The corporatization of universities and unions as agents of resistance

Corporate interests, partnerships, values, and rationalities increasingly govern the University. This essay examines the increasing corporatization of the university and its consequences for the university's role in the public sphere and education as a public good. It first examines five dimensions of corporatization of the university: managerial campus governance through corporate values, practices, and objectives; increasingly close relationships with private businesses in the context of donations as well as research agendas; transformations in curricular and educational content and recruitment; law schools' specific turn to corporate values, reference points, and modes of practice; the permeation of the idea of the "student as customer"; and expanding securitization and measures to curtail free speech and public debate. Finally, it turns to the ways that campus faculty and staff unions are able to counter some of the pressures of corporatization.