What Comes After the Critique of the Corporate University? Toward a Syndicalist University

Authors

Clyde W. Barrow, University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6846-3728

Keywords

Corporate University, Neoliberal University, Democratic University, Socialist University, Syndicalist University

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Research Article

Abstract

For the past three decades, university faculty have produced a cascade of contemporary protest literature that routinely criticizes the knowledge factory, academic capitalism, managed professionals, college for sale, the university in ruins, the corporate corruption of higher education, and University, Inc. University faculty are regularly warned about the fall of the faculty, the last professors, and the last intellectuals. This article reviews the historical development of the corporate and neoliberal university, but it takes the next step of asking what is to be done after the critique of the corporate university. It calls on faculty to engage in a variety of direct actions that circumvent established faculty institutions and proposes a new type of syndicalist university that is owned and managed by faculty. The legitimating principle of this revolution in university control is a principle that has long been accepted in classical liberal, Marxist, and anarcho-syndicalist theory – the right of first generation and the labor theory of value.

Recommended Citation

Barrow, Clyde W. (2024) "What Comes After the Critique of the Corporate University? Toward a Syndicalist University," Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/emancipations/vol3/iss1/1