This work documents the rise of corporate practices within the modern university. It uses first-hand narratives to discuss the challenges and costs of working within this new system and explains why a labour movement has arisen to restore power and independence to university teachers.
Steal This University explores the paradox of academic labor. Universities do not exist to generate a profit from capital investment, yet contemporary universities are increasingly using corporations as their model for internal organization. While the media, politicians, business leaders and the general public all seem to share a remarkable consensus that higher education is indispensable to the future of nations and individuals alike, within academia bitter conflicts brew over the shape of tomorrow's universities. Contributors to the volume range from the star academic to the disgruntled adjunct and each bring a unique perspective to the discussion on the academy's over-reliance on adjuncts and teaching assistants, the debate over tenure and to the valiant efforts to organize unions and win rights.
"Anyone with an interest in the future of American higher education will benefit from reading this collection of provocative and often brilliant essays. There are lucid and cogent analyses of the excessive and often corrupt influence of corporations on curricula and research, profiteering by academic entrepreneurs, the imposition of a demonstrably flawed corporate structure on the academy, and the overuse and abuse of poorly paid contingent faculty. The volume concludes with a call to recapture the university for the good of our students and our society." -- Jane Buck, Ph.D., National President, American Association of University Professors"The strength of the book is in the very readable essays of those authors who are working as or are organizing graduate asssistants, adjunct faculty, or tenure-track faculty. It is an accessible anthology for undergraduates as well as graduate students...this volume has a great deal to offer." -- Journal of Higher Education
