Dr. Danielle M. Bouchard

Associate Professor, Women's and Gender Studies

How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation
by Marc Bousquet

This book has been so important to my understanding of the relationship between capitalism and the US higher education system. Bousquet carefully traces the ways in which corporate culture and capitalist logics have infiltrated the mission and functioning of the institution of higher education since the uprisings of the 1960s--and have attempted to quell the radical transformative potential of those uprisings. From a place of deep commitment to higher education, Bousquet levels a crucial critique of the ways in which racial, gender, sexual, and class injustices are all too often produced and perpetuated by the corporatized university. I love that he frames his analysis around the needs and concerns of students, who after all should be the focus of higher education. Bousquet offers an important challenge to his readers: he asks us not to sit back and watch while higher education becomes increasingly corporatized, but rather to take responsibility for making higher education an institution that actively works toward social justice.