To what extent is education corrupted when it becomes intertwined with profit-making businesses?<\/p>\n
This question becomes increasingly relevant as corporations move into key roles at American universities. In late June of this year, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo steamrolled a bill through the state legislature to establish\u00a0tax-free havens<\/a>\u00a0for businesses on the campuses of the State University of New York (the largest public university in the United States) and on those of some private colleges. This legislation, he promised, would \u201ctransform SUNY<\/a>\u00a0campuses and university communities.\u201d Faculty, he said, should \u201cget interested<\/a>\u00a0and participate in entrepreneurial activities.\u201d Indeed, \u201cyou\u2019d be a\u00a0better academic<\/a>if you were actually entrepreneurial.\u201d<\/p>\n What can happen when education is run like a business is shown in a new, hilarious\u00a0satire<\/a>by Joel Shatzky:\u00a0Option Three<\/em>\u00a0(Blue Thread Communications). Shatzky, a novelist and playwright who taught dramatic literature at SUNY\/Cortland for 37 years, provides an unnerving, madcap, depiction of the corporatization of the university \u2013 in this case, a university very much like SUNY.<\/p>\n The story begins when the novel\u2019s hero, Acting Visiting Assistant Professor L. Circassian, receives two letters from the administration: the first laying him off and the second taking him back on as an adjunct, with a 35 percent pay cut. Queried by a confused Circassian, Dean Lean explains that there are three options: \u201cOption One is that you are an invaluable member of the faculty that has to be let go; Option Two is that you are a superfluous member of the faculty that can\u2019t be let go. Is that clear so far?\u201d When Circassian replies that it is not, the dean continues: \u201cOption Three was devised several months ago by Central Administration and what it means is that we don\u2019t have the funds to keep you but we can\u2019t let you go because you are too valuable.\u201d Circassian remonstrates that he can\u2019t survive on the reduced salary, especially as he can barely exist on the one he already receives, whereupon the dean retorts: \u201cOf course, we understand that. That\u2019s why this is called `Option Three\u2019; it\u2019s a combination of two unacceptable solutions to a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n This is only the beginning of the nightmarish, downward spiral of Circassian\u2019s life and that of the other faculty at this fanciful institution of higher education. Governor Putski (a nice mixture of former New York State Governor George Pataki and Cuomo, with a name suggesting the Yiddish word for a portion of the male anatomy), egged on by Operation Change (a conspiracy of the wealthy much like Change New York), repeatedly slashes funding for the state university, thereby giving campus administrators the green light they desire to proceed with its evisceration.<\/p>\n Circassian, much like Yossarian in Joseph Heller\u2019s Catch-22, looks on in amazement as irrationality proceeds unchecked by reason. Rival corporations buy up departments and compete for students, debasing teaching and knowledge. Finally, with the campus swept by chaos and madness, the administration announces that 95 percent of the teaching will be done by automated programs (holograms), with the 5 percent of the faculty remaining assigned to teach those students who have elected to have \u201clive\u201d instructors.<\/p>\n Circassian somehow survives all of this, although not before being kidnapped and brought, bound and hooded, to the office of Amber Slaughter, the head of Operation Change. In their ensuing conversation, Circassian seeks to defend the public university as a place of educational opportunity for all. But the wealthy Slaughter coolly rejects that notion, retorting that \u201cdemocracy sucks.\u201d He explains the he and other members of his class have no desire to educate what he calls \u201cthe rabble.\u201d<\/p>\n And so Circassian and the reader ultimately learn what the privatization of public education is all about.<\/p>\n Despite this harsh premise,\u00a0Option Three<\/em>\u00a0is a very funny book, enlivened by new and very creative words (\u201cyibbled,\u201d \u201cblicking,\u201d \u201ccharfled,\u201d \u201ctraffled,\u201d and many others) and ideas. Readers will certainly enjoy the novel\u2019s playful tone. When the English Department\u2019s corporate manager develops a course entitled \u201cShakespeare for People Who Hate Shakespeare,\u201d he suggests a revised version of Hamlet\u2019s \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d soliloquy to \u201cmake the product more marketable.\u201d It runs:<\/p>\n Should I live or should I die? Although the book focuses on the unraveling of university life, it even has a relatively happy ending.<\/p>\n But what is happening to higher education today, as it undergoes a corporate makeover, is considerably less amusing. The sharply reduced government funding for public universities, the replacement of full-time faculty with low-wage, rootless adjuncts, the rapid development of mass, online courses for academic credit, and the increasingly pervasive corporate presence on campus all indicate more concern for the business-defined bottom line than for intellectual growth. Future satirists of university life will be hard-pressed to stay ahead of the emerging reality.<\/p>\n Dr. Lawrence Wittner<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY\/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university life, \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On at UAardvark?<\/a>\u201d (Solidarity Press).] He can be reached through his\u00a0website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
That\u2019s the riddle: tell me why.
Must I live with aggravation,
Or die if that\u2019s my inclination.
Yes, die and take an endless snooze,
That\u2019s the nobler way to choose.
But in death could I have a dream,
Perhaps that way\u2019s a bit extreme.
Still, who\u2019d dare take all the crap,
That bitter life drops in your lap.
Live long enough, you\u2019ll get the shaft,
`Til all that\u2019s left to do is laugh;
But here\u2019s Ophelia, nymph is she,
By her my sins remembered be.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n