1. Academic Capitalism: Theoretical and Conceptual Underpinnings
Kate Bresonis
University of Massachusetts Boston
Spring 2013

2. Agenda Background Definitions & Concepts
Syllabus Snapshot – Select Key Literature
Next Steps – Incorporating Race & Gender into a Course on Academic Capitalism, Science, & Technology\
Activity – Analyzing Academic Capitalism

3. Background
Widely recognized shift in the direction of market-oriented values and practices in higher education (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1997; Geiger, 2004; Gibbons et al., 1994; Mars & Metcalfe, 2009; Santos, 2006; Schugurensky, 2006; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004)
From the public good knowledge/learning regime to academic capitalism (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004)
Foregrounds science and technology disciplines and the university production of knowledge as primary drivers of knowledge economy
STS has typically overlooked the university as an organization that sustains science, how it interacts with state and private sectors, and how values are embodied across and within organizations

4. From Slaughter & Rhoades (2004, p. 15)
“The theory of academic capitalism focuses on networks—new circuits of knowledge, interstitial organizational emergence, networks that intermediate between public and private sector, extended managerial capacity—that link institutions as well as faculty, administrators, academic professionals and students to the new economy. New investment, marketing and consumption behaviors on the part of members of the university community also link them to the new economy. Together these mechanisms and behaviors constitute an academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime.”
This theory explains the processes by which universities integrate with the “new economy” which treats advanced knowleedge as raw material that can be claimed through legal devices, owned, and marketed as products or services
Universities have been increasingly treating knowledge as raw material (e.g. prior to 1981 fewer than 250 patents/year were issued to universities, by 1999 this number was 5,545, now?) accompanied by policy shifts like Bahl Dole Act of 1980 and changes to state’s conflict of interest policies.
Draws on Foucault (1977, 1980), Mann (1986), Castells (1996, 2000) but addresses an overlooked focus on universities or the part played by universities in the new economy

5. Co-existing Knowledge-Learning Regimes
Academic capitalism
Public good
Privatization of knowledge, profit taking, networks with private sector
From basic science to public benefits, serendipitous process
AC– basic science and technology for use (Stokes, 1997), discovery is valued because it leads to high-tech products for a knowledge economy, little separation between science and commercial activity; knowledge is treated largely as a private good
PG– Aligned with Mertonian norms of science including communalism, universality, disinterestedness/free flow of knowledge, organized skepticism AND Vannevar Bush’s model in which universities perform unfettered basic science that pushes back the frontiers of knowledge

6. Syllabus Snapshot: Shifting Regimes, Shifting Values Literature
Mertonian
Critical
Social Constructionist
University-Industry Collaboration
“Intellectual Commons”
Strands of literature on the norms and values of science
Mertonian – values of science/scientists, insists on science as autonomous from market and state
Critical – challenges Mertonain & sees science as servant to war & the capitalist state – historically and presently serving corporate America & the military-industrial complex; flows from Marxist, Neo/Post Marxist views; de-idealizes science (highly connected to #3 and parallels to #4)
Social Constructionist – also de-idealizes science but from a materialist as opposed to Marxist perspective; takes aim at how science is done from construction of scientific facts to organization of resources for research; challenges the nation that science is separate from the scientist; challenges policies and structures within which science is enacted with a particular focus on the local activities and interpretations of social groups and individual actors (e.g. Latour, some feminists)
University-Industry – science has always been involved with economy via use/application and is a crucial component of the new knowledge economy; science is not value-free/neutral but can accommodate both academic and market values; perhaps an idealized entrepreneurial science? (Stokes, 1997; Etzkowitz, the Modists; some feminists)
Science is an “Intellectual Commons” that must not be appropriated by the corporate or economic sector because to do so is against the interest of the public good

7. Next Steps in Syllabus Creation
Identify and add readings that consider the ways in which academic capitalism interacts with race and gender and affects inequities
Construct writing and research assignments including reflective journals and critical analyses that consider issues and complexities of academic capitalism using lenses of race, gender and additional positionalities and intersectionalities
Locate/construct case studies
Incorporate guest/skype speakers

8. Small Group Activity: Analyzing Academic Capitalism in Action
Discussion Questions
Can you identify threads of academic capitalism in your article? Briefly describe your finding(s).
Can you identify public good expressions? If so, briefly describe these.
Think about your current role as a graduate student, post-doc, and/or faculty member. In what ways , if any, does academic capitalism intersect with:
your position in academe?
your scholarship?
your professional aspirations?
your race, ethnicity, gender, international student status, etc.?
your personal values and beliefs?
In small groups of 2-3, please read and discuss the article provided then address the discussion questions.
Please record your findings and be ready to informally present these to the large group at the close of the exercise.
You may wish to select group members accordingly to record findings, present findings, etc.