How the Corporate University Created and Destroyed Diversity

This blog originally appeared in Counterpunch. 

The Supreme Court did not kill diversity. Higher education did it to itself. It has done it slowly and methodically over the last few years, as the corporate university created and then destroyed diversity as part of its business plan to attract students and make itself more relevant to American capitalism.

Many thought that the US Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended affirmative action, pronounced the death knell for diversity in higher education. The reality is that colleges produce the seeds for its destruction. Typifying this undermining  of diversity is a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article highlighting how many colleges are now advertising to students that they are  a school where everybody is just like you.

How did all this happen?

The history of higher education in America has always faced a contradiction.  On the one hand, universities have preached diversity as intellectual openness to new ideas, while excluding or segregating women, the poor, those of certain religions,  and people of color. Yet from the 1960s, partly as a result of the civil rights movement and of changing demographics in America, universities gave lip service to demographic diversity.   This resulted in affirmative action programs providing special consideration for women and individuals of color.

In the landmark 1978  Regents of California  v. Bakke, the Supreme Court ruled that while racial quotas were unconstitutional, the use of race could be considered as an effort to try to promote diversity. From that decision on, schools struggled with what it means to be diverse, how to promote it, and really, who would be the beneficiaries of it.  But for the corporate university, diversity rested less on a concept of fairness and equity than it did on both a way to expand its customer base and use the concept as a marketing tool to achieve that.

Who won from diversity?  In part because of the failures of K-12 to deliver an adequate and equitable education for students of color, the pipeline to college was racially constricted.  The main beneficiaries of affirmative action became middle class white females. Recruiting them allowed schools to “check the box” for diversity. Over the course of the last 50 years, higher education has transformed from being a male-dominated  to a female-dominated institution, with some numbers suggesting that more than 60% of those enrolled in colleges and universities are now female.   That has come at the expense of persons of color, whose numbers continue to dwindle, or at least remain stagnate, especially at some of the elite schools such as Harvard.

At the same time, the corporate university in its effort to boost enrollment and to define a niche for itself, has increasingly pitched its message to its students that it is a school that will specialize to the  particular needs of students in the same way businesses market to locate customers and maximize profits.  This narrowing of the focus of higher education comes at the same time that schools are deemphasizing liberal arts education. Liberal arts, at its best, was about exposing students to new and contrasting ideas. It was intellectual diversity that went beyond gender and skin color.

But liberal arts is expensive. It requires universities to staff a variety of courses and programs that are not necessarily high profit producing even though they are important for intellectual diversity. The narrowing of the perspectives of higher education has morphed into intellectual safeness and narrowness, protecting both conservative and liberal students from opposing ideas from which they disagree.

The result is that the real diversity that college universities are supposed to stand for—exposure to new ideas, different perspectives, and different people—has gradually eroded.

The business plan of the corporate university in its effort to save money has narrowed the intellectual scope and diversity of both the ideas that it offers and the students that it caters to.  The future of higher education increasingly looks much like the past of higher education.

Campus Protests and the Corporate University

 

This blog originally appeared in Counterpunch.

The murder of the four students who protested the Vietnam War at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, was a tragedy.  The suppression of student protests on campuses across the United States in the spring of 2024 is a farce. The latter points to how little college administrators and politicians have learned when it comes to students’ speech, thinking that repression is the solution for dissent and disagreement.

The student protests of the 1960s were born of political anger. Students were unable to vote. They lacked a political voice in American elections and politics, and they lacked a voice in the governance of their schools. They demanded a seat at the table, the right to be heard and some control over the institutions that literally dictated their lives. Their demands for a voice were met with force and repression much in the same way that the civil rights demonstrators who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge  were.

College administrators first ignored student demands.  Then they sought to break up the demonstrations with campus police.  Politicians such as Governor Reagan in California, and Governor Rhodes in Ohio responded even more forcefully. They, along with President Richard Nixon, sought to capitalize on the protests politically and personally. They made political careers by running against challenges to authority, campaigning  as law and order candidates, claiming to speak for the silent majority, and labeling those who dissented as un-American.

A show of force was their solution across college campuses in America.  Eventually they called out the National Guard. The tragic result culminated in Kent State. Four Dead in Ohio as sung by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Colleges and politicians should have learned the lessons of this mistake.  The lesson should have been that student voices matter, that students have a right to express their views, and  force is not a way to stifle or to address differences of opinion.

They should have also learned that universities are supposed to be socially responsible. They are or have become political institutions, not private corporations. They are socially responsible in the sense that they have responsibility to act ethically and act consistent with their values. Their values include free and open inquiry, disagreement, and debate.  They need to be responsible to their stakeholders, including their students, and they need to live up to the democratic ideals and values that they are supposed to be fostering.

But what we learned in the 1960s was that schools were also hotbeds of hypocrisy. That was the source of much of the campus unrest and protest in the 1960s.  Instead of fixing the hypocrisy, living  up to their values, and respecting student demands, higher education turned corporate.  Over a fifty year period schools thought they had learned how to address the dissent on campus. They adopted even more of a corporate structure, seeking a top down mechanism for trying to control curriculum, faculty, and students. They adopted speech and civility codes as a way not to encourage debate but as a tool to discourage views that they do not want to hear.

The corporate university turned itself into a  private good, forcing students to borrow tens of thousands of dollars and thereby discipline their behavior by the demands of the economic marketplace.  Moreover, the corporate university  created its own problem by not being neutral when it came to a diversity of viewpoints, favoring some as opposed to others. It created not a tolerance but an intolerance of certain types of speech. Moreover, as universities have become even more corporate they have built lofty endowments whose investments are oftentimes questionable and which gives donors  outsized influence upon  what administrators and professors can do.

Much in the same way that the students of the 60s criticized universities for the defense contracts they took and how universities furthered the Vietnam War, students today criticize endowments for supporting causes and issues of which they do not support.  They have legitimate grievances against both the US government’s support for a war they do not endorse, and also against universities  whom they see as complicit. They demand a voice, call for disinvestment, or simply want to express their disagreement.

Yet again politicians such as Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are denouncing the protests, calling for the National Guard to quell student  speech.  Yet again a sitting president seems unable or unwilling to  listen to the students.  Yet again another war will impact a presidential campaign.

This is more than a tragedy.  It is a farce.

Hamline University and the Lessons of Crisis Management: Ten Rules to Follow

 

Universities are businesses.  Like any business they occasionally have to engage in crisis management,

responding to threats, including those to their brand if not their very existence.

               Hamline University is at that point now.  Locally and nationally its reputation is severely damaged. It is at the center of cultural wars.  I receive reports from colleagues overseas in Eastern Europe where I have taught that  my school is now used as a tool of political propaganda in terms of how in America free speech is squashed. Hamline faculty voted to demand its  president to resign.  The University is in a full-blown crisis. The question is what to do?

               I taught in a business school for fourteen years and did corporate, non-profit, and government consulting.  Like others, I often used case studies as teaching tools, seeking to distill lessons regarding what works or not in terms of crisis management.  What can Hamline learn as it wrestles with its crisis?

               Business crises come in all shapes and sizes.  They can be self-inflicted, such as when Volkswagen was caught fabricating emissions testing, or in 1985 when Coca Cola rolled out New Coke in what is arguably the worst market blunder of all time.  The self-infliction can be the result of bad leadership, governance, or hubris such as when  Bernie Ebbers and WorldCom or Kenneth Lay and Enron began cooking their financial books to inflate corporate earnings and  preserve executive bonuses.  Both the 2005 documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room and Cynthia Cooper’s Extraordinary Circumstances—arguably the best book ever on corporate misbehavior , greed, and arrogance—chronicle these stories.

               But business crises can be external.  Nokia’s failure to adapt to changing cellphone market conditions took a business at the top of its game to  one destroyed by Apple and Samsung.  The same is true of Blackberry, which at one point controlled more than 40% of the cellular market.  The 1982 post-market tampering with Tylenol was an unforeseen threat to the Johnson & Johnson brand, but it was and remains a perfect case study in how to navigate a crisis and recover from it. .  Conversely,  Ford’s  1970s coverup of the exploding Pinto and cost-benefit decision on its refusal to change product design to save lives in order to make money is a case study in failure.            

               One can only hope universities and  their leadership can learn from business case studies.  Repeated sports and recruiting scandals at schools pose problems, but often not to the degree of threatening the brand.  In the 1990s the University of Minnesota had a major basketball cheating scandal but it did not challenge or threaten the school’s brand.  The recent decision by its Board of Regents to allow its president Joan Gabel to serve on the Securian Board of Directors is another major misstep, but not an existential brand threat.

               But Hamline faces the greatest brand and existential crisis it has ever faced.  I assess no blame and offer no specific policy recommendations on what to do. But nonetheless based on what business case studies teach us, there are several things that need to be done in charting a path forward.  Here are ten rules it needs to consider.

               First, recognize the problem.  Don’t equivocate  deny the problem.  It will not go away over time but instead fester and produce a long-term corrosive impact on the brand.

Two, be honest and transparent.  J&J was fully transparent and open in terms of what it knew about the  adulterated Tylenol.  Its public engagement and willingness to talk built trust with the public and its consumers.  When faced with a crisis many businesses hunker down and go silent.  This only furthers distrust, encourages rumors, and leads many wondering where is the leadership?

               Three, admit mistakes.  Don’t try to cover   up and don’t try to pretty up a mistake.  We all want to hear genuine apologies and recognition that mistakes were made.

               Four, don't speak in doubletalk.  Businesses like to hire public relations consultants and draft press releases written in corporate prose that say a lot without saying anything.  The public sees through this in a second and it does nothing to build credibility.

               Five, act.  Do something.  Yes, gather appropriate information but do not engage in paralysis by analysis.  Too many businesses face a crisis by  being afraid to act for fear of making the wrong choice. If there is a house on fire don’t stand around and debate what is the best way to extinguish it. At some point pour water on it and work from there.

               Six,  address the short-term crisis first.  Solve it first and then worry about a longer-term solution.  A short-term threat to a brand needs to be immediately addressed, allowing for a longer-term  solution when more information can be obtained, and the emotion of the immediate crisis is past.

Seven, identify the core mission and values of your organization.  What are they, don they make sense, do they need to be changed. These values provide the guideposts for how you will resolve short and long term your  crisis and reposition  your business for the future.

Eight, identity, consult, and listen to stakeholders.  For businesses they are workers, customers , and potential customers.  For universities, they are faculty, students, alumni, and donors.  But remember—students are not customers—they are learners, and their relationship is very different from that of a customer who theoretically is always right.

Nine, separate the interests of the organization from its leadership.  So many crises and mistakes occur when leaders are unable to separate out what is in the best interests of the organization versus what is in their best interests.  Organizational interests come  first, not self-interest.

Ten.  Learn from mistakes.  The best businesses and corporations seek to identify the processes and structures that produced bad decisions.  Continuous learning and changes to organizational decision-making structures are central to improving business.  This was the core of General Electric’s use of Six Sigma to improve its business.

               As Hamline looks forward to solving its current problems, I hope it learns the lessons of what other entities faced and  follows these ten rules here.

The Limits of Free Markets, Both Economic and Intellectual

Today's blog originally appeared in Counterpunch on March 13, 2018.


Both in economics and speech, the market is a powerful metaphor.  Free economic markets are
efficient, and produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people by the fair interplay of sellers and buyers.  The marketplace of ideas is supposed to produce truth, and maximize free inquiry of ideas through the competition or rival ideas.  Both marketplaces are supposed to support contrasting forms of individual freedom.  Except the truth is that neither work in practice compared to theory, fixing their externalities and preventing one from corrupting the other  is challenge and task of contemporary western politics.

The market is a metaphor of modern western politics.  Belief in the efficiency of economic free markets dates at least to Adam Smith’s 1776 The Wealth of Nations.  For some economists, free markets maximize individual freedom producing both what is called Pareto efficiency (no one can be made better off without someone being made worse off) and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency (overall greatest net wealth for a society).  Government regulation interferes with economic markets, damaging both individual freedom and both forms of efficiency.  Market fundamentalism in the guise of contemporary Republican or neo-liberal politics, ascribes to this belief.

Yet there are limits to this economic market fundamentalism.  The same Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations also penned The Theory of Moral Sentiments and argued how economic markets are circumscribed by ethical values and virtues.  The Wealth of Nations in book five recognizes an important role for the government investing in infrastructure.  Later on, other economists have described unregulated markets as producing externalities such as pollution or monopolies.  Others see externalities to include the mal-distributions of wealth and income in the world or racial and gender discrimination.  Economic markets are also  plagued by problems such as free riders or collective goods.  These problems necessitate government action.  Even Milton Friedman recognized the need of the government to enforce the rules of the marketplace against force and fraud so that it would work properly.

The point is markets are not architectonic.  Markets are not inherently self-regulating or natural.  Karl Polany’s 1944 The Great Transformation made this point.  It took enormous state power to construct and maintain market capitalism. The logic of both capitalism and human nature is often against free markets, wanting to produce collusion, monopolies, or engage in rent-seeking behavior or political action to favor oneself.  Pure self-interest left on its own, as Nobel Prize economist Kenneth Arrow pointed out, cannot be aggregated to produce collective goods for a society.

The marketplace of ideas is also powerful.  John Milton writing in his 1644 Areopagitica argued against censorship and suppression of religious views in the belief that the competition among religious sects would reveal the truth.  John Stuart Mill’s 1859 On Liberty similarly believed that the free play of ideas would yield the truth if there was a “chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.”  And in American constitutional law, it was Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who in his 1919 Abrams v. United States dissent first introduced the market metaphor to the First Amendment when he contended that “the best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”  Since that decision, the hall mark of free speech jurisprudence is the belief that the marketplace of ideas will produce truth and inform the public.  Competition among rival ideas will filter truth from falsehood.

Yet if economic markets are flawed, so is the marketplace of ideas and they too may not be architectonic.  Beyond the fact that some are questioning whether truth even exists, what we learn from recent surveys is that faith in  free speech is waning.  Not a day does not go by that some group argues for restrictions on racist, sexist, or offensive speech or how the press should be regulated.  And a recent study by MIT professors points to something that many have suspected for some time–falsity or fake news  spreads more rapidly than truth on-line.  Because of the natural  tendency for people to be attracted to novelty, falsity is retweeted or posted more than truth.  The enduring power of myths such as vaccines cause autism is proof of this.  For a democracy to exist, its members must have the ability to express their views and search for truth.  Yet if the marketplace of ideas is not  working, democracy is in peril.

The problem then is that the marketplace of ideas too is producing externalities that must be addressed, but doing so without compromising the right and ability of individuals to think for themselves and access the information they need to do so.   How to regulate the marketplace of ideas to address externalities without censorship is a dilemma.   But this marketplace is also plagued or affected by the economic marketplace, allowing rich and powerful actors to use the resources they have acquired in there to adversely affect the marketplace of ideas.   The challenge is how both to preserve the marketplace of ideas from destroying itself while at the same time preventing the economic marketplace from destroying itself and corrupting the marketplace of ideas.