since the neoliberal revolution universities have become increasingly financialized, with the "college experience" turned into a commodity managed and sold by HR and PR departments that greatly exceed any research and teaching funding and personnel. universities are brands now
and their clientele are prospective students. their incentive structure is set up to as to maximize this clientele so as to maximize their profits, which leads to ever exorbitant tuition fees and other costs and a hyper-sensitivity to protecting their brand
this financialization and marketization of the university has a distorting effect on all relations within it: between students and teachers/researchers and among students and teachers/researchers themselves, which is expressed in all sorts of pathologies
pathologies like ever increasing rates of severe depression and suicidal ideation among students, who are put in a "survival of the fittest" situation the poorer they are, the frenzied competition between recent graduates for ever scarcer jobs, let alone tenure-track positions
at-will contracts are now the norm, the pay is terrible, a strict hierarchy is maintained with disciplining those on the lower regions of it by those on the higher being commonplace. but these pathologies get little to no attention by the professional media class
for obvious reasons: they directly relate to the material conditions underlying the neoliberal university. by shining a light on them, the latter is also illuminated, and we can't have that. so what do they focus on instead? the "OMG SJWS" stories, perfect outrage-clickbait
the right-wing, funded by billionaires, hyperfocus on these stories, magnifying and distorting them so as to further the marketization of the university and to undermine any remaining semblance of autonomy it still has. and, crucially, to divert attention from material issues
anti-"woke" liberals do the same for the same reason: their social function as members of the professional media class is to divert attention to meaningless spectacles. it also helps both cosplay and build a brand as brave fighters against a mythical foe: the sjw cultural marxist
but though it is easier to divert and farm for outrage with these "OMG SJWS" stories, however marginal they are (the vast majority if not all of them are dishonestly framed), they too are expressions of the neoliberal university's material incentive structure
look at any case of this happening and it is always a result of hyper-sensitive university HR and PR departments taking some sort of action to protect their brand. and why shouldn't they? that's their duty: to maximize profit by ensuring they get as many students as possible
and I said, this distorts all relations in the university: when students are seen and treated as consumers, they will in turn see and treat the university as a corporation, which the neoliberal university in effect is. right-wingers and liberals created these very conditions
so whenever you see one of these faux outrage stories which every bluecheck professional media class hack hyperventilates over, and there are going to be a lot of them over the next 4 years, take notice of the fact that none of them, zero, address the root material cause of it
and the same is true w/ regard to the job market: there is constant, never-ending shrieking about this or that "cancellation" (always very selectively chosen to fit their normative priors) and how it spells the end of western civilization, but no discussion of at-will employment
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
