Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education

by Henry A. Giroux

Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education reveals how neoliberal policies, practices, and modes of material and symbolic violence have radically reshaped the mission and practice of higher education, short-changing a generation of young people.

Giroux exposes the corporate forces at play and charts a clear-minded and inspired course of action out of the shadows of market-driven education policy. Championing the youth around the globe who have dared to resist the bartering of their future, he calls upon public intellectuals — as well as all people concerned about the future of democracy — to speak out and defend the university as a site of critical learning and democratic promise.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Research, History

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2013

About the author

American cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory.

A high-school social studies teacher in Barrington, Rhode Island for six years, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Giroux has published more than 35 books and 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies literature. Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer, and has published nine books, including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in 2002.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big admirer of Henry Giroux: he is an academic who understands and can articulate political theory clearly and accessibly as well as someone who connects this theory with real events, lived experience. He is a philosopher in the tradition of Paolo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) who is concerned with how to help the vulnerable in our society (the youth, the elderly, the poor and working class) create a more equitable society.

In this book, Giroux examines how neoliberalism, the movement to privatize everything, to individualize all issues and move away from the common good, the belief that free markets and consumerism are the ultimate expression of society, is destroying democracy. He discusses how democracy in general is effected, what this movement in both this country and the world at large, means and how it leads to authoritarianism. He then focuses on how neoliberalism particularly effects higher education. This include high tuition (that puts college out of reach for many young people), student debt (which cripples many college graduates facing enormous debts and a poor job market), the corporatization of universities, the increasing use of adjunct professors who lack power, resources, salaries that are adequate to live on, health benefits, tenure, and so on and how that creates a faculty unable to appropriately educate students. Those lacking tenue are afraid to teach students to think critically because to do so means they are risking their jobs (such as they are).

The reduction of liberal arts programs supports the growing tendency to see college as a training ground for jobs. The use of standardized tests and memorization is another way of not teaching students to think critically. Giroux sees higher education as a "space for democracy", a place where the self-reflective and engaged citizens needed to maintain and continue to improve a democratic society are created. The book was written before the 2016 campaigns and presidential election in the U.S. took place but predicts that the country will move toward an authoritarian leader (as indeed is happening globally).

For the most part, Giroux's writing is accessible although I found the book challenging. There were passages that were difficult for me but by pushing myself to read these and think through them as best I can (as well as connect them with the surrounding passages that I did understand) my ability to read him and learn from him increased. Giroux is one of those writers (for me, usually in fiction) who taught me how to read him. Of course, it helps to know something about the neoliberal trend but I think Giroux explains it clearly for those who don't.

This is an important book. Even for those who disagree with it, it is a powerful picture of what some people believe is happening in this country and how democracy is being eroded and, ultimately, faces possible destruction. It will help them understand the point of view for those who agree with its premises. And, for those who do agree, it clarifies many related issues and provides both information and language to discuss the situation with others. After writing this review, I looked at other GR reviews. It seems that the book evokes strong but opposite reactions: people either loved it or hated it. Obviously, I'm in the camp that loved it.

Altogether, a book that is highly relevant for our times and important to read.

[E. C. Koch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought that I was an impassioned Leftist pedagogue with a penchant for vitriol, but this is in another league. Giroux's thesis here is that the neoliberal economic policies (beginning roughly with Reagan's presidency) slowly adopted by the US and mimicked globally have ill-served all facets of higher education from the administration to the professoriate to the students. And he's dead-on here and it is a problem on a global scale and it is affecting higher ed. And since my politics align pretty closely with his I was able to follow along with Giroux's arguments without too much cringing, but if Mussolini is an example of subtlety in rhetoric then Giroux shouts so loud that he screeches. I really wanted to revisit the effects of neolib. policy on public universities (I've matriculated in three now) and the effects of crippling student loan debt (I've got my share) and the need for 53% of US college graduates to postpone full-time employment (I'm still searching, and still in school) and the Occupy Wall Street protests that challenged neolib. policy (I was there) and the emerging subaltern class of adjunct prof.s who are a direct product of said policies (I was one) and the growing threat to the humanities (my field) and on and on BUT Giroux just wouldn't stop beating me with his arguments. It was exhausting. Now maybe I just read this wrong. Maybe the mental tone and inflection I adopted while reading this wasn't what Giroux had in mind, and, like, the intentional fallacy notwithstanding I'm not giving this guy his due. So I guess a caveat to my review should be that I read aggression into this where there maybe wasn't any (but read a little of this for yourself and tell me I'm making this up). Or maybe the problem is just that I'm being too sensitive and Giroux wrote this the way he did in order to wake us sleeping academics up to the reality of how fucked the humanities are and how deeply neoliberalism penetrates our thoughts and behaviors. The most intriguing argument Giroux advanced here was his call for a new language, a new vocabulary, with which to counteract neolib.'s damaging effects. He brought this up in several chapters but never really expands on what this new vocab. might be, which seems a lost opportunity. But maybe somewhere in this new lexicon I might find the word I need to describe this book; one that is both agreeable and disagreeable, attractive and repulsive, prescient and myopic. Enigmadox? Impassacrux? Maybe "splenetic disrelish"? Maybe just: first draft. A for content, F for execution.

[Joe Noteboom · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I essentially agree with Giroux's main point, that the changes to higher education wrought by neoliberalism center on the assault on all things 'public' (e.g., converting higher education from a largely public to a private good, diminishing the role of academics as public intellectuals), the sort of rhetoric used here didn't sit well. At one point Giroux discusses the distinction between 'radicalism' and 'fundamentalism', arguing against their commonly being used interchangeably. With that in mind, it's hard not to see this as a self-consciously Radical response to the market Fundamentalism of neoliberalism. While I do sympathize with the idea that this sort of discursive struggle is key to understanding how ideas/ideologies become dominant, and I do believe that the tenets of neoliberalism need to be identified and challenged, the over-the-topness of Giroux's rhetoric strikes me as dishonest and probably unproductive (in that there's little in this book that would convince someone who doesn't already basically agree). I don't think Giroux puts enough emphasis on the role of universities and academics in, if not introducing, then at least perpetuating the changes he rails against. He presents 'neoliberalization' as something done TO universities, without paying enough attention to what has been done BY them. I am also quite a bit more skeptical of the role and potential of mass student protests in bringing about real change, but I do admire his faith. Overall, probably any one of the chapters on its own would drive home Giroux's point, which, again, is a valid and important one, but could have been expressed with more balance and brevity.

[Roxana Sabau · Rating 4 out of 5]

maybe the reason I loved this book was because I already had a bias regarding the commodification of education in order to serve capitalist interests.
When the educational system becomes not a source of critical thinking, but a factory of future cogs in the capitalist machine, then we'll have a mass of disengaged citizens. Disengaged citizens will not be able to spot authoritarian tendencies in their rulers, they'll become extremely individualistic and we'll have an erosion of democracy.
If individualism becomes a core value of society, then we'll see no point in altruistic values, in offering equal opportunities, because we'll think any social issue such as poverty is a direct consequence of a personal failure, rather than a systemic issue.

[Anatolikon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giroux's main point is that neoliberal ideologies target any sort of education that promotes a broad, critical engagement with the world and that this is a danger to democracy and the welfare state. He's convincing, but unfortunately this book is an over-written essay that repeats itself ad nauseam. Giroux is at his best when he's actually speaking of events rather than just abstract ideas, but unfortunately for anything beyond the basic point of this book you'll need to delve into the notes. A good book that should have been an essay.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giroux's analysis is generally correct, but the force of his thesis is undercut by repetition, hyperbole, and agressive polemicism. For sharper, more theoretically rigorous takes on (largely) the same idea, see Christopher Newfield and Wendy Brown.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

The problem is probably some place else: Giroux's department lack of expansion considerably decreases Giroux's ability to coax his students to provide gratification for himself. What's next? Would people have to find a honest job and work to support themselves?

[Todd Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here’s the thrust of Henry Giroux’s (American and Canadian scholar and cultural critic) arguments in Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education.
1. In order to function effectively, society needs an informed and socially active citizenry.
2. In addition to education, Universities serve a civic purpose … that of creating an informed and socially active citizenry.
3. Universities are under attack by neoliberal forces and have increasingly turned to military and commercial sources of funding due to budget cuts.
4. The financial influence of these sources has resulted in an increased militarization and commercialization of universities and colleges, and has led them to largely abandon their civic purpose.

There is evidence in support of this premise. Many universities have experienced significant budget cuts. Tuition is rising, as is student debt. Many view college as simply a route to a better job, rather than as a route to becoming a better citizen. And there are documented attacks by right-wing politicians upon individual professors and institutions of higher education for promoting ideas they find objectionable (such as the investigation by Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli into climate scientist Michael Mann for his climate change research). Of course the right’s relentless criticism of universities and colleges as bastions of liberalism is also no secret (because knowing stuff is elitist … or something).

A class war has been taking place in the U.S. over the last few decades. The war has two fronts. The first is the one most people are familiar with and involves a vast transfer of wealth upwards to the very richest members of society to the point where the top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 95% (the greatest economic inequality the country has seen since the great depression). Enrichment of the wealthy has been coupled with a hollowing out of the middle class and cuts to social services designed to protect the most vulnerable. We are now living in a plutocracy where consolidated wealth begets consolidated political power, which is used to beget more wealth in viscous cycle. The tide of this battle has swung dramatically in favor of the oligarchs. All that’s left for complete victory is to cement this state of affairs so as to ensure a permanent aristocracy.

This is the goal of the second front of the war, which is more subtle, but also more important. Its goal is unquestioned public acceptance of a two-tier society. Where economic Darwinism becomes fait accompli and those in poverty are seen as deserving of their fate. We’re all familiar with the language being used in this regard. There are ‘makers and takers’, and those who want ‘free stuff’ that they get through ‘entitlement programs’.

How will this be accomplished?
One means is through restriction of dialog within narrow and acceptable bounds. For example – if you provide the choice to a death row inmate between the electric chair and lethal injection, you are implicitly removing other options from the table - the option of a re-trial due to prosecutor suppression of exonerating evidence being but one of them. We saw this in the 2016 presidential election. There was considerable discussion as to whether one was a crook and the other a liar, yet you heard little from either candidate about such issues as how to increase civic engagement in the political process (although, to his credit, Bernie Sanders raised this issue repeatedly).

In the absence of an engaged public, politicians are free to pursue their own personal agendas, even when they conflict with the public will. For example – 90% of Americans support expanded background checks before purchasing a firearm … a measure that has been blocked by congressional republicans (which also appears to be an example of the ‘taxation without representation’ that they’re always banging on about).

Giroux sees attacks on higher education as yet another strategy in the battle’s second front. Through the suppression of critical thinking and civic engagement, Giroux fears the bulk of the public will become blindly accepting of their fate as second class citizens and will not have the knowledge, skill or power to redress their grievances.

Yeah, he kinda has a point. However, there are significant flaws to this book.
1. Giroux is an ideologue, and as such fails to discuss regressive leftist forces on college campuses that are serving to limit discussion and repress freedoms. Conservative speakers are being dis-invited from speaking engagements and far too much credence has been granted on campuses to ‘safe zones’ and ‘trigger warnings’. These folks need to grow up. If you don’t agree with a point of view you should hone your arguments to refute them, rather than suppress free speech so as to shield your delicate ears from ideas you find objectionable.
2. Giroux seems to be suggesting that universities offer courses in ‘sticking it to the man’, which seems absurd on its face. However, it’s not terribly clear because I found Giroux lacking in terms of concrete solutions to the issues identified.
3. I also found the book abundant in terms of rhetoric, but rather lacking in terms of supporting evidence (for well researched, data-driven analysis of primary education I would recommend the work of Diane Ravitch). Because Giroux doesn’t avail himself of sociological studies or data he simply repeats himself over and over again. (Confession – I quit the book about 70% of the way through since little new was said after the first chapter).
4. Also (apropos of nothing, other than the fact that I found it irksome) – he loves the word ‘pedagogy’ and its variations, which he seems to use in every other sentence like a parrot suffering from echolalia.

Conclusion:
Those who benefit from the status quo have a vested interest in pushing the narrative that the U.S. is a country of rugged individuals, each independently pursuing our own individual self-interests. They are fully aware that groups are stronger than individuals, particularly groups who are engaged in the legislative process and are savvy enough to leverage the strings of government to enact reform. Strategies that promote rugged individualism, cynicism, civic disengagement, apathy, infighting and distain for governmental institutions all serve their ends. The results of their success are a government that no longer represents the public will. It’s called a plutocracy … and in the U.S. it’s the new norm.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent but extremely dark perspective on the neoliberalisation of universities and the loss of critical thinking amongst the youth and the excluded

[Nick Sorrentino · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute drag and the worst part is that I agree with most of the arguments here.
Don't bother picking it up

[E Money The Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Not only does neoliberalism undermine civic education and public values as well as confuse education with training, it also treats knowledge as a product, promoting a neoliberal logic that views schools as malls, students as consumers, and faculty as entrepreneurs.”

Say less. Decade later and shits only getting worse.

Sad seeing all these young students today have to struggle working full time while being full time students, still racking up debt, just so annoying millionaire tv-men can call them lazy and “unamerican” because our dear young students have any values at all. And it’s a miracle that they even do.

This book shows how, by design, our ruling class has been working hard to defang institutions of higher education. They want uncritical thinkers that are happy to work for less money, never question the world around them, and are unengaged and apolitical.

Yet, due to all the massive obstacles, I am truly inspired by our nations students! Decades of neoliberal rot has not managed to ring out the spirits of our youth. They deserve our admiration. They don’t deserve riot batons and rubber bullets. Nor public scorn from millionaire tv-men. And I hope they win! I hope they unionize their workplaces. I hope they wipe their debts and free the world. It’s the least they deserve.

You beautiful young people of the colleges and universities.

[Nacho Rivas_Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sin duda, Giroux es uno de los referentes de la pedagogía crítica, derrochando una fuerte erudición y conocimiento de los procesos políticos de los sistemas educativos. En este caso de la educación superior. Aunque escribe desde la realidad norteamericana, que tiene sus muchas peculiaridades, su análisis tiene tremenda actualidad sobre la mayoría de las universidades de la mayoría de los estados. El empuje neoliberal no entiende de fronteras ni de instituciones, aunque sí es cierto que sus políticas se fraguan en buena parte en las universidades norteamericanas, por lo que es importante conocer qué se cuece en ellas. También es cierto que la universidad europea, sobre todo las del sur y centro de Europa, presenta otras características que no están presentes en este libro. En cualquier caso, los criterios de análisis, los procesos políticos, las políticas culturales, que se presentan, ofrecen elementos de interés para cualquier escenario.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

For those not familiar with what neoliberalism is, this book may be a good primer through the context of higher education. Other than that, I felt the book was heavy on pathos and light on argument. Perhaps the books is trying to be more polemical than trying to be scholarly, but it seems to fall somewhere uncomfortably in the middle. One would be advised to read Wendy Brown or David Harvey for a more erudite exploration of neoliberalism.

[Nyika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m in agreement with Giroux on the whole (find the “public intellectual” thing a bit awkward, but I get his point), and greatly enjoyed On Critical Pedagogy. However, I found this book extremely repetitive. Just the same points over and over again, and the same argument in each chapter for how this affects HE. He’s got some good points, but there didn’t need to be a whole book to get them across.

[Omar Guerrero · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good book to understand the current state of education through the eyes of a Leftist teacher. However, I wanted the author to give us more details and information on how Neoliberalism has affected the university. Instead, the book felt like it was mostly rhetoric.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, very ass backwards

[Salahuddin Hourani]

ملاحظة لي: لم اقرا الكتاب بعد - الكاتب باحث في التربية النقدية مقابل قوى السوق

[Medhat2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Administrative-BLOT

[Eric Castillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great and accurate account of neoliberalism’s attack and purchase of Higher Education. Excellent analysis (albeit somewhat repetitive) and Giroux cites some incredible authors. His call for public intellectuals to fill the political landscape and fight to keep critical thinking in the classroom is timely.

[rabble.ca]

http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2014/0...

Review by Tiana Reid

Henry Giroux's Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education, a treatise on two concepts no one can fully agree on -- neoliberalism and the university -- could have just as easily had another name: The Disappearance of Public Intellectuals. Why? Because for Giroux, the clash between late capitalism and higher education has everything to do with the demise of the public, and the public intellectual emerges as the flailing hero.

What can be gleaned from this book, then, is that Giroux knows our contemporary problems: lack of funding, corporate interests, high tuition rates, massive debt, privatization of schools, austerity, professionalization over everything, union busting, precarious labour of adjuncts, depoliticization of faculty and curriculum, education as training, entrepreneurial impulses, the intensification of the police state, full-fledged class warfare, an endless et cetera.

Amidst all of this, Giroux, a professor and critic who self-identifies as a public intellectual, is his own disappearing subject. In fact, "The Disappearance of Public Intellectuals" is also the title of a 2012 Counterpunch article published by Giroux, of which some paragraphs (among pieces elsewhere like in Truthout's Public Intellectual Project) were recycled in parts of his new book.

His interest in and commitment to intellectualism has galvanized a theoretical concept that has come to be known as critical pedagogy -- critical theory coupled with educational practice. Paulo Freire, often hailed as the founding father of critical pedagogy, and bell hooks, seemingly everyone's mother, are other famed proponents.

"The right-wing war on critical literacy is part of an ongoing attempt to destroy higher education as a democratic public sphere that enables intellectuals to stand firm, take risks, imagine the otherwise and push against the grain," Giroux writes.

What Neoliberalism does is offers a manageable written intervention on higher education in a basically unmanageable reality.

And Neoliberalism does often feel like a list of did-you-knows. Say, did you know the U.S. federal budget for military is 60 per cent whereas it's six per cent for education?

Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2014/0...

[Margaret Heller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok I didn't read the whole thing, but I read a lot of it. Definitely at least read the introduction if you are at all connected with higher education. It's a bit screedy and strawmany, but very thought provoking and moving too.

[Ida de Jesus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good essay, but no book

For something marketed as a book I expected more. The proposal about how to integrate corporate financial capital into the research university needs further development.

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays on various instances of the neoliberal offensive on different higher educational institutions in the west rather than an overarching treatment on the topic in general.

[Robert Geoghegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book to read the same ideas can be applied to other sectors as well... think health.