Fredrik deBoer is a PHD graduate from Purdue university. In his New York Times article, he rallies against what he sees as the downfall of the original intentions of the University: to be an institution of education for the people. He writes: “Enrolling at a university today means setting yourself up in a vast array of for-profit systems that each take a little slice along the way.” Both student and faculty alike have become something of a slowly shifting beast: no longer do the offices and bureaucracy serve us — we serve them, it, the numbers, and statistics that feed more funding, more money, more corporate greed, bigger wallets.
The bureaucracy has grown so sticky and thick. At first, I assumed it was only my undergrad university that was terrible in what I’ve come to call its customer service. As a graduate, I’ve quickly come to learn that is not even almost true. deBoer writes: “This legion of bureaucrats enables a world of pitiless surveillance; no segment of campus life, no matter how small, does not have some administrator who worries about it.” The employees who run the offices are placed there and forced to withhold sympathies. They are often too old to read the screens that offer the information needed to actually help those who need it. Wrong information is spread through careless errors and college life becomes a constant headache of the what-ifs of what will go wrong.
It becomes more and more evident that through student loan entrapment, additional hidden fees, paper pushing, corporate named stadiums, and parking fees & fines (amongst a ton more) that the players in the university system are not there for the benefit of education of educating. Universities have become corporatized, and deBoer so casually points out that “corporate entities serve corporate interests, not those of the individuals within them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html