Fracking the faculty: The privatization of public knowledge, the erosion of faculty worklife quality, the diminution of the liberal arts
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2018 Taylor & Francis. University-developed knowledge is rapidly undergoing privatization by virtue of being sequestered into increasingly expensive journals, books, and monographs, all of which are controlled by a burgeoning academic publishing industry (Lincoln, 1998; 1999; 2012; Ohmann, 2003; Pirie, 2009). As a result, it becomes obvious that less well-funded scholars and institutions (with limited library budgets), as well as developing countries, find it harder and harder to access knowledge that might lead to improved life chances for citizens, more democratic forms of government, or more useful scientific knowledge for health, agriculture, clean water and the like. Knowledge production and scientific discovery are being perverted from their original purpose of improving the lot of humankind, and turned instead to yet another marketable commodity. The argument is made that, having marketized virtually everything on the planet, including our privacy and interiority (van Manen, 2010, p. 1024), the capitalist concern turned to finding new material that might be commodified and hence, marketized (Pirie, 2009). What better than the steady, rich outflow of information, data, knowledge, and proposed applications (or technology transfer) from elite scholarly knowledge workers? The exceptions are open access journals1, and U.S. government regulations which force some government-sponsored research to remain open access for a year prior to publication, so that it may be accessed anywhere in the world. The rapid marketization of knowledge, however, has led to what may be metaphorically termed the fracking of the faculty.
