Concepts of the marketplace are useful lenses through which to study the economically charged environment in which higher education operates. Aca- demic capitalism is used in this chapter as a conceptual lens to view the use of IT in higher education. In addition, the concept of technocracy is explored to better understand the stratified nature of employment within high-tech organi- zations, and how this might impact decision-making in higher education institutions.
Academic Capitalism
Academic capitalism, the encroachment of the profit motive into the academy, has been studied by a number of scholars (Breneman, 1993; Etzkowitz, 1983, 1989; Fairweather, 1988; Gumport & Pusser, 1995; Massy & Zemsky, 1990;
Rhoades, 1997), but it finds its richest description in the work of Slaughter and Leslie (1997) and more recently Slaughter and Rhoades (2004). The authors discuss academic capitalism as institutional and professional market or market- like efforts to secure external funds for higher education. Slaughter and Leslie (1997) argued that with the rise of globalization, the state has decreased its share of funding to higher education in the form of block grants, but has increased support of research and innovation that is tied to economic develop- ment and competitiveness. In other words, state expenditures have become more focused on regional and national returns-on-investment rather than on overall social returns from higher education. While state support as a percent- age of higher education budgets has decreased, demand for education, especially education and training tied directly to business and industry, has dramatically increased. Society sees higher education as the means for training the future workforce, making it an integral part of economic growth. Further, higher education institutions have become important sites of innovation and technological development, with an increasing ability to seek markets for their products due to a changing legislative landscape that favors university-industry relations. Yet, expansion of the mission of higher education has stretched institutional budgets beyond the breaking point. Colleges and universities have turned to private sector funding and cost-saving measures to continue the development of diversified services while sustaining their original focus on undergraduate education. Breneman (1993) argued that this entrepreneurial
condition is not temporary, but a new reality to which higher education must permanently adjust.
The conceptual framework of academic capitalism has been recently revisited by Slaughter and Rhoades (2004). While Slaughter and Leslie focused on the entrepreneurial activities of universities in three geographical regions (Austra- lia, United Kingdom, and the United States), Slaughter and Rhoades examined the market-like behaviors of university administrators, faculty, and staff at U.S.
institutions. They found that the trend toward seeking outside resources beyond the state is increasing, and entrepreneurial behavior on college campuses is happening to a much larger extent than previously noted. The authors provide several examples of the opportunity-seeking behaviors within academia, challenging the notion that institutions of higher education are merely respond- ing to environmental resource stress.
We find academic capitalism to be a particularly useful theoretical framework for understanding the trend toward the use of information technology in higher education, particularly in the field of student affairs. As public funds are increasingly restricted and applied toward academic endeavors thought to help states and regions become more competitive in a global market, the labor- intensive work of student affairs is often viewed as a loss-producing function that is ancillary to the research mission of colleges and universities. Electroni- cally distributed student services, however, are sold to higher education institutions with the promise that they will allow for more efficient provision of high-quality services to student “clients.” As the student-as-consumer model becomes more entrenched in the academic business core, student affairs will likely be evaluated in terms of revenue-generation, cost savings, and customer service goals.
Technocracy
Technocracy is an organizational theory used to explore organizations in the late 20th and early 21st century. The model is generally applied to post- industrial/post-Fordist organizations that rely heavily on technology, especially computerization and other types of high technology, to accomplish their mission. Building on the work of others (Clegg, 1990; Colclough & Tolbert, 1992; Collins, 1979; Heydebrand, 1979, 1983, 1989; Kouzmin, 1980), Burris (1993) developed a detailed description and study of technocracy. Technoc-
racy has a number of distinguishing features. While no organization necessarily embodies all of them, each characteristic is indicative of a technocracy.
First, technocracy polarizes workers into expert and non-expert sectors with clear gender and racial distinctions between them. In the U.S., experts tend to be white and male, non-experts often are non-white and/or female. Experts possess more abstract, diagnostic, and technical skills, which replace more traditional skills. Daday and Burris (2001) suggested that marginalized (non- expert) employees in a technocracy can gain a sense of prestige-by-association through working in teams that mix both experts and non-experts.
Second, technocracies flatten bureaucratic hierarchies (Burris, 1993). The polarization between expert and non-expert personnel and flattening of hierar- chies can lead to erosion of internal job ladders. Once a person has assumed a position in a technocracy, there may be little chance of promotion. This condition is further strengthened because technocracies place an increased emphasis on credentialing, which creates advancement and participation barriers for non-certified employees. Such barriers create an atmosphere where technical expertise is the primary source of legitimate authority. Tech- nical expertise at the executive level is seen not only as desirable, but as inevitable because the advanced technological nature of organizations makes the experts the only people capable of making informed and correct decisions.
Third, technocracies have flexible configurations of centralization and de- centralization, which generally lead to increased consolidation of the most critical means of control and a corresponding delegation of more superficial organizational tasks. These task segregations are linked to data management and information flows so that centralized systems handle the most critical and controlled organizational operations. In this way organizations are often tied to a central financial system for their accounting procedures, but may be permitted decentralized databases for sub-unit tasks.
Finally, Burris added that technocracies must be viewed as a complex inter- weaving of technical, social, and political concerns, which leads to one of her strong critiques of other technocratic theorists. Burris (1993) argues that too often technocracy is associated with technological determinism, a theory that assumes technology naturally progresses from one stage to the next causing innovation and change and that technology can always present the one right solution to any challenge. Those who hold this positive notion of technology are the most optimistic about the outcomes of technocracy; for them, it is a panacea, the beginning of an Utopic future where technology shapes society for the better. However, we view technology more as an increasingly powerful tool
that can be misused for control and exploitation. From our viewpoint, technol- ogy has the potential to increase managerial control, de-skill certain individuals in the labor process, lead to increased worker stress, and contribute to occupational health problems.