Steal This University

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

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.

Genres: Labor, Nonfiction, Education

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and generally well-written essays on the corporatization of American universities from perspectives of faculty and grad students. Some stories will not be a surprise to anyone's who's gone through the system, but there's still some pretty shocking stuff (e.g. non-tenured faculty sleeping in homeless shelters to attend conferences). There's some solid tactical advice for folks trying to organize a labor union in academia. The idea of the "prestige economy" really helped me understand why so many people are willing to put up with labor exploitation in academia. Made me rethink what's the purpose of higher education in general.

[Brandon Wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays about the rise of the corporate mentality in institutions of higher education, this volume is a bit uneven but makes a compelling and urgent case that concepts from the business world like efficiency, marketability, catering to the "consumer", and so on are often opposed to the very ethos of a liberal education - which should be focused on making students better citizens and thinkers, not better workers. The authors tackle this problem from the perspective of the new class of academic workers - the adjuncts, part-time lecturers, and graduate assistants that are doing more and more of the work at universities (for less and less pay compared to full-time faculty). Should these workers organize as a new academic labor movement, they have the power to transform higher education for the better.

As someone currently involved in a graduate student labor movement, I found that this volume offered many key lessons (both hopeful and sobering) that any adjunct or grad assistant would do well to hear.