Of Establishment Self-Pity

We are told that we live in an era of "populism" (ad nauseam). It would be far more accurate to say that we are living in an era in which it has become harder for policymakers and supporters of the status quo generally to ignore public disagreement with the neoliberal and neoconservative policies they have so unflinchingly instituted for a half century in spite of their failures, and contempt of public opinion. In discussing this it is only fair to also note that in the highly uneven political contest which followed the far right, thanks to its advantages (including a good deal of elite sympathy for the far right, and the centrist tendency to accommodate it in a way it would never the left), has been more successful in channeling that disagreement into support for its parties and leaders and their proposed policies than any element on the left--though however ineffectual, it may be that some are looking leftward in a way they did not before (to the horror of center and right alike).

The results have been uncomfortable for many in "the Establishment," certainly those who feel their particular institutions and interests to be challenged by the ascendant political tendency. Per usual, their response has not been an openness to compromise and reform, but disdain for the critics, and (problematic as the term is I think it really is warranted here) pity for themselves.

So does it go with the defenders of the status quo in higher education as they moan "Oh why, why don't the people like us?" then conclude "It's them, not us."

So does it go in Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Philip J. Hanlon's poorly and sloppily researched, reasoned and written counter-attack of critics of that pillar of the Establishment, the Ivy League, in TIME magazine last month--the kind of piece that, as Nathan J. Robinson might put it, forces me to "restrain my instinct to write multi-thousand word rebuttals."

Still, even holding back from the multi-thousand word rebuttal required to dismantle the piece I still find it hard to refrain from comment upon particular bits of it, with one that seems to me to especially do no credit to this "Senior Associate Dean of the Yale School of Management, President of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, and Lester Crown Professor of Leadership Practice" and former President of Dartmouth is their claim that universities add "$40 billion annually to the GDP and their technology transfers have contributed over $600 billion to the nation's GOP in the last twenty years."

Let us overlook the fact that in raising this they switch the subject from the Ivy League specifically to higher education generally, confusing the matter. Let us also overlook the reference to "GOP" instead of "GDP" ("GDP" is how it is written in the source they link, leaving no doubt of the nature of the typo, and what passes for copyediting at TIME). Instead let us consider what these two figures, which are supposed to overawe us with the mighty contributions of the university to the economy, mean within the larger picture. As one finds clicking the link about universities adding $40 billion to U.S. GDP (a surprisingly low figure for institutions employing 4 million persons) one finds that the source, a 2019 item posted at the web site of the Association of Governing Boards, identifies the source figure, actually $36.9 billion, as the contribution of international students to the economy specifically, not universities as a whole. It thus does not mean what they say it does.

Meanwhile the reference to the $600 billion (rounded up from the original figure of $591 billion in the same item that supplied the "$40 billion" figure) contributed in technology transfers refers to the years 1996 to 2015--during which Gross Domestic Product came to some $261 trillion in current (before inflation) figures. The result is that all that university research contributed less than 1/4th of 1 percent of U.S. GDP during the whole two decades.

The $600 billion figure is meant to give the impression that the universities are powering an economy roaring with innovation. Alas, when one gets beyond the most superficial sort of examination it affirms just how little innovation was really going on in that period--how little technological change there has been, in spite of the Silicon Valley-singing hype. It is thus also far from satisfying as evidence of what the authors endeavored to prove in that section, namely that what America's higher education delivers is well worth the price--all as these two writers studiously avoid mentioning a good many other statistics, such as the nearly $1.8 trillion student loan debt owned and securitized as of the third quarter of 2024, some $1.6 trillion of this Federal debt owed by some 43 million debtors owing some $35,000 on average. This raises a point the authors overlook--namely the question of, even if we allow for the gains in the economy, who is reaping the benefit--and who bearing the burden, especially at that national level they raise when the matter is convenient, and shun when it is inconvenient, greatly muddling the picture even as they fling the accusation of "cherry picking" at their critics.