The first of this two-part series argued that unionization is inadequate social unity for higher education (HE) and that a socialist version of the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) offers better. Explaining how PSA relates to the ideology and economics of socialism, this second post delivers greater detail regarding how the model can provide more of the unity needed during the “great reset.”
This video is a summary of the reasoning to follow. As the video progresses, pause to allow more reading time: https://youtu.be/r25NMylEZ6I
PSA and Socialist Ideology
Before this socialist portrait of the PSA model begins it must be acknowledged that the model is equally comfortable in the hands of capitalism. After all, few would characterize existing professions such as law, medicine, or dentistry as pillars of socialism. Though the possibility of a socialist PSA was introduced some 10 years ago on this blog and from its inception the model is developed in accordance with a socialist ethos, posts have not been very attentive to the capitalism-vs-socialism debate.
This is because what recommends PSA is not necessarily its affiliation with socialism or capitalism, but how over the current higher education institution (HEI) model of universities and colleges it offers such categorical improvements as: increased access for academics and students; substantial system-wide cost reduction; higher quality outputs; greater community infusion; elimination of the need for out-of-state and international tuition rates; greater system integrity; improved working conditions and compensation for frontline workers; better response to changes in demand; increased resilience during economic turmoil; increased research funding; improved sustainability; and much more.
I write this series with an explicit socialist interpretation of the model because I have always preferred it and the future we face calls for it.
Within this institutional model, it is complicated to claim that some of this labor is of greater value than others. For instance, there is plenty of criticism about the monetary value placed on HEI presidents. But not only does this miss the true social tragedies of the HEI model, it ignores the fact that for a university or college it would be challenging to sell chicken without a Colonel Sanders. Less metaphorically, consider the staff that cleans and maintains the washroom facilities on campuses – imagine the loss of this labor after a couple of weeks. Without the work of the administration or sanitation, HE production is problematic. That said, it remains reasonable to claim that without the frontline work of academics, who are principally responsible for teaching, research, and community service, HEIs become inert factories that produce nothing – though they have functioning toilets and well-networked presidents.
To show this, consider what might be called a “frontline basic production unit” of the PSA model. It is a solo professional practice that operates out of a home office where the academic might elect to hold classes in-house or online and perform all their own advertisement, registration, secretarial, tutorial, and research work. In this basic production unit, the necessary and sufficient capital and labor is provided by the professional academic licentiate, with no need for employees. This is a bare bone but operational and legal possibility under PSA, as it is in other professions such a law, medicine, architecture, dentistry, accountancy, etc. This is not to say that professionals are not also employees of firms, hospitals, governments, and other types of employers. It is also not to say that professionals do not hire companies to provide telephone, internet, printing, cleaning, delivery or even office facilities and secretarial services – which is not the same as offering employment to such service providers. It is to say that independent, entrepreneurial, private practice is permissible and traditional within the professions.
In this case, the capitalist-socialist conflict is side-stepped, since the academic is a sole proprietor or, in socialist terms, a capitalist with no proletariat. An individual academic can manage entrepreneurism of this sort, were PSA in place to provide the legitimacy, freedom, agency, and professional society support to do so – with more on the work of the professional society in a moment.
Because of its operational and legal constitution, this is not possible under the HEI model. The model has elected for institutionalized capitalism, where universities and colleges are owners of the means of production and play the freedom-agency card as defense against charges of exploitative employment practices, claiming the proletariat is free to negotiate sale of their labor to the capitalist or free to become a capitalist themselves. In reality this is a choice between the exploitational and the exceptional – which is not an actionable choice at all.
I write this series with an explicit socialist interpretation of the model because I have always preferred it and the future we face calls for it.
As an ideology, socialism
emphasizes central principles and values with which PSA is constructed: democracy, freedom, equality,
solidarity, honesty, openness, responsibility, self-help and caring for others.
This socialist ethos acts as a spigot that regulates analysis, evaluation and
creation of relations between the productive forces of labor and the means of
production. Though in considering these relations it is common to focus on the
manufacture of objects, socialism applies to all products of labor, from babies
to bullets, from matrices to melodies, and from philosophies to pharmacies.
As
a key part of the knowledge sector, HE offers a mix of production with varied
types of labor. Focusing on universities and colleges, a sample of such
productive labor includes: staff that advertises an institution or maintains
the greens and plumbing; academic labor that conducts research or creates and
delivers courses; and administration that represents an institution or oversees
promotions and payrolls.
Within this institutional model, it is complicated to claim that some of this labor is of greater value than others. For instance, there is plenty of criticism about the monetary value placed on HEI presidents. But not only does this miss the true social tragedies of the HEI model, it ignores the fact that for a university or college it would be challenging to sell chicken without a Colonel Sanders. Less metaphorically, consider the staff that cleans and maintains the washroom facilities on campuses – imagine the loss of this labor after a couple of weeks. Without the work of the administration or sanitation, HE production is problematic. That said, it remains reasonable to claim that without the frontline work of academics, who are principally responsible for teaching, research, and community service, HEIs become inert factories that produce nothing – though they have functioning toilets and well-networked presidents.
None of this is to say that secretary and registrar work or teaching and research assistant work is not of value. It is only to say that without academics there is no HE sector within which the full complement of institutional workers can peddle their productive labor. It is a matter of necessary versus sufficient conditions. With the design of the HEI model, academics are necessary, but not sufficient for production. In the PSA model, academics are necessary and sufficient.
To show this, consider what might be called a “frontline basic production unit” of the PSA model. It is a solo professional practice that operates out of a home office where the academic might elect to hold classes in-house or online and perform all their own advertisement, registration, secretarial, tutorial, and research work. In this basic production unit, the necessary and sufficient capital and labor is provided by the professional academic licentiate, with no need for employees. This is a bare bone but operational and legal possibility under PSA, as it is in other professions such a law, medicine, architecture, dentistry, accountancy, etc. This is not to say that professionals are not also employees of firms, hospitals, governments, and other types of employers. It is also not to say that professionals do not hire companies to provide telephone, internet, printing, cleaning, delivery or even office facilities and secretarial services – which is not the same as offering employment to such service providers. It is to say that independent, entrepreneurial, private practice is permissible and traditional within the professions.
Because of its operational and legal constitution, this is not possible under the HEI model. The model has elected for institutionalized capitalism, where universities and colleges are owners of the means of production and play the freedom-agency card as defense against charges of exploitative employment practices, claiming the proletariat is free to negotiate sale of their labor to the capitalist or free to become a capitalist themselves. In reality this is a choice between the exploitational and the exceptional – which is not an actionable choice at all.
The HEI model suffers from perpetual insecure (under)funding that limits faculty employment (and student enrolment) capacity resulting in insufficient and highly competitive employment across the HE sector, where just over 60% of academic labor is contingent with two-thirds earning less than $50,000 per year. No academic has the independent wealth or influence necessary to open a capital-intensive, degree-granting university or college. All of this is in a model where, as seen through the lens of PSA, unionization is a counterpart of capitalism that ultimately harms all HE stakeholders – even though PSA does offer collaboration with unions that benefits members and non-members of the community. In the end, there is no true actionable freedom here and, given the viability of the PSA model, agency is inexcusably undermined, as is social unity.
Returning to the frontline basic production unit, in 15 years of working at universities, I have always accepted the department offer of a teaching assistant, though I never use the labor. I prefer to do the work of a teaching assistant (e.g., marking, tutorials, etc.), since I consider it part of my (not the institution’s) teaching service and development. At the same time, students are desperate for whatever financial assistance they can get in coping with the expensive HEI model. From my perspective, it’s a win-win situation. However, assuming such a workload will not be the preference of all, moving beyond the basic production unit there will be professional academics who prefer to rely on support staff in the provision of their HE services. It is at this point that socialism becomes conspicuous.
The reality is that socialism is but scattered islands in a sea of capitalism. As described thus far, those on the PSA island include academics and any academic support staff used in the operation of a professional HE practice. This means any practice that, for instance, uses the work of teaching or research assistants must make these workers partners. There are no employers or employees on this island, only socialist owners of the means of production.
To clarify, while socialists use both terms depending on the design of the organization or enterprise involved, here the term “partner” is used when referring to practices because it is most common in the professions and “cooperative” when referring to the professional society. When referring to the professional society component of the PSA model (as opposed to the professional practice component) the term is, “Society.”
For instance, related to the partnership requirement, one common criticism of socialism is the free-rider argument. Setting aside substantial engagement with this argument, suppose the probationary period has lapsed and for one reason or another a partner has become a free-rider who draws an income without contributing what the other partner(s) expect. If this cannot be resolved at the practice level through (legal application of) the partnership agreement, then the parties can seek recourse to the Society where a hearing is held to determine a binding course of action.
Two examples can serve to characterize the nature of this relationship: First, consider the question of tuition fees. Unlike the medical or legal professions, which, if they discuss, suggest, or impose service fee caps at all, the decision is principally made among practitioners, with little to no effective community input. This is not so in PSA, because the values and principles of socialism are the fulcrum of decision-making in the Society. Governed and operated by cooperative membership that includes the wider community in a one-member-one-vote democratic decision-making process, individuals are empowered to decide tuition fee caps. By comparison, in the HEI model, government regularly imposes fees caps in a bastardized attempt to honor the socialist ethos, while it slashes public funding for the social good of HE. Positively for PSA, tuition fee caps are decided not only in accordance with a proper socialist ethos but in a system where the cost of providing HE has been reduced by 50-75%, creating greater elbow room for open, amicable discussion among members. [For PSA financial analysis see: 1) America; 2) Canada; and 3) Australia.]
In this way, some aspects of an academic practice are not exclusively in the hands of the individual academics (e.g., maximum tuition fees or income differentials) and some are, such as the means of production, location of a practice, the workload, balance between teaching and research, courses offered, course schedules, holidays, tuition fee rates (subject to Society caps), income levels (subject to Society caps) and much more that determines working conditions. Compared to the HEI model, this is far greater worker control over the means of production and labor, exercised by frontline experts through two socialist-conceived channels that engage: 1) greater collectivity through the Society and 2) greater individuality through private academic practice. This is a mix of interdependence and independence designed to avoid capitalist maladies and maximize actionable freedom and agency in the implementation of socialist principles and values.
Another way to describe the relationship between the Society and private practice is to clarify what is meant by the phrases: "our Society" and "our practice." The Society is ours in the same sense that all the students, teachers, staff, parents, and neighbors intend when they say, “our school.” None of these groups own the school per se but rather enjoy benefit from and participation in the social functions of the school. Likewise, through free association members enjoy participation in the oversight functions of the Society – and so by model entailment, the HE sector. By comparison, “our practice” refers to a more limited free association of partnership in the ownership and operation of a private academic practice – and so by model entailment, the delivery of HE. Succinctly, the first refers to socialist (sector) governance and the second to socialist (practice) ownership.
Though this is nothing like a complete PSA blueprint, the hope is that this description and the section to follow will aid the reader in generating their own answers to calls for further detail. That said, this section closes with responses to a common criticism of PSA that can shed further light on the blueprint.
The critic claims that this description of PSA is perhaps viable for less capital-intensive fields of teaching and researching such as those common to the Humanities, Business, Fine Arts, Soft Sciences, or Law Schools, but not for the Sciences, particularly the hard sciences, which require laboratories and particle accelerators, that, like the opening of a university or college, are well beyond the means of an individual academic. As such, PSA is not a comprehensive model for the HE sector.
First, were the PSA model only partially adopted it would be a great victory for those individuals active within the civil society that depends upon HE. For instance, in coping with the instability caused by fiscal stresses, the Humanities are taking a real beating as HEIs develop short-term market strategies that emphasize a vocational return on investment mindset across the HE sector, from institutions to individuals. This is a necessary consequence of the HEI model, but devastating to HE and unnecessary under PSA. Further, the adoption of PSA does not mean the necessary elimination of the HEI model, since the two can collaborate in the provision of HE. Though in the end, the merits of PSA are likely to cast a long shadow over the demerits of the HEI model, and contrast often leads to conflict.
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Third, recognizing that universities and colleges are not HE, in reducing the total cost of HE facilitation by 50-75%, the PSA model liberates substantial public funds that can be channeled to increase the teaching and researching means of production on a scale and scope not possible in the HEI model – not to mention the increase in human capital that PSA makes possible. Where such material capital is concerned, groups of PSA academics can partner (in firms) and apply for access to these liberated public funds in the development of their own capital-intensive teaching and research assets, not to mention shared assets such as particle accelerators or observatories. So, whether it is existing or new capital necessary for fields of study in the hard sciences, PSA can accommodate. But even if this were not so, PSA remains of service and benefit to that portion of study in the hard sciences that does not go beyond the classroom and library.
Along with its numerous other benefits, PSA offers scale and scope at least as comprehensive as that of the HEI model, though at a reduced cost and with more favorable governance and working conditions. The result is a viable, desirable model that can be used to structure a socialist HE sector. To this end, the next section identifies aspects of the social economy that complement PSA.
PSA and Socialist Economics
Leaning on the socialist blueprint of PSA described thus far, this section looks to the social economy as a way to further elucidate and substantiate the model. In so doing, some of the more applied expressions of socialism are enlisted, such as social: economics, entrepreneurship, enterprise, finance/investment, and knowledge.
In keeping with the modifier, PSA is a social innovation.
As with most innovation, PSA is not a wholly new way, but a product of building with borrowed materials. Though the previous section and the entirety of this blog offer considerable explanation as to how these materials are assembled, the model can be succinctly described thus:
Adapting the quasi-public-quasi-private service apparatus of the professions, HE is offered under the direction and protection of a professional society of academics (PSA). Academics are licentiates of a legislated profession – as is done for the valued services in medicine and law. In this way, academics are no longer employees of HEIs, but professionals who offer their services in private practice, engaging support services according to professional prerogative. This makes redundant the current model of institutional employers and employees, and places both the sector labor and means of production in the hands of professional academics – not institutional middlemen.
Education is among the essential undertakings of any community and ought not to be confused or corrupted with commercial or conservative values – no matter how tempted or terrified by our circumstances. At the same time, under the current institutional model of universities and colleges, the unmet or poorly met needs of people form a long tragic list: $2+ trillion in student debt; industry dissatisfaction with graduate preparedness; racial, gender, and socioeconomic access inequality; institutional and individual corruption; exploitation of labor; vocationalisation and commodification of HE; and persistent funding cuts across the board.
From the perspective of PSA, hardship endured under the HEI model is a bitter irony. Academics provide students the education qualifications – i.e., the knowledge, skills, and course credits – necessary for entry into the professions, though they themselves cannot provide their hard-earned expertise from within the professional model; wherein they do not need to be employees of HEIs and do not need union labor representation, since in principle and practice professional societies enable practitioners to be self-employed, self-supported, self-represented, and self-regulated. Fundamentally, professionals are entrepreneurs. In a socialist PSA, academics are social entrepreneurs.
As an innovative corrective, PSA transforms HE from an institutional to an individual foundation. Such change might mean the elimination of traditional HEIs, it certainly means their subordination to relevant stakeholders such as students, academics, academic support staff, and their communities. If this transformation takes place within the social economy, then PSA can better immunize HE against the serious capitalist municipal and market liabilities of the HEI model.
Like the economy as a whole, the social economy is made up of individuals, firms, and processes that order economic relations and structure economic activity. At the micro scale of the individual, rather than entrepreneurs and investors, in the social economy we see social entrepreneurs and social investors. At the meso scale of the firm, we have social enterprises. At the macro scale of the system and structural change, we have social innovation. All these terms - social entrepreneurship, social finance/investment, social enterprise, and social innovation – are close cousins of the social economy, and key aspects that we might see as operating within it. Social innovation helps describe a key component of the social economy – its experimentation with new ways of organizing economic activity.[Thomson, M. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, 2020, 239–247; pg. 242]
Though its Western roots reach back to medieval guilds – a history it shares with the professions – the modern social economy is normally considered to have emerged as a response to the excesses of industrial-age capitalism. Since then, it has grown in scale and scope. As examples of this expansion, Mondragon Corporation has been identified, but one can also look to its presence in the province of Quebec, Canada, or in Ecuador, where the social economy contributes over 25% of the GDP. In spite of enlistment by communities and governments and the increasing research attention it has received, theoretical, operational, and legal aspects of the social economy remain somewhat nebulous. In this context, rather than navigate these deep cloudy waters, as a template for discussion this post relies on a document from the European Union (EU) – a geography that serves as yet another example of social economy growth. This document is a 2021 communication from the European Commission (EC) describing an action plan for expansive support of the social economy among its member states.
Returning to the frontline basic production unit, in 15 years of working at universities, I have always accepted the department offer of a teaching assistant, though I never use the labor. I prefer to do the work of a teaching assistant (e.g., marking, tutorials, etc.), since I consider it part of my (not the institution’s) teaching service and development. At the same time, students are desperate for whatever financial assistance they can get in coping with the expensive HEI model. From my perspective, it’s a win-win situation. However, assuming such a workload will not be the preference of all, moving beyond the basic production unit there will be professional academics who prefer to rely on support staff in the provision of their HE services. It is at this point that socialism becomes conspicuous.
The reality is that socialism is but scattered islands in a sea of capitalism. As described thus far, those on the PSA island include academics and any academic support staff used in the operation of a professional HE practice. This means any practice that, for instance, uses the work of teaching or research assistants must make these workers partners. There are no employers or employees on this island, only socialist owners of the means of production.
To clarify, while socialists use both terms depending on the design of the organization or enterprise involved, here the term “partner” is used when referring to practices because it is most common in the professions and “cooperative” when referring to the professional society. When referring to the professional society component of the PSA model (as opposed to the professional practice component) the term is, “Society.”
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So, a professional practice might have one or more academics and one or more academic support staff that provide the frontline services of HE, but all are equal partners and all must be licensed by and a member in good standing with the Society. Obviously, one must be careful to select the correct partner(s). Such care is routinely undertaken by the HEI model where faculty and graduate student candidates are vetted with various tools and stages before selection. Further, in many cases faculty employment positions are subject to a probationary period during which both parties are free to exercise no-fault termination of the employment relationship. The same can be true of PSA. There is nothing new here and where new is needed PSA can draw its own blueprints.
For instance, related to the partnership requirement, one common criticism of socialism is the free-rider argument. Setting aside substantial engagement with this argument, suppose the probationary period has lapsed and for one reason or another a partner has become a free-rider who draws an income without contributing what the other partner(s) expect. If this cannot be resolved at the practice level through (legal application of) the partnership agreement, then the parties can seek recourse to the Society where a hearing is held to determine a binding course of action.
Beyond this, just as students are better empowered in PSA to choose the individuals with whom they pair for education, academics are also better empowered to choose the individuals with whom they partner. This is because in both cases the performance records of academics and academic support staff are a matter of public record, encompassing a wide range of information: 1) pass/fail ratios; 2) student evaluations of service; 3) peer evaluations of service; 4) disciplinary/commendation actions taken by the Society; 5) criminal records; 6) number and level of students serviced; 7) types of professional development; 8) student post-service success/failure data; 9) qualifications; 10) awards; 11) research record; 12) years of service; and whatever other data students and academics can use in exercising their agency to make informed decisions about the studying and working relationships they form – a mechanism with very weak presence in the HEI model.
As might be guessed, along with solo and partner professional practices, on the socialist island there is also the Society of which, as indicated, all individuals who provide frontline work in HE must be licensed members to practice. This is the same sort of body that one finds in the licensure of lawyers or doctors. As a key element of PSA that fundamentally distinguishes it from the HEI model, the Society does more than qualify individuals to practice HE. Like other professional bodies of self-regulation, it disciplines, develops, and defends academics or academic support staff. It also undertakes community outreach, conference scheduling, annual meetings, fund raising, liaising and other maintenance of the profession.
As might be guessed, along with solo and partner professional practices, on the socialist island there is also the Society of which, as indicated, all individuals who provide frontline work in HE must be licensed members to practice. This is the same sort of body that one finds in the licensure of lawyers or doctors. As a key element of PSA that fundamentally distinguishes it from the HEI model, the Society does more than qualify individuals to practice HE. Like other professional bodies of self-regulation, it disciplines, develops, and defends academics or academic support staff. It also undertakes community outreach, conference scheduling, annual meetings, fund raising, liaising and other maintenance of the profession.
Beyond these functions common to all professions, the Society is tasked with: overseeing program development; credential requirements; objective evaluation systems; course and academic advertisement; student records maintenance; member performance record maintenance; complaints/conflict adjudication; research and grant support; credential issuance; scholarships/grants/awards determinations; self-studies and other academic maintenance of the profession.
Like the professional academic practices it enables, the Society is a socialist invention. Its governance and operation require cooperative participation not only from academic and support staff members, but also from the community the profession serves. So, while students or other individuals of the wider civil and industrial communities have no direct control over or partnership in the operation of a frontline private academic practice, they do in how the Society relates to its academic licentiates (and the wider community).
Two examples can serve to characterize the nature of this relationship: First, consider the question of tuition fees. Unlike the medical or legal professions, which, if they discuss, suggest, or impose service fee caps at all, the decision is principally made among practitioners, with little to no effective community input. This is not so in PSA, because the values and principles of socialism are the fulcrum of decision-making in the Society. Governed and operated by cooperative membership that includes the wider community in a one-member-one-vote democratic decision-making process, individuals are empowered to decide tuition fee caps. By comparison, in the HEI model, government regularly imposes fees caps in a bastardized attempt to honor the socialist ethos, while it slashes public funding for the social good of HE. Positively for PSA, tuition fee caps are decided not only in accordance with a proper socialist ethos but in a system where the cost of providing HE has been reduced by 50-75%, creating greater elbow room for open, amicable discussion among members. [For PSA financial analysis see: 1) America; 2) Canada; and 3) Australia.]
Second, consider the question of worker income in professional academic practices. As indicated in Part 1 of this series, the income differential in capitalist-leaning corporations and HEIs is at least over 300-to-1 and well over 13-to-1, respectively. With other socialist organizations as indicators, such disparity is very unlikely in PSA. For instance, in large longstanding, multinational, multidivisional socialist organizations such as Mondragon Corporation bylaws stipulate that income differentials are not to exceed a range of 6:1 to 9:1, with an annual income cap of $1 million for CEOs. A differential decided and imposed at the cooperative Society level limits the sort of income disparity that can be agreed to in partnerships at the practice level.
In this way, some aspects of an academic practice are not exclusively in the hands of the individual academics (e.g., maximum tuition fees or income differentials) and some are, such as the means of production, location of a practice, the workload, balance between teaching and research, courses offered, course schedules, holidays, tuition fee rates (subject to Society caps), income levels (subject to Society caps) and much more that determines working conditions. Compared to the HEI model, this is far greater worker control over the means of production and labor, exercised by frontline experts through two socialist-conceived channels that engage: 1) greater collectivity through the Society and 2) greater individuality through private academic practice. This is a mix of interdependence and independence designed to avoid capitalist maladies and maximize actionable freedom and agency in the implementation of socialist principles and values.
Though this is nothing like a complete PSA blueprint, the hope is that this description and the section to follow will aid the reader in generating their own answers to calls for further detail. That said, this section closes with responses to a common criticism of PSA that can shed further light on the blueprint.
The critic claims that this description of PSA is perhaps viable for less capital-intensive fields of teaching and researching such as those common to the Humanities, Business, Fine Arts, Soft Sciences, or Law Schools, but not for the Sciences, particularly the hard sciences, which require laboratories and particle accelerators, that, like the opening of a university or college, are well beyond the means of an individual academic. As such, PSA is not a comprehensive model for the HE sector.
First, were the PSA model only partially adopted it would be a great victory for those individuals active within the civil society that depends upon HE. For instance, in coping with the instability caused by fiscal stresses, the Humanities are taking a real beating as HEIs develop short-term market strategies that emphasize a vocational return on investment mindset across the HE sector, from institutions to individuals. This is a necessary consequence of the HEI model, but devastating to HE and unnecessary under PSA. Further, the adoption of PSA does not mean the necessary elimination of the HEI model, since the two can collaborate in the provision of HE. Though in the end, the merits of PSA are likely to cast a long shadow over the demerits of the HEI model, and contrast often leads to conflict.
.png)
Second, university and college campuses have evolved with capital assets that are chartered by public legislation, built with public funds, and operated using public grants, appropriations and student loans. As such, there is good reason to consider these assets part of the commons owned by civil society. As an example, consider the libraries of public HEIs, which are constructed, operated and equipped through public funds. Though it is not widely known, such resources are in fact open to the general public. As a high school student, I enjoyed full access to the university libraries in my hometown where I used my library card to conduct personal and class assignment research. If PSA were considered in the public interest, then such capital assets as libraries, laboratories, classrooms, and the like would be available as means of production in the model. In fact, studies on classroom and laboratory space use at HEIs indicate that there is plenty of room for PSA in the HEI model – not to mention the wider community, as this video describes:
Along with its numerous other benefits, PSA offers scale and scope at least as comprehensive as that of the HEI model, though at a reduced cost and with more favorable governance and working conditions. The result is a viable, desirable model that can be used to structure a socialist HE sector. To this end, the next section identifies aspects of the social economy that complement PSA.
PSA and Socialist Economics
Leaning on the socialist blueprint of PSA described thus far, this section looks to the social economy as a way to further elucidate and substantiate the model. In so doing, some of the more applied expressions of socialism are enlisted, such as social: economics, entrepreneurship, enterprise, finance/investment, and knowledge.
In keeping with the modifier, PSA is a social innovation.
Unlike conventional innovation, which tends to describe creative change that has as its object technological progress or organizational efficiency, generally for the pursuit of profit, social innovation has as its object social end – changes in social relations and institutional configurations that aim to meet social needs currently being left unmet by the market or state. …the social economy is closely associated with social innovation – as the reintroduction of social justice into economic production and allocation systems through their transformation.[Thomson, M. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, 2020, 239–247;
pg. 242]
As with most innovation, PSA is not a wholly new way, but a product of building with borrowed materials. Though the previous section and the entirety of this blog offer considerable explanation as to how these materials are assembled, the model can be succinctly described thus:
Adapting the quasi-public-quasi-private service apparatus of the professions, HE is offered under the direction and protection of a professional society of academics (PSA). Academics are licentiates of a legislated profession – as is done for the valued services in medicine and law. In this way, academics are no longer employees of HEIs, but professionals who offer their services in private practice, engaging support services according to professional prerogative. This makes redundant the current model of institutional employers and employees, and places both the sector labor and means of production in the hands of professional academics – not institutional middlemen.
Education is among the essential undertakings of any community and ought not to be confused or corrupted with commercial or conservative values – no matter how tempted or terrified by our circumstances. At the same time, under the current institutional model of universities and colleges, the unmet or poorly met needs of people form a long tragic list: $2+ trillion in student debt; industry dissatisfaction with graduate preparedness; racial, gender, and socioeconomic access inequality; institutional and individual corruption; exploitation of labor; vocationalisation and commodification of HE; and persistent funding cuts across the board.
This partial inventory of failure is widely known and experienced around the world in communities that adopt the HEI model – an artifact whose history is traced and tuned to PSA in this three-part blog series: Part 1, Part2, and Part 3. The aftermath of the 2008 global recession is but one example of the sort of contraction and collapse to which HE is routinely subjected under the model – and from which the sector has yet to recover, never mind advance beyond.
From the perspective of PSA, hardship endured under the HEI model is a bitter irony. Academics provide students the education qualifications – i.e., the knowledge, skills, and course credits – necessary for entry into the professions, though they themselves cannot provide their hard-earned expertise from within the professional model; wherein they do not need to be employees of HEIs and do not need union labor representation, since in principle and practice professional societies enable practitioners to be self-employed, self-supported, self-represented, and self-regulated. Fundamentally, professionals are entrepreneurs. In a socialist PSA, academics are social entrepreneurs.
As an innovative corrective, PSA transforms HE from an institutional to an individual foundation. Such change might mean the elimination of traditional HEIs, it certainly means their subordination to relevant stakeholders such as students, academics, academic support staff, and their communities. If this transformation takes place within the social economy, then PSA can better immunize HE against the serious capitalist municipal and market liabilities of the HEI model.
Like the economy as a whole, the social economy is made up of individuals, firms, and processes that order economic relations and structure economic activity. At the micro scale of the individual, rather than entrepreneurs and investors, in the social economy we see social entrepreneurs and social investors. At the meso scale of the firm, we have social enterprises. At the macro scale of the system and structural change, we have social innovation. All these terms - social entrepreneurship, social finance/investment, social enterprise, and social innovation – are close cousins of the social economy, and key aspects that we might see as operating within it. Social innovation helps describe a key component of the social economy – its experimentation with new ways of organizing economic activity.[Thomson, M. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, 2020, 239–247; pg. 242]
Though its Western roots reach back to medieval guilds – a history it shares with the professions – the modern social economy is normally considered to have emerged as a response to the excesses of industrial-age capitalism. Since then, it has grown in scale and scope. As examples of this expansion, Mondragon Corporation has been identified, but one can also look to its presence in the province of Quebec, Canada, or in Ecuador, where the social economy contributes over 25% of the GDP. In spite of enlistment by communities and governments and the increasing research attention it has received, theoretical, operational, and legal aspects of the social economy remain somewhat nebulous. In this context, rather than navigate these deep cloudy waters, as a template for discussion this post relies on a document from the European Union (EU) – a geography that serves as yet another example of social economy growth. This document is a 2021 communication from the European Commission (EC) describing an action plan for expansive support of the social economy among its member states.
After identifying how the social economy can help the EU meet its social rights and sustainable development goals, the document moves on to define what the EC means by “social economy.”
In the context of this action plan and related EU initiatives, the social economy covers entities sharing the following main common principles and features: the primacy of people as well as social and/or environmental purpose over profit, the reinvestment of most of the profits and surpluses to carry out activities in the interest of members/users (“collective interest”) or society at large (“general interest”) and democratic and/or participatory governance.
Traditionally, the term social economy refers to four main types of entities providing goods and services to their members or society at large: cooperatives, mutual benefit societies, associations (including charities), and foundations. They are private entities, independent of public authorities and with specific legal forms.
Social enterprises are now generally understood as part of the social economy. Social enterprises operate by providing goods and services for the market in an entrepreneurial and often innovative fashion, having social and/or environmental objectives as the reason for their commercial activity. Profits are mainly reinvested with a view to achieving their societal objective. Their method of organisation and ownership also follow democratic or participatory principles or focus on social progress17. Social enterprises adopt a variety of legal forms depending on the national context.
Terms such as “social economy enterprises”, “social and solidarity enterprises” and “third sector” are also used by some stakeholders, countries and international organisations18 to refer to social economy entities. (pg.3)
As a social innovation, PSA can draw further elucidation and validation from three elements of this social economy definition.
The first is in regard to “reinvestment of profits and surplus.” Where profit is concerned, the Society is non-profit in the standard legal sense of the term, with profit being used to further the social ends of the Society (members), not to enrich investors or capitalist owners. As for frontline private academic practices, the use of profit is determined by the solo practitioner or the details of the partnership agreement. This is not to say that the Society might not elect to pass bylaws regarding private practice profit, as it might regarding tuition and income differential caps. For instance, aside from membership fees, the PSA model might include a requirement that practitioners remit a percentage of their income or profits to the Society in order to fund social projects in the HE sector such as needs-based scholarships, research with social dimensions, remedial education programs, and the like.
The second element of the definition is the EC characterization of social economy entities as “private [and] independent of public authorities and with specific legal forms.” With the distinction and relationship between Society and practice in the professional model, there is both a public and private dimension to PSA.
The Society embraces direct public participation in sector oversight, including the legislation that delineates and atomizes its legitimacy across community participation that includes private academic practices, where a degree of individual profit or income-seeking control over the means of production and labor is vested in solo or partnered academics. In his way, strictly and positively speaking, PSA is not a “private entity,” but a public-private hybrid. Under this formulation, PSA is not “independent of public authority.” Though more philosophically, “independent” in this context is a relative term requiring greater clarification, since to one degree or another no aspect of life enjoys absolute independence from public (or even government) authority. Less philosophically, the EC document acknowledges this when it says:
Sectoral public policies are also relevant for social economy entities as they are important partners for public authorities in the provision of social, health and care services. (pg.4) …Public financial support plays an important role in enabling the start-up and development of social economy actors. State aid control seeks to maintain a balance between this support and fair competition. (pg.7)
With reference to the “specific legal forms” of entities, the description of PSA offered thus far requires legal instruments that facilitate legislated licensing authority, non-profit incorporation, for-profit (private practice) incorporation, degree-granting status, and binding partnership agreement. That said, as indicated, this blueprint is open to revision as the PSA model innovates according to social ethos and need.
The third element is related to the sort of entities the EC identifies as traditional in the social economy: “cooperatives, mutual benefit societies, associations (including charities), and foundations.” Though they are historic contemporaries of such entities, reticence to place the professions within the social sphere might come from three observations: First, many professionals provide their services as employees, not as entrepreneurial practitioners. Second, where they do provide their services in private practices, these are typically ventures that maximize profits for owners and rely on employment relationships lacking socialist dimensions such as collective ownership, democracy and solidarity. Third, though in origins iconic vocations such as law and medicine argued on civil-service-minded grounds that professionalization was needed for effective stewardship, their state-sanctioned authority has been misused as a means of bigoted exclusion and income protection. Though proper reasoning does not permit categorical condemnation of PSA based on these observations and there are important differences between the times and constitution of the existing and proposed professions, there are nevertheless valuable lessons to be learned from the fall and, some declare with enthusiasm, the demise of the established professions that can aid in the socialist design of the new academic profession.
Further, the traditional entities the EC identifies are all voluntary in the sense that no one is required to join a cooperative or an association. This is not true of PSA. If one wants to practice HE, then one must be a licensed member in good standing with the Society. This is a stricture with state-enforced legal consequences for violation, as it is in medicine and law. Acknowledging the potential for abusive use of this authority, PSA uses it as a quality insurance mechanism to aid in stewardship – as it should be. That said, as will be seen in the final section of the post, this state-sanctioned requirement for licensure and membership is part of PSA as reform, not as revolution – and the distinction has interesting legal and social implications.
This analysis might seem to suggest that professions – certainly traditional ones – do not fit comfortably in the social economy, but tradition is tenuous when innovation is afoot. The hope is that what has been said makes it clear PSA is not a typical profession and there is some good reason to believe it will not become one, especially with regard to their more distasteful attributes. For instance, unlike the legal and medical examples which were dominated by white affluent males when the professions were formed, HE has far more racial, gender and socioeconomic diversity in what are far more progressive times. This is not to say all is well in HE with respect to bigoted exclusion, income inequality and protectionism, or rights protections,. It is only to make the relative claim that the PSA starting point shows more promise – as the existing professions themselves are moving toward greater equity and inclusion.
But more to the point of this post, PSA is not a typical profession because it bears a socialist stamp and so unlike the traditional professions it belongs squarely in the social economy. At the same time, as this economy is discussed in circles like the European Commission and the World Economic Forum, or even the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University, there seems to be little room for something like PSA. Most of the discussion revolves around potential for the social economy to transition the main economy (a.k.a., the capitalist economy) toward economic, employment, and environmental practices that are more inclusive and sustainable. In this pursuit of a capitalist economy with more values-driven imperatives and practices the HEIs themselves are not targeted for transformation. Instead, they are seen as tools to raise awareness, provide specialized degrees, and conduct research and collect data in support of the advancement of the social economy – as they are in the advancement of the capitalist economy – ignoring the fact that HEIs are themselves badly in need of a reorientation from a capitalist to a socialist ethos.
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Whether the social economy is seen as a supplement or a substitute for capitalism, it stands to reason that given the central role (higher) education plays in the advancement of society in any direction, the HE sector needs to clean house while it maximizes its values-driven contribution to the three Es. A socialist PSA is meant to do just that. The only question that remains is whether this is a project of reform or of revolution.
PSA and Socialist Reform or Revolution
In this series, Part 1 argued that while unionization offers unity for its members, it takes the form of a partial, fragmented, defensive response to the capitalism with which it is necessarily joined in an unhappy unity. As a professional service model, PSA bypasses unions and as a socialist service model it bypasses capitalism. This section closes out Part 2 of the series with an analysis of the legitimacy of this bypass.
Legitimacy is key to successful HE. It is also key to success of PSA, whether the model is used as an instrument for socialist reform or revolution.
To be legitimate is an imperative in HE. The quality is sought in the academic work produced and protected against plagiarism in all its forms. The quality is sought in the application materials academics and students submit as they attempt to gain access to employment or education in HEIs. It is sought in the marks and grades assigned student coursework. It is what creates value in the credentials that are awarded. It is what creates eligibility for student loans. It is what creates confidence in the commitment of time and money to the pursuit of education and career.
Consequently, the absence of legitimacy increases uncertainty and the risk of unsatisfactory investment of time and money – commitments which present opportunity costs. As a credence good, this is especially acute in the case of HE, where the HEI model also markets itself as an experience good. To address this quality insurance issue, PSA requires that practitioners meet minimum qualifications for licensure by the Society, which is also responsible for the issuance of education credentials, while the model provides publication of academic member performance records. The other side of the coin is quality assurance. PSA addresses this primarily through its objective evaluation mechanism, where all student work that is used in the calculation of final grades is crowd-source marked with anonymity for all parties by at least two qualified academic members in addition to the immediate service provider – a comparable practice to that found in some graduate studies and all peer review journals. Together these checks serve to help establish the legitimacy of PSA.
But whether it is the HEI or PSA model, legitimacy stems from the work of academics. This is as it should be, since there is no other source qualified to determine and deliver HE. To reiterate, academics are principally responsible for the frontline production of HE teaching, research and community service, along with the academic support staff that contribute to this work (e.g., teaching and research assistants). Whether it is the academics that populate HEIs and accreditation boards or those that are licensed members of the PSA Society, legitimacy is based on authority that is logically entailed in the work of academics, whether or not that work is legally protected through social contract, and without whose work there is no HE sector.
Further, conceptual analysis of “legitimate” reveals it is a binary concept. That is, one either has the attribute or one does not, it is not a continuum concept, it is absolute, not relative, it is digital, not analog. For instance, it is meaningful to say that one legitimate claim to the throne has greater strength than another, but the relative strength is applied to the claim, not the legitimacy. In this example, the claimant is either legitimate or not; while the claim is strong or weak.
This is important to recognize as it instructs the bedrock of legitimacy based on the use of minimum criteria for qualification. PSA stresses that the bedrock is qualification of academics, not university and college presidents, cafeterias, analysts, sport stadiums, fundraisers, dormitories, secretaries, libraries, janitors, and so on. This is true even though such a list (particularly from the point of view of accreditation) might form the sufficient and necessary conditions for something to be an HEI in a model where academics are necessary, but not sufficient, and legitimacy is determined based on the qualification criteria of institutions. It is certainly true in the PSA model where academics are both necessary and sufficient and legitimacy is based on the qualification criteria of individuals.
The upshot is that the two models rely on different sets of criteria to define legitimacy, though they share an academic bedrock. But the contest between the HEI and PSA models is not over legitimacy, since both are legitimate thanks to a shared bedrock. The contest is over which model better meets the needs and aspirations of individuals and civil society – where “better” is a relative term and the arguments routinely made on this blog claim that the PSA model is better, while its socialist interpretation is better still.
That said, in this series and much of the blog content, legitimization of PSA is framed with lines of state legislation that authorize the Society to license qualified academics in the provision of HE, as HEIs are legitimized by the state through acts of legislation and recognition of accreditation boards. Endorsement of this dependence on the state places PSA in a social reform position. Or so says the revolutionary who argues that government is more or less an instrument of capitalism where any progress a reformist (PSA) might make in introducing socialist principles and values to the (HE) system is under constant threat from government action that routinely champions capitalism. Accordingly, the only reliable emancipation from a capitalist-sponsored government is revolution.
This would seem so and Marx certainly thought so. From the analysis offered here, PSA as a socialist revolution has legitimacy – in fact, unassailable legitimacy. Across the HEI model, academics and academic support staff have been opting for unionization, but were they to opt for PSA, though they can seek state-legislated permission, they do not need it. As the bedrock of legitimacy in HE, academics do not need to seek or comply with legal authority granted by the state in offering their services, or even issuing degrees or qualifying to receive public student loan funding. PSA is a model that makes this not only possible, but preferable based on the many categorical and socialist improvements it offers over the HEI model.
No doubt capitalist-leaning governments and HEIs would protest and take legal action against any body of individuals that independently forms their own professional society of academics to offer HE services and credentials – especially the much coveted and state-protected university or college degree. But this is precisely the sort of response revolutionaries hope for in modern times as they challenge the validity of the very laws they are being charged with violating. In going to a court of law the socialist PSA revolution can expose as a matter of public record much that is morally and legally wrong with the HEI model, while it tests legitimacy and authority of the model and any use of laws that might challenge it. Consider some of the counter-arguments to PSA that the state and HEIs might make in such a court: What arguments could establish the illegitimacy of PSA? What arguments could establish the economic non-viability of PSA? Or establish the relatively poorer quality of service? Or establish the challenges to integrity posed by the model? Or bar PSA from receiving student loan revenue? Or deny PSA from issuing degrees and other credentials?
In this legal context, showing that PSA violates some HE law is insufficient response to the revolutionary who challenges either the validity of the laws themselves or their application. Like legitimacy, validity is a binary concept – a law and its application either has it or not. As such, only the first question regarding legitimacy is relevant to a legal challenge of this sort, while the rest are derivative or comparative. Derivatively, if PSA is legitimate and laws that bar it or their application invalid, then (for instance) it can receive student loan funding and issue degrees. Comparatively, the issue is which of the two legitimate models is better in terms of: economics, quality, integrity, working conditions, and so on.
The PSA model has addressed all of these arguments with a winning design that effectively counters such comparative challenges, where veracity of the legitimacy and derivative claims might be determined in a court of law, as forced by a revolution.
Of course, thanks to the comfortable cultural and legal entrenchment of the HEI model, governments and HEs might simply sit back, denying PSA the competitive tools required for at least the short-term success of the model, including legal degree-granting status and eligibility for student loan funding. In this case, the independent group of academics that forms PSA will have to sue the government for their day in court.
At any rate, this drifts from the focus of this series as a compass not a road map to reform or revolution. The compass readings indicate direction for a new world order in higher education through social innovation, which the European Commission claims:
[O]ffers new ways of producing goods, organising and delivering services and new forms of civic participation responding to concrete social needs or societal challenges. It changes social relations and can offer new policy approaches, potentially leading to systemic changes. By operating in a bottom-up way and being close to communities, citizens and the problems they face, social economy entities have the capacity to find innovative solutions. (pg.20)
The innovation offered by PSA has always been social, but its reformative or revolutionary character has yet to be determined.
This was a long post. Thank you for taking the time and reflection necessary to read it. Please feel free to contribute with comment or collaboration.
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