"It’s College Students vs. the Corporate Machine – and the Machine’s Winning"
Published on Monday, July 15, 2013 by Campaign for America's Future Blog
It’s College Students vs. the Corporate Machine – and the Machine’s Winning
by Richard Eskow
"Once this nation saw higher education as a citadel of learning, growth, and opportunity. Now student debt is being used as a cash cow to subsidize corporate tax breaks, while universities become incubators for corporate employees and cheap laboratories for private-sector patents.
The new student loan deal being cooked up in Washington is part of a larger picture. The forces of technology, globalization and wealth are calling the shots in government nowadays, and they’ve got higher education in their sights. Corporations want colleges and universities to serve them, not students.
In the dystopian future unfolding before our eyes, whole segments of the population are being offered up to the Corporate Machine. And unless we reject the corporate commodification of our common humanity, there’s no end in sight.
We can start by doing something about student loans. But that’s only a start.
Colleges and universities have traditionally taught critical thinking, offered a breadth of social and human knowledge, and sought to provide students with the insight, skills, and courage to become the leaders of the future.
Not anymore. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, corporations want to turn college education into an employee training program. “To expect business to bring graduates up to speed,” says an executive for Boeing, is “too much to ask.” (“Too much to ask”? Boeing receives billions each year in government contracts and corporate profits are at record highs.)
“Once upon a time, ‘trainee’ used to be a common job title,” says Philip D. Gardner of Michigan State University. “Now companies expect everyone, recent graduates included, to be ready to go on Day One. The mantle of preparing the work force has been passed to higher ed.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/15-3
Really well written piece worth the read.
I can vouch for this from personal experience. Companies are hiring grad students on a salary basis, working them 80 hrs+ per week, burning them out after a couple of years until they "quit", then, in this job market, have 100 to chose from for the next rotation.
Corporate slavery.
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