The Universities I attended were largely free of corporate influence and sponsorship. Partly this was just a matter of timing. My first stint at University was between 1991 and 1995. Corporations were already heavily invested in penetrating the market of affluent young people on a career track but all that meant at the time was we got a Taco Bell in the cafeteria. Considering the quality of food we had prior to that, it's hard to see the drawback. And I got a lot of credit cards, which turned out spectacularly badly.
My second stint at University was from 2002 until a couple months ago (as a student and a professor - not a real professor, the kind they hire when someone who is actually qualified for the position can't be there for some reason). And the primary evidence of corporate penetration was sections of our building being nominally "named" for a company that donated money. The "So-and-So Gallery", which was actually just the wall by the elevator.
Architecture is not the faculty corporations really want in to. My alma mater (the University of Waterloo) has a big reputation as an engineering school and, although architecture is technically part of the Faculty of Engineering, it has its own building in a different city. I bet the conditions in the engineering buildings proper were (and are) very different from the School of Architecture. The influence corporations can have on public institutions (Canadian Universities are public, run by the government) has been well documented. My concern is more with the corporate model as a basis for Univerities.
Without naming any names, there are Universities in Canada that have begun to structure themselves as corporations. And, even when this is not done intentionally there is a certain amount of drift in that directions. The Corporate University views professors as one of the costs of its product - education. It follows that lowering the costs of faculty created more profit - in this case profit is money that can be spent on "luxury" items or just a reduction of debt.
The model is really very simple - students are consumers who are purchasing a degree from a vendor of choice. Buildings are like factories or warehouses, faculty are line workers, administration are managers, etc. It seems like a viable and straightforward model for educational institutions. There is one problem - it's completely fucked.
Universities are not education vendors. Students do not buy their degrees. Faculty are not an operating cost. If these things become true, you no longer have a University. By definition, you have something else. A vocational school or training center. The function of a University is not to graduate students - that is incidental. Universities exist to provide all levels of society with expertise. They are the way society maintains public intellectuals - a phrase that has acquired negative connotations since it now refers to talking heads whose primary qualification is the ability to look good and speak intelligently while pretending not to be on camera. Nevertheless, that is what Universities are for. Professors are paid by the public to be expert and impartial advisers to the society that maintains them. Students are there to make sure we don't run out of professors. A University may be a corporation legally but it is actually the name we give professors and students engaged in trying to increase the sum of human knowledge. According to this (admittedly medieval) definition, the buildings are irrelevant, as are the administrators, staff, anyone and everything except the professors and students.
The practical costs of changing this definition include a massive reduction in tenured professors and an equally massive increase in the number of administrators. Most people are against the concept of tenure - they believe it means the right to get paid for life even if you just sit on your ass. Well, sitting on their asses is what professors do. It is the best position in which to think. And tenure protects them from reprisals in the event they think unpopular thoughts. The validity of tenure, as a concept and binding agreement, relies on the very hazy principle of good faith - the assurance that whatever a professor is thinking about, and whatever writings result, the inquiry was conducted in good faith. Meaning the only reason the professor was thinking about it at all was because he or she wanted to know the answer, or move the rest of us slightly closer to an answer. It relies on professors not writing things just to make themselves famous (or infamous), not becoming political hacks, not espousing ideas in which they do not honestly believe. It takes a hell of a lot on faith because that's the only way it can work.
Of course tenure is abused. Of course it means professors check out early and do nothing but cash pay cheques. Of course there are any number of examples of professors acting in bad faith. But these are the exception and not the rule. Tenure means Universities are not run like reality television - professors are not voted out if they say, or write, something unpopular. And if this seems like a bad system, I quote Winston Churchill on democracy, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
The tenure system is a fundamental protection for free speech and innovation - since popular ideas rarely need protecting. It is also expensive. Tenured professors cost more than temporary, untenured associates. They cost around ten times as much (sometimes more). The corporate model for Universities consequently means fewer tenured professors and more associates without tenure (or benefits). It's way cheaper. But it is also a betrayal of the idea of the University. It makes it impossible for our public intellectuals to have the time and resources they require to serve the society that pays them. Yes, they cost less but they deliver much, much less.
The corporate model also causes an massive increase in student debt - the result of exponential increases in tuition fees. The first time I paid tuition (in 1991) it cost $1300. Those of you who attended schools in the States are probably screaming now but that's what it cost. My first tuition cheque in 2002 was for $5500. That's a big increase. And it's not hard to understand the reason why tuition is going up so fast - tuition is not the cost of your education, it's what the market will bear. Ideally tuition should be a nominal fee that only serves to remind students they have an incentive to try. In practice, it is a crushing debt many students will struggle under for the rest of their lives. This serves the practical, political purpose of making absolutely certain graduates have an incentive (like a gun to their heads) to join the work force immediately and keep their heads down. Here is an interesting perspective on that issue. So students are paying more for less but it doesn't matter as long as they have the degree at the end, right?
Wrong. Students entering Canadian Universities are, on average, 19 years old. The majority are 17 or 18. When they graduate, they will have a degree and a debt level that ensures they go to work immediately. Is it right to expect a 17 year old to know what he or she wants to do for the rest of his or her life? Because six months after graduating the loans come due and you better have a job by then. So if you realize you chose something you aren't going to be happy doing for the rest of your life, well, that's why they call it work. In my field (architecture) there is a common phenomenon I've started calling the lost decade. I have talked to many architects who wanted nothing to do with architecture when they graduated. The only reason they didn't change career paths was because of their debt. It took ten years, on average, for them to find some way to be happy. 10 years out of the 40 or so they will be working. I don't have information on other professions but this is, in itself, enough to bother me. Not just because so many of my friends are unhappy (when you are a graduate of architecture school all your friends are architects too) but because it is so obviously unfair on a class basis. If your parents have money (and, to be honest, the majority of architecture students come from families with above average net worth), you don't have to worry about the debt and can retrain for whatever you want. If you don't come from money you find a way to live with it. Is this as bad as never having had an opportunity to get an education in the first place? No. Is this an unfair as being criminalized because of your race and class? No. But it's still unfair.
Universities should recast themselves as anti-corporations. Instead of luring successful business people into taking largely honorific roles (at huge salaries) in the University structure, Universities should dedicate themselves to not caring about how corporations work - except in the business and economics schools obviously. The Ivory Tower is too Ivory and not Tower enough. How this would work in a practical sense is difficult for me to see. But I do have one suggestion.
All University faculties should be unionized. They might not call themselves unions but the principles of collective action and bargaining would be the same. I have heard the argument Professors cannot form unions because they are the University, so they would be organizing against themselves. In accepting the definition of a University I have described here I am legitimizing that argument. But the reason professors should organize is not to protect themselves (as with a standard labour union) but to protect their institution. In effect, they would be asserting their position as the institution, not making themselves subservient to the institution. Only collectively can professors do anything about issues like the decrease in tenured positions and the massive increase in tuition. Professors should organize not just within their institutions but nation-wide, to protect the place of the third-party expert in a society in which it is under increasing threat.
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