Corporate Culture and the Attack on Higher Education and Public Schooling

Henry Giroux. (1999). Fastback series. Phi Delta Kappa International.

Giroux affirms that the commercial power suffocates higher/public education by measuring the knowledge produced in the process of education as a commodity to sell. According to him, corporations, which have the fundamental standpoint that knowledge is capital to invest, instrumentalize knowledge by selecting higher education research projects/models based on the profits they would bring, and this practice reflects the ever-creeping perspective that education is a process of "vocationalization" and "subordination of learning to the dictates of the market" (p.16). He finds further evidence of the corporatization of knowledge in higher education in the way that government and educational institutions build their relationship with corporations: for example, corporate leaders often represent government or educational institutions in the media and persuade the purpose of higher/public education to the public. This corporatization is also found within higher education institution itself as seen in an increasing number of high rank university officers who are hired from or make a strong partnership with the business world. This indicates higher education's self-modeling in favor of corporate standards. [This suggests a microscopic level of corporations' invasion to higher education. This is an invisible hand to control the higher education system. I need to look into this self-adaptation process in order to find out the current position of higher education that is facing strong commercial winds that come from corporations.]

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