The “Government-Education Complex” Defined

Don't let the picture of a grade school classroom that accompanies this article about the "Government-Education Complex" mislead you. The same complex fortified by foundations, armed with learning analytics algorithms and directed by managers bereft of teaching experience stalks HigherEd and the academic labor that makes it work. Adjuncts, lecturers, contract and tenured faculty are the boots (loafers, pumps, moccasins) on the ground teaching in classrooms. The Campaign for the Future of Higher Ed is working to make sure teaching voices are central to any discussion and the future and quality of higher education. The New Faculty Majority supports and joins the Campaign as an active participant and voiced for bring adjuncts/contingent faculty and other underrepresented NTTs.

Since the launch, the Campaign initiated a discussion group and scheduled a conference in Boston. In the meantime, let's do our homework - get intel: learn as much as possible about the "Complex" and its major players, analyze their arguments and formulate classroom-room, learning-centric alternatives.

While we're at it, let's add pictures showing our classrooms.

The “Government Education Complex” is the interlocking set of interests that control the vast majority of American education dollars, education policy, and the steady increase in unnecessary education job creation. The explosion of spending, debt, and taxation we’ve witnessed in the last 25 years was used to fund the growth of this Complex.

The complex is made up not only of associations of administrators and teachers unions, but an interconnected network of bond dealers, builders, architects, law firms, textbook companies, and other service providers who profit off of the overproduction of service contracts, debt, public employment and bureaucracy....

Like the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned of, the “Government Education Complex” is politically powerful, and completely self interested in perpetuating itself....[but] has failed to provide our society with the educated populace we are paying for.

The “Government-Education Complex” Defined

community college classroom