<< not vanity i wouldn't say -- rather the economic effects of status (a kind of cultural capital somehow specific to academic institutions which have to differentiate themselves from one another in a market) >>
On the contrary, isn't the growing elitism and corporate prostitution of higher education rather predictable from the development of the larger capitalist society? What doesn't parallel the development of, say, the corporations' power and reward structures? I don't see how universities have ever been less special or less tied to the needs of capital, sundry medieval atavisms aside. Not only college jobs, but college enrollments, are increasingly restricted to a largely pre-selected class. Note a recent post re the exotic place of the working class student at Duke University.
BTW, re money going to a few superstars: Hasn't this been recognized for some time by economists (who of course for the most part have no problem with it), and wasn't it even somewhat popularized by Frank and Cook in "The Winner-Take-All Society"?
http://www.mhhe.com/economics/frank4/author/winner.mhtml
As for "economic effects of status": Isn't this pretty much what always has defined the professional middle classes? (Before I get flamed for even using the phrase "middle class," I'm following Ehrenreich's discussion at the start of "Fear of Falling," should anyone want to know where I'm coming from.) Following Ehrenreich's thesis, the favored professoriate and university administrators are acting just as one would expect them to act, given an increasingly brutal understandig of their (and other professions') place in the capitalist order.
----Original Message Follows---- From: Catherine Driscoll <catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: academic economics Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 09:45:25 +0900
[sorry, that last post was meant to go offlist, the machine isn't listening today]
Doug asks
> >The pay gap is widening in all respects. Bus/Science vs. the
> Humanities.>Star professors vs. ordinary grunts.
>
> I was just at the University of Illinois-Chicago. The estimable
> Stanley Fish was recruited at the price of $250k/yr to hire some
> stars. Walter Benn Michaels has been brought it at somewhat lower
> expense, partly paid out of an affirmative action fund.
>
> The trustees, and apparently ultimately the legislature, has
> decided
> it wants to put UIC on the academic map. Can anyone explain the
> logic
> of this? Does it make economic sense, or is it mainly vanity?
I'm not sure if the question is why want to be on the academic map, or why imagine hiring these people at this price will get you there...?
The answer to the first question is economic of course, being on 'the map' means more students want to go to you. Of course funding is different in the states but I understand it's always based on student enrolments. Perhaps not.
Why make that kind of investment? Being seen and heard about by other academics, being covered in the media, being published, winning grants and awards -- it's a general consensus view that these are more effectively done by stars (whether anyone agrees with or likes that or not) than by others consigned to the general 'teaching staff'
we have similar discourses and expectations in australia, though on a very different scale and with some qualifications. our funding comes almost entirely from the govt and is based on a complex formula including enrolments (but this is carefully regulated), graduate completion rates, publishing, success in generating income through grants or contracts. though this means a 'star' theoretically has to supervise and publish and win grants/contracts etc they don't actually have to teach and we increasingly have positions which are just there to maintain a dept's public/academic profile. they don't get paid US star-academic rates, but there are some of them and to a significant extent having been successful enough to get that kind of position automatically puts them in a position where they are more likely to attract research students, be published, win grants and so on... i think this translates to the US system
oh and then grants and so on also generate what is horribly called 'soft money' which can be used in all sorts of important ways (so that's a double win and status of the applicant is in fact a major criteria in winning the things) -- and then to make things worse in the states you have a whole culture of donations, endowments etc which are so rare here as to never be a major criteria (but again these work on status)
which depts/areas get such positions whether there or here is usually determined by the university's perception of effect -- do they need to reinvigorate a fading dept, establish the premiere position of a successful one, and of course will they get their money back.
it's all a bit circular in other words but there's a logic to it. not vanity i wouldn't say -- rather the economic effects of status (a kind of cultural capital somehow specific to academic institutions which have to differentiate themselves from one another in a market)
catherine (depressed now)
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