Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Pushing Back Against the Business Model

It is no secret that among the humanities the discipline of philosophy is still one of the worst offenders when it comes to including a wide range of perspectives, despite its ongoing efforts to explicitly combat this problem. It is also not a secret that philosophy departments are losing ground in academia. What can help solve these problems is for departments to engage the interests of the increasing number of marginalized undergraduates and graduate students in higher education, including older, non-traditional students, and the best way to do so is to simply hire more experienced, marginalized candidates into tenured or tenure-track faculty positions. Diversity and inclusiveness is simply good business. Yet, doing this has proven to be difficult. Some reasons are given by the facts of academia’s sexists, racist, ageist, and elitist history that is written into its culture; the workings of a relentless corporate business model of education that perpetuates the sexism, racism, ageism, and elitism on which academia was originally founded; the general lack of education funding across the disciplines and across all public academic institutions; and the general lack of the fair distribution of the resources that are available.

Furthermore, although ending the culture of exclusion within the discipline will involve recognizing the problems observed by Sally Haslanger, and following her subsequent recommendations, it is also important to recognize and explicitly acknowledge the way in which the corporate business model of education, as it is currently practiced in general, has structured the interactions between students, faculty members, department chairs, and institutions so as to inevitably lead, in these times of change, to a department’s demise if they continue to carry on with business as usual.

According to the business model of education, an academic institution serves the purpose of turning a profit rather than providing high quality education. Such profits are then reinvested in the institution in order to raise the institution’s prestige so that it can continue to attract undergraduates and their parents who believe that prestige is of the utmost importance in gaining a higher degree. For example, consider the students and parents who were involved in the recent University of Southern California bribery scandals, or those involved with the other seven bribery scandals at elite U.S. institutions. Such a model, coupled in the U.S. with the unfortunate consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act, in which students were literally taught to cheat by their institution, thirty years of government policies to shift funds from education to social welfare, and the failure to restore the funds that were cut in response to the Great Recession, have led to increases in student tuitions and reductions in the general quality of education that an institution provides. Of these consequences, the most significant is the adjunctification of the faculty. As Aaron Hanlon observed, the adjunctification of the faculty has led colleges and universities “towards the cliff’s edge.” And if such forces can drive entire institutions to become unsustainable, they can do so even more to departments of disciplines that have traditionally been valued for being antithetical to a business model.

One solution is to increase student interests at both the undergraduate and graduate level, and this can be done by tapping into the interests of the increasing number of marginalized students who are in or entering higher education. The problem is that for many marginalized students, especially those who may otherwise thrive within the discipline, the decision to pursue a degree, let alone a career, in philosophy is simply irrational given the above conditions. This is especially so because the pursuit of a philosophy degree is still typically valued, especially at the graduate level, as being worthwhile primarily for a philosophical career. If a marginalized candidate has the wherewithal to be a successful philosopher it is likely that such a candidate would be equally successful, if not more so given the current situation, pursuing interests in an alternative discipline or industry. Furthermore, it is more rational for any candidate, marginalized or not, to pursue an alternative path given the current trajectory of the job market in philosophy, especially under the current conditions of the business model of education (as I will discuss below). Finally, once accepted as a member of the profession the structural disadvantages that marginalized philosophers face may be carried over, keeping them from thriving within the discipline.

One way to counter the irrationality of marginalized students pursuing a degree in philosophy is to simply hire more marginalized tenured or tenure-track faculty. This not only directly addresses the problem of diversity and inclusion in the faculty, but also provides marginalized students more evidence and experiences for being optimistic about their philosophical pursuits. Yet, the hiring and promotion practices of academic institutions, which have been overtaken by the business model of education, continue to perpetuate the culture of exclusion in our discipline. For example, many departments and institutions continue to consider student evaluations as part of an applicant’s dossier.

Student evaluations were introduced through the business model of education, and there is now a wealth of empirical evidence that supports the fact that such evaluations not only fail to accurately assess the quality of a marginalized faculty’s teaching, but also actively puts them at a disadvantage. Therefore, as long as student evaluations reflect student biases against marginalized faculty members, including student evaluations as a factor in hiring decisions will necessarily always bias the decision against marginalized candidates. Institutions or departments who are aware of such evidence and yet continue to ask for student evaluations as part of a job application—assuming that they are able to inoculate themselves from their biases—may also present an even greater harm then those who ignorantly ask for them.

Student evaluations also play a more pernicious role by structuring the interactions between students, educators, department chairs, and administrators in such a way that, given the increased pressures of the current corporate business model (e.g., the adjuntification of the faculty, increased class sizes, and the diversion of funds to pay for bloated administrative costs), place educators in coercive circumstances that make it more reasonable, if for no other reason than self-preservation, to resort to lowering their standards and practicing enabling behavior that leave students happy in the short-term, but no better in terms of skill development, wisdom, or long-term happiness. This is because learning is difficult and, let’s be honest, few students, especially under the business model of education, are encouraged to love to learn where learning is understood as developing those hard-won skills that can only be learned by overcoming various fears and frustrations—challenges—challenges that, once overcome, leave students with a sense of accomplishment and self-confidence that will allow them to thrive. Student evaluations and similar procedures to address student concerns are also, unfortunately, uni-directional, and in being so, they amplify a student’s “un-happiness” with their circumstances while offering no effective way for correcting these amplifications, especially when students eventually realize that they were wrong when making their initial complaints.

Under such a business model of education, learning is no longer about developing the skills that would allow students to thrive once they graduate. It is about students regurgitating spoon-fed information, i.e., the continuation of the model of “teaching” that was developed as a consequence of the failed No Child Left Behind Act, which ultimately works to sustain the injustices on which academia was originally founded. As consumers, students and parents are also excused from their responsibility as students and parents, and these responsibilities are, often through the use of student evaluations and top-down pressure from chairs and administrators, transferred to educators who are expected to “serve” rather than teach their students. Add to this the explicit abuse of marginalized educators by students, parents, fellow faculty members, chairs, and administrators, and what is left is a race to the bottom. Habituated by the business model of education, faculty, chairs, and administrators who include student evaluations as factors for hiring and promotion decisions, therefore, not only continue to sustain the culture of exclusion by simply carrying on with business as usual, they also work against their own sustainability and encourage their students and parents to also do so.

So what can we do? Besides conveying the value of a philosophy degree beyond the goal of pursuing an academic career (i.e., acknowledging that a good business model does have some place in academia), which is being done at various departments across the nation and globally, and simply hiring more experienced, marginalized candidates (which can be done!), departments and institutions should no longer rely on student evaluations for hiring and promotion decisions. Given the evidence that is now available, to do so is an indication that a department or institution just doesn’t care about diversity and inclusiveness, and therefore, just doesn’t care about improving their department or institution, despite what they say, especially in accordance with a good business model of education.

Student evaluations may still play a valuable role as they were originally intended by more ethical implementors of the business model of education, before they were weaponized by the few short-sighted students, chairs, and administrators who unwisely focused primarily on short-term, narrowly self-interested gains—bad business in short! Student evaluations can provide educators with valuable feed-back, but department chairs and administrators necessarily lack sufficient background knowledge (regular, one-on-one student interactions) to appropriately interpret these evaluations for hiring and promotion decisions.

Chairs and administrators can also work to counteract the effects of a bad business model on student behavior by working with educators in order to help them bring about a shift in the culture of sexism, racism, ageism, and elitism that is reinforced by such models of education. To do so, department chairs and administrators need to accept that student evaluations and student reports, especially against marginalized faculty members, are not always legitimate. They should always take pause when addressing student complaints, and ensure that they are also acting so as to support their faculty’s efforts rather than undermining them. They should pause to make sure that students are also being held accountable for fulfilling their responsibilities as active participants in their own education before “speaking with” the educator in question, and they should make sure to not only inform themselves about the problems with implicit biases in academia, but also that they are actively working to counter these biases in their and others’ interactions, especially as members of a department. In other words, they should push back against the bad business model of education, and encourage their faculty and students to also do so.

Cecilea Mun

Cecilea Mun is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, with the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Louisville, KY, the founding director of the Society for Philosophy of Emotion, and the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Philosophy of Emotion. I have a total of 15 years teaching experience at the undergraduate level of education, and have taught at a variety of institutions, including community colleges, public land grant institutions, and one of the largest public universities in the country.