In their work Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University, authors Sheila Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie argue in terms of a vast shift in the late 20th and early 21st century. Similar to rhetoric used in the student movements of the 1960s and 70s, Slaughter and Leslie observe the shift from universities as centers of enlightenment and learning (more similar to Newman’s previously-discussed idea of “learning for learning’s sake,” or Kerr’s initial fantasy of the university for social betterment) to market-driven entities, due to increasing globalization. Thus, higher education is no longer perceived as an investment for society, but is increasingly tied and determined by the market demands outside of the university.

The authors assert that this can be tied to World War II and the importance of technology, the Space Race during Kennedy’s presidency, and the Cold War in general. At these pivotal moments in history, the demand for educated producers of science and technology skyrocketed, essentially leaving the humanities and social sciences far behind. Simultaneously, a growing globalization increased competition among global communities to outshine the others. Federal and state governments poured money into science and technology-driven projects, such as the nuclear testing and oil drilling at our very own Scripps Institute; yet, due to momentous events such as the taxpayers’ revolt of 1978 resulting in Proposition 13, they cut funding for higher education dramatically.

Results: As a competitive research university, professors are often researchers first and professors last - meaning they tend to devote much less time and energy to their students. Class sizes are rising continuously, and some science courses have even expanded to offer 900 spots (split between 3 lecture halls) with the professor in one lecture hall, broadcasting their lecture to the other 600 students. Meanwhile, my literature courses are offered less and less frequently, and I often engage in intense competition to land a spot in a seat when they are offered. Humanities courses specifically and lower division courses in general are pushed off onto the community colleges (this is also a byproduct of the Master Plan).

Slaughter and Leslie argue that universities compete in academic capitalism — that is, “the pursuit of market or market-like activities to generate external revenues” (11). As Elizabeth Mazzolini writes,

“Academic capitalism is as sweeping as the globalization to which it has been a compulsory response… globalization has efficiently linked prestige to research funding to marketability. Slaughter and Leslie point out that federal research and development policies have… emphasized the technological as being key for global competitiveness, so that academic capitalism is most visible in applied science and technology departments… [and] the humanities are useful only insofar as they support the most marketable research coming out of the university.”

As discussed, student activists within the UC system reacted and fought against this beginning in the 1960s; they argued that the “mechanized” university functioned to churn out producers of the status quo society at an alarming rate, and that fiscally-beneficial endeavors were privileged over socially-relevant courses (such as those proposed by the Lumumba-Zapata student activists). They also claimed that administrators protected business relations at all costs, since these corporations funded a large part of the university by that time. And some scholars were inclined to agree: John Kenneth Galbraith (no, not the one for whom the building at UCSD is named) once said, “The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.”

But the question remains…

Do we, as UCSD students, still see this today? Absolutely. Stay tuned as I move into present-day events such as last year’s Compton Cookout and continuing fee hikes in my next blog posting.

And if you’re feeling adventurous, take a more sobering trip to the border as my break the bubble connection this week. Not for margaritas and tacos, although those are delicious — use the opportunity to think about the way nationalist attitudes about immigration and immigrant populations may be connected to their under-representation here at UCSD. Visit Border Field State Park and former Friendship Park for an eye-opening experience.

The addition of a Third College (what is now known as Thurgood Marshall College) to UCSD’s campus in the very late 1960s coincided with efforts to force the UC system to “make good” on its promise to provide a public university for all. Thus, a student-led reform movement arose on the UCSD campus — African-American and Chicano/a students banded together to demand access and curricular reform, among other significant changes, to the elitist and exclusion-based La Jolla campus. They hoped to carve a space for minority voices and identities within the framework of the university, and to fight for student voice and choice in policies, procedures, and curriculum on campus. They wanted to see themselves reflected in the university, and wanted a relevant education for minority students — to study issues directly relating to, and from the perspective of, their cultural histories and identities — as well as contemporary social problems.

Students picket for “self-determination.”

Thus, they proposed a name for the college: Lumumba-Zapata College, named for two revolutionary figures of color.

The activism of students such as those behind the Port Huron statement and the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley inspired and was closely linked to this struggle for a Lumumba-Zapata College, which raged between 1969 and 1972. At the time, there were very few working-class and very few historically-excluded groups represented within UCSD’s population (something which has changed very little since). Students rebelled against prosperity and the dominant affluent society, and resisted being forced to fit expected societal molds.

To make a long story short, the administration refused to honor the students’ demands, and attempted to appease them by appointing African-American professor Joe Watson as founding provost of Third College. In addition to the blatant tokenism of a Black provost, Third College grew to reflect a traditional university model, far from the students’ visions for Lumumba-Zapata. “‘Although Lumumba-Zapata College was never created… the episode stands as a key chapter both in the history of UC San Diego and the history of educational reform,’  noted Jorge Mariscal, professor of literature. ‘The Lumumba-Zapata student demands foresaw many of the most pressing educational issues affecting communities of color that are still unresolved today.’” In addition to still vastly underrepresented communities of color, women were also underrepresented at the university, and continue to be so; as recently as ten years ago, there was not one female professor of engineering.

Though student activism provided an outlet for equity at UCSD and initiated a conversation, conservative elites quelled their efforts by discrediting them as communists and “silly” college students. (As a student today, I have absolutely encountered this lasting mentality — of us students as silly and ignorant of “what’s best” for the university. Especially as a literature major, I constantly observe a systematic privilege toward the sciences and technology, in comparison to the humanities. More on the here and now later.)

Fellow students, if you are feeling inspired by the tale of the Lumumba-Zapata students, consider my break the bubble suggestion for the week:

Visit Parque Chicano (Chicano Park) in Barrio Logan, just by the Coronado Bridge; the park was established as a community park with the help of UCSD student activists in the late 1960s to early 1970s, coinciding with the Third College movement. Enjoy a picnic and the vivid, thought-provoking murals adorning the Coronado Bridge pylons — the park serves as a visible reminder of past UCSD students’ rare and fleeting community activism.

I first became educated on (and incensed about) the issues I discuss in my blog in a literature class focusing on a “people’s history of UCSD,” taught by professor Jorge Mariscal. I learned, for instance, that the birth of a fledgling University of California campus on the bluffs of La Jolla was not an arbitrary decision - rather, a look at its history resembles a complex chess game. The University of California, San Diego campus bears a legacy of intrigue and power struggles among wealthy big-wigs vying for the upper hand, in turn leading to the founding of a fundamentally hypocritical university. Despite the University of California’s claimed goal of a public university with access for the masses, in reality, the University of California, San Diego was specifically intended for the intellectual elite, evident in the sequence of events surrounding its inception and implementation.

Some background, outlined in Nancy Scott Anderson’s An Improbable Venture: A History of the University of California, San Diego:

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography gained national recognition and fortune during World War II due to their work with the federal government in nuclear testing and defense weaponry.

Thus, the goal of its leaders, among them the well-connected Roger Revelle, husband of the Scripps’ grandniece Ellen, was to capitalize on marketability and expand Scripps by creating a graduate school of science and technology. This graduate school, which Revelle once referred to as a “cathedral on a hill” (…sound familiar? Think back to Newman), intended only for the best and brightest, would cultivate and nurture future researchers for Scripps’ endeavors. As I have said before, the founders of UCSD, now home to over 20,000 undergraduates, never intended for us to be there. Do you observe the effects of that today? I do.

Groundbreaking ceremony, May 18, 1961. Look at the title given to this new university.

Student Apathy: Beginnings

During the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, the 1962 Port Huron Statement for Students for a Democratic Society reports that students’

“…apathy is not simply an attitude; it is a product of social institutions, and of the structure and organization of higher education itself… Students leave college somewhat more “tolerant” than when they arrived, but basically unchallenged in their values and political orientations… the student learns… to accept elite rule within the university, which prepares him to accept later forms of minority control. The real function of the educational system — as opposed to its more rhetorical function of “searching for truth” — is to impart the key information and styles that will help the student get by, modestly but comfortably, in the big society beyond.”

The striking and ultimately frightening thing is, these statements hold as much truth today as they did in 1962. More on that next week. Meanwhile…

…feeling like this guy? Since the university continues to rob us while we turn a blind eye (I know, I know, it’s midterms), take a study break with my break the bubble of the week:

Take a trip on the MTS bus of your choice. My personal favorite is Route 30, or the “Dirty 30” as it is fondly called by some of its regulars. For a grand total of $0 with a UCSD student bus pass, this particular route will take you past the beaches and all the way downtown, if you so choose, or you can hop off at Old Town State Historic Park, home to San Diego’s humble beginnings and some of the more authentic Mexican restaurants. It’s partly cheesy, but there are gems within the tourist atmosphere.

Check out:

Doctrine - Debate - Defense - Invention by Brian Holmes (blog)

In my journey of inquiry into the subject of the UCSD bubble, I learned that it begins far before the University of California was even born. The university was, as Cardinal Newman called it, “the high protecting power of all knowledge and science, of fact and principle, of inquiry and discovery” (“The Idea of a Multiversity,” Kerr, 3). In Newman’s “Idea of a University”, he asserts that useful knowledge, applicable to reality, was “trash,” and unworthy of discussion within the university walls. (So you may ask yourself, as I did, what, for goodness’ sake, did they study, then?) Study was restricted to upper-class men, and the university walls resembled an academic cloister, originally a term reserved for an enclosure used to shut religious practitioners from the world. Newman’s idea was that the university was a similarly “religious” experience, and that it reflected the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

Yet this man,

Clark Kerr, former President of the University of California, argued that the university was evolving to meet the needs of the “social evolution of which they are part” (Kerr 3). The goal, stated in his Master Plan of 1960, was to offer affordable public education at large research universities, in hopes of cultivating an educated middle class for the future, who would then apply their knowledge to the betterment of their society. There have been many criticisms of Kerr’s ideas, and fatal flaws in the system he created despite his claims that the modern “multiversity,” as he called it, revolutionized the academic world.

I challenge Kerr’s multiversity — in spite of the perception that the university in general and the UC specifically has evolved… Despite the obvious inclusion of women in the academic world, and due to the obvious exclusion of underprivileged populations in the academic world, the UC is simply a modern-day cloister — albeit a cloister where science is the religion and research is the worship. Now largely driven by private research grants, California’s taxpayers offer little support for the UC, and tuition costs continue to skyrocket year after year (including a 32 percent increase in 2010). Far from accessible, these heavily levied fees contribute to a “privatization” of a purportedly public university.

Bored yet? Whether your answer to this question is yes or no, do me a favor— Instead of picking up the video game controller in your dorm room, take a break with this week’s suggestion as to how to break the bubble.

Pack a romantic dinner for two or pack your SUV with friends and popcorn, and explore one of San Diego’s littlest-known gems from the comfort of your own car: the drive-in movie theater. Oh yes, they still exist, and yes, the sound still plays through your car radio. Movies are generally around $7 per adult, and the best part? You have the option to stay for a double feature — without sneaking into the next theater.Plus, the movies offered are movies that are still in theaters, so not only do you score a bargain, but also a much richer experience.

Check out the South Bay Drive-In and the Santee Drive-In Theatre… and see you there, movie buffs!

Another relevant link:

An excerpt of Clark Kerr speaking in the documentary Berkeley in the Sixties

With the limited resources of a student $ _ _ _, _ _ _ in debt, I have had to be creative. The result: I have poured vast quantities of time and effort into a four-year comprehensive study of San Diego.

Namely, ways to explore a beautiful and rich little piece of my own personal heaven - San Diego - on my champagne taste… and Pabst Blue Ribbon budget. I have made a point to make San Diego my home, and should be quite the expert by now in adventuring on the cheap.

The view from up top - ironically, it is virtually impossible to get a glimpse of anything but La Jolla.

UCSD’s locale is a sequestered bubble, albeit a vast one. I have found, in my experience, that it is rare to find a student who steps outside the university’s invisible walls unless out of necessity. Why is it that UCSD students so rarely make the effort to take ownership in such a vibrant city?

Thus, my purpose is two-fold: first, to investigate student apathy and lack of ownership of the community surrounding UCSD; and second, to provide insight into accessible exploration. My goal in connecting this first inquiry to a practical application is to challenge and hopefully subvert a 50-year tradition of introversion and exclusion. While, of course, in keeping with that beer-on-sale budget. The best things in life (should be) (almost) free…

…such as this week’s break the bubble excursion to Balboa Park’s Free Museum Tuesdays.

Explore art, architecture, culture, science, botanical gardens, and the lush green of Balboa Park, located in downtown San Diego. This is absolutely one of the best ways to take advantage of such a rich resource — FREE to San Diego residents! Just bring your UCSD id card and you’ll sail on past the entrance desk.

And after… check out Landini’s Pizzeria in historic Little Italy for the best — and I mean the best — pizza around. The daily special gets you two huge traditional slices of pie and a soda for $6.

Additional links:

http://ucsd.edu/

http://www.sandiego.gov/