"Quality of Education" Pop Quiz: Does your education empower you to be a "citizen?" or does your education prepare you to be a "worker/ consumer?" Do your professors ask for your thoughts and ideas? or are you treated as a "bucket waiting to be filled?" Does your education empower you to think and question critically? or is your curriculum full of "givens" and "facts" you must memorize? Is your education free of corporate influence and bias? or is it full of corporate advertisements, gimmicks, and ploys? If the answer to any of these questions is the color red, chances are your education is being "Corporatized!" The "Corporatization of Education" is the process by which corporations and their profit-driven adgendas are rapidly encroching on the quality of public education. Corporate Influence over Higher Education Corporate influence in higher education institutions impacts students in a variety of ways, none of which promotes a "liberal education": ---a corporate influenced education treats students as products to be trained, not as citizens to be educated. ---a corporate influenced education teaches students to be passive followers, not to be civic leaders. ---a corporate influenced education treats students as merely a means to an end (of increased revenue), instead of treating "schooling" as a means to an end (of more highly educated and critical individuals). 
Classroom Dynamics EXAMPLE 1: Classroom dynamics are a good place to start. A typical college classroom has one teacher (the authority) and ninety students (the subordinates). The professor espouses facts and givens, which students rush to copy down. There is little or no dialogue between students and teachers, except for questions of clarification. This sets up students to be submissive workers and submissive citizens. It's a dynamic we're comfortable with (after sixteen and a half years of it), and it remains a dynamic we're comfortable with. This benifits both corporations who expect you to be a passive worker, and those in power who expect you to be a passive citizen.
Around the turn of the century, schools used to be a place where students would go to learn, purely for the sake of becoming more knowledgable citizens. Thirty years later, thanks to those in power (who both benifited from students lessening interest in democracy and growing interest in turning profits) schools shifted from institutions of "education" to institutions of "training." It's hard for us to fathom that education used prepare us to be citizens, and didn't just train us to be good workers.
Institutions of higher education are the last hope for creating a more democratic, welcoming, and understanding society. But the more they are turned into training camps for workers, the less emphasis there is on creating civically minded, multiculturally aware citizens. 
Education Corporatization at UWSP EXAMPLE 2: The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is in the process of building a "Business Education and Training Facility." This high technology facility will require $245,000 tax-payer dollars from the limited UW system budget. This facility will pull professors (from a limited supply) from UWSP to teach and work at a high technology center, and it will pull students into a high-technology distance learning classroom to interact more with computers and less with actual professors.
This translates into: --Fuller classrooms, due to less teachers. results in less student to teacher interaction, less student to student interaction, and students are treated increasingly as "buckets to be filled." --Less funds for programs such as fine arts, social sciences, and ethnic studies (as funds are being pulled from a limited budget.) results in less emphasis on multiculturalism, pluralism, ethnic studies, democracy, and student empowerment. --More emphasis on upholding a corporate agenda (profits before all else) within higher education, since UWSP has invested funds and resources in the growth and development of area corporations. results in curriculum that promotes the status quo, rather than educating students to think critically and ask questions. --And your tax-payer dollars, quality of education, and tuition money go to subsidize corporate development and profit. The "Business Education and Training Facility" is, in it's most basic form, CORPORATE WELFARE. 
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