Colleges in the corporatocracy

• In Event: The Clash of Honest Ethics and Corporate Greed in Higher Education Lobbying

Abstract

Matthew J. Camp is Director of Government Relations at Teachers College, Columbia University and a PhD candidate in Politics & Education at Columbia University. Matthew’s expertise includes interest groups, higher education, and lobbying. He has been a higher education advocate for 12 years and is researching how lobbyists subsidize the work of legislators (journal article under review), and how advocates attain “mini-wins” along the legislative process. He has presented at Midwest and Southern Political Science Association annual meetings, among several others. This will be his first ASHE conference.

His paper asks “do colleges lobby like corporations?” by examining how the forces of neoliberalism prompted public, private, and for-profit colleges to lobby government for funding and against accountability measures. Camp’s paper uses a convergent parallel mixed methods design and a newly created College Lobbying Database to track lobbying tactics and expenditure trends from 2004-2014, along with interviews and a news analysis. More Americans enter college every year, and many that graduate do so with high debt loads. Who has the will to advocate on their behalf? Although initial research suggests that colleges lobby, little is known how they lobby to secure student aid and research dollars for their campuses, and thus their students. If it is in the image of corporate America, will that yield positive results for campuses and students?

Author

• Matthew Camp, Columbia University