Commercialization of Schools

The Roots of Commercialization

The commercialization of schools is not a new phenomenon; businesses leaders have earned a profit from selling textbooks for many decades. However, a new tide of corporate involvement began in the 1970s and 1980s. During the Ronald Reagan administration, the Commission on Excellence in Education prepared a report, A Nation at Risk (1983), which found that U.S. students had fallen behind their counterparts elsewhere in academic achievement and placed the blame on schools. Critics of the report said that it unfairly targeted schools for outcomes that were really owing to the globalization of capital and deindustrialization.

From this point forward, a marked shift took place in the influence corporations would have in the domain of schooling. Under conservative administrations in the 1980s and 1990s, Western governments cut funding to their public school systems, which opened avenues for increased corporate involvement in the education system. Increasingly, educational institutions turned to corporations for funding, resources, and guidance. In the case of underfunded K-12 schools and urban [Page 146]community colleges, this outside funding was needed to meet students' basic needs. In the case of public colleges and universities, these business linkages were needed to remain on a par with competing private institutions across the region or country.

Commercialization and Higher Education

Within the context of higher education, corporate policies, practices, and market ideologies have braided together to infiltrate all aspects of campus life. For instance, many public institutions of higher education in the United States have lost significant amounts of funding from state governments and face strong competition for student dollars from the growing pool of for-profit higher-education institutions. University administrators are compelled to base hiring decisions, the utility of academic programs, faculty research, and student learning with a “bottom line” mentality. Not coincidently, contingent adjunct faculty members are growing as the dominant teaching force; teaching assistants are used to replace full-time faculty members; prospective faculty are compelled to secure grants to obtain tenure-track positions; and programs that are not economically attractive are generally eliminated.

Meanwhile, university personnel often feel pressured to treat their students as “customers.” They must meet student demands or face the possibility of losing needed resources with their institution, which may translate into losing their own positions. Since students have often come to view education as merely another commodity, deeming education as important to the extent it provides value in the marketplace, faculty modify their pedagogy to keep them “happy.” They teach students what they find practical, rather than preparing them to become active citizens in the pursuit of forging a society predicated on justice and democracy.

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