The Shadow Elite is a book that attempts to describe how a group of elite people, that are only loyal to themselves attempt to accomplish their own goals by challenging and twisting the rules of governments and business. A way in which they go about molding the rules is by blurring the line between public and private. The book also goes about discussing how corruption and self-dealing are rampant and that those that have political influence are getting rich at the expense of the public while simultaneously becoming less and less accountable.
According to the biography that she offers on her personal website Janine R. Wedel is a professor of Public Policy at George Mason. She has a background in Cultural Anthropology. George Mason University states that Wedel has been a pioneer in applying anthropological insights to topics that are typically the terrain of political scientists, economists, or sociologists. Wedel spent 25 years studying the role of informal systems in shaping communist and post-communist societies. Wedel is also a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, which is an American non-profit foundation that focuses on national security studies, technology, asset building, health, energy, education and the economy.
A key concept used in this reading is that there is an increasing privatization of public entities and on the contrary there is private entities are becoming more and more public, this merging of state and public "renders government less accountable and relevant markets less competitive (pg 108)". Another key concept is that there is an effort being made by the U.S. government to cap or reduce the number of civil servants. The people in control of the cap is the shadow governments. They are making an effort to curb the shadow government.
"Waning loyalty of institutions to people and of people to institutions goes hand in hand with the proliferation of people's roles. (pg 104)" This quote has the ability to pertain to public universities, it describes how the state is taking less and less accountability for the institutions and not exactly doing their part to support them, which is why tuition must be risen to combat this lack of state support. And perhaps the institutions could combat this but they are receiving more money under this system and get to determine themselves where they want to spend the money.
"This 'privatization of the functions of the state' signals 'areas of the state in which the state is responsible but has no control', (pg 70)" This quote is very indication of where public institutions are heading and also goes on to discuss a stage where public institutions might be at. It also may explain why the mission shift of these universities have changed from an improvement in the education of the state to an improvement in themselves. The priorities have shifted and that is primarily because it is not even the state that has control over these universities. The universities have control over themselves and because of that they have become self-centered.
"Really holding flexians to account would be a daunting enterprise (pg 201)." The reason this quote is important is because these shadow elite figures that control everything in the United States and consequently the world have a lot of control and are potentially very much behind the reasoning as to why banks supply and benefit from college debt and whey colleges seem to continue to go with the trend and promote this benefit to the banks. This quote states that even if they are controlling things it will be very difficult to catch them, it would take a "team of investigators and public servants".
This material helps me explore my research question by showing me the behind the scenes of the U.S. government. It gives me a reason as to why higher education is not higher up on the political priority list, the shadow elite are simply benefiting too much from the current system. This book also further developed my understanding of how privatization and public are becoming one. Which has a major effect on the collegiate system in and of itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment