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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Munitz's Plan For Restructuring CSU And How He Intends To Do It
Vocationalization of the University
Corporate Restructuring of the University
VIII.
THE LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC OF RADICAL TRANSFORMATION
XII. INFORMING THE "STAKEHOLDERS"
In late April of 1997 a copy of the comprehensive system-wide strategic planning initiative, called Cornerstones (w.co.calstate.edu/aa/cornerstones/ ), was distributed to department chairs and to Academic Senates throughout the system. In accordance with the principle of shared governance, the faculty was asked to participate in a system-wide discussion of Cornerstones through the medium of faculty government. It is, however, incumbent on all members of the faculty to participate in this discussion since Cornerstones is not merely a set of proposals about how the university might better function, but rather part of a plan for a radical restructuring of the entire system. This transformation will create quite a different institution than the one we now have, an institution which will be far less able to meet the educational needs of students and the needs of the different communities which it serves.
Cornerstones is a document written by committees and designed to overcome institutional obstacles in its eventual passage. Its language, therefore, does not reveal its full meaning. Thus the document must be read in the context of national trends, relevant statements made in other venues by CSU administrators, and projects actually underway within the system. Seen within this context the ultimate goals of the Cornerstones Project, and the agenda of which it is a part, can be summarized as follow:
THE LANGUAGE OF RADICAL TRANSFORMATION
The language of radical transformation used here is by no means hyperbole; it is the language of Barry Munitz himself, chancellor of the CSU and apparent prime mover in the restructuring effort. For example, in an essay entitled "Managing Transformation in an Age of Social Triage"( Reinventing the University: Managing and Financing Institutions Higher Education, S.L. Johnson, et al., of Coopers and Lybrand. John Wiley & Sons. 1995.) Munitz says that we are "now faced with a profound challenge to [our] core rationale", and that "radical changes are occurring that will fundamentally alter the nature of the university and the governance model we have followed for the past three centuries. Not only are we testing the basic assumptions, we are also transforming traditional concepts of leadership expectations and management processes." This indeed is an "age of triage", he says, "because it mandates politically sophisticated priority setting and hard nosed reallocation of resources in a social environment where competing public needs have comparable national pulls."
Munitz repeated this
line of persuasion to the members of the California Citizens Commission
on Higher Education. The minutes of
their January 23,
1997 meeting report the following: "The Chancellor ... indicated that past
economic troubles have forced California's institutions of higher learning
to implement reforms which do not tinker around the edges." It is now "time
to implement extensive reforms which require a thorough rethinking of all
the assumptions of the California master Plan" (www.ccche.org under "Promises
To Keep"). In "Triage" Munitz describes the required reform as producing,
"adjustments in how universities are administered, how faculty teach and
students learn, and how higher education is financed," all of which will
"require a dramatically different vision and perspective from college presidents
and their board members, deans and their faculties."
THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND ECONOMIC RATIONALES FOR RADICAL TRANSFORMATION
The wedge employed by the administration to shoe-horn this new vision into the framework of the CSU system, and to provide a rationale for expanding into entirely new business ventures, is the scarcity of funds available for current operations as well as increasing student demand, dubbed "Tidal Wave II", which, it is said, will overwhelm the underfunded institution in the next decade.
Radical internal changes, says Munitz, are therefore necessary in order to deal with these inexorable external forces, a claim repeated in Cornerstones Other independent observers take a less alarmist view. Patrick Callan of the Higher Education Policy Center, while warning that very real problems confront the state's publicly funded colleges and universities, tells us that "the sky is not falling down", and that the system, although requiring some changes in the way it does business, is indeed flexible enough to deal with the financial situation. This, he says, was demonstrated by the way the institution dealt with the crisis created by Proposition Thirteen.
Clark Kerr has taken a similar position of moderation. Kerr is the architect of the present three tiered system of higher education in California, and has been a figure "at the center of every upheaval in higher education in the second half of the twentieth century" (Sacramento Bee, 5/4/97). He is also the mentor of Barry Munitz, apparent instigator of the planned transformation of CSU.
Kerr said in an April
1996 speech in Berkeley (as reported in the Bee) that "we have been
obsessed with our current problems, our current annoyances, our current
mosquito bites" and "have projected them into the future, enlarged them
and forgotten what was happening in the totality". In this context he explained
that predictions are in reality assumptions, and illustrated his point
by discussing some of the assumptions made by the framers of the current
Master Plan which were later proved wrong. "History," he said, "indicates
that prediction has a bad track record." Today, said Kerr, we are afraid
of "Tidal Wave II" and the financial situation. Yet he reminds us that
despite enrollment fluctuations and budgetary problems in the 1980s and
1990s the state institutions of higher education have "remained resilient."
His advice is that "we throw out the rhetoric we hear. It's too pessimistic,"
and that "we look at the whole range of possibilities in looking at the
future, not just the ones which are of current interest."
The demographic argument presented by the CSU management rests on the assumption that student demand will grow in coming years, creating "Tidal Wave II". Yet, Cornerstones qualifies this frightening metaphor when it says that "unlike a tsunami, Tidal Wave II is an incremental growth in student demand which will place the resources of the university far behind the growing demand". Some of this growing demand is due to the participation of older returning students which the CSU leadership has actively encouraged. Lifelong learning, meaning lifelong institutionalized learning, is a byword of the system; it is on the presidential seal of the newest campus. The system is thus crying "flood" and turning on the tap.
The truly demographic consideration is based on the projected increase in the 18-25 year old segment of the population, the so-called "baby boom echo", plus the unprecedented influx of immigrants that shows no sign of abating.
Errors in projected enrollments nationally form the subject of a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The headline sums it up nicely: "The Widely Predicted Growth in Enrollment Hasn't Materialized in Some States" (CHE, August 15, 1997). California Community colleges, where actual enrollments were 5 % below CPEC's projections in the Fall of 1996, are cited as an example of the unreliability of recent forecasts. The author of the article, Patrick Healy, notes that, "Lawmakers in some fast-growing states...are increasingly skeptical of the so-called 'baby boom echo.'" Healy reports that Washington State senator James E. West, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, went so far as to say of these projections, "there's some hype to it."
What is also far from clear is whether the immigrant sector of the population and their children will behave as did white middle class Anglo students and parents thirty years ago when Tidal Wave I took place. There are strong indications that they may not. The Hispanic population today, like Southern and Eastern Europeans in the last massive wave of immigration, seems to find routes to assimilation and success that do not stress higher education until the third generation and later.
It would thus be unwise to rely on outmoded and ethnocentric assumptions in making policy. To do so would be to ignore the true cultural diversity of our changing population, as well as the sophistication of their choice-making. (On this point, see the CHE article cited above as well as USN&WR 1996 "Best Colleges," p. 70). Clark Kerr's counsel concerning the nature of predictions, assumptions and prognostications should therefore be heeded before we permit plans for the radical transformation of a valuable institution to go forward solely on the basis of such demographic assumptions.
What the CSU administration is actually doing here is using the Tidal Wave argument as a rationale for its proposed expansion and restructuring. It is perhaps slightly hyperbolic, but only slightly, to see in these plans a new CSU that will include essentially everyone in the population for their entire lives in what Cornerstones calls a "seamless system" of undergraduate, graduate and continuing education functions, articulated with elementary and secondary education, business and social service agencies.
Financial and enrollment projections are always dependent on policy. What we see in the CSU management's predictions, therefore, are the reflections of a policy change which has already been decided at the chancellor's level, and which must now be sold under the guise of unavoidable changes in the face of unalterable forces.
Current rhetoric in regards to the very difficult problems of financing is in Clark Kerr's words "too pessimistic". In fact, it seems to be intentionally so. For example, the trend line used by the CSU administration for future income for higher education "intercepts with zero" in 2010 "meaning that no funding for higher education will be available - unless the trends are dramatically changed." This, of course, is sheer demagoguery; the kind of straight line projections presented by the administration are far from realistic, a fact pointed out by experts in the field of higher education.
For example, the sudden increase in spending on prisons will eventually level off, and the increased student fees proposed by the trustees will bring in more revenue. Also projections indicate that lower enrollment at UC will bring new students into the CSU system paying higher fees, thus changing the picture presented by the administration's deceptive estimates. These are only a few examples of why the figures presented by the administration should be more closely examined by experts and not accepted at face value. Such considerations, and others like them, should lead any sober person to question the need for the kind of radical changes which the CSU management is so vigorously pursuing in the name of financial crisis.
All this is by no means intended to minimize the very real financial problems facing the system. The high level of support enjoyed by higher education over the last thirty years is indeed dropping and the situation for CSU is tight. The major portion of its budget comes from the general fund, and constitutional and statutory provisions have placed restrictions on the governor and the legislature in allocating resources, thereby distorting the budgetary process. The result is that CSU is now a "left over" category when it comes to state financing, thus constraining the distribution of resources even when there are surpluses available as is now the case.
The university should be seeking solutions to current financial problems in terms of new fee structures, administrative savings, restrictions on or higher fees for out of state and out of country students, the possible reconfiguration of some departments, priority in admission of traditional college age students, and lobbying for political changes which allow for more flexibility in the budget process. Instead, the administration is using worst case scenarios and scare rhetoric as a rationale not for the purpose of making the institution more financially viable, but rather for transforming it into something altogether different.
Higher education is too important simply to wither away or to be severely crippled as implied by the administration's straight line projections. This is especially true of CSU, the largest institution of its kind in the world which confers half the baccalaureates in the state, produces the majority of its teachers and half of all engineers in California. Also, as Cornerstones itself points out CSU is seen as the gate-way to the middle class, thus enhancing its value in the public mind, and thereby increasing the bargaining power of its representatives.
The Munitz Contradiction: Aggressive Expansion in an Age of Social Triage
While Munitz is "courageously" triaging the faculty and programs which benefit students, nothing is being done to deal with administrative costs. Nor does Cornerstones address this problem in any meaningful way. In this regard Callan observes that there is a relative acceptance of hugh bureaucracies which impose costs throughout the system. There are however no incentives at present to cut administrative costs. In fact, Munitz's plan to further concentrate power in the administration tilts the system even more towards central management, and thereby increases the tendency towards bureaucratic growth and the continued waste of resources at the expense of the mission of the institution, those it serves and those who serve it.
For example, the trustees in a special meeting held on July 23, 1997 reached consensus on a 30% three-year salary increase for top level CSU administrators. This is just one symptom of the whole trend towards maximizing the power, compensation and prestige of the managerial class in the CSU at the expense of the rest of the system.
On top of this, the CSU management is pursuing an aggressive and potentially risky policy of expansion in a time described by management in crisis terms. Such expansions are CSU San Marcos (upgraded from a San Diego State University off-campus center), the CSU-Hayward off-campus center in Contra Costa County which is planning further growth, a new full fledged campus in Ventura County planned for the year 2000 (CSU Channel Islands), and the newest campus in the system, CSU Monterey Bay.
Squandering Scarce Resources at Monterey Bay
The Monterey Bay campus came into existence in 1994 when the federal government gave CSU 1,500 acres of land on the site of Fort Ord. There was, however, no market reason for building a new campus there. The region is sparsely populated, largely with older and retired people. There is also a fine community college in Monterey, and a CSU center administered by San Jose State in Salinas, where the student population is concentrated.
Since demographics determined that CSUMB could not become a commuter campus, like so many of the others in the system, its management billed the new institution as a statewide residential campus despite the fact that the state does not need another statewide campus, and also despite current CSU policy which is actually de-emphasizing "bricks-and-mortar" facilities in favor of "distance learning."
William Chance, author of a report entitled "A Vision in Progress: The Decision To Establish A Public University At Monterey Bay" (California Higher Education Policy Center, 6/97. "Reports" www.policycenter.org) notes this contradiction, saying that it should be a topic of further "conversation". He also cites the Legislative Analyst's report on the 1994-95 budget bill in regards to the need for the new campus. The report, says Chance, stated that "in the 1990-91 Budget Perspectives and Priorities, we found no demonstrated need to plan for any CSU campus based on Department of Finance Demographic Unit enrollment projections and the CSU capacity projections through 2005-06. Since that time DOFDU has revised its enrollment projections for 2005-06 downward by five percent." Despite this the CSU moved aggressively forward to cut administrative corners and by-pass the normal checks and balances in order to accept the land offered by the Army and to establish, with little planning, a working campus as soon as possible.
Cost per student at this new campus, most of which is picked up by the tax payer, is $12,316, comparable to average cost per student in a private college, and twice that of existing CSU campuses. In regard to student cost, the state Legislative Analyst's office reported in its analysis of the 1994-95 budget bill that "the CSU estimates that it will need $21 million in 1995-96 to serve 1,000 FTE students at the proposed campus. The same funding level could be used to support roughly 4,500 students on existing campuses, because support services were already in place." The report points out that "the situation was expected to escalate in 1998-99, when funding for 4,000 FTEs at Fort Ord would support 10,000 FTEs elsewhere in the system."
CSUMB has also chosen to offer a "non-traditional" curriculum (see section X. "Actions Speak Louder Than Words," ) which further adds to its cost. In this respect, Chance observes that "if the `21st campus for the 21st century' vision as presently conceived is pursued, it may prove to be relatively costly to operate ..." since history shows that such campuses are more expensive than are their sister institutions.
Illustrating his point with three publicly supported institutions in Washington state, Chance says that the "non-traditional" college among the three ran, on an average, at 30% higher cost than the others. High cost per student, therefore, can be expected to continue at CSUMB even as start-up costs level off. However, the "non-traditional" nature of the CSUMB program may impede its growth, since the New Age curriculum it offers may not be what students really want (see pages 80-81). If not, enrollment will remain low, thus adding yet another low enrollment campus to others already within the system.
Chance was also told by a CSU campus official that future incoming students "will demand something like [that which] exists elsewhere [in the system]. This is particularly so for community college transfers. The community colleges will have to prepare their transferring students for what is planned as an unorthodox program at [Cal State Monterey Bay], and they may not be able to, and their students may not want it if they can."
But that is precisely what the Cornerstones Project is all about: to restructure the entire system to correspond to what is already underway at the Monterey Bay campus. There is no secret about that, at least not at CSUMB, for its President, Peter Smith, speaking on the first anniversary of the new campus proclaimed that, "just as the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy and established beachheads for the campaign to defeat the Axis powers we have with great courage and sacrifice, stormed the beaches of tradition and established a beachhead here at CSUMB" (www.monterey.edu).
Capital costs to complete this "courageously won beachhead" are estimated by its president at $150 million to $200 million. As the Legislative Analyst reported in 1994 "if the federal government did not provide the outstanding 90 percent of renovation costs, Cal State Monterey Bay would then be competing with the rest of the system for limited state capital outlay funding." Chance raises doubts in his report that promised federal funds will in fact be forthcoming.
In its haste to acquire the Fort Ord land, the university inherited buildings and infrastructure (plumbing, water mains, etc.) built years ago. Yet, in the words of one legislative staff member the university has "little money to upgrade" and has "a weak maintenance base." In his words, CSUMB "will be an albatross on CSU for years to come." Legislative estimates place costs for building repairs at about $300 million. And "if the federal government doesn't renege", says the staffer, "at best we're looking at around $150 million ..."
Indeed, the army's buildings do not meet either state seismic codes or federal standards for disability access, and shortly before the campus was opened it was estimated that 84 buildings must be demolished and another 21 renovated depending on costs. Also an appraiser stated that the land actually has "negative value" due to the presence of asbestos and lead in the buildings, a fact which might eventually incur a "negative cost" to the system, perhaps in the millions of dollars, if the campus were ever required to clean up. This may very well happen if regulations are changed or remodeling were undertaken.
Moreover roads must be widened, electrical transmission lines buried and the telephone system replaced. Also unexploded ordinance is still a problem. And on top of everything else it was discovered that only half the number of students planned could actually be accommodated because of an unforeseen lack of water. There is now talk of implementing water-saving technologies and building a desalination plant that, if built, will further increase the cost of the new campus.
If, however, the water problem cannot be solved, the "promise of technology" will once again save the day, for "distance learning", we are told, can help CSUMB meet its goals without students ever having to set foot on campus. President Peter Smith seems to think this reduction of projected students is a good thing. "Such a large campus", he says, "would probably overwhelm the surrounding community and be an inappropriate presence in a rural area." Dumping a university of 25,000 people on the area, asks Smith rhetorically, "is that really the dream? I don't think it is." But then why did they plan for so many students in the first place? And if technology is to be the answer why did they plan the institution as a residential campus instead of an updated cyberuniversity which the CSU management is now promoting systemwide?
The answer to these questions, of course, is politics. The entire process, which moved forward with unprecedented "alacrity", was in fact in violation of provisions in the 1960 Master Plan which were designed to prevent the politicization of the process of campus location. Indeed there is more of a story here than has so far come to light; a story investigative reporters are now busily looking into. The tip of that iceberg is seen in the $1,400 a day "consultant's fee" paid from CSU funds to former congressman Leon Panetta and his wife. Panetta was involved in the transfer of land from the Army to CSU and was a close associate in the deal with Peter Smith (the CSUMB president) and chancellor Barry Munitz.
CSUMB is there. And once there it won't go away. This expensive, impractical and politically motivated campus thus threatens to remain a permanent resource drain on the entire system during a period which the administration constantly tells us is an era of permanent resource scarcity, and a time of "social triage".
Another such venture is now in the planning stages for 623 acres presently occupied by the Camarillo state mental hospital in Ventura County 50 miles north of the Los Angeles Civic Center. CSU trustee, William D. Campbell, says of this project that "at this point as I read the numbers , and pending further analysis it looks like a turkey to me" (California Policy Higher Education Policy Center, Crosstalk, www.policycenter.org). Campbell goes on to say that plans to lease 155 acres of the land to business will not bring in enough to cover the high costs of the new campus. This will result "in an annual deficit of $18 million by the year 2006, even with a yearly state appropriation of $10 million a year. It would cost us $17,000 per full time student and the state would contribute only $5,000 per student." Campbell added that "this thing is crazy," and that the deficit "will splash over the whole system," thereby reducing money for the other campuses.
Such expansion in an "age of triage" may indicate appallingly bad planning and management, or it may suggest covert arrangements and beneficiaries not yet disclosed, or it might simply reveal that no one is really in charge despite the tough, take charge talk of Chancellor Munitz. In any case these facts should bring into serious question the rhetoric, the competence and the honesty of the CSU management when employing economic arguments as a rationale for the kind of radical transformation it is now advancing. Moreover, the entire enterprise should raise red flags, calling for careful examination and a hard nosed audit of what the CSU management is up to and why.
Fiscal scarcity creates
the rationale for the expansion of CSU's client base and its physical plant.
It also creates the rationale for competitive operation in new markets,
and for participation in what has been called entrepreneurial government,
that is a close relationship between tax supported entities and private
enterprise, almost always at tax payer expense and to the detriment of
the public institutions involved.
First, universities are increasingly faced with competition in the very area in which CSU wishes to expand, namely those lifelong students Munitz counts on to sustain "Tidal Wave II." This concern, in fact, helps explain CSU management's heavy investment of scarce resources in "distance learning". (Following fashion is another). This competition comes from corporations and new entrepreneurs in the aggressive use of computer and telecommunication technology. This issue is well covered in an article on the rapid spread of "distance learning" which appeared in the June 16, 1997 issue of Forbes Magazine.
The authors of that article, journalists Lisa Gubernick and Ashlea Eberling, describe the rise of "cybercolleges", or "virtual universities" as growing competitors to the "brick-and-mortar" colleges which control higher education at the present time. The authors attribute the growth of such cyberinstitutions to an increasing number of working adults who wish to further their education without the cost of room, board and faculty salaries and benefits. Conventional higher education, say the authors, "is about to get some sorely needed competition."
The managers of "brick-and-mortar colleges," however, are looking not only at the threat to their monopoly, but also at the potential profit and managerial convenience provided by the spread of the new technology, for if they can make the brick-and-mortar melt into cyberspace, and the costly benefits and the annoying interference of faculty disappear, their jobs will be made immeasurably easier.
In this regard entrepreneurs who are now hustling high tech higher ed, talk of "unbundling" the faculty, a notion which is also implied in Cornerstones They point out that today the same faculty member develops and delivers courses and is responsible for evaluating student performance. With new technology the development of courses and testing will be contracted out and delivery done by low cost "paraprofessionals" and computers. Such a project is already underway in the public sector in the Western Governor's University, a virtual university which covers the western states, with the exception of California. This is no doubt a tempting model for those who would transform CSU from a collegial institution with face-to-face interaction between students and teachers to a strictly management operation.
Another business angle is the pattern of joint ventures with private business which Munitz and his managers are now undertaking, ostensibly to make up for the current and future deficit. Indeed this is also one of Clark Kerr's "predictions" that Munitz has adopted as a recipe. Kerr describes it as funding "to be handled outside the channels." The danger here is that such cooperation might lead to the corruption of the university and to questionable practices by the public and private sector partners.
There is nothing new about external collaboration. Publicly funded universities, in their capacity as research institutions, have long assisted government, agriculture, and business. What is new here is that the Munitz CSU is going into business for itself. For example, Belinda Wilson, President of CSU Northridge, is (to the consternation of local merchants) planning to use campus property to build a strip mall. Also, part of the land turned over to the CSU by the army at Fort Ord is to be developed, and the new Channel Islands campus in Ventura County is planned as a business venture from the start.
Advertisements have already gone out to Ventura County "customers" with the heading, "California State University Channel Islands: get in on the ground floor of this unique opportunity." Interested parties are to reply to, "Capital Commercial Real Estate," a local land developer. Similarly, it is hoped that the CSU Hayward satellite campus in Contra Costa County will become a center for the information technology and communication industry. Or as university officials put it, the university will "provide a needed link between the campus academic know-how and the East Bay's telecommunication and technology industries."
Alex Bordetsky, CSUH professor of telecommunications says of the center, "it's a source of network knowledge. What normally do businesses need to develop? They need some extra resources, some faculty to prototype, to test their business plan. This is what the center is about." The idea will develop, says director Mark Nickerson, depending on "how much corporate and government interest - and money - the campus can attract."
Something similar is planned for the Channel Islands campus, which still has no mission statement or planned curriculum. This, says Handel Evans, its president, will be worked out with local business. The argument presented to tax payers, who will bear the risk if something goes wrong, is that local business will prosper from such ventures and jobs will be created for local students. The real economics of the situation are thus swallowed up in political entrepreneurship which may or may not pay off for the "consumer" (students and business) while providing a risk free (tax supported) venture for the "provider."
The economic side of the venture at CSU Channel Islands has been criticized by Trustee William Campbell who calls the real estate plans a money losing "turkey." He goes on to say that it is "a real estate dog wagging an educational tail" (the Monterey Bay venture appears to be a political dog wagging the educational tail). Campbell also criticizes Handel Evans for "running around trying to line up tenants" for the real estate venture. "Since when does the state of California hire a man like Evans to be a real estate developer? He's supposed to an educator." Evans, it may be noted, oversaw the acquisition of the Fort Ord property for CSUMB.
In sum, overly pessimistic rhetoric about the tidal wave of new students and about financial crisis for the CSU create the rationale for 1) a more aggressive, market oriented management (ideally shorn of costly faculty "labor" and interference from shared governance) and 2) participation in entrepreneurial government enterprises. Moreover, the planned restructuring of the system provides a rationale for redefining what college education will be at CSU in accordance with a clearly stated vision of a restructured nationwide system of education and human resources management. This vision constitutes the national context for education policy in the United States today.
THE NATIONAL CONTEXT OF THE CSU PLAN FOR RADICAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE BUREAUCRATIC-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
This context was created by 1) the perceived failure of education in the United States, especially K-12 education, 2) the response of government and business to the problems caused by this failure and 3) the way various interest groups have captured the reform momentum in a successful effort to defend and expand their turf as well as to promote their own agendas at tax payers' expense.
The result has been a collaborative effort which involves state and local education bureaucracies, the federal government (especially the US Departments of Education, Commerce and Labor), philanthropic organizations, such as the Pew Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation and others, as well as the Business Round Table and such corporate giants as Procter and Gamble, IBM, PG&E, Southern California Edison, etc., in what is becoming a massive bureaucratic-industrial complex aimed at reshaping American education to more closely fit the needs of big business and expanding government bureaucracies.
Failure of K-12 Education as the Catalyst for the Formation of the Bureaucratic-Industrial Complex
The stimulus for this "collaborative effort" is the massive failure of K-12 education. This is perceived not only in the decline of such measures as SAT scores (revised downward to accommodate the decline), but also in numerous comparisons with other countries. This failure has also been noted by parents and is revealed in increasingly anxious complaints from employers concerned about the declining quality of their work force. It is indeed cause for real concern as indicated by the title of the well known report, A Nation At Risk, which launched the current reform movement.
Anthroplogist Ernest Gellner's description of the essential role of mass universal education in a modern society shows why such a decline is so troubling. In Nations and Nationalism he observes that universal generic education, which is necessarily publicly funded, is essential for transmitting to the widest number of people "certain shared qualifications: shared literacy, numeracy, basic work habits" and "basic technical and social skills" upon which all specialisms are necessarily based.
"Specialized schools," he says, "have prestige only at the end of the educational process if they constitute a kind of completion of a prolonged previous unspecialized education." On the other hand "specialized schools intended for younger, earlier intake have negative prestige." This arrangement, says Gellner, is based on the assumption that "anyone who has completed the generic training common to the entire population can be re-trained for most other jobs without too much difficulty. Generally speaking, the additional skills required consist of a few techniques that can be learned fairly quickly, plus 'experience,' a kind of familiarity with a milieu, its personnel and its manner of operation." The failure of such mass education therefore places the entire society and economy at risk, especially when it comes to economic competition with countries where such mass public education works the way it should.
The Role of
Business In The Bureaucratic-Industrial Complex
The failure of K-12 education in the United States is thus a cause of concern for business, and has pushed corporations into the collaborative enterprise which constitutes the bureaucratic-industrial complex. For example, a Yankelovitch Partners poll commissioned by "Nightly Business Report" surveyed 314 executives from companies with sales and revenues ranging from $10 to $100 million dollars (San Francisco Examiner, 5/4/97).
The study, taken in March 1997, reported that 70% of the executives polled believed that public schools are unable to provide businesses with a sufficient pool of potential employees, 81% believe national academic standards should be implemented, 80% said that local school systems should institute academic programs that reflect the employment needs of local business, 82% want more attention paid to vocational and trade training and 74% think that business should become more involved in setting academic curriculum.
The danger of too much
business involvement in setting priorities for education is that business
corporations view problems within their own narrow framework, giving highest
priority to their own short-term interests. This is in harmony with managerial
instincts but it often overlooks goals not always clearly translatable
into specific business needs, thereby reducing educational outcomes to
what can be easily measured, while ignoring those which cannot.
The Education Establishment And Reform
A large part of the failure that triggered business intervention in education can be attributed to the unshakable monopoly of the educational establishment. Arthur Bestor (Bestor, Arthur Educational Watseland: The Retreat from Learning in our Public Schools, 2nd ed. Urbana, Ill. University of Illinois Press, 1985.)
.) has described this establishment as an "interlocking public school directorate" consisting of coordinated groups which control the institutions of education through committees and commissions, university departments of education, public school administrators, professional consultants, theorists and planners, philanthropic organizations and bureaucrats in state and federal departments of education.
Chester Finn, former professor at Vanderbilt University and former Assistant Secretary of Education, has described this establishment as "a tyrannical machine" which is "its own boss, answering to no one but its innumerable organizational `stakeholders'. It scorns its own customers while tirelessly pursuing its own interests" namely, the "expansion of its own revenues and defense of its monopoly" (Weekly Standard, 6/2/97).
When demands for reform
grew louder, the educational bureaucracy was included as a major player
in the reform movement. The organization and influence of this bureaucracy
have thus not only enabled it to deflect criticism from itself, but has
also made it possible for the educational bureaucrats to capture the momentum
and the language of reform for their own purposes. Thus the inclusion of
the educational bureaucracy in the reform movement (where its territoriality
and billions of dollars are at stake) is tantamount to naming the fox as
one of the members of the hen-house defense league.
Any movement requires an orientation and some degree of coordination. This tone-setting and leadership role is usually taken by interested parties which have a vision and a clear agenda as well as the degree of organization and the resources necessary to advance their goals. Among the entities able to perform these functions in the United States are philanthropic organizations and special interest think tanks. Judging by the rhetoric, current legislation and the kinds of proposals that have come to characterize the bureaucratic-industrial complex, this tone-setting function as been assumed principally by the Carnegie Foundation through its National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE), an organization directed by Marc Tucker a long time advocate for restructuring the entire system of American education and the work force along European lines.
The difference between the European model and the American imitation, however, is that the European system is openly elitist, in that it selects the most promising students for the academic track, while the Carnegie version is egalitarian, dumbing everything down for everybody.
The Carnegie plan is outlined in a letter from Tucker to Hillary Clinton written just after the elections in 1992 in a successful attempt to enlist the then new administration in its restructuring effort. The same provisions, and in almost the exact same language, were later spelled out in a paper produced by the NCEE entitled A Human Resources Development Plan for the United States.
The NCEE document begins:
This vision, according to the NCEE document includes "a proposed legislative agenda the new administration and the Congress can use to implement this vision. One of the four "high priority packages" suggested to implement this agenda deals with postsecondary education. This, says Tucker in his letter to Hillary Clinton, would "use the President-elect's proposal for an Apprenticeship system as the keystone of a strategy for putting a whole new postsecondary education system in place ..." which "contains a powerful idea for rolling out and scaling up the whole new human resources system nationwide over the next four years, using the (renamed) apprenticeship idea as the entering wedge."
This would involve
the creation of a set of national standards that students must meet in
order to advance to postsecondary education. Once they had met these standards,
students would be entitled to two free years of college. "College" in this
plan, however, refers to something quite different from what most people
think, for it is really an extension of a vocational/technical training
and apprenticeship system under the guise of higher education. This guise
is necessary since, as Tucker tells Mrs.
Clinton, "the unions
are adamantly opposed to broad based apprenticeship programs by that name,"
and "focus groups conducted by JFF and others show that parents everywhere
want their kids to go to college, not to be shunted aside into a non-college
apprenticeship `vocational' program."
The way around this
problem is to "combine both academic study and structured on-the-job training",
that is, combining "time in the classroom with time at the work-site in
structured on-the-job training." Thus, this "proposal reframes Clinton's
apprenticeship proposal as a college program and establishes a mechanism
for setting standards for the program." Moreover, the plan calls for "qualifying
all students to a lifetime of learning in the post secondary system and
at work." This, says Tucker, is "an idea which redefines college," and
which will require "radical changes in attitudes, values and beliefs":
an idea we see clearly in the the Cornerstones Project for CSU.
The rhetoric and overall
goals of the Carnegie Plan have come to characterize the language and the
direction of the bureaucratic-industrial complex in general. Also parts
of the Plan were passed by Congress and signed into law in 1994 in the
form of the Goals 2000 Educate America Act (HR 1804), the School to Work
Opportunity Act (HR 2884), and the Improving America's Schools Act (HR
6). Other major elements were introduced in the Careers Act (HR 1617) and
the Work Force Development Act (S 143) of 1995. Grass roots opposition
led to the defeat of the 1996 legislation. However, its successor, the
"Employment, Training and Literacy Enforcement Act" (HR 1385), is currently
before Congress. This bill, if passed, will lay the ground work for the
creation of a Carnegie type human resource planning and vocational training
system in the United States in service to major corporate and governmental
bureaucratic interests.
The thrust of the bureaucratic-industrial complex is purely organizational and bureaucratic in nature, with a results-oriented direction as defined by business practice. This new structure completely lacks an educational philosophy. In other words, the present movement is an expanding bureaucratic organizational shell lacking any intellectual content. Since the educational bureaucrats have been included as major players in the game, and since they are the only players with a coherent philosophy of education, it was their philosophy which rushed in to fill the void.
The Orthodox Educational Ideology of the Public Schools and its Resilience in the Face of Constant Failure.
The problem is that this philosophy, with roots going back to the beginning of the century, has long since hardened unto an orthodox ideology which reduces certain truths about education to caricatures and thus to the point of fallacy. E.D. Hirsch, in The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them describes the two principal fallacies upon which this ideology rests. One of them is the formalistic fallacy which holds that the particular content which students learn is less important than acquiring tools which will enable students to continue a life long process of learning. The rationale here is that knowledge is constantly changing. It is thus impossible to learn everything within a field. Schools should therefore de-emphasize the learning of what the educational bureaucrats denigrate as "mere facts", and focus instead on "accessing skills" (learning how to look things up) and such "higher order" and "metacognitive skills" as "critical thinking," "problem-solving," etc. This approach leaps over the real process of learning, which is knowledge based, and abstracts from real experience certain desired "outcomes." These outcomes are then imagined as all-purpose tools which can be applied to looked-up data.
Hirsch refers to the second pillar upon which orthodox ideology rests as the naturalistic fallacy. This view holds that learning is done best not in a formal setting with focused instruction, employing drill and stressing individual study, but rather in the form of "project oriented," "hands-on," "collaborative learning" which takes place in "real life-like situations".
This is an expression of the romantic notion that learning of all kinds is a spontaneous, "natural" process, like the learning of the mother tongue. Thus, the learning of everything is best achieved in a similar natural, spontaneous manner. The teacher is replaced by the "facilitator" who coaches from the side lines while students "discover" for themselves the kinds of skills they will need for "lifelong learning": or as the shop-worn doggerel goes, "the sage on the stage gives way to the guide on the side."
We all know the effectiveness of the small group, carefully directed learning enterprise as seen in university laboratories, studios, seminars, field work, tutorials and in the Great Books programs of some small, seminar-oriented colleges. Yet focused instruction and drill are also effective and in some cases mandatory, especially in the context of mass education carried out with limited resources.
The orthodox ideology projected by the educational establishment thus reduces learning and teaching to a single mode which, if taken to the extreme, is nothing more than the unreliable approach of the dabbler and not the focused, systematic, knowledge-based approach of the expert. To make such a system work on a mass scale there must be a large number of "guides by the side" dealing intensely with large numbers of small groups; a scenario which would require enormous inputs of time and resources at a level of expense which a mass system of education cannot afford.
The inability of the American educational establishment to devise an effective system of teaching cannot be ascribed to its institutional monopoly alone. Other industrialized nations have even more centralized educational systems; ours is far more decentralized. What is wrong is here is a dense conformity on the intellectual level. This conformity is based to a large extent on the bureaucratic preference for procedure over substance, and the tendency of bureaucracies towards simplified, formulaic systems. Thus the orthodox educational ideology operates as an extension of the bureaucratic culture which like any culture (and ideology) defines its organizational content and guides the thoughts and action of its members.
One observer has described
this establishment in terms of a religious community since it forms "a
cohesive body of believers with a clearly formulated set of dogmas and
doctrines". These believers are "constantly perpetuating the faith by seeing
to it that through state laws and the rules of state departments of education,
that only those teachers and administrators are certified who have been
trained in the correct dogma." (Mortimer Smith. Madly
Teaching, Chicago: Regnery, 1949, p. 7 ) Under such circumstances
the establishment and its dogmas are persistent and highly resistant to
change.
Mainline Research on Cognition and Learning.
In defense of orthodoxy,
the educational bureaucracy ignores mainline research on cognition and
learning. That research which the establishment cites in its favor is dubious,
relying on small sample size or ignoring significant variables; it is often
contradictory; and it is selectively cited. Mainstream research, on the
other hand, tends to support not the naturalistic and formalistic ideology
of the current educational orthodoxy, but instead its opposite, namely
knowledge-based learning.
The main points of this research can be summarized in the following way. The ability to learn something new depends on the ability to accommodate new things with what is already known. Thus relevant background knowledge provides a stock of potential analogies that enable new ideas to be assimilated, a process which is necessary at each stage of learning.
Skills are also acquired as a part of this process, forming what is called "domain specific" skills; that is, "thinking critically" about brick laying is different from thinking critically about chess, carpentry, mathematics, literature, etc. The greater the diversity of learning in different domains, the greater the ability to think critically over a broad range of activities. In fact, it is claimed that a general faculty of "critical thinking" does not exist at all.
It is thus a fallacy
to abstract general skills like "critical thinking", "problem-solving",
etc., from real world facts and experience while de-emphasizing knowledge,
and then trying to teach these skills as all-purpose tools applied to looked-up
data. This actually has the effect of decreasing a student's capacity to
think critically about new things.
The fad quality of techno-enthusiasm in American education has been examined by Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford University. In his book Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920 Cuban describes a cycle which begins with promises from technology developers backed by research, followed by classroom use, followed by no significant academic results. The failure is then blamed on a lack of spending, on teacher resistance to the new innovation, or bureaucratic paralysis. At this point some critics of the technology itself will emerge, and as results continue to prove disappointing the blame will eventually be laid on the technology in question. This is followed by a new generation of technology and the lucrative cycle to contractors begins all over again.
In an article entitled "The Computer Delusion" (Atlantic Monthly, July 1997) Todd Oppenheimer examines the latest computer enthusiasm of the educational establishment and the research used to support it. Such research, says Oppenheimer (echoing E.D. Hirsch's observations) often "lacks the necessary scientific controls to make solid conclusions possible. The circumstances," he says, "are artificial and not repeated, results aren't statistically reliable, or, most frequently, the studies did not control for other influences, such as differences between teaching methods." Edward Miller, former editor of the Harvard Education Letter, says of such research that it is "inconclusive"; that is, it shows no significant change in either direction.
Indeed there is even some evidence that this unproven technology may be harmful. Citing researchers such as Jane Healey author of Endangered Minds: Why children Don't Think and what We Can Do About It, Shirley Turkle, Life On The Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway and others, Oppenheimer reviews some of the possible negative effects of the current uncritical use of computers in K-12 education.
Among them are the possibilities that students' attention is diluted and their creativity reduced, that the computer focuses only on two senses, that analytic gaps in thinking are created, that thinking is flattened to narrow sequential data, that reading is discouraged, and that linear rather than creative thought is encouraged.
Enthusiasm for high technology in schools also means that resources are shifted in favor of computers and as a consequence other programs of known value have to be sacrificed. One example is the current shortage of books in schools across the country which can be partially laid at the door of misdirected resources. Also schools are burdened with equipment which requires expensive maintenance and replacement.
Oppenheimer notes that "the computer industry and other businesses" are constantly expressing "their high-tech hopes for America's school children." Also "many of them are joined to philanthropic commitments to helping schools make curriculum changes." On the other hand some business people realize that many of the daunting problems faced by education are unrelated to technology.
In this regard Oppenheimer quotes Steven Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computer, who claims to have spearheaded the give-away of more computers to schools than anyone else on the planet. Jobs said in a 1996 issue of Wired Magazine that "what's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology can make a dent ... You're not going to solve problems by putting all knowledge on CD-ROMs."
Oppenheimer also observes that "if big business gains too much influence over the curriculum, the schools can become a kind of corporate training center - largely at tax payers' expense." As we have seen above, this is precisely the current national vision as represented in White House policy, pending federal legislation and corporate funding. Moreover, computer companies, like the tobacco industry, seem to be encouraging habits in their customers which will lead to costly addiction.
Yet the general trend
in the use of technology continues along the lines of superficial, fast
track, quick solution, bureaucratic approaches to education which promote
the facile abstraction of bottom line-like "skills" in a system that continually
fails but never suffers the consequence of its failure.
One of the goals of recent educational reform was to make schools accountable by correlating teaching methods more closely with outcomes. However, once the educational bureaucrats were included in committees on standards and methods of assessment, they simply took over the process and the language of reform in a more invigorated offensive to expand their influence. This offensive has been so successful that opponents now call the orthodox ideology "outcome based education".
Proper testing is important so that individuals, methods, schools, school districts, states and countries can be compared with one another and so tthat improvements can be measured. Since objective knowledge-based tests would highlight the failure of the educational establishment, its members are busy capturing the standards process and the development of tests.
What the educaional
bureaucrats prefer are "performance based tests" which are unreliable,
non-comparable, subjective, and
difficult to grade,
thus permitting the test consumers to shield themselves from criticism.
In 1993-94 such an instrument was tested in six states under Goals 2000
as a part of the plan to establish national educational standards. The
California version, known as the CLAS test (California Learning Assessment
System), was strongly attacked by parents when they found out what was
going on.
Opponents claimed that the test designers were replacing education with "behavior modification." At any rate, the test was so far off the mark of what parents wanted to know about the education of their children, that it was finally abandoned. New standards are now being designed. In the meantime Governor Wilson is calling for the statewide use of the Iowa Skills Test, a long proven, objective, knowledge based test normed on the entire country. As one gubernatorial aide said, this test will provide solid and comparable data on the academic achievement of California students before the new standards come into place. This will set a baseline against which subsequent student ability can be measured in order to evaluate changes in California's educational system. Needless to say the educational establishment is vociferously opposed to this test, calling the plan "divisive" and lobbying to prevent its use in an effort to save themselves from real public accountability and from "the splash of cold water in the face of parents" when they find out how badly off California public education really is.
Demands voiced by the educational bureaucracy that the public hold it "accountable," thus apply only when the educational bureaucrats themselves control the terms of accountability and the methods employed to establish it.
In a recent article, (Weekly Standard 7/21/1997) Chester Finn shows how the educational establishment and the federal bureaucracy have by-passed Congress (through the use of discretionary funds) and have committed the government to binding contracts for the development of national educational standards. This is being done before Congress has a chance to examine the project. "It seems," says Finn, "that the Congress should have nothing to say about the arrangements for so momentous a shift in American educational federalism."
The main contract so far has gone to the powerful Washington-based Council of Chief State School Officers, an association of state school superintendents which is highly protective of turf and orthodox doctrine. This indicates, says Finn, that the resulting standards and test "will be the creatures of the education establishment and prone to its curricular post-modern faddishness."
The plan is on a fast track, remarkably fast for a bureaucratic procedure, with a pot for publishers and test designers rumored to be $50 million of tax payer money. This is yet another illustration of what happens to education reform when, as Finn puts it, reformist projects brush up against the "twin tar babies of the federal government and the educational establishment."
HIGHER EDUCATION
AND THE BUREAUCRATIC-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Higher education administrators are faced with budgetary concerns and are threatened with competition from private business. Moreover there is a tendency for top level university administrators to become detached from the university and from the academic pursuit and to merge into the ranks of the managerial elite. They thus become responsive to national trends which coincide more with bureaucratic and corporate interests and less with the mission and needs of the academy.
One indication of this shift is seen in advertisements for the position of university president, which are now listed in the Chronicle of Higher Education as openings for CEOs. This suggests, along with many other indicators, that nowadays the business of the institution is less important than the business of management.
Another symptom is shown by the national lobbying organizations clustered at DuPont Circle in Washington D.C. The American Council on Education, which leads the Dupont Circle group, has been active in establishing the Business Higher Education Roundtable, and in the diversity, assessment, and accreditation controversies. Its publications and conferences sound a steady drumbeat for satisfying the perceived concerns of social and political "stakeholders" and for the infusion of the K-12 orthodox ideology into higher education. The ACE, which is a so-called "presidential" organization, purportedly representing higher education in the highest policy circles, finds itself more and more concerned with economic and political questions, viewed from a managerial perspective, and less and less in touch with teaching and learning.
BARRY MUNITZ: THE CEO OF HIGHER EDUCATION
This is nowhere better illustrated than in the tenure of Barry Munitz as chancellor of the California State University system, a former vice president of Maxxam, Inc., and former CEO of Federated Development Co., corporations controlled by Charles Hurwitz, one of the most notorious corporate predators of the 1980s.
Barry Munitz announced in July 1997 his departure from CSU to take over the $4.3 billion Paul J. Getty Trust. Since he is the author (or at the least the chief proponent) of the massive restructuring planned for CSU, and since he will remain in charge until January 1998, it is useful to examine his tenure at CSU. Moreover, Munitz will continue to remain active in higher education affairs, for he has been appointed to an advisory committee which reports to Congress on higher education finance. Also, as the future head of an immensely wealthy philanthropic organization, Munitz will join the ranks of an important, even defining, wing of the bureaucratic-industrial complex.
Barry Munitz: Corporate Manager Not University Administrator
Although Munitz has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University, he has only two years of teaching experience, and has never been involved in scholarship or scholarly activities. In fact, Munitz has never pretended to be a scholar, for when appointed to head the CSU, he admitted that critics might say of him, "this is not a person who has spent 20 years as a distinguished member of the faculty, of any faculty. That's clearly true." Instead Munitz tells us that his efforts have been devoted, as a manager, to hiring, raising money and policy making.
His disinterest in the heart of the university (research and teaching) and his interest in business, government and policy is reflected in his current associations. For example, on his CSU web page Munitz does not list membership in a single academic organization or scholarly association. He is, however, a member of the boards of such policy oriented associations as the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, the California Economic Development Corporation, and the California Institute of Federal Policy Research. He is also active in education planning and management associations such as the California Education Roundtable, the Commission on National Investment in Higher Education and the White House Commission, "America Reads". He is also immediate past chairman of the American Council on Education.
Munitz is still active in the business world as a member of the board of directors of KCET TV Los Angeles, and on the boards of two companies; the SunAmerica Corporation which buys and sells annuities and other financial instruments, and FHP Health Care. In short, Munitz is a manager's chancellor, not a scholar's and teacher's chancellor. Unfortunately this seems to be the kind of chancellor the Trustees want, for Munitz's replacement will not be encumbered with the requirement of any kind of academic experience at all.
Nor has Munitz ever liked shared governance. In this respect Professor Larry Judd, former faculty president at Houston University where Munitz served for a time as chancellor, says, "my perception was that (Munitz) wasn't very responsive to sharing governance with faculty." And when Munitz took over the management of CSU he said half jokingly that "one of the real dangers" when beginning as a corporate manager "was that you had to be very careful about what you said to people when they asked your advice because they actually tried to follow it. In a university, yes, you do have some sense of authority. But you know every decision is going to have 11 committees and 13 reviews. It doesn't mean you compromise what you say. It's just a very different world"; a world which Barry Munitz is determined to change in order to free both himself and other managers in higher education from the nuisance and the cost of faculty in an effort to mold their institutions according to the goals and the structure of the bureaucratic-industrial complex.
Munitz's Plan for Restructuring CSU And How He Intends To Do It
Robert Berdahl, on his first day as Chancellor of UC Berkeley, made a point of saying that, "I really intend to be somebody who is an advocate for students, and advocate for the faculty. That's the job of administrators and that's what I am here to do" (Contra Costa Times, 7/8/1997). That, however, is not what Barry Munitz is here to do, for his focus is neither on students nor faculty but rather on creating a stronger, less constrained management. He is, in fact, no university administrator at all, but rather a corporate manager of the most unsavory sort as revealed in his own words and actions. Among the most candid of his statements are those found in his essay "Managing Transformation in an Age of Social Triage."
The ideas on the university expressed in that essay, however, did not originate with Munitz. They are a coarser and more open expression of the pragmatic views of his mentor Clark Kerr (who, one would like to think, is horrified at what his now old fashioned vision of the "multiversity" is becoming). Also Munitz's methods are those of the corporate predator Charles Hurwitz whom Munitz served as chief lieutenant before he came as chancellor to CSU.
In "Triage," as everywhere
else, Munitz evokes a sense of crisis and urgency as a cover for his restructuring
ventures. He then describes what kind of manager is required to carry out
the bold plans he champions.
The Munitz-Manager.
"The nuts and bolts of the leverage and constraint mechanism, where relevant and flexible incentives and sanctions determine who (sic) we hire, who (sic) we promote, how we pay in what we invest ... all of these administrative tools cry out for imaginative leadership in this Age of Triage."
Indeed "for those who are managing the twists and turns that are confronting American higher education, there is ... little time left for thinking, planning, or collegial consultation ... Indeed, one of our problems is that business and elected leaders believe ever more strongly that the pace and intensity of their remodeling dramatically outstrips ours."
The "new model of presidential leadership," he says, "involves people who are willing to take risks, be accountable, sell the university to its many publics, and develop workable leverage and constraint mechanisms to alter the internal structure. They must be willing to ruffle feathers, reconsider the earlier boundaries of academe, and be willing to test the old assumptions with a courageous coherent vision." He goes on to say that "this new breed of leader is more likely to be in the newspaper and on television than in his or her office or at the faculty club... They must be found in the middle of messy public debates, balancing social priorities and asserting a strong influence on their institutions."
The Vocationalization of the University.
The vision of this new breed of higher ed CEO is that of the Carnegie Plan which Munitz sells by appealing to the desire of voters for the economic well being of their children. "Voters want higher education to train students for jobs and careers," he says, "to give young people the opportunity to move up in the world, to provide retraining opportunities for adults seeking new careers, and to improve the economy through a more competitive work force."
This leads him to the argument, following the Carnegie Plan, that higher education should be vocationalized. Evoking Clark Kerr's prediction (i.e., Munitz's goal) for the university in the 1990s, Munitz quotes Kerr; "in general I [Kerr] believe that the greatest trend in the reorientation of program efforts within American higher education, as already in Western Europe, will (and should) be toward more emphasis on training polytechnic type skills and toward more polytechnic type applied research and technology transfer."
There is indeed nothing wrong with polytechnical institutes nor with polytechnic training. In fact, two of our CSU institutions are highly successful polytechnics, and one of the newer acquisitions of the CSU system is the California Maritime Academy, which offers specificized training. Yet it is necessary to discover just what Kerr and, more importantly, Munitz mean by "European polytechnic" before we can compare that vision with the polytechnic reality we already have within the system.
Also Kerr's comment, as quoted by Munitz, should be read against the backdrop of what Marc Tucker of the NCEE says about "redefining college" as well as of legislation now before Congress (HR 1385).
Corporate Restructuring
Of The University.
The proper organizational model for the institution which will realize this vision is not the university, but rather the corporation, or, better stated, the kind of corporation that Munitz knows best. "For better or worse," he says, "our institutions are going to be held to standards comparable to those that corporations apply to their businesses and that governments are beginning to apply to their agencies."
Recruiting the "Stakeholders".
This is the kind of talk that appeals to business leaders whom Munitz actively recruits in his drive to transform the university. Such businessmen and business oriented leaders, along with other special interest groups, are known in the jargon as "stakeholders." The presumption is that since they pay taxes to support institutions of higher education and since they consume its product as employees, they have some special claim on the institution and how it should be run.
Sometimes tax paying citizens (students and their parents) are included in the category "stakeholder" when the narrow economic interests of this constituency are enlisted. In general, though, "stakeholder" has come to mean those elites whose backing must be secured by eductional bureaucrats in order for them to get and keep what they want.
One group of "stakeholders" is the California Citizens Commission on Higher Education, a group supported by foundation money. Its purpose is to "set comprehensive public recommendations" to address the problems of education in California (see their website, www.ccche.org). In their minutes of January 23, 1997 (on their website under "Promises to Keep") Munitz's contribution was summarized as follows: "The Chancellor stated that the Commission's most important role is that of a catalyst to bring change in the current climate and help the institutions implement difficult and possibly painful reform."
He evokes a "sense of urgency" in his appeal saying that "a reform movement must be underway prior to the summer of 1998 in order to have a full political impact. A clear, focused, and politically courageous plan," he says, "is needed." The report goes on to say that "Chancellor Munitz ... indicated that a priority of the Commission ought to be to ensure that the collective pressure of its members, the public, and those within institutions interested in reform, is felt for movement on these issues."
Munitz told the Commission that the state of California understood in the 1960s, when the current Master Plan was designed, that education was a "public good", and that "the state would pay the bill. We now have to ask again what is the current `public good' and is there a connection between what those purposes and what we spend our resources on, or if we are merely spending based on outdated priorities."
"The sense of urgency," he says, "... will require political and marketing strategies that will sell a program of reform to the institutions and sell that same program to the government." He then explains to the Commissioners that "you will make the best use of outside sources of leverage and inside mechanisms of control." However, "if you do not produce a report that seriously discomforts the prerogatives of my internal constituencies, then you have done me no good at all. I am not here to protect their prerogatives, increase their freedom and simply send them more money. They are critical to the success of this enterprise, faculty, students, staff, and administrators. But, the underlying and operative assumption here is not that their traditional prerogatives have to be protected above the public interest."
Commissioner Dennis Mangers (Senior Vice President of California Cable Television and former Vice President of American Learning Corporation) responded to Munitz's appeal by saying that "if we are to provide a sort of `cover' for you as we go public with some reforms I want to be better prepared to help you in selling reforms. It would be useful to talk in private ..."
We do not know what Munitz and Mangers and other Commissioners discussed in private, and what kind of "cover" these particular "stakeholders" decided to give Munitz in his "political and marketing strategies." Nor do we know what Munitz has worked out with other "stakeholders." We do know, however, in his own words, how he planned to deal with a key component of the institution he intends to transform so radically, namely the faculty.
Reducing Bothersome Employees (the Faculty).
In order to affect this restructuring and to facilitate "the new demands being placed on" the institution Munitz tells us (in "Triage") that "our academic governance system" must be reconsidered. This involves the coercion and the manipulation of the faculty, which stands in the way of the enlightened manager and his ability to respond to business and governmental bureaucratic demands. Thus "creative incentives and sanctions ... will be required to encourage more than one model of reward for faculty, legitimize more than one measure of prestige, and realize viable alternate paths for graduate student growth."
Thus "our leadership strategies will have to include greater respect and reward for those carrying out the highest priority tasks - defined according to external public interests and requirements, not just internal guild standards and desires."
One of the problems involved here, says Munitz, is "refusing to discuss tenure". Thus the manager must create a system of "leverage and constraints" in order to get his way. Thus "public expectations must be linked more directly to the criteria of institutional prestige and social requirements" (or as Marc Tucker would put it "radical changes in attitudes, values and beliefs" which would "redefine college"). "And faculty rewards must be linked more directly to highest priority social requirements" (in plain English to bureaucratic and business demands).
"Unless courageous leadership from faculty is more creatively recognized and publicly honored, the tendency to protect traditional turf and defend historical processes will be irresistible - and very destructive"; destructive, that is, of the bold new plans which Munitz and the bureaucratic-industrial complex have invented for restructuring education and the work force in the United States.
Munitz gets down to brass tacks in discussing how the faculty should be dealt with. "A leading corporate CEO," he says, "who has engineered massive restructuring at two of America's largest companies" (was it Charles Hurwitz?) "recently described to me the leverage and constraint mechanisms (more often described in the business environment as reward and punishment) necessary to bring about change. He said: I have concluded that there are three and only three things in the end that matter to those key employees upon whom essential change rests: pride, fear, and greed." This, in fact, may account for Munitz's experience as a CEO when he said in a jocular vein that "you had to be very careful about what you said to people when they asked your advice because they actually tried to follow it." Presumably they were afraid not to.
Munitz admits that "... fear of relocation or dismissal, and greed for greater personal support are not often stated considerations when presidents and chancellors attempt to bring about change in a classroom, an educational organization, an independent or public university. But without candid analysis of how we hire and promote employees, pay and protect faculty and staff, and improve or dismantle programs, there is little hope for establishing a healthier relationship between the social priorities (which trigger public investment) and the way colleges and universities do business."
He continues by saying that "for academic employees and their supervisors" (in normal parlance, professors and deans) "what we seek are factors shaping individual behavior, influencing choices, and molding decisions - all directed toward facilitating not obstructing transformation", that is, to ghet what the manager wants. Thus, "incentives and sanctions are central to managing most emphatically when money is tight and competition tough."
In this regard he says that "current governing structures allow faculty groups to stop others from bringing change..." In order to affect this restructuring something must therefore be done about the faculty. Here is what Munitz has to say about that. "...anyone attempting to guide the movement of a contemporary university will have to examine (among other things): 1. How will we establish a value and reward system consistent with priority goals? 2. What leverage and constraint mechanisms will be required to affect change and improve client orientation in response to consumer and patron expectations?..."
In other words, what kinds of manipulative and coercive mechanisms can the manageers of universities devise in order to reshape the institution along corporate lines? The job, he points out, won't be easy but it is feasible if one follows the "reward and punishment" incentives used in business. "University executives ... are still struggling uphill against the common indictment that if faculty do as they have always done, society will get no more than it always had. In response ... faculty rewards must be linked more directly to the highest priority social requirements." One must ask at this point if society has gotten a bad deal so far from higher education in the United State, an institution which by all measures is considered the best in the world.
One way to control faculty is to get around tenure. One method is to stop filling tenure track positions, and instead hire part timers at lower pay and with no fringe benefits. Such faculty are far more tractable, since they must constantly remain responsive to management in order to safe-guard their tenuous position, a method which is apparently being applied at CSU Hayward (See Chronicle of Higher Education (3/28/97).
Another way for a "courageous"
and tough minded management to deal with faculty is to manipulate salary
increases so as to reward the obedient and punish the independent. This
procedure, now in force throughout the system, is called PSSI.
Jeff Lustig, of the Government Department at Sacramento State, has captured the essence of this deliberate subversion of the faculty in an essay entitled "PSSI -Hazardous to the Health of the University" (published by the California Faculty Association, cfa@calfac.org, www.calfac.org). The PSSI program, says Lustig, was first conceived as a financial incentive to reward performance. In reality, however, PSSIs are not bonuses but "permanent salary accretions and distinctions to last through retirement."
At first, a remarkable 20% of available salary increase funds were allotted to the PSSI program. "The chancellor," says Lustig, "then sought all such monies for PSSIs, proposing in the process to nearly abolish cost-of-living increases for the faculty as well." This system, in the spirit of the Munitz vision of restructuring, concentrates power in the hands of the campus presidents and the chancellor's Office. "The former gives the awards goaded by the latter."
The entire system thus gives "immense discretionary power to campus presidents over faculty members' pay scales, institutional status and indeed professional lives." Lustig continues by saying that "it seeks to create a concentration of power unknown elsewhere in public and private-sector employment." "Civil service and industrial relations reformers," he says, "have fought for a century to establish criteria of promotion to quash exactly powers like these, so often abused." Another adverse effect for the institution, and a plus for Munitz and the Munitz-managers, is that by "assigning power to campus presidents ... means taking away from faculty senates, the recently-established union, and autonomous departments, vitiating their strength and subverting their roles."
But why should the "stakeholders" care? In fact, shouldn't they approve of a strong central management which sweeps away the obstruction created by faculties; employees with too much to say in the running of an efficient corporate entity and who represent little more than "guild interests" standing in the way of the "public good" and enlightened management?
The fact is that the "stakeholders" should care very much about attempts to deprofessionalize the faculty, since it is the faculty that constitutes the heart of the university, not the management. And if "stakeholders" should want a university, and not a mixed voc\tech school with a token academic component, then they should ask themselves what a faculty means to a university and why Munitz-like plans to devalue the faculty are destructive of the institution.
James Burnham (author of The Managerial Revolution and The Machiavellians) noted that power grabs and fraud are always closely related. George Orwell, in a review of Burnham's writings, summarizes Burnham's view in the following way: "Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to make use of the masses, and the masses would not cooperate if they knew they were simply serving the purposes of a minority."
This is clearly the case in the power grab now underway at CSU, where the administration (self-defined as corporate management) 1) evokes a sense of crisis and urgency employing hyperbole and distorted evidence, 2) appeals to the self interest of "stakeholders," and 3) proceeds to implement its agenda by secrecy, deceit and prevarication. In other words, the end (the advancement of the agenda of the bureaucratic-industrial complex) justifies the means (mendacity and manipulation) in order to reach the stated goal. One illustration, in a vast multitude of examples, is Munitz's massaging of the faculty at CSU Fullerton (LA Times 3/31/1997).
In "Triage" Munitz writes: "The use of technology holds great promise for keeping universities competitive and greatly expanding access." He goes on to say that "no one can reasonably expect higher education to be exempt from productivity pressure. Technology has been the most significant component of productivity improvement in other industries ... The question at hand is the degree to which technology can aid productivity in a service environment like higher education, and the degree to which the information explosion and the access it provides to data will change the very nature of the university."
Citing the financially dubious Monterey Bay campus Munitz says that "this new facility ... will be a model of twenty-first century mechanics, reducing building requirements at the site (by using such things as a robotic controlled at-distance library) while incorporating the technological capacity to reach across the entire state through a two-way satellite and microwave telecommunication network."
Yet when queried by faculty at CSU Fullerton on the promise of technology, Munitz said, "You're talking to a former professor of classics and comparative literature who does not own and hopes to die having never owned a computer. I'm a charter member of the Luddite Society," he said. "I'm a long way from convinced that technology is the secret to efficiency." The chancellor's office issued a reaffirmation of technology the next day. And in August of 1997, Munitz reaffirmed his commitment to pushing a high tech agenda for the CSU as his first priority in the remaining months of his tenure as chancellor.
Also at the same meeting Munitz, in response to questions on the PSSI policy, conceded its shortcomings while soothing his faculty audience by saying that "a measure of the muddle is coming from the top," and that the program still needs work, leading one gullible faculty member to gush that he thought the chancellor's candor was "enormously healing." So far, however, no healing salve has come from the Chancellor's Office, and PSSIs are still in force.
The lesson here is
that Munitz and the Munitz- managers will say anything to mollify, disarm,
mislead, manipulate and persuade whatever audience they are addressing
in order to advance their agenda. In short, prevarication and deception
are essential techniques of the Munitz-management style and that of his
systemwide team.
Summary
In sum, Barry Munitz disdains the mission and the nature of the institution he is entrusted to administer and represent. He is also attempting to manipulate and coerce its faculty, for which he obviously holds contempt. He engages in obfuscation, deceit and double talk to get his way, and is launching risky and dubious business enterprises with the university's and the public's funds.
All this is done in
the name of better management along corporate lines apparently in keeping
with the corporate experience for which he was hired. What then was Barry
Munitz's experience at Maxxam and Federated Development Co., and what can
that tell us about where the CSU has been pointed under his management?
An excursus in that direction is helpful in understanding the background
for Cornerstones and the broader agenda which it is designed to
advance.
MUNITZ AS A CORPORATE
PREDATOR
Changes in the economy and the failure of some companies to adjust created an opportunity in the 1980s for corporate raiders to reap enormous personal profits at the expense of the companies they took over, and at the expense of their employees and the tax payer. Those predators deceptively depicted themselves as hard nosed managers who saved failing companies by acquiring them, and then by ousting unimaginative management, installing tight spending controls and restructuring the businesses, which they claimed would then be set on solid ground.
The truth, however, was very different, for such takeovers were actually raids on vulnerable companies in which the takeover artists built vast financial empires based on company debt and tax write offs. In the process, hundreds of American jobs were lost, shareholders were defrauded, and the raiders made off with millions of dollars of profit, often in effect subsidized by the tax payer. A prime example is what happened to the Simplicity Pattern Company, which at one time was the world's leading producer of patterns for home sewn clothing.
The Simplicity Pattern Company
In 1979 Simplicity was a tax paying concern with $100 million dollars in reserve. Once the corporate raiders had gotten through with it a decade later, its pension fund had twice been raided, the work force and the benefits it had enjoyed had been reduced, and the company ended up paying no federal tax and $100 million in debt. This is the story as told in the Philadelphia Inquirer (10/26/1991) by two Pulitzer prize winning reporters, Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele. Their article was later included as a chapter in their book America: What Went Wrong?.
As fewer women made the clothes their families wore, Simplicity's business fell off, and with it a drop of income from $24 million in 1976 to $ 9 million in 1980. As Bartlett and Steele put it Simplicity "was a Harvard Business School case study of a stagnating company - an entrenched management unable to meet the challenges of a changing market," and thus "a company ready made for corporate raiders."
They came in waves, buying and selling the company's stock and passing the company back and forth among themselves in leveraged buy outs "like trading cards". For example, Michael Milken's now defunct Drexel, Burham and Lambert told its investors that "Simplicity Pattern is a cash cow," then picked up 5% of the company's stock themselves in a transaction they kept secret. During the 80's, the Simplicity "cash cow" was bought and sold four times using the company's own assets for some of the transactions. Bonds were floated until Simplicity's debt reached the point where the company was unable to make interest payments, thus leading to default on interest payments and bank loans.
One of the four corporate raiders who passed the company around was Charles Hurwitz, who tapped into a nearly unlimited source of capital from Michael Milken, a financier who later went to prison for securities fraud. One of Hurwitz's close associates in his enterprises was Barry Munitz.
In May of 1982 two of Hurwitz's companies, MCO Holdings, Inc. and Federated Development Co. purchased Simplicity from its owners, the second of the corporate raiders who victimized the company. While Hurwitz and Munitz, now in charge of Simplicity, were busy acquiring a sugar company (Amstar, Inc.), and real estate, they were also busy seeking to cut the benefits and the pay of the employees at Simplicity's plant in Niles, Michigan. They also began paper work with the IRS which would allow the company to remove $2.9 million of $ 7 million for their venture from one of Simplicity's pension funds (allowable under law).
In 1984 Hurwitz also changed the name of his enterprise to Maxxam. In the same year he pressured the unions to reduce the wages and benefits of the workers at Simplicity's Niles plant, and also persuaded the city of Niles to give the company a 50% tax break and to help arrange financing for more modern equipment under the threat of closure.
All the while, the management of Simplicity kept looking to Hurwitz and the board, of which Munitz was a member, to come up with ideas for diversifying the company in order to set it on solid, profitable ground. They never did. Instead the Hurwitz group sold the company.
Bartlett and Steele summarize this by saying that "now that Hurwitz had invested Simplicity money in sugar and real estate; now that the company name had been changed to Maxxam; now that Niles tax payers were going to subsidize the purchase of equipment; now that workers had agreed to pay cuts, he decided to unload the business."
In 1986 the new owner, the Triton Group, went to the pension fund for a second time to remove $7.8 million of the 8.5 million fund, part of which went to Maxxam (Hurwitz, Munitz, et. al.,) as a part of a $65 million package of cash and notes it received from Triton when it sold the company to that group. In all, the corporate raiders made millions by exploiting the resources and the employees of the company. Bartlett and Steele summarize the whole sordid decade of corporate predatio