In the Shadow of the Ruins: Globalization and the Rise of Corporate Universities

Abstract

The term ‘corporate university’, which has come into wide use in the last decade, is applied to three kinds of organizations: (1) established, mainstream, non-profit universities adapting to economic and technological pressures by adopting managerial practices of modern for-profit corporations; (2) newly established, highly innovative universities that operate as for-profit corporations, but satisfy the political and legal requirements for university status, and meet the standards of accrediting bodies (e.g. the University of Phoenix); and (3) new educational organizations operating within, and providing education and training services for, for-profit corporate firms (e.g. Marriott University). Organizations of types (2) and (3) provide a different ‘product’ than traditional universities, but nonetheless are subverting traditional academic practices in areas of recruitment and retention, academic standards, pricing, and managerial culture, thus making mainstream institutions corporate universities of type (1). This article offers a framework for understanding corporate universities as ‘shadow institutions’, an analogy with shadow cabinets, or shadow governments-in-exile. The framework draws on three connotations of the word ‘shadow’: corporate universities exist in the shadow of, or are obscured by, mainstream universities; they reflect, or form a shadow image of, these mainstream universities in certain formal respects; and they foreshadow or pre-figure mainstream universities of the future.