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Student Affairs
Daniel Salter Penn State University Editor Stuart
Brown |
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Fall 2000 • Vol. 1, No. 3 |
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Dan Schiller |
Dana Christman Northwest Missouri State University |
Dan Schiller's book, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System, is a well-written treatise about the intimate relationship between politics, economics, and global technology. Although student affairs readers may be cautioned that chapters 1 and 2 seem to further the story rather slowly as they describe the history of today's technology in terms of the impact on corporate business, they are worth a quick read as they cautiously lay the groundwork for what is to come. Schiller not only delineates the creation and history of cyberspace by the military, government, and certain higher education institutions, he also brings readers' attention to the part of the story that is not often heard. He describes the inequalities that were not addressed and that still persist between those countries that have global technology power and those who still aspire to bring reliable telephone service to each village. Schiller even discusses technology inequities within countries.
Notwithstanding, it is the latter part of his book - chapters 3, 4, and conclusion - which should intrigue student affairs practitioners more. Providing a clear history of the development of higher education in the 20th century in the U.S., Schiller notes that in-house corporate education began to develop substantially around the mid-century mark, but entered the fast track in the last decade or so. He notes that "the annual dollar volume of this shadow education system was uncertain but unquestionably great" (p. 152). Generating during the 1980s around "$30-80 billion in revenue," this non-traditional education system boasted approximately "250,000 full-time and an additional 500,000 part-time trainers" teaching outside the formal higher education system in the U.S. (p. 152-153). Undeniably, there was a substantive demand for education outside the traditional system and universities had to seek new patterns and patrons of higher education. That new partnership was with industry.
Such was the new partnership that research in higher education took a new turn. Schiller describes how the University of California made a conscious decision to fund research in part through patent income, thereby almost ensuring that "program priorities would be set more directly by the search for profit" (p. 165). According to Schiller, the "leading symptom of this general transformation comprised a rapid extension and hardening of class divisions with academe" (p. 165). Real salaries for professors were lower than they had been in 25 years and part-time faculty, including post-doctoral appointees, were cast into a sort of lower-class tier. Distance learning had become a reality and, with the advent of the Internet, who owned the intellectual property rights of coursework became a debate. Higher learning had become an industry in itself and ushered in the for-profit vendors of higher education.
Thus, Schiller poses the question of how far education will be transformed by profit-seeking motives and whether the process of change will encounter real social opposition. He postulates that, perhaps, the symbiotic relationship with industry is merely a sign that consumers have gained sovereignty that has long been due. Even more importantly, since this ability of corporate business to shape and define the social institution of education has been evidenced, has it also been evidenced in our politics and culture? Schiller maintains that it has, but that it is not the first time in U.S. history that it has done so. Such influence was felt both before and after World War I. What is new, according to Schiller, is the breadth of corporate rule. There are no "socialist adversaries" (p. 205) for corporate rule to face. In fact, Schiller notes that digital capitalism "is free to physically transcend territorial boundaries and, more important, to take economic advantage of the sudden absence of geopolitical constraints on its development" (p. 205).
Interesting and alarming issues, then, are raised. With the strong influence of digital capitalism, local, state, regional, and national entities race against each other to attract capital investment and, thus, produce a "race to the bottom" (p. 208). The decline in the social wage and the redistribution of wealth continue unabated. "We may be confident that digital capitalism has strengthened, rather than banished, the age-old scourges of the market system: inequality and domination. The road to redress begins from this recognition" (p. 209). In a field that professes to strive for equity among its students, perhaps, student affairs practitioners should be among the first to take heed of what Schiller has written.
Schiller, D. (1999). Digital capitalism: Networking the global market system. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
