Name: My University Plans to Reopen This Summer, Based on Advice From McKinsey. That’s Terrifying.
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My University Plans to Reopen This Summer, Based on Advice From McKinsey. That’s Terrifying.

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This Thursday night, join us live online to celebrate 46 years of muck-racking, truth-telling journalism at the In These Times anniversary celebration, featuring Adam McKay, writer and director of "Don't Look Up." The infamous s ​busing crisis” in Boston may seem far-flung from efforts by university administrators to confront the Covid- pandemic in . The connection, however, came home to me recently when I&nbsp;learned that the administrators of the Texas State University System — where I&nbsp;have worked for a&nbsp;decade — are planning a&nbsp;return to campus this summer, following the advice of the corporate consulting firm, McKinsey &nbsp;Company.McKinsey appears to be using the emergency of the pandemic to undermine what is left of faculty governance and student voice in higher education.Just as corporate leaders came together to help oversee desegregation of Boston’s public schools nearly &nbsp;years ago, today, business interests are again at the table, this time guiding school administrators on how to reopen in the midst of a&nbsp;deadly outbreak.McKinsey’s advice has already undermined effective responses to the pandemic in other sectors than higher education. Volunteers from the firm have been central to the Trump administration’s to procure personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals. Meanwhile, the firm has profited from state-level officials looking for a&nbsp;veneer of legitimacy in their efforts to to those now in poverty. There is no reason to believe McKinsey’s advice for public higher education will be any more&nbsp;promising.The administrators I&nbsp;work with in the Texas State University System (TSUS), nonetheless, have called on messaging from McKinsey &nbsp;Company to sell our faculty and staff on the plan to return to face-to-face instruction — originally on July , —and to do so while absorbing the impact of during an ongoing in Covid- infections in Texas. (In a&nbsp;statement, TSUS denied having a&nbsp;formal connection to McKinsey, saying the administration is not ​consulting with McKinsey &nbsp;Company to develop plans or responses to&nbsp;COVID-.”)To facilitate this reentry into on-campus work and study, McKinsey is selling a&nbsp;top-down, closed process. They have laid out a&nbsp; that includes no systematic efforts to collect the views of faculty, staff or students. Instead, they’re calling on the people most at risk upon returning to campus to embrace both possible infection and a&nbsp;post-pandemic ​new normal” — defined by&nbsp;austerity.A history of&nbsp;privatizationMcKinsey &nbsp;Company is not new to the business of restructuring public education. The firm has been a&nbsp;key player in the effort to exert private-sector control over Boston’s public schools since at least the&nbsp;s.The history of the s ​busing crisis” in Boston is well-known. Images of white Bostonians stoning school buses transporting Black children to previously all-white schools, and of demagogues tearing the city apart with appeals to ​white pride,” have been seared into our collective historical memory. Yet fewer are familiar with what is perhaps that period’s most lasting legacy: the insidious way corporate and finance leaders exploited desegregation to privatize public&nbsp;education.In , Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity issued a&nbsp;landmark decision calling for the immediate desegregation of Boston’s public schools. Local school officials, however, refused to enforce Garrity’s order. To meet this resistance, Garrity personally oversaw the implementation of desegregation. Looking for help wherever he could get it, Garrity invited corporate leaders to partner in that process. Yet many Bostonians were skeptical of this new corporate&nbsp;intervention.McKinsey &nbsp;Company stepped into the Boston school reform effort as advisors to the philanthropic foundations that funded public-private partnerships in education during the s and s. By the s, McKinsey advisors were helping to advance the cause of publicly-subsidized, for-profit charter&nbsp;schools.McKinsey has sought to privatize and close public schools even if it required skewing the facts. In June , Boston Public Schools reported that the buildings in the system had total a&nbsp;capacity of , seats, with an enrollment of ,. But just two years later, McKinsey to Mayor Marty Walsh that capacity had grown by nearly %, to , seats. This surge in capacity would justify shuttering dozens of schools. But where did they find all this extra space? As a&nbsp;parents’ group discovered through a&nbsp;Freedom of Information Act Request, McKinsey’s role was not to shape sound policies to improve education, but rather to justify a&nbsp;predetermined policy goal: closing to district schools, privileging, as the parents concluded, ​short-sighted cost-savings” over ​equitable access to quality schools for all&nbsp;children.”McKinsey’s approach to school reform is precisely not what we need right now. Mass school closures to hurt surrounding communities and to consolidate private-sector control over urban schools. In the name of ​” and ​choice,” privatization schemes have actually undermined the commitment to equity in education as a&nbsp;public good. As historian put it in her survey of McKinsey’s record in education reform: ​McKinsey is always there, although there is no evidence that they are education experts… . Education has been warped for the past &nbsp;years by the inappropriate application of corporate strategy to schools and classrooms and&nbsp;children.”Military-style responseMcKinsey appears to be using the emergency of the pandemic to undermine what is left of faculty governance and student voice in higher education. In a&nbsp;May article published on McKinsey’s website, titled ​Lessons from the generals: Decisive action amid the chaos of crisis,” senior partners Yuval Atsmon, , and lay out this militaristic strategy. Structural changes will be driven by protocols of defined by a ​military-command structure” that will plan ​across all time horizons,” while keeping focused on adopting ​age-old principles of&nbsp;war.”In , an exasperated Boston parent asked, ​Why hire a&nbsp;firm like McKinsey with a&nbsp;reputation for closing schools, if that wasn’t your end goal?” We should ask our university administrators a&nbsp;similar question. Why look to a&nbsp;firm like McKinsey, with its record of corporatizing public institutions, if that is not your end goal? Is the objective merely to justify ongoing budget cuts, increased insecurity for faculty and staff, attacks on tenure, and declines in the quality of education? It is difficult to come to any other&nbsp;conclusion.McKinsey’s advice makes no mention of fighting for more state or federal funding for public universities, after the Great Recession of -, even as state revenue and university enrollment grew. In the absence of increased funding we will see the extension of ongoing trends that increase tuition while lowering the quality of education. Students will pay more for an impoverished university experience. Growing ranks of contingent faculty and outsourced staff will struggle to keep up, as administrators increase their workloads and cut their pay. All of this will hit low-income and first-generation students the&nbsp;hardest.The bottom line is that a&nbsp;McKinsey-style warlike response threatens to divert resources from students, particularly our working-class Black and Latinx students (the majority of students at Texas State), for whom higher education promises a&nbsp;path to the lives they strive to&nbsp;create.Toward an anti-racist&nbsp;approachRather than corporate reformers like McKinsey &nbsp;Company, we need to listen to students, faculty, staff and parents to recall the true purpose of public education. In , looking back on the fight for desegregation in Boston, the legendary parent-activist and community-based crisis counselor, Ruth Batson, spoke to the heart of the matter: ​The theory that has propelled Black people since slavery to educate their children,” she declared, has been that education is ​a survival mechanism, a&nbsp;way out—a way out of ignorance, a&nbsp;way out of poverty—a way out of a&nbsp;binding and non-fulfilling job — a way out of exploitation.” The willingness of Black parents to ​endure busing,” as Batson put it, reflected their need to go through what they knew would be a&nbsp;painful process in order to secure a&nbsp;quality education for their&nbsp;children.Neither the attempt at desegregation nor the corporate-driven ​reform” of public schools secured the access to a&nbsp;quality education that Batson and her fellow parents were seeking. Batson knew ​busing” alone would not get the job done, but she was willing to endure it in the hope that it would be a&nbsp;step in the right&nbsp;direction.What she could not have known is that ​socially responsible” corporations would step into the process to profit off of school systems, thereby creating new barriers to the equity parents sought. One has only to look at the recent trend in privatization of in the United States, and its disastrous consequences for residents and staff during the pandemic, to see that privatization and consolidation is not a&nbsp;panacea.We in the nation’s public universities are having to endure the challenges of dealing with a&nbsp;pandemic. The appearance of McKinsey &nbsp;Company raises the fear that the return to campus will not only threaten our lives, but force us to act in ways that will undermine the kind of public education that can be ​a way out” for our students. If that’s the case, we will have endured the pandemic to find that we’ve facilitated our public university’s transformation into the corporate&nbsp;university.&nbsp;Instead, in the midst of both a&nbsp;pandemic and the , let us come together to demand an anti-racist state response to the Covid- crisis in higher education. The goal ought not to be maintaining morale by convincing faculty and staff to make warlike sacrifices in the interests of austerity. We must instead demand a&nbsp;democratically conceived project of reinvesting in public universities — cementing higher education as the public good that it&nbsp;is.&nbsp;Win your dream vacationThe In These Times raffle is our most popular fundraiser of the year. This year, the grand prize is a trip to a destination of your choice—airfare and lodging are on us.The live drawing will take place at our virtual annual event on Thursday, September 15, but you don’t need to be in attendance to win. With a grand prize of a $1,000 airfare voucher and a $1,000 Airbnb gift card, you can design your ultimate getaway. 100% of your donation will go towards supporting our independent, progressive journalism.Have thoughts or reactions to this or any other piece that you'd like to share?Similar articlesJoin our newsletterFearless journalism, emailed straight to you.Subscribe and Save 66%Less than $1.67 an issueWatch live Thursday nightAcademy Award-winning filmmaker Adam McKay, writer and director of “Don’t Look Up,” joins us to celebrate the 46th anniversary of In These Times. Plus: Chris Smalls and the JFK8 Amazon workers.

This Thursday night, join us live online to celebrate 46 years of muck-racking, truth-telling journalism at the In These Times anniversary celebration, featuring Adam McKay, writer and director of "Don't Look Up." The infamous s ​busing crisis” in Boston may seem far-flung from efforts by university administrators to confront the Covid- pandemic in . The connection, however, came home to me recently when I&nbsp;learned that the administrators of the Texas State University System — where I&nbsp;have worked for a&nbsp;decade — are planning a&nbsp;return to campus this summer, following the...

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My University Plans to Reopen This Summer, Based on Advice From McKinsey. That’s Terrifying.

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