Unmaking the Public University

The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class

Christopher Newfield

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780674060364, 9780674028173
• eBook ISBN: 9780674256583
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

An essential American dream—equal access to higher education—was becoming a reality with the GI Bill and civil rights movements after World War II. But this vital American promise has been broken. Christopher Newfield argues that the financial and political crises of public universities are not the result of economic downturns or of ultimately valuable restructuring, but of a conservative campaign to end public education's democratizing influence on American society. Unmaking the Public University is the story of how conservatives have maligned and restructured public universities, deceiving the public to serve their own ends. It is a deep and revealing analysis that is long overdue.

Newfield carefully describes how this campaign operated, using extensive research into public university archives. He launches the story with the expansive vision of an equitable and creative America that emerged from the post-war boom in college access, and traces the gradual emergence of the anti-egalitarian "corporate university," practices that ranged from racial policies to research budgeting. Newfield shows that the culture wars have actually been an economic war that a conservative coalition in business, government, and academia have waged on that economically necessary but often independent group, the college-educated middle class. Newfield's research exposes the crucial fact that the culture wars have functioned as a kind of neutron bomb, one that pulverizes the social and culture claims of college grads while leaving their technical expertise untouched. Unmaking the Public University incisively sets the record straight, describing a forty-year economic war waged on the college-educated public, and awakening us to a vision of social development shared by scientists and humanists alike.

Index

Abortion, 239, 242, 284, 285

Academic Bill of Rights, 256, 277, 278–279

Academic Capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie), 221

Academic freedom: conservative criticism of, 52; corporate seminars, 224; culture warrior opposition to, 244; Dartmouth College statement on, 357n29; defense research, 242–243; epistemological challenges, 259; essential to university’s function, 10; federal government seen as threat to, 221–222; Fish’s definition of, 261; hallmark of postwar university, 257; Horowitz on, 279; politics seen as threat to, 61–62; research regulation, 232–233; University of California’s redefinition of, 258

Academic planning, financial incentives in, 165–168

Accountability, 127, 153, 159–160

Accounting, 160, 161, 163, 170, 172, 173, 225

Acquisitions, 128

ACTA. See American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)

ACT exams, 315n

ACT UP, 157

Adjunct faculty, 144, 225, 231, 234, 235, 273

Adler, Jerry, 59, 60

Administrative costs, 160–161, 164–165

Admissions: component of financial strategy, 226; development admissions, 178–180, 181–182; legacy admissions, 178–180, 181–182; reformers’ concern with, 231; skew toward financial returns in, 177–180. See also Race-conscious policies

Advanced degrees: income correlated with, 191–192; PhDs, 117, 147, 191, 329n22

Advocacy, 262, 358n30

Aerospace, 1, 81

Affirmative action, 83–88; Bakke case, 111–113; California campaigns against, 1; Clinton defends, 74; Connerly’s proposal for ending, 98–99; counterrevolution against, 268; D’Souza’s attack on, 69–70; economic aspects of attacks on, 269, 270; faculty and culture wars position on, 284; Hopwood cases, 101–106; language of civil rights movement used by opponents of, 84, 310n12; legacy admissions compared with, 178–179; meritocracy, 94–95, 97, 101–106; New Economy and attack on, 88–90; policy makers’ attacks on, 26; Proposition 209, 84, 85, 87, 88, 317n10; public support for, 93–94, 313n4; quotas, 75, 77, 86, 94; relied on for even rudimentary integration, 115–116; Right uses to polarize, 239; shrinking educational resources, 104–105; standardized tests, 315n; university reformers, 236. See also Race-conscious policies

“Affluent society,” 27, 34, 40

Affluent Society, The (Galbraith), 34

African Americans: affirmative action controversy, 86–87, 311n19; Arnold’s view of politics and, 57; The Bell Curve on, 97; continuation of discrimination, 93; democratization of h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• I. The Meaning of a Majoritarian Society
• II. Inventing PC: The War on Equality
• III. Market Substitutes for General Development
• IV. The New War—and After
• Conclusion: Powers of the 100 Percent
• Appendix: Flaws of the “Liberal Bias” Campaign
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index