Education in Neoliberalism

Harvard MBAs - Naked Capitalism
April 4th, 2008 by jgoldstein · 1 Comment

This is from a blog called “naked capitalism” - my friend sent me this link because I always make fun of her for wanting to be an economist… pretty much for the sorts of reasons that this study shows…. It couldn’t be a more perfect example of the ‘professionalism’ we read about in class. Can’t decide if its hilarious or depressing.

The Ethics of Harvard MBAs via naked capitalism by Yves Smith on 4/3/08

Bloomberg had a odd article on the varying fortunes of Harvard MBAs (and some alumni of other Harvard graduate programs). It duly notes that they range from unquestioned successes like Lou Gerstner to more controversial figures, such as Jeff Skilling, Paul Bilzerian, Henry Paulson,, Stan O’Neal, and of course, George W. Bush

Generalizing about HBS graduates is tricky. It is the largest graduate school program in the world, turning out roughly 900 MBAs a year, which almost guarantees some heterogeneity in the population, Thus it might be more useful as an indicator of business behavior generally, in part because force of numbers gives Harvard MBAs some sway, in part because the program more so than others sets out to create CEOs, and finally because only a few MBA programs, such as Yale School of Management’s, are highly distinctive (Yale has a strong emphasis on not-for-profit management.

After the accounting scandals of 2002, where Skilling and other Harvard MBAs played high-profile roles, the school studied what it could do to improve the conduct of its graduates. It concluded that students’ ethical compasses were set before they got there, which one could view either as accurate or a way of punting. Thus, the school gave some motherhood statements about changing its admissions policies.

So what has happened? Consider this section of the Bloomberg article:
Harvard Business School’s two-year program instills confidence “to go out and aim high and to think you can work on the world’s stage,” said Scott Snook, an associate professor at the school. Yet, not all students mature psychologically while at Harvard, he said.

Snook studied 50 students from before they enrolled until they graduated in 2006. Using psychological tests and interviews, he found that one-third were still, in respects, stuck in adolescence, and had trouble empathizing.

Snook found another third inclined to define right or wrong in terms of what everybody else is doing. That might explain why even well-educated executives have fallen prey to the subprime- mortgage debacle, he said. Snook said the study will be published this year.

“They can’t really step back and take a critical view,” he said. “They’re totally defined by others and by the outcomes of what they’re doing.”

The subprime-lending spree shows that Harvard and other elite schools fail to mold managers who look beyond self- interest, said Rakesh Khurana, an associate professor at Harvard Business School.

“Business schools as an institution have not effectively addressed this issue of creating a profession that has the capacity for self-regulation,” said Khurana, author of “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands” (Princeton University Press, 2007).

Hhm. It looks that post 2002 study was wrong, or that Harvard did a lousy job of changing its admissions policies.

A final tidbit:
Bush, the first U.S. president with an MBA, has written that Harvard gave him “the tools and the vocabulary” of the business world. Now, in his final year in office, Bush faces a slumping economy and an unpopular war. His approval rating is 32 percent, according to USA Today/Gallup Poll research in March.

Neoliberalism in Education

Neoliberalism is a Contagious Disease

What country do you think the following excerpt from Giroux's chapter (2008) purports to describe?

(a) Indonesia

(b) USA

(c) Indonesia and the USA

(d) none of them

In keeping with the progressive impoverishment of politics and public life over the past two decades, the university is increasingly transformed into a training ground for corporate interests and, hence, receding from its role as a public sphere in which youth can become the critical citizens and democratic agents necessary to nourish a socially responsible future. Strapped for money and increasinghly defined in the language of corporate culture, many universities are now modeled after the wisdom of the business world and seems less interested in higher learning than in becoming licensed storefronts for brand-name corporations -- selling of space buildings, and research programs to rich corporate donors. As higher education is corporatized, young people find themselves on campuses that look like malls . . .. . . . As higher education increasingly becomes a privilege rather than a right, many working-class youth either find it financially impossible to enter college or, because of increased cost, have drop out.
Not surprisingly, students are now referred to as "customers," while some university presidents even argue that professors should be labeled "academic entrepreneours". College presidents are now often called CEOs and have come to be known less for their intellectual leadership than for their role as fund-raisers and their ability to bridge the worlds of academe and business. What was once the hidden curriculum of many universities -- the subordination of higher education to capital -- has now become an open and much-celebrated policy of both public and private higher education. (Giroux, Henry A, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed. London, Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. 2008, pp.102-103).

Even though Giroux refer his description to the US condition, but it applies to other countries as well, perhaps it may also apply to our country. This shows that neoliberalism is indeed a global contagious disease.

Your Govt is infected by neoliberalism disease!

How do you know if your Government is infected by neo-liberalism disease?

You will immediately know it by understanding the main points of neo-liberalism

The main points of neo-liberalism Martinez, (2000).

The rule of the market.
Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bond imposed by the government (the state) . . . Calls for total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services . . . unregulated markets is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.
Deregulation:
Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits . . . including protecting the environment and safety of the job.
Privatization.
Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors . . . in the name of greater efficiency.
Cutting public expenditures for social services
Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves – then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy” ("fatalistic", "lack of need for achievement or McCleland's nAch -- added by me), etcetera.

Neoliberalism Kills

NEOLIBERALISM KILLS !!!

The domination of neoliberalism is a victory of ideas, or precisely: a set of myths. Accordingly, to be succesful in overturning the myth we must redouble our efforts to win "the battle of ideas". Winning this battle requires conserted efforts to reveal that neoliberalism functions as "an ideological cover for the promotion of capitalist interests, not as a scientific framework for iluminating the economic and social consequences of capitalist dynamics" (Hart-Landsberg, 2006).

As a set of myths, neoliberalism consists of, among other things, the myth of the superiority of "free trade"; the myth that unregulated free market is essential precondition for the fair distribution of wealth and for political democracy; the myth that economic growth will reach its maximum speed when the movement of goods, services, and capital is unimpeded by government regulation or any "un-natural barriers".

Well yes, the human race on planet Earth, taken as an aggregate mass abstraction, may be getting richer. But there is another side of reality: a new report from the World Institute for Development Economic Research of the United Nation University (as quoted in Hirschhorn, 2006) shows that wealth creation is "criminally" unequal: the richest 1 percent of adults alone owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000; the richest 2 percent owned more than half of household wealtyh; and the richest 10 percent accounted for 85 percent of the worl total. The trend shows that the unequal distibution of wealth may get worse; the riche are still getting richer, more millionaires are becoming billionaires.

That leaves very little for the remaining 90 percent of the global population. As for them, the bottom half of the world owned barely 1 percent of global wealth; over 1 billion poor people subsist on less one dollar a day. Even worse, according to Unicef, 30.000 children die due to poverty -- that's over 10 million children killed by neoliberals every year. The poor will not survive neoliberalism!!!

The proposition that unregulated free-market is essential precondition for political democracy, or that economic liberalization is a necessary precondition for political liberalization, is another myth. The reality shows that neoliberals' free market is slowly killing political democrarcy in various part of the world as politics become more and more commodified, as state now makes stronger and stronger alignment with corporate capital, and as the state emphasize more on its policing functions, with a stronger political willingness to punish rather that serve the poor (which are most visible in the increasing use of the coercive state appartuses to arrests homeless, to enforce anti-begging laws, to eliminated side streets vendors, to guard environmentally harmful urban projects, to take a stance on the capitalists side in industrial relations disputes, etc.). Democracy will not survive neoliberal free market!!!.

Neoliberalism kills children, and democracy !!!

Snapshots of Neoliberalism

Faces of Poverty in the Land of Plenty

God is on sabbatical leave

Friends, here is the situation:

The Kings and all their ministers are gone for a box office love movie.
Our elected noble and wise lawmakers go on comparative studies abroad, comparing their books of laws, hi-tech accesories and salaries.
Our revolutionary middle class arguing for a revolution, sipping Starbuck's coffee, then races to malls for shopping spree .
. . . and God is on sabbatical leave
. . . and they are all leave us home alone.


Yes, we are all alone when those market worshipers sneak in through our backdoor, grining, laughing. like a gang of ghosts.
. . . and in no time unveiled faces of poverty appear all around the house.


. . . and with a single Midas touch, they turned us into commodities to be sold in a market we never made. (March 14, 2008)

Neoliberalism and Plastic Surgery

To look beautiful is a neoliberalism moral duty.
Girls, go get plastic surgery for your breasts, your noses, your tummies, and your asses!. You may find and would surprise that paying for plastic surgery by women, to look beautiful and to improve employability is a typical neoliberal phenomenon.

Because, you too exist for the market, not the other way around. Accordingly, and you shall also compete each other. Neoliberalism thus see competitiveness — or specifically employability, for women and those who do not own capital — is their moral duty. They have a moral duty to arrange their lives to maximize their advantage on the labor market. As a consequence, it is not a surprise to find that plastic surgery by women – to look more beautiful -- is a common phenomenon in neoliberal economies. For them, to look beautiful is a way to improve employability (in this context is a new synonim for exploitability); the chance to get employed in several industries, especially in entertainment, media, public relations, airline industries, would be greater if you're look beautiful. Such a phenomenon helps explain the cooptation of patriarchy by neoliberal ideology, or the hierarchical co-existence between the two ideologies.

Neoliberalism and social fatigue

Enough is enough. No more development . . . please. I have had enough developments . . . I am full of developments . . . I am too tired of development. Gimme a break. Your developments have nothing t do with me . . .

Neoliberalism and the disappearance of the"public"

The extent to which neoliberal ideology penetrate our society has a direct and linear relationship with the disappearance of noncommodified or un-marketable spheres of life. As the logic of neoliberalism dictates efficiency, maximum profits and capital accumulation, maximum production and consumption, public spheres and public enterprises are increasingly either commodified (privatized) or abandoned (liquidated). It's just a question of time before we say goodbye to nearly all form of public spheres and enterprises ; educational sector will gradually become an open sector for profit-seeking investment, institutions such as public schools and universities will be pushed into service industry. The same is also true for broadcasting sector. Non-commercials public or community broadcasting stations, will be considered as unproductive spheres, and hence their airspace frequencies should be reallocated for profit-seeking broadcasting companies. In a parallel move, the State, on one hand, increasingly abandons its social investment in health, and social welfare, but, on the other hand, increasingly strengthening its policing function, to control and to punish rather than to serve the poor, intensifying the use of repressive state apparatuses to clean up streets from beggars, vendors, and other "penyakit masyarakat" (a term uses by bureaucrats for "society's diseases", such as street prostitutes, petty criminals, etc.)
Such phenomena also applies in political spheres as votes and political authorities can be bought and sold in the market, and as the State becomes more closely aligned with capital, as a new "mode of power production" (that include the circuit of money - power - more money - more power) becomes more common. Gone are the years when public could control political processes on issues affecting their life. Soros says, democracy will not survive neoliberal free market.

Neoliberalism and the death of a mother and son

Today, a seven-month pregnant mother and her 5-year old son, died of hunger
Today, a seven-month pregnant mother and her 5-year old son, died of hunger, in Makassar, the capital city of South Sulawesi. A television station aired the tragedy, seconds before continued its attack on public with a series of luxurious products commercials, before the audience switched to yellow programs that sell dreams and creams, and before everybody slipped back into their own personal businesses. Everything is back to normal by the time the nation started its Saturday evening routines. Because it's a personal tragedy of a pedicab drivers's family, not a tragedy for the nation; because it's a private matter, beyond State's responsibility and intervention; because it's simply a human tragedy, and has nothing to do with markets. That's what neoliberalism is all about.