While college student enrollment rapidly snowballs to keep up with the ever changing and ruthless labor market, many colleges have brought up the question of Elitism v. Inclusion. Believers in the old meritocracy—espoused as, "You get what you earn"—have found competition in clogged academic hallways and stairwells, crowding their ventures up the ivory tower. At a time when working class students need help the most, their only chances of entry into higher education are under attack. Liberal educators argue, like John Dewey did, that higher levels of education are necessary as capitalism develops. Though opening schools as the key to individualism has been touted by progressivist educators for more than a century, this has proven to be a contrary goal to some powers concentrated in the market. Specifically, the empowerment and intellectual growth of more working class people, despite the efficiency education may bring for capitalists, is deemed threatening by an economic class between capital and labor.
Working class students face classism at the entry to, as well as during, college, by having to simultaneously labor, bear financial stress, and transition to a drastically different educational atmosphere; previous educational advantages at rich high schools weight against working class students, who were more likely to get less expensive teachers and books, along with a more closed-ended classroom to train them to be passive workers. Today, working class students find themselves struggling an uphill battle on every front after high school.
A war on terror is calling for an end to campus disruptions by eliminating any security to access college. This hits working class college students who would potentially be dedicated activists against imperialism; but, instead, they learn subordination to authority by obeying their superiors, in hopes of tickets to job security—their degree. Job insecurity of today’s unskilled labor, more and more, requires college to secure some technical skill or other credentials for future labor. On top of all of this, a popular debate has been rehashed on campuses: Are colleges being too inclusive? Educational elites are suggesting that college standards for entry be raised to "cut the fat" out of the classroom.
Disregarding the culturally biased problems with standardized testing, this elitist approach still ignores those indicated by standardized tests as those most needing of education help. Instead, it rewards those who already have already passed the bar of "success" in competitive evaluation methods. It separates them from those lower rated/graded students, marking the two for separate paths. Despite the fact that this elitism in schools has not improved educational standards—in fact, it counters nearly every study on inclusive education—colleges across the United States are "raising the bar" to limit the amount of admitted students, even though the number of applicants is rising.
The progressive liberal educators have always maintained that capitalism needs an educated work force. It would seem market forces would encourage schools to produce a surplus of educated and technically skilled workers, so wages could drop, pleasing capitalists with a "reserve army" of technically skilled labor.
Struggle up the Ivory Tower
How, then, does capitalism actually conflict with liberal educators’ agenda? Instead of describing the push for elitism in higher education as a purely capitalist class idea, it may be better to first describe it as a push by those who have already accumulated these technical skills and feel threatened by working people who are giving them a run for their money in the sprint up the ivory tower stairwell. Academic elites seek to protect their educational credentials, similar to the way capitalists protect capital. To increase their wages, they act against the interests of the working class by capping the potential amount of workers with higher education (human capital); meanwhile, they also work against the short-term interests of the capitalist class by decreasing profit margins and increasing salaries.
This is similar to the way that many guilds and some unions have worked in the past, and still work today. The difference is that Iron Workers, Steel Workers, some teaching sectors, and other rank-and-file labor acts to limit the amount of skilled laborers to raise wages, without subordinating the rest of the working class.
In the case of the American Medical Association, which limits the amount of admitted medical students, doctors are trained to protect their human capital against those workers who could easily learn and share from these skills, like nurses, emergency medical technicians, and paramedics. By limiting the amount of doctors, the AMA is able to maintain rank-and-file workers in subordinate positions that, at most, require an education of self-discipline, obedience, rigid perfectionism, tolerance of menially repetitive activity, and other ideals that stifle the creativity and curiosity of human nature.
Similar to the AMA, the ivory tower is under siege by working people who are grasping for the tools of economic success. As jobs leave, standards of living plummet, job security decreases, and unemployment has held at 5.5% lately, doctors, lawyers, and other prestigious protectors of human capital are attempting to make it harder for working people to enter college.
The Coordinator Class
Liberal capitalists, it would seem, would like workers to have access to this training, which would open up competition in the skilled labor market and maintain a higher rate of productivity with lower wages. Coordinating elites—those who have monopolized the knowledge, skills, credentials, and thus, the decision-making tasks in production—have taken the initiative in a war on the working class, even acting against competitive market forces. That is not to say that capitalists get nothing out of this war. Capitalists enjoy the fact that the section of the work force with a lot of human capital (which functions as bargaining power) is small, and can be easily threatened by reforms, like academic inclusion, or less strict job credential requirements; capitalists enjoy having a work force that fights internally, especially when the majority is taught and forced to be that subordinate group of obedient, unskilled labor, which is most easily be threatened by any surplus of labor.
The liberal measures of progressive educators has not been mass implemented in the U.S., and could provide empowering reforms for working people to further challenge the existing school systems and capitalist markets. Either way, in the long-term, capitalists experience a win-win situation in this fight between labor and its coordinating elite, unless capitalism is ended.
Ending capitalism alone, will not end this hierarchical division of labor, and its mirrored image in the schools. We need proposals for schools that encourage student-self-management, not self-discipline—innovation, not passivity—diversity, not menial repetition—solidarity, not competition. We need to propose a similar worker-run production plan where the real capacity for the creativity and curiosity of humanity is realized.
It is also worth noting that this attack on working people’s access to education is not confined to the battle up the ivory tower. Students from working class high schools will find it harder to enter colleges as standards are raised, which should be interpreted as a direct attack on working class students—by both, a coordinating elite and the capitalist class. The goal of capitalists is to make working people feel insecure about their position in school to quell the many student rebellions on campuses across the country, leaving only the most economically secure student activists.
This is class war, and it needs to be fought openly recognizing two problems: 1) The market system must be eliminated if workers seek to non-chaotically find jobs, end the uneven development of schools around the world, and end capitalist tactics to drive down wages; and 2) The coordinating elite act in contradiction to workers’ solidarity, self-management, equity, and creative potential, and engage in their own threats against working people, like capitalists. Only democratic economic planning of the economy can resolve the first problem, and the second must be confronted by workers self-managing their workplaces, industries, and the larger economy by participating in the decisions that effect them. Self-management requires workers’ tasks to be redistributed to maximize education and participation throughout the economy, including decisions and necessary drudgery.
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