Is there a concerted attack on the Higher Education System of the US?

A recent article in a website called Alternet, puts forward the idea that conservative and capitalist forces have set out to destroy higher education systematically.

The argument goes like this: During the Sixties, the Universities were a source of protest, anti-establishment sentiment, suspicion of Big Business, anti-war propaganda, and support for diversity, sexual liberation, protest against racism and against exclusionary policies at all levels, in short, everything that stood against traditional motherhood and Apple Pie.  The conservative elements--rightly--identified this left-leaning thought with Universities specifically, and post secondary education generally.  The author (not identified clearly on the site) suggests that a movement was put in place at least thirty years ago, to effectively destroy higher education as it existed then, and replace it with something friendlier towards Business, the Armed Forces, and conservatives, or the so-called Business-Industrial Complex, though it was not identified as such in the article.

The article describes how the author believes the Universities were set on the Road to Destruction in 5 Steps.

Step 1:   Defund higher education.
Step 2:  Impoverish professors.
Step 3:  Move in a managerial class to "prefessionalize" university administration.
Step 4:  Move in Corporate structure, and corporate money.
Step 5:  Destroy the Students.

While we may think that the path of higher education, generally, and the paths of practically everything, has followed this path ever since Ronald Reagan took office, there is reason to believe that certain individuals had actually planned this route, notably one Lewis Powell, who joined the Supreme Court in 1971, who is reputed to have sent something now called the Powell Memorandum, which declared that the Universities were the source of a concerted attack on the Free Enterprise System, and called on a concerted counter-attack, in terms of increasing the power of the Congressional Lobby, and its ability to shape the priorities of members of Congress.  The article quotes Anna Victoria, who points out (Pluck Magazine) that this agenda bore fruit, as Universities had to turn to private sources for funding.  Private funders, of course, use their leverage to influence the tone of activity in the schools that they fund.

The (identity unknown) author of the Alternet "Five Steps" article compares the anti-education procedure adopted by US Business as being a subtle variant of the Chinese action of sending dissending intellectuals to "re-education" camps.  Though the condition of the US 'professoriate' is not visibly as pathetic as that of either Russian or Chinese intellectuals in the decades of the fifties and sixties, one can indeed see that while, on the one hand, University Presidents (and football coaches) do enjoy fabulous salaries, most other professors earn far less than one would expect with salaries of the 1960s adjusted for inflation.  Professors are being bullied into cooperation with Business.

Though it is difficult to see the entire problem of higher education in the framework of the Five Steps article, it is nevertheless easy to imagine that certain parties, at least, have incorporated the idea of the destruction of universities into their private agendas; in other words, I do not see the entire sad recent history of Academe in the US as the story of victims of a conspiracy.  But I do have to admit that any conspiracy one can imagine on the part of Business can easily be true; there are so many instances of business organizations that seem to compete on the surface, but which have cooperated in order to destroy some common enemy.  All that remains for us to believe is whether American Higher Education is seen as The Enemy of Big Business.  Well, that certainly seems to be a no-brainer.  Big Business seems friendlier towards Community Colleges than big universities, because the latter have, historically, been full of intellectuals with a liberal bias, if not outright socialists.

I don't know whether I'm truly upset at the picture being painted here.  While it is true that the universities have nurtured liberal values for many decades, it seems to me that today, perhaps by the success of the grand design put forward by the Five Steps article, the big universities are nurturing fewer liberals than simply a lot of people who whine all the time.  If we're going to have a free enterprise system, it makes sense that we must educate our workers in the way that will be most useful to the bosses who will hire them.  If we don't like that plan, we have to jettison the free enterprise system entirely.  In other words, you can't have the pleasures and surpluses of Capitalist Society, and the freedom of thought of a Socialist Society at the same time.  The big contradiction we've clung to so far is that it is possible to keep Big Business happy, and keep Poor Workers happy, and Socialist Professors rolling in lucrative grants, all at the same time.  Marx knew this, and he said that the whole world has to be Socialist, or the whole world has to be Capitalist.  Otherwise, the Capitalist businesses will suck the socialists dry.  And looking at Cuba and Mexico, we know that it is true.  What about China?  They chose Capitalism.

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