Teach the Partnership: Critical University Studies and the Future of Service-Learning

Abstract

Students, staff, and faculty ought to engender a culture of civic action and ethical accountability enhanced by rigorous coursework, but this goal necessitates resources: administrators must invest in service-learning to reap its full benefits. Issues arise, however, when one considers this investment in light of the academy's corporatization. As higher education, deeply influenced by neoliberalism's pressures to marketize, adopts the structure and value systems of big business, it risks placing private interest before public concern. Higher education may not prove the best location, after all, from which to effect progressive democratic change. In this article, the author stays the course with this provocation and argues that service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) educators must teach their partnerships--the specific histories, missions, and stakeholders involved--and thereby contextualize SLCE within the often problematic forces at work within and upon higher education.