The false promise of higher education

Our education system is no longer a place that fosters creativity or critical thinking. It matters little whether we are talking about the American model of mostly privatized universities or the European one where heavily subsidized universities are overflowing with students. This essay will argue that both have fatal flaws, and are intended to perpetuate a system of control.

Discipline and Control

Our society used to be one of discipline, one where the idea of constant surveillance was used to control people. You would go from one prison to the next with each their own rules, from home to school, from school to the factory, from the factory to the hospital and so on and so on. Or to borrow an example from Deleuze, ‘at the sight of some laborers, the heroine of Rossellini’s Europa ’51 would exclaim “I thought I was seeing convicts.”’ Our current societies/enclosures are artifacts of this, evidenced by the constant outcry for their reform. Our society has now mostly turned away from this discipline, and we’re now in the end stage of our transformation into a society of control. Deleuze explains the difference as ‘Enclosures are molds, but control is modulation, a self-deforming cast that will contiously change.’ However it is easier to think in terms of negative restraints and positive space. The former envisioned by restrictions in time or space and the latter by experiencing restrained freedom. Modulation in this sense is the feeling that you yourself can excerpt influence – ‘freedom’, even though this is controlled. A perfect example is offered to me when I am trying to ‘decide’ my future, where I can pick between a set number of preset masters, and courses. The fact that I can choose empowers me with a feeling of freedom, but in reality, these offerings are in alignment with preconfigured objectives – labour market etc. – Instead of being confined into an institution I am being controlled by positive space.

One big corporation

This brings me to my first point. The ‘modulating principle of salary according to merit’ Which has clearly been incorporated fully into the university. A place where one can learn perpetually, optimizing productivity. Perfectly aligned with Deleuze observation that ‘in societies of control one is never done with anything.’ Furthermore, the introduction of corporations at every level of schooling and the clear commercialization of university research. The university is no longer an institution to enact change through academia or research, or to foster critical thinking/creativity. No, it has been handed over to the corporations. This if further evidenced by the system public universities are funded. This system is based upon retention, attendance and results. In other words, workplace culture of loyalty, employee reliability and performance indicators. Higher education is tailored to optimize market needs, and in doing so dulls creativity and critical thinking.

All that we see or seem

This brings me to my second point; the way universities undermine any meaningful resistance against this system. They both enclose students - disciplinary – and give them ‘freedom’, control. You have the freedom to choose to go higher education, but the lack of any meaningful employment opportunities without education and the encouragement from society as whole means that this freedom is a mere ‘dream within a dream’. Luckily, you can now pay for your own exploitation and be in debt – enclosed, and now dependent of system – while all you get in return is another way to serve capitalism. Effective resistance to the system is further dulled by the way higher education internalizes compliance. Students are constantly evaluated and observed, grades, assignments, attendance, Courseworks, university rankings, which are all typical disciplinary tools. This internalizes a drive to perpetually strive to meet market demands and thus internalizes compliance to the system.

The Road Not Taken

The transformation of higher education signifies a broader societal shift from discipline to control. Higher education has become a mechanism to perpetuate the current systems of control and capitalism. This is done through the imposition of debt, cultivation of compliance and the constant commodification of their students and their education. However, knowledge itself is quickly turning into a commodity, making higher education an even more important tool to fight back. But tread carefully, as the way to compliance and blissful ignorance is not the road less travelled by. An alternative education model is thus desperately needed, as it is the way to make all the difference.

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