January 11
To: Colleagues in Minneapolis
From: Harry Boyte, chair, Institutional Connections Committee
Civic Engagement Task Force, University of Minnesota
Re: Civic Engagement Newsletter
As Steve Clift mentioned last spring, the University is undertaking
a long term process to strengthen its civic engagement with
communities and the world. The provost's charge to our Task Force
and various reports (including soundings from many different
public forums with communities over the last year) are at the
University web site under "civic":
www.umn.edu/civic
As part of this work, I am sending out a period electronic
newsletter. I should note that beyond notices and other factual
information, the views are only my own perspective (and,
generally, that of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the
Humphrey Institute). They are not the formal positions or
consensus of the Task Force.
There follows the second issue of "Civic Engagement News" for
2002. Please contact me directly if you would like to receive it
regularly.
Civic Engagement News #2, January 11,
2002
The following is a periodic electronic mailing of
news items and information pertaining to civic
engagement at the University of Minnesota and
other institutions of higher education. It goes to
faculty, staff, and students at the UMN, civic
leaders across the state of Minnesota, and
leaders in higher education. I continue to add
names by request, and from key events.
Please let me know if you would rather not
receive it.
Harry C. Boyte, Co-director
Center for Democracy and Citizenship,
Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN AN AGE OF
CONSUMERISM
We all know the market pressures in higher
education, which lead to students being
redefined as customers, and public service
becoming service delivery to those who can
pay. A recent article, �The Reversal of
Production and Consumption at the Minnesota
State Fair,� by Mark Ritson, formerly on the
faculty of the UMN Carlson School and now
at the London Business School, published in
the CURA Reporter (2000), helps put such
pressures in historical context.
Ritson used quantitative and qualitative indices
to explore a thesis that the Center for
Democracy and Citizenship, among others,
has advanced: Western culture has shifted
over the last half century from a focus on
production to one centered on consumption.
Ritson compared premium list data (cash
purposes awarded to exhibitors for prize-
winning displays of production skills) to
revenue from concession stands, commercial
stalls and food tents for the period 1883 to
1995. He also conducted a detailed thematic
analysis of speeches, brochures, news reports
and other discussions to discover �what did
the fair mean to the people who organized and
attended the event, and how did these
meanings change over time?�
Ritson�s piece (available from the Center for
Urban and Regional Affairs at the UMN)
describes three distinctive periods in State Fair
history. In the first, from its beginnings in the
19th century up until 1932, the fair had a
strong emphasis on production. It featured
robust livestock, bountiful harvests, and the
labors of pioneers who built homes and cities.
In 1914, the president of the State Fair
described it as �the annual assembling of the
best products of the fields and orchards of
Minnesota for the inspection and enlightenment
of the citizenship of the state.�
A transition period, from 1933 to 1946,
mingled themes of production and
consumption. From 1947 on, the Fair
increasingly focused on consumption. �Every
year the Minnesota State Fair finds as many as
a million people wolfing down gastronomic
novelties,� ran a story in the Minneapolis
Tribune in 1956. Concession stands came
overwhelmingly to dominate. Livestock
exhibits and other displays of productive
activity were sharply scaled back. Even the
blue ribbon, once the prestigious symbol of the
production ethos, was licensed to a national
company that buys the rights to the winning
pickles and preserves and mass produces
them under the brand name, State Fair.
Such trends are crystallized in Mark Yudof�s,
�Is the Public Research University Dead?�, an
article in the current Chronicle of Higher
Education. Few observers and leaders of
higher education have been as astute in
observing and analyzing the dire pressures
facing public universities as Mark Yudof,
president of the University of Minnesota.
Through the spring, Yudof eloquently spoke of
�the withering of public support for the public
university,� during the budget battle in the state
legislature. In the January 11 Chronicle,
Yudof details what he sees as implications of
such withering.
Yudof describes the historic compact between
public universities and legislators and citizens,
formed more than a century ago: �In return for
financial support from taxpayers, universities
agreed to keep tuition low and provide access
for students from a broad range of
backgrounds�promote arts and culture, help
solve problems in the community, and perform
groundbreaking research.� But in a new age of
global economics, changing demographics,
fierce competition, and pressures from
legislators to demand market accountability,
Yudof believes that declining support for
public universities from state legislators is
inexorable.
He argues that radical revisions in the compact
are necessary. Tuition will have to increase
significantly. The creation of public goods,
especially at land grant institutions, as well as
professional degree programs which generate
less revenue than tuition provides, will require
new partnerships with foundations and private
organizations and more fees-for-service for
traditionally free programs. Most
fundamentally, perhaps, what Yudof calls �the
hybrid university� will face �a philosophical tug
of war� between the pressures from market
competition and its mission to �nurture learning
for its own sake, transmit cultural values,
encourage civic understanding� and other
public goods that are not very profitable.
Yudof�s depiction of these trends is
compelling. But his concluding metaphor needs
more work. �The pessimist complains about
the wind,� Yudof says, quoting author William
Arthur Ward. �The optimist expects it to
change. The realist adjusts the sails.� In
Yudof�s view, public universities have been by
and large pessimists, �blaming the
circumstances of the day.� He calls, instead,
for candid recognition that �the long-term
political winds have shifted.�
In the short term, �adjusting the sails� would seem a matter of simple
prudence. But the metaphor of �wind� is too gentle. It
�s more like a tornado, reaping havoc on the public landscape and molding the
political outlook of most elected officials. Politicians have gone from a New
Deal language
� FDR
�s call to mobilize the productive work energies of the nation in addressing
crucial tasks, in efforts like the CCC and WPA
� to a consumer framework. Most politicians see citizens as consumers demanding
largess
� and sell themselves in election campaigns like advertisers sell toothpaste.
George Bush now appears in a Marriott commercial urging people to take more
vacations as their civic response to 9/11. In this context, only a broad civic
movement among the people to solve public problems and create public things
seems capable of calming the storm. Such a development is certainly imaginable.
These market trends are, after all, human
creations, as Karl Polanyi observed some
years ago in his fine work, The Great
Transformation.
Institutions of higher education � certainly
public universities � have a crucial leadership
role to play here as powerful culture-shapers
and meaning-makers in an information age, not
only for ourselves but also for the sake of our
civilization.
For more on the UMN�s civic engagement
work, see the web sites of the Civic
Engagement Task Force, { HYPERLINK "http://www.umn.edu/civic"; }www.umn.edu/civic
and the Center for Democracy and
Citizenship, especially the growing section of
interviews and essays on public scholarship, at
{ HYPERLINK "http://www.publicwork.org/3_4_interviews.html";
}http://www.publicwork.org/3_4_interviews.htm
l
"Democracy is a journey, not a destination."
William Hastie, 1940
Harry C. Boyte, Ph.D.
Co-director, Center for Democracy and Citizenship
Senior Fellow, Hubert H.Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
301 - 19th Ave. South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-5509, fax 612-625-3513
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