Universities in the market place
Adam Tooze has written thoughtfully about the student demonstrations at Columbia, and I came across Branko Milanovic’s post via John Naughton.
Tooze writes:
There was no riot last night at Columbia any more than there has been at any other point. The violence came from the police side and it came at the invitation and request of the University administration.
My colleague at the FT Edward Luce is right. It was the adults not the students that caused the real disorder. It is the University administration not the student protestors who have seriously disrupted the end of term and examinations. Chartbook 280 The state as blunt force – impressions of the Columbia campus clearance.
Here is an excerpt of a post from Branko Milanovic:
The novelty, for me, in the current wave of freedom of speech demonstrations in the United States was that it was the university administrators who called for the police to attack students. In at least one case, in New York, the police were puzzled why they were brought in, and thought it was counter-productive. One could understand that this attitude by the administrators might happen in authoritarian countries where the administrators may be appointed by the powers-to-be to keep order on campuses. Then, obviously, as obedient civil servants, they would support the police in its “cleansing” activity although they would rarely have the authority to call it in…
But in the US, university administrators are not appointed by Biden, nor by Congress. Why would they then attack their own students? Are they some evil individuals who love to beat up younger people?..
The answer is, No. They are not. They are just in a wrong job. They are not seeing their role as what traditionally was the role of universities, that is to try to impart to the younger generation values of freedom, morality, compassion, self-abnegation, empathy or whatever else is considered desirable. Their role today is to be the CEOs of factories that are called universities. These factories have a raw material which is called students and which they turn, at regular annual intervals, into graduates. Consequently, any disturbance in that production process is like a disturbance to a supply chain. It has to be eliminated as soon as possible in order for the production to resume. Graduating students have to be “outputted”, the new students brought in, moneys from them have to be pocketed, donors have to be found, more funds to be secured. Students, if they interfere with the process, need to be disciplined, if necessary by force. Police has to be brought in, order to be restored.
The administrators are not interested in values, but in the bottom-line. Their job is equivalent to that of a CEO of Walmart, CVS, or Burger King. They will use the talk about values, or “intellectually-challenging environment”, or “vibrant discussion” (or whatever!), as described in a recent article in The Atlantic, as the usual promotional, performative speech that top managers of companies nowadays produce at the drop of a hat. Not that anyone believes in such speeches. But it is de rigueur to make them. It is a hypocrisy that is widely accepted. The issue is that such a level of hypocrisy is still not entirely common at universities because they were, for historical reasons, not seen exactly like sausage factories. They were supposed to produce better people. But this was forgotten in the scramble for revenue and donors’ money. Thus the sausage factory cannot stop, and the police needs to be called in. Universities as factories – by Branko Milanovic
But if you look at the President of Columbia’s cv it is not hard to be sceptical of her role as a university president. John Naughton points out:
The President of the institution is Minouche Shafik, described by Wikipedia as a British-American academic and economist. She has been serving as the 20th president of Columbia University since July 2023. She previously served as president and vice chancellor of the London School of Economics from 2017 to 2023.
From 2014 to 2017, Shafik served as deputy governor of the Bank of England and also previously as permanent secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011. She has also served as a vice president at the World Bank and as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund. She was created a life peeress by Elizabeth II in 2020.
John Naughton adds:
(Footnotes: Actually Shafik was the Director of the LSE; it’s only since her departure that the role has been rebranded as “President and Vice-Chancellor”. Also, it’s not clear how much of an ‘academic’ Shafik is. She was an Adjunct (i.e. unpaid) Professor in the Economics department of Georgetown University for five years, and an Associate Visiting Professor at the Wharton School, but the bulk of her career thus far suggests someone who is basically an administrator. This may be relevant to what follows.)
Whatever the lessons of these recent events, the managers of universities have over the last three to four decades undermined a key reason for their own existence and access to public funding. Better to attach a few portakabins to job centres.