And honestly, the point of this article is not doom and gloom but a suggestion for something good to work towards in the Battle For What Comes Next.

But before we get to the good stuff, we do need one very important piece of context: the big economic Transition happening over the next decade or so is away from neoliberal capitalism, which has been the dominant world system since the early 1980’s into… Well, that’s the big question, now ain’t it.

The capitalists and their cronies want something like corporate fascism or feudalism depending how we’re defining things, and just like in everything else I hope they fail miserably.

It’s been heading steadily to this point since 9/11 if you’ve been keeping track of this sort of thing. Keep in mind, that neoliberalism was only ever meant to be a temporary project – it’s a project to privatize and managerialize every aspect of human life and every inch of our beautiful planet. It has a built in end-goal, it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s coming to an end tbqh.

“But, Nat, the bastards haven’t reached their goal yet, so why is it ending now then, smart guy?”

Easy. It’s a shitty system – even without full saturation it’s always been an incredibly unsustainable system. And besides, they’re fucking trying to get as much of that shit done as they can before they lose their chances.

Surely, you’ve noticed how everything is going subscription these days. You pay a thousand rents to take part in a society that isn’t even worth one, ffs – and that’s without paying attention to all the firesales on public land in countries dominated by neoliberal politics (basically The West, as the assholes see themselves).

Anyway, I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but one of those public institutions being privatized and managerialized at very accelerated rates in Neoliberal States these days is the public university system. Accelerated rates btw, not new processes. The Public Universities in neoliberal regimes like the US have been under heavy and sustained attack for the entire 21st century so far. If you were unaware of this fact, or you’re not aware of the ways that individual schools in the various Public University Systems have been targeted (often violently) that doesn’t mean this stuff hasn’t been happening.

For example, the threats against immigrants and their visa statuses in the US gain their traction from good old fashioned American Racism, and rightly gets confronted on those terms. But…there’s another reason that’s way more important for the people who make the strategies that the ghouls turn into laws and policies that’s easy to see once you realize that for the past decade public universities (and probably private, too, but whatever) have looked to foreign students as a major source or their funding.

Basically, they charge insane tuition and other fees to foreign students (look up the rates for the major Universities in each state in the US, it’s obscene) and likewise have increased the number of foreign students exponentially to the point that without them a very significant portion of their actual funding would abruptly stop, crippling them to the point that – well, that’s the thing – no one knows what will happen. Probably different things in different school systems, but almost guaranteed that none of it will be good. (For the record, I am very much in favor of more foreign students, I am not however in favor of treating them like cash cows. That sucks.)

End-game strategies basically. As in it’s the end of the game, Public Universities ain’t making it out of this decade looking anything like what they’ve been for most of your lifetime. New & Far-From-Improved! It’s a bummer honestly.

The end of the Public University System will be traumatic – despite its flaws it was way better than nothing – which is what the people who broke the world plan on leaving us with. But because they aren’t planning on a good replacement for the Public University System, there is an opportunity for us to take the lessons of what was good as well as what was kinda fuckin shitty about Public University Systems and build a new system: a University of the Commons.

Oh, and before you’re like “hey, easy there, little trigger, aren’t you (a) being a bit over-dramatic; and (b) people can’t just build a brand new university system so easily?” consider: (a) no; and (b) you been watchin too much History Channel if you think aliens or some shit built the present public university system.

Seriously though, the Public University System is the sole reason why most people who have a higher education actually have one, myself very much included. Once the Public University System is gone then higher education is only for the children of the wealthy elite and “the best and brightest” of the working classes so they can do the stuff that the rich kid idiots can’t or won’t do for themselves.

Bleak shit, I know. But the obvious logical outcomes of four decades of worse and worse policies often are. Just sayin.

Anyway, I think I’ve made my point that there is about to be a giant void that I for one think is BAD for the individuals affected by it and for the world in general. And I happen to have some thoughts about it. Weird, I know. But before we get to the Good Stuff, we gotta go through the Nerd Stuff. (awkward nerd “yay!”)

I want to spend a little time on the last point there: Credentialing. That’s what degrees are, that’s what they do – they bestow credentials. Associates, Certificates, and Bachelor’s Degrees all guarantee differing levels of competence, while Masters Degrees and Doctorates guarantee different levels of expertise. That’s the idea anyway. But this is where the Public University System went very, very astray in the past few decades.

The Neoliberal Era has been very, very bad for Education in general – yeah, no shit, I know – largely due to Credentialing becoming not just the most important function of the University System, which it did over the course of the past three decades and honestly was bad enough, but this process metastisized and became the sole function of the University System in the past few years.

Of course I know that the other stuff still happens, but now only in the service of Credentialing – and keep in mind this is from a Societal Perspective, or how Universities fit into the Societies that they are a part of. If your work only has social value as something to put on your (or often your manager’s) resume, then that’s what it is from a Societal Perspective – not research into the World or Humanity or anything else. That stuff has all become incidental – and it sucks donkey butt, I know.

There’s nothing wrong with Credentials, and having a trustworthy system to guarantee competence and/or expertise is a good thing in itself. But that does not mean that the way that the Public University System has done it at any point in its history is the right way, mostly because there’s no such thing.

There are ways that work better or worse, based on whether or not those guarantees are in fact trustworthy – a pretty simple metric actually. The Public University System did a pretty good job of it over the past couple of centuries or so, but honestly no better than pretty good.

Neoliberalism has slowly (and at times rapidly) stripped any goodness from the University Credentialing system over the past three decades, and we are at the end of that process where it is now aggressively bad and makes the world worse on a daily basis in more ways than any one person could possibly imagine. Not hyperbole btw, if you don’t believe me try to think of a dozen ways turning the entire Public University System into a degree mill has bad effects on the rest of society. Easy, right? Do it again, I bet you can no problem, and I bet you could keep going for a while and at some point during the process you’ll probably realize that you could keep finding shitty connections indefinitely.

Anyway, maybe turning Credentials into a commodity wasn’t really ever the best way to do such things, but it worked (kinda) for a while…until it didn’t. Time to move on imho. So let’s.