Thread by @BretDevereaux

This is a good thread that I think nails the lottery nature of academia as a result of marketization, but as always I think it is then necessary to ask 'marketization in contrast to what?'

'System is bad' is true but alternatives must be considered to be useful. 1/25

https://twitter.com/Calthalas/status/1358430052787105800

So briefly, while organized university-like training existed first in East Asia and the Islamic world, the modern university's organization comes through the European tradition, where the universities were founded - often by kings - mostly to train priests. 2/25

(I am gliding over some complexity here, of course).

Moving into the early modern period, emergent European states (and later, their colonies) expand that model substantially. The model gets exported and adopted, even outside of the cultural context of its origin. 3/25

So the first model was one where states funded universities and gave them considerable independence because 1) they needed the knowledge universities cranked out to compete with other states and 2) they needed the educated professionals the universities cranked out... 4/25

...to staff their growing administrations and increasingly complex economies (which provided resources for the state competition at (1)).

Of course there was also a veneration of elite knowledge or elite knowledge's sake, but note the word 'elite' there is crucial. 5/25

Democratization of both political power and education pretty much had to change that system. It changed slowly because elite attitudes (which informed spending priorities) lagged behind the structural changes in power, but the change happened nonetheless. 6/25

And so what 'marketization' really adds up to is a shift to 'education is for the people so the people should pay for it' which leads to a model built around endowments, tuition and grants and less reliant on big blocks of state funding. 7/25

And to be clear, that system has lots of problems - skyhigh tuition, all of the issues with precarity that @Calthalas outlines in the thread (seriously, it's a good thread, go read it).

It also had some substantial advantages in knowledge production. 8/25

After all, the market has *vast* resources. It isn't an accident that probably the most marketized university system the (USA's), by one ranking system has a stunning 22 of the top 30 research universities and 30 of the top 50. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_…
9/25

The other ranking systems look similar (also the UK also punches substantially above its weight in those rankings too).

That's *bonkers* when you remember that the combined EU university systems cover a population and economy that is just as big as the United States. 10/25

Now of course a lot of that success is built on older institutions, from really old privates to land-grant universities, etc. But if you dig into the rankings, the tuition-based privatization of public schools has been associated with their *ascent* in the rankings. 11/25

So I am not sure that this is entirely a story of the market coasting on the laurels of state investment - all of that tuition money did go into to building a *lot* of world-class research universities.

But obviously the system is no longer working great. 12/25

Tuition keeps going up, while instructional budgets get slashed. It's bad. I talk about it here: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
13/25

There I suggest some solutions to try to put the university system on a firmer footing without giving up the resource and flexibility advantages that marketization have supplied. Namely:
1) Governments (fed/state) need to recognize that it is in their interest... 14/25

...to sustain these institutions for the economic and state dynamism they create. They should eschew trying to control curricula (trust students to smell bullshit and seek out hard knowledge), but instead channel funding to instructional budgets so the public gets... 15/25

...the thing it is paying for, which is useful, highly educated people to do all sorts of things (some jobs, some not) in our society that improve conditions in the long run.

2) Then cap tuition, at least for in-state students, otherwise you'll lose talent that can't pay. 16/25

Which would defeat (1).

I want to add two more things.

3) It benefits us to have world-class research institutions, but generational transitions means we're going to have fewer students.

Good news: the world is full of students who want to come here to learn. 17/25

Let them, in far greater numbers. Obviously public state schools need to keep seats open for residents of their state, but overall expanding the number of international students is a big plus: their tuition dollars can provide the revenue to employ more faculty... 18/25

...while we benefit from the advantages of having all of that world-class research happening here rather than somewhere else or not at all.

I see no good reason, given that we've built all of the infrastructure, not to make higher education a major American export. 19/25

And finally 4) there needs to be a concerted effort to explain *to voters* (not students!) the benefits that having world class universities provides for them even if they do not attend those universities or any university or college at all. 20/25

Every academic field needs to be asking itself, "how do I justify what we do to someone who will never take my classes?" It can be done! I do it with the humanities broadly here: acoup.blog/2020/07/03/col… 21/25

Beyond that, the university needs to make the same argument as an institution. And it isn't a hard argument to make, generally.

Take North Carolina. NC is not a rich state - we're about 40th (out of 50). But NC has a bunch of world-class universities and a good... 22/25

...overall state university system, mostly because the state invested in that (and also Duke exists, I guess...). And it just isn't hard to look at where economic growth is happening in NC, and to look at NC's growth compared to neighboring states, to see the impact. 23/25

The UNC system is pretty clearly a good investment for the state in the long run. We need to be defending it on those grounds because we can't rely on 'elite consensus' about the value of higher education to get funding anymore. 24/25

And that is my long-winded point: the glory days of research being funded because the state and elite wanted it are 1) not that glorious and 2) over.

We need to focus on building public support, which means explaining the value to folks who will not attend out schools.
end/25