Critical Qualitative Research and the Neoliberal Assemblage in Higher Education: Territorializing and Deterritorializing

• In Event: Critical Qualitative Research and the Corporatized University: On a Collision Course

Abstract

An emerging corporate university industrial complex (Washburn, 2005; Editorial, 2001; Kenney, 1986) labels students and parents as consumers (Dickeson, 2006), employs professor as either highly paid ‘stars’ named after corporate donors or as factory workers hired to instruct and manage massive numbers of consumers (students), and recruits administrators as CEOs who generate funds and work to build their own financial academic empire. For-profit higher education is a national force with venture capitalists like the Apollo group (University of Phoenix) and American Public Education, Inc. (American Military University) offering “education” to the largest numbers of “learners” in history (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2007). This study uses the critical notion of “assemblage” to examine this corporate university industrial complex. Data were gathered from university documents, surveys, and faculty interviews (conducted in the state of Texas) and analyzed by constructing situational maps (Clarke, 2005). The assemblage is described using concepts introduced by Deleuze and Guattari (1987; 1977) that include multiplicities, exteriorities, elements/entities, material and expressive roles, desiring and producing machines, coding, and regimes of signs. Additionally, lines of deterritorialization/flight (that counter new forms of capitalist facism) within the higher education assemblage are described.

Author

• Gaile S. Cannella, University of North Texas