch, of course, is politically liberal, but believes that the erosion of coherent curricula has both limited our ability to share a common conversation and, in particular, reduced the opportunities for minorities, immigrants and the poor to achieve the kind of education which elites already possess. (Raymond Chandler once said that he sought a classical education to protect himself from those who already had one.) Amorphous curricula and, indeed, lowered expectations, grade inflation and the view of students as consumers (part of the `60's' legacy) have not necessarily enhanced the opportunities of the weak, particularly in a global economy with far greater competition.

Along that line, there is no mention of the studies of Richard Sander of affirmative action. These are potentially very consequential and come from a colleague within the UC system, at UCLA. Sander, another confirmed, traditional liberal, found that the admission of minority students to `reach' law schools served to diminish their success. The dropout rate and bar exam failure rate were raised by practices that were well-meaning. The bottom line is that people of good will, across the political spectrum, can share the same hopes for our fellow citizens, particularly those operating at significant disadvantage, but disagree strongly on the means to turn those hopes into realities. Back in the 60's a friend of mine was teaching at Cornell. He was teaching a black lit course and had a black student in one of his other courses. He told the student that she might be interested in his black lit course. She responded, "Thanks, Professor McConnell, but I already know what it means to be black; I came to Cornell to become an engineer."

Finally, all of the books on education tend to focus on the home institution of the author. This author teaches at UCSB and has been very active (and, given his command of the issues and facts, probably very effective) in taking leadership positions within the faculty councils that govern the UC system. He is troubled by what he has encountered within that system, as well he might be. One must question, however, the `representativeness' of California within the current discussion. Its state assembly is broadly considered to be dysfunctional. Individuals are fleeing its levels of taxation and regulation. At the same time, its tuition and room and board costs are extremely high. Still, the state is solidly blue, despite its occasional Republican governors. The tuition and room and board in many red state public flagships are much lower. So too, one might argue, is quality, but the quality of the UC system should have enabled its individual institutions to seek alternative sources of revenue with greater ease. These are very complex issues, of course. Newfield's argument is more simple and not necessarily in a bad sense. I like a strong master narrative. It is clear and thought-provoking and that narrative here is very nicely articulated and strongly argued. It is also open to challenges of various kinds.

This book has already gotten good reviews by those who appear to have actually read it. (Not always the case here at Amazon, especially if a book is suspected of carrying a political message.) Nonetheless, I think by focusing mainly on what Newfield says about higher education, earlier reviewers may have unintentionally given too much weight to the title and not enough to the subtitle: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class.

Certainly the book is about the undoing of higher education, but in addition it offers a documented and informed description of the bigger picture, the gradual fragmentation and impoverishment of our nation. It is this background narrative that, for me at least, makes the book so good. I admit I've been a bit slow to realize the importance of Cultural Studies, and this treatise, along with the work of Cary Nelson, has given me an appreciation of the field's potential for generating insights and knowledge. Newfield's careful analysis of complex issues, of the competing interests, and how things have come to be the way they are, should change the way most readers see higher education and our changing universities. This is a thoroughly well-researched work, and Newfield provides plenty of graphs, charts, and statistics, as well as copious endnotes, to support his conclusions.

Business majors especially, would do well to read what Newfield, the English Professor, has to say about the rise of Financial Capitalism in the '80s, the cost of accounting, the types of knowledge-workers and their fate, market economics, and so forth. Indeed, in light of the latest economic downturn, it's highly likely you may know some bewildered, unemployed MBAs, and I would certainly consider loaning them the book so they may at least get an idea of what hit them (Hint: a lack of "proprietary" knowledge.)

Like other reviewers, I found it a great read, which is not to be confused with an easy read. Mostly it's smooth going, but now and then you're probably going to trip over passages that have to be read over another time or two or six. Difficult concepts don't always lend themselves to simple expression.

What a delight, after several years of dull, self-important books on the state of academia, to receive another clearly thought through book from Chris Newfield. As usual his research is not only well documented, but widely drawn. His curiosity lends each example the quality of a good story--we want to follow and learn more and see where it all comes out.
His sense of Americana, all of the beliefs, myths, and dreams enlivening the hopes of the middle-class, provide a compelling context for the arguments of the book. We begin to care what happens in all these committee rooms and budget conferences and administrative policy-taking. He takes us along to see through the myriad details into the resolute engine driving the decision-making. And he does this as a traveling companion, not as a didact.
Newfield also lays a foundation for a re-making of the university, after the relentless unmaking, not in the usual fix-it mode, but in providing a comprehensive understanding of the problems and how they arise. Rather than finger shaking he directs a focused intelligence on the myriad causes, missteps, and politizations, which turned the university from its committed path into unexpected territory.
Probably the main reason to read this book is that it is actually a great read. A non-academic friend picked Unmaking the Public University off my desk, read a few pages and asked to borrow it. When asked why, she said she found the style compelling.
The other important reason is that we begin to understand what has happened to public education and thus what can facilitate reincarnation.
Deirdre C. Patrick
Palo Alto

Newfield's book is motivated by his "concern about the country's intellectual and imaginative decline". This is a feeling shared by me and many if not most literate people in the U.S. today. Newfield is passionately committed to his profession as a teacher of English literature in its cultural contexts, idea that I think enhances interest in literature. He bemoans the increasing preoccupations of university officials with materialistic concerns, the continuing cutbacks, political controversies swirling around academia, and attacks on cultural diversity. He is clear about whom he holds responsible for these problems: "leaders in politics, economics, and the media [who] have lost much of their capacity to understand the world in noneconomic terms, to understand cultural divergence as its own kind of enlightenment and as in any case a fact that will never submit to political or economic coercion". He makes an articulate case that public universities' problems are due to crass, benighted people - especially Republicans and conservatives.

While there may be compelling aspects to Newfield's case, my review of the history of American university policy since World War II (Manheim, Springer, 2009) suggests that the problems he cites and his own ideological polarization are not primarily due to arbitrary and irrational politically-motivated groups. They are products of a larger set of developments that have gotten submerged by the roiling arguments and causes that dominated the headlines.

Before the major change in U.S. research and educational policies in the 1950s, English literature played a larger relative role in university curricula than now. At that time higher education in America was more closely tied to undergraduate education and the practical life of the nation (think Land Grant colleges). There were few openings for academic faculty to pursue eclectic research of their own choosing - except during summers or as it related to the teaching function, or associated with societal activities like medical research or chemical engineering partly supported by commercial firms. Most students in universities expected to follow careers in business in some way or another - but it was not uncommon and even prestigious for future business leaders to major or minor in liberal arts or scientific fields for their undergraduate degree. All this changed after introduction in 1950 of federal support for basic research freed from any external controls or practical applications in the universities. Although the funding was initially small, the prestige associated with the competitive grant awards shifted criteria for academic appointments, promotion, and tenure to peer reviewed publications.

A significant part of the ensuing, vast expansion of academia embraced a new freedom to explore ideas without ties to the more practical life of the nation. More extreme developments included sexual liberation, drug use, and radical rejection of bourgeois society and capitalism. Other results included introduction of new "affective" models for K-12 education, replacing the "cognitive" models that had categorized most public schools. The most important and pervasive result was the fragmentation of academic research in peer-controlled disciplinary groupings. By the middle 1970s the "Golden Age" of research met constraints caused by recruitment exceeding support. Since then university faculty outside special "hot" fields such as biomedical research have experienced ever increasing competitive pressures. State universities have come under especial pressures as skepticism about the eclectic pursuits within the university became fueled by increasing economic pressure. Thus, university administrators could feel obliged - even against their own preferences - to focus on the priorities of legislators.

Let's look realistically. Cutting ties with larger society liberated cultural exploration within the university. But the larger society was not served by or became a part of much of this development. If social scientists in particular had been doing their job, they would have recognized the problem and long-term consequences of alienation and loss of a sense that universities were part of the community, not separate entities. But they have ignored or just communicated specialized theories about it to their peers. The image of humanists as elitists whose attitudes are nurtured in the rarified isolation of the university and have mainly disdain for the practical life and concerns of the larger public is a big problem. It won't be improved by books like Newfield's.

Imagine the world without Einstein's intellectual pursuits. Imagine, too, an advanced post-industrial society without a rigorously educated middle-class. Imagine the end of the United States as a global power. Now connect the cornucopia of these images.

Markets are not the gods of serious intellectual pursuits, a point that Christopher Newfield implies so well in his sophisticated analysis of how public higher education has been victimized by a culture wars' discourse promulgated by political coalitions steeped in the stagnation of conservative paternalism. In brief, the U.S. public has been cheated out of the best possibilities of public higher education as public universities have deteriorated financially over the last four decades. No amount of economic jingoism or political manipulation can nullify the preponderance of empirical evidence Newfield amasses in support of his contentions. Worse yet, policymakers have abandoned a robust vision of postsecondary education as a collective good. Increasingly, the parasitic norms of privatization and commercialization drive intellectual decisions.

Arguably, until this saturated generation of mass media and commodity consumption, the very best public achievements of Western civilization have been based on the genius of free inquiry (even more so than free enterprise). University faculty members have, for the most part, devoted themselves to research rigorous enough to expose ludicrous ideologies, materialistic fantasies, pedantic indulgences, and bogus evidence. For the great qualitative aspects of collective human existence, market ideology has too often been short-sighted and insufficient. To witness, the persistent intergenerational scourges of disease, idiocy, racism, sexism, and poverty could not have been challenged effectively without even relatively modest advances in expertise or knowledge.

One great reason the powerful ship Titanic sank was a failure of leadership and critical thinking. Leaders ignored the signs of the times and plunged many innocent lives into ruin and devastation. As in the Titanic story, naïve political leaders and popular social conformity to trivial mythologies can gradually plunge great nations into the abyss of ignorant demise. As noted philosopher, Randall R. Curren establishes in his poignant book entitled Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education, authentic democracy depends on critical thinking in order to escape the tyranny of the majority as well as the barbarism of ignorance. Slothful, mediocre, and superficial thinking ruins civilization. Newfield shows how such shoddy thinking has imperiled the treasures of public higher education, before suggesting how this situation can be refuted and transformed for the collective good of future generations. Public higher education matters.

For those of us fighting the good fight in the academy, this is the single most useful analysis of the conditions in which we find ourselves that I have read!

If you are looking for a conspiratorial polemic which lays all the blame for the decades-long decline of public higher education on conservatives, then this book is definitely for you! Were Rush Limbaugh a liberal and had he written a book on higher education, one would expect a result not much different from Newfield's "Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class".

But the serious student of higher education can expect to be disappointed by this work, unless she or he like Newfield is so ideologically convicted as to believe that all of our problems can ultimately be reduced to the simplistic credo that the root of all evil is Republicans.

Although Newfield weaves in a certain amount of factual information, such as the fact that public higher education has become alarmingly commercial in its insatiable pursuit of research funding, he seems content merely to blame whatever problems our public universities face on the Right and demurs from considering how universities can be improved from within.

And this is all the more ironic given the privileged position from which Newfield writes.

And, for that matter, the fact that most of his fellow academics in the Liberal Arts share his same political leanings.

An outsider might wonder how the decline of higher education could be the fault of the Right, especially in the Humanities while it was so solidly under the control of the devotees of the Left, but to a rationalizer like Newfield small facts like these prove of little matter, and he proves himself more than capable of gloriously reaching conclusions consonant with his personal opinions and little effected by objective evidence or other untoward intrusions from the world of reality.

I don't know. I'm just a reader. And Newfield is certainly entitled to his opinions. So if Newfield can get a warm and fuzzy feeling by constructing in his mind elaborately contorted rationalizations to the effect that the evil Republicans are the only thing preventing he and his enlightened ilk from saving the world, more power to him.

But then I read the course description for the class he is currently teaching on pre-Civil War American literature and read that "This course will use a cultural-studies framework to ask some non-cultural-studies questions. We will read the reading-list canon -- Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Dickinson, and Whitman. We will fetishize this canon by buying only Library of America copies of their work. All volumes will contain many other great works you don't want to read (and we'll talk about why). (Cheap substitutes for these editions are widely available.) We will consider socio-cultural framing issues: how the writing invents a national identity, influences gender roles, explains widespread social anxiety, registers problems of law and domination, notes shifts from father to mother in household influence, tames the "democratic" individual, copes with industrialization, and responds to racial subjection. And yet we will pay special attention to what these fairly amazing pieces of writing tell us about imagination, about being creative, and about what it might mean to have a collective renaissance instead (or on top) of a revolution. What does it take to leave this world? What does it take to imagine another one? We will look at the arc of romantic theories of creation as they develop from Coleridge on and then unwind and recombine with Nietzsche and his 20th century successors. We'll write together, talk together, blog together. You will pass your exams. You may also get a new angle on why you like literature and what kind of power - is that the right word? - it has in the world, and has for you.". (quoted from http://www.english.ucsb.edu/courses-detail.asp?CourseID=2018 )

The above "course description" comes closer, I think, to touching upon the nub of the problem then anything I read in Newfield's book. What we really seem to have here is a stark choice between two visions for public higher education. Newfield, though "liberal", stakes out the conservative claim that the future ought to be like the past, (only more so). In the past professors at the University of California were accorded an exulted position in society as the recognized experts-for-life in whatever field they professed. Newfield seems not to want to change that.

But Newfield goes further still in imagining his role as an English professor at a public university. He seems to think that his position accords him, no, really requires him to place a heavy hand on the tiller and steer society to the better world he imagines is possible.

Let me speak simply here because I think we come very close to the heart of the premise of Newfield's book, such as when Newfield tells his graduate students what "great works" they don't want to read.

Newfield seems to have a very different conception of the public university than the actual Public itself. Liberal Education was intended to produce better citizens, and Newfield seems to have somehow conflated this historical fact with the idea that, as an English professor at UC, it becomes his province to determine what the better citizen should think.

I'm not so sure that that is true. Personally, for example, I prefer to take my pre-Civil War American literature without Nietzsche. But that's just me. The real question is "what does the public want from its public university?".

And, although it pains me to say this, especially after people like Newfield have been so kind as to attempt to save the world on my dime, that part of the reason for these sustained declines in public funding for higher education which we have been witnessing with tiresome repetition in recent decades may, in fact, be partly Society's way of saying to those like Newfield who wish to dish public education out with a large helping of their own personal opinions and political predilections - "Thanks but no thanks".