4 Disturbing Ways Big Banks Have Turned Colleges Into Money-Grubbing Institutions

http://www.alternet.org/4-disturbing-ways-big-banks-have-turned-colleges-money-grubbing-institutions



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1. Privatizing Student Life

Changes in campus dorms, quite possibly the epicenter of the student experience, represent a clear illustration of how this new world order is unfolding. Often unknown to students, campus dorms across the country are no longer run by the university, but by private companies that reap large profits from their management deals. These deals have become particularly prevalent at public universities, which have experienced massive funding loses in recent years and are increasingly turning to corporate backing to fill the void (the universities, of course, take a cut of the profits raised by the management companies).

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2. The Consumer Body

If reaching for efficiency through housing wasn’t enough, some colleges and universities are now transforming student ID cards into prepaid debit cards, thus profiting from student spending through unique checking account and debit card deals.

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3. Diluting the Classroom

The next innovative product being marketed to students, and being funded and invested in heavily by colleges and universities as well as by Silicon Valley, are online learning systems. Without a doubt, these new systems will fundamentally change the brick-and-mortar model of higher education: elite institutions have already formed joint ventures such as Coursea, Edx, Udacity, and 2tor to develop online classrooms. Well financed (investment in education technology companies has quadrupled since 2007) and extremely data driven, these programs have now set the bar for other second-tier institutions to catch up.

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4. The Student Voice on Mute

With the magnitude of the continued changes taking place at colleges and universities, one would think that college newspapers, many with long histories of being independent voices on campus, would play an even larger role in informing and empowering student issues and activism on campus. But this fundamental presence is also being threatened.