What is Materialism

Changes in the mission, organization, and administration of colleges and universities reflect the transformation from elite to mass to universal access institutions. Curriculum, pedagogy, academic standards, funding, and employer-employee relations have been transformed. Administration has increasingly become management in name and in nature, as the labor process of educational work mimics that of private-sector corporations. Meanwhile, the social purposes of higher education have shifted toward explicitly economic aims and away from intellectual pursuits. Colleges and universities increasingly pursue methods of technical and practical control over human and non-human nature in the interest of prosperity and progress. Academic values of open inquiry are compromised and largely eclipsed by market demands for employability skills and commercially based research. This chapter urges an ongoing critique of higher education in late capitalism, institutional governance reform, and critical interrogation of education as teachers and students address imminent and potentially catastrophic economic, ecological, and ethical problems.