ACADEMIA Letters The Corporate University in the Age of the Coronavirus David Schultz Covid-19 has changed many things. But it has also accelerated many trends already occurring in our society. The same is true with higher education. Specifically, the pandemic has enabled the structures and organization of the corporate university, and it has fast-forwarded the fiscal crisis of higher education that has been building for decades. Elsewhere I have written about the emergence of the corporate university and the changing institutional philosophy and failing business plans for higher education in America. PostWorld War II higher education was structured along what I called a John Dewey model that promoted increased access to higher education in vastly expanded and taxpayer funded public university systems built upon tenure and shared faculty governance. Education was mostly liberal arts based, training students to be the next trustees of democracy. At least that was the theory. A college education was a collective or societal good worthy of government support. Yet this model begin to collapse in the 1970s because of then state fiscal crises. Replacing it was the corporate university. The corporate university is one where colleges increasingly use corporate structures and management styles to operate. This includes abandoning the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) shared governance model where faculty had an equal voice in the running of the school, including over curriculum, selection of department chairs, deans, and presidents, and determination of many of the other policies affecting the academy. The corporate university replaced the shared governance model with one more typical of a business corporation. The corporate university was created in response to the emergence of a neoliberal political philosophy characterized by less government involvement and more faith in market structures. One consequence of neo-liberalism was pressure to cut taxes and government revenues, and higher education was a casualty, especially public institutions which saw them receiving Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: David Schultz, dschultz@hamline.edu Citation: Schultz, D. (2021). The Corporate University in the Age of the Coronavirus. Academia Letters, Article 2930. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2930. 1 dramatically less government revenue. In many ways, they became public in name only. To make up for lost revenue, the corporate university sought more business sponsorships or joint ventures, expanded high profit and demand professional programs such as MBAs, and dramatically increased tuition. Higher education came to be seen as a private good and student loans as an investment in the future. It became a cost-benefit decision in one’s future career. The corporate business model survived until the Great Recession of 2008-09. Enrollment in professional programs decreased in many cases, and students, already tapped out with more than $1 trillion in debt, were unable to continue to finance their education. Post 2009, higher education muddled along, enjoying the population boom from a large Millennial cohort and able to attract foreign students to the US to make up for lost revenue. But the muddling along does not mean thriving, and the corporate university’s business has been precarious since then. At the onset of the pandemic the Trump Administration made higher education less attractive to foreign students who are opting to go elsewhere. Student debt was approaching $1.7+ trillion. There was little indication, despite Bernie Sanders’ talk of free college, that government support for higher education was increasing appreciably. Already for the above reasons, and a consequence of the racial inequities in American society, the number of eighteen-yearolds wanting to attend college was decreasing. But down the line is coming the big enrollment crash. In 2026, 18 years after the Great Recession during which birth rates collapsed, there will be a drastically smaller pool of students to recruit, with estimates suggesting a fifteen percent decline or several hundred thousand individuals. The same number of schools chasing a dwindling admissions pool. Even before the pandemic, all the above suggested that only the strong would survive. Now enter the pandemic. Higher education faces unprecedented challenges to its business plans. As the most recent AAUP Report on the Economic Status of the Profession documented, college and universities reported $336 billion in long-term debt, expanding by more than 71% since 2008. While colleges and universities received some temporary relieve from the CARES Act, it did not make up for lost revenue, lost students, and the extra expenses undertaken to combat the coronavirus. They still have not recovered and it is not certain enrollments will occur. In response to the pandemic schools are now doing what they were already going to have to do by 2026, inf not sooner. Higher education is accelerating its corporate restructuring. Across the country shared governance, as AAUP reports, is being taxed as schools take control of curriculum and programs. Universities are using the threats of real or possible financial exigency to cut low profit low enrollment programs and majors, furthering abandoning the Deweyian ideal of a liberal education to train future leaders of democracy. Additionally, the more schools slim Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: David Schultz, dschultz@hamline.edu Citation: Schultz, D. (2021). The Corporate University in the Age of the Coronavirus. Academia Letters, Article 2930. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2930. 2 down majors they become less attractive to students who rightly perceive they are getting less quality but at the same or increased price compared to before. Full time tenured faculty are being replaced by even more contingents. Schools are shifting online with canned curriculum. The result? Higher education is undermining itself even more profoundly than I thought a few years ago. For years especially smaller schools sold their pricy tuition by saying it bought smaller student teacher ratios and more personalized learning. They also sold the amenities and extra-curricular activities as justifying their price. Going on-line, while a short-term cost savings strategy, will only pit schools against one another globally, taking away any geographic advantage any once had. Thus, the pandemic not so much upended the corporate business plans and restructuring as it did accelerate them by several years. Instead of perhaps 2026 being the beginning of the next massive wave of higher education restructuring, the future is now. Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: David Schultz, dschultz@hamline.edu Citation: Schultz, D. (2021). The Corporate University in the Age of the Coronavirus. Academia Letters, Article 2930. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2930. 3