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4306 - The Neoliberal University: Including Tributes to Scholar-Activist Dan Clawson

Tue, August 11, 12:30 to 2:10pm PDT (12:30 to 2:10pm PDT), Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Floor: Lobby Level, Golden Gate 4

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

This session is dedicated to Dan Clawson who passed away on May 6, 2019 at the age of 70. He was a professor of sociology at UMASS Amherst for 40 years – a rare combination of renowned scholar and dedicated labor organizer. His most famous book, The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements was published in 2003. Among his organizing miracles was the unification of tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty in a common fight for improved working conditions and pay. He wrote widely on the challenges of higher education. Before he passed away he had organized the following panel.

Neoliberalism came late to higher education, but it has come. Stable long-term jobs with career ladders and benefits – in other words, the tenure system – are increasingly replaced by contingent employment, creating a two- or three-tier faculty and dramatically changing the likely career trajectory for today’s graduate students. Chancellors and presidents are becoming CEOs. Pseudo-market systems are promoted for evaluating universities and faculty, and for allocating resources to departments. State appropriations are shrinking and departments are expected to become entrepreneurial, introducing revenue-generating programs. Marketized on-line education proliferates. Students take on debt because education is an investment in future individual income, not a social good or an opening of the mind. For-profit colleges and universities have a significant toehold. Panelists will examine some of the ways in which colleges and universities are shaped by neoliberalism, the ways it influences power and resistance in higher education work, and the implications for the future of the university.

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