Markets and Mindwork

Competition is pervasive in America. It is almost blasphemous to question its efficacy in ordering human affairs. Despite this wave of popularity, I question how beneficial competition is for institutions that traffic in the work of the mind. Cervantes asks, “Can we ever have too much of a good thing?” I would suggest that there can be too much competition in intellectual pursuits. At least, in these fields of endeavor—including law and education—there is no invisible hand that automatically guides human activity to optimum results. On the contrary, intellectual services share certain characteristics that make competition highly problematic unless great care is applied. In fact, competition is already doing some damage to America’s three most prominent intellectual institutions: public schools, universities, and law firms

Response to Review by Terrance Sandalow

Mark Twain tried to convey the size and complexity of the Mississippi by explaining to his readers that the river draws its water from every state between Delaware and Idaho, discharges 338 times as much water as the Thames, and is fed by 54 subordinate rivers each of which was large enough for steamboat travel

Assessing the Proposed IAM, UAW, and USW Merger: Critical Issues and Potential Outcomes

[Excerpt] We examine the many difficult issues facing the IAM, UAW, and USW as they move toward the creation of a single organization. In order to place this merger in con- text, the larger issue of mergers in the American labor movement will be addressed, as will the origins and history of each of the three unions. The specific issues confronting the unions will be examined in three categories — structure, administration, and functions and services. We conclude with an assessment of the current status of the unification effort and the prospects for its realization

'Excellence' and exclusion:the individual costs of institutional competitiveness

A performance-based funding system like the United Kingdom’s ‘Research Excellence Framework’ (REF) symbolizes the re-rationalization of higher education according to neoliberal ideology and New Public Management technologies. The REF is also significant for disclosing the kinds of behaviour that characterize universities’ response to government demands for research auditability. In this paper, we consider the casualties of what Henry Giroux (2014) calls “neoliberalism’s war on higher education” or more precisely the deleterious consequences of non-participation in the REF. We also discuss the ways with which higher education’s competition fetish, embodied within the REF, affects the instrumentalization of academic research and the diminution of academic freedom, autonomy and criticality

A paradox in education

Admired abroad yet criticised at home, America's universities should revise their priorities and seek new ways to serve the nation

Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More

Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress college students actually make toward widely accepted goals of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering. Although most students make gains in many important respects, they improve much less than they should in such important areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors do not feel that they have made substantial progress in speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic interests, or learning what they need to know to become active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students are learning more than they did fifty years ago. Looking further, Bok finds that many important college courses are left to the least experienced teachers and that most professors continue to teach in ways that have proven to be less effective than other available methods. In reviewing their educational programs, however, faculties typically ignore this evidence. Instead, they spend most of their time discussing what courses to require, although the lasting impact of college will almost certainly depend much more on how the courses are taught. In his final chapter, Bok describes the changes that faculties and academic leaders can make to help students accomplish more. Without ignoring the contributions that America\u27s colleges have made, Bok delivers a powerful critique--one that educators will ignore at their peril