The Lamar University Electronic Journal of Student Research

Fall 2007

Postmodernism, Higher Education and Economics

A Different View

Nasrin Nazemzadeh
PhD Student in Educational Leadership
The Whitlowe R. Green College of Education
Prairie View A&M University
Prairie View, Texas
Professor
Tomball College

William Allan Kritsonis, PhD

Professor and Faculty Mentor
PhD Program in Educational Leadership
The Whitlowe R. Green College of Education
Prairie View A&M University
Member of the Texas A&M University System
Visiting Lecturer (2005)
Oxford Round Table
University of Oxford, Oxford, England
Distinguished Alumnus (2004)
College of Education and Professional Studies
Central Washington University
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ABSTRACT

Postmodernism is an unappealing quasi-nihilistic loose body of ideas. It holds that

there are no absolute truths; it denies the existence of objective reality, and
questions the possibility that man will attain progress by means of his intellect.
Denying the existence of an absolute truth or standard of truth, the postmodernist
must also deny the existence of lower-level truths. Falsehood, like truth, is illusory
since there is no objective reality. Postmodernism is an empty box of philosophy; it
will fade away after attaining perhaps two milliseconds of fame. Relative to Ayn
Rand, it stands at the opposite end of the spectrum of ideas.
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 What is Postmodernism?

Postmodernism is difficult to define, because to define it would violate the main

assumption of postmodernism that no hierarchies, definite terms, boundaries, or absolute
truths exist. Also, those who claim to be postmodernists have different beliefs and
opinions on many issues.
In postmodernism, reality does not exist; it is a real illusion; it is an image created
by the language we use; there are multiple realities, none of which is more or less real
then others. Since there is no single reality, any institution is open to multiple
representations. The language we use does not reflect reality, but rather it defines what
we know and how we know it. Language produces the objects of which it speaks (Hardy
& Palmer, 1999).
Postmodernists withstand universal standards, ideas, laws and the behavior that
results from the exercise of those standards. Indeed, their greatest opponents are the
practices that focus on one theory, claim, method, truth or one right way of thinking.
Postmodernism is neither a philosophy nor a unified perspective or doctrine. It is a series
of loosely assembled ideas and techniques against the well- established traditions of
empirical sciences (English, 2003).
Postmodernism doubts the possibility of order and rejects that there is objective
knowledge and questions the idea of progress, that the future will be better than the past.
In postmodernism, no single grand theory explains the world; power is not a finite
resource and no one is in control of it (Daniel, 2004).
Postmodernism is an attitude toward the social world, this is more of a diagnosis
than a theory (Schwandt, 2001). It opposes four central doctrines that form the core of the
Enlightenment tradition:

1. The notion of a rational, autonomous subject; a self that has an essential human
nature;
2. The notion of foundationalist epistemology (and foundationalist philosophy in
general);
3. The notion of reason as a universal, a priori capacity of individuals;
4. The belief in social and moral progress through the rational application of
social scientific theories to the arts and social institutions.

Postmodernism is also characterized by its distrust of and incredulity toward all

“totalizing” discourses or metanarratives—those large-scale or grand theoretical
frameworks that purportedly explain culture, society, human agency, and the like. In
place of these meta-frameworks, postmodern theory endorses heterogeneity, difference,
fragmentation, and indeterminacy (Schwandt, 2001).
Accordingly, Griffin, Barnett, Wortham, and Miller (2001) reject postmodernism
because of the “disablement of judgment” about what is good, fair and right which feeds
back into universalistic claims of one truth. They regard postmodernism as a set of
epistemological positions that have specific political, ethical and practical implications.
In sum, they believe postmodernism has committed itself to a logic of difference
which is theoretically incompatible with a logic of democracy while all the time
implicitly relying upon the latter for the force of its critique (Blackmore, 2001).
 Postmodernism, Constructivism and Education

Constructivism is the fundamental learning theory in postmodern education. That

is, all knowledge is constructed or invented in the mind of people. This knowledge is
used not because it is true, but rather because it is useful. Postmodern education is a
drastic departure from what we are used to in education (Delashmutt & Braund, 2007).
In other words, what teachers teach in schools and students learn are human construction
and are not reality. If knowledge is not true, what counts as “knowledge” to be taught in
the schools? In postmodernism education, the students’ construction of knowledge is the
focus in the classroom. In other words, they shift away from a teacher-centered classroom
to a student-centered atmosphere. In postmodernism education, what is taught in schools
is not a matter of objectivity but rather it becomes a matter of power. Those who have the
power dominate the curriculum.

Postmodernism and Higher Education

In postmodernism, education is viewed as another form of cultural consumption

and commodification. Students choose courses on the basis of desire and to be optimally
positioned within the market (Blackmore, 2001). The learner is no longer the passive
recipient of knowledge or the reasoning individual of the Enlightenment; instead he
views education as a consumer good like other goods in the market (Barnett and Griffin,
1999). So what mode of pedagogy is appropriate for postmodern life where there is no
closure, everything is provisional, and there is no coherent fixed unified student identity?
One assumption is that of the self-managing learner conceptualized as flexible, adaptable,
self-motivated, independent, and capable of making choices in order to maximize
personal benefits -- a discriminating consumer. These humanistic subjects are posited as
knowing what they want to learn and what they are prepared to do to get it, possessing a
natural tendency to self-directedness inhibited only by institutional, teacher-controlled
education.
Barnett and Griffin (1999) argue that just as the consumer can accept or reject
goods available on the market, secure in the rule that the customer is always right, so the
"consuming" student can reject the knowledge and expertise higher education has to offer
at will, without a need to justify such as choice.
This shift from teacher-driven to student-driven pedagogy creates a crisis for
academic authority. What should we do about what Barnett and Griffin (1999) describe
as the gap between mission as stated and the mission as practiced in the corporate
university? Just how responsive should universities be to industry, state, and student
demands? The tension with respect to teaching is who decides -do students as consumers
have the capacity to know what they need or want? What then is the role of the critical
intellectual?
The pedagogical relations of academics to their students have been transformed in
the client-drive, user-pays university that uses learning technologies. In higher education
the pressure for quality assurance and improved outcomes, largely measure through the
capacity to attract and retain students, but also through input measures of research monies
and output performance indicators of publications and commercial benefits. This new
focus on outcomes linked to funding and consumer satisfaction has increased surveillance
over academics. At the same time, the student is a more volatile object or subject of
higher education.

Postmodernism, Economics and Higher Education

Some of the postmodern changes are associated with economics and higher
education. These changes affect the kind of education offered by higher education
institutes, the delivery mode of education, the autonomy of the colleges and universities,
and the competitive position of institutions of higher education. The postmodern society
is a postindustrial society. The workforce is moving out of industrial production to
service jobs. In the United States, people are moving from the centrality of work to the
centrality of consumption. The production of information is now emphasized over the
manufacturing of goods. Corporations mostly are entering in the world of multinational
corporations and mainly rely on telecommunications networks and outsourcing for
production of goods and services. Therefore; these changes have put considerable
pressure on the institutes of higher education to change their curriculum. As the result,
many of the higher education institutes are educating students for service jobs. In the
contrary, service jobs may turn out to be low-paying, noncareer-producing positions that
require vocational and technical education.
It also should be noted that multinational corporations need many employees
fluent in foreign languages, able to understand diverse cultures and willing to move to
foreign sites. Therefore; higher education institutes have offered many programs of
global studies to prepare students for this demand. Unfortunately, at the same time,
multinational corporations use local work force that have a great advantages over
imported American experts in terms of familiarity with the culture, language and lower
wages and salaries and less desire to move up in the corporate ladder.
Perhaps, the most disruptive to the higher education curricula, is that the United
States is now a consumer culture. This means that a consumer culture education prepares
people that supply goods and services to a population that seeks an ever greater supply
and variety of consumer goods. So, higher education not only should prepare students to
be producers and sellers of consumer goods but also to be philosophically and
intellectually and knowledgeable consumers.
It also should be mentioned that unfortunately, higher education faces so much
competition for attention from media that is almost impossible to be viewed as the
legitimate institution which teaches consumerism. Learning what a consumer society
wants to consume does not come from the teachings of professor in a university or
college, but from media of any sort. The schools are one of the front lines in the battles
against the hegemony of capitalism. In education and elsewhere that control of our
current lives is in the hands of those who direct and manage the economic realities of the
world.
In the postmodern Era, institutions rely mostly on their own effort to acquire
funding in the face of weakened state and federal and federal agencies. Higher education
has become more depend on multinational organizations financially. As the result,
research is judged on its ability to aid the competitive position of the multinational
organizations. People in higher education feel increasingly burdened by the addition of
more rules and regulations from the state. Governments are handcuffed by the interest
groups with incompatible interest. The state finds it more difficult to permit institutions
of higher education the autonomy that they need to fulfill their purposes.

Concluding Remarks

The postmodernism is a place of contradictions, uncertainty, ambiguity and

contraction. Postmodernism is seen as a return to a kind of right wing barbarism that
searches to undo all the progress associated with the Enlightenment.

References

Appignanesi, R. & Garret, C. (1995). Introducing postmodernism. New York: Totem

Books.
Barnett, R. (1997) Higher education: A critical business. Buckinghham: Open University
Press.
Barnett R. & Griffin, A. (1999). Higher education, the end of knowledge in higher
education. London: Cassell.
Blackmore, J. (1999). Intellectual labor at risk or under reconstruction? Australian
Association of Research in Education Conference Proceedings.
Bloland, H. (1995). Postmodernism and higher education. Journal of Higher Education,
66(5), 521-522.
Daniel J. (2002). Education in a new postmodern world. Retrieved July 6, 2007, from
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL_ID=5908&URL_DO=DO_TOP
IC&UR...
English, F. W. (2003).The postmodern challenge to the theory and practice of
educational administration. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publisher.
Delashmutt G. & Braund, R. (1996). Postmodernism and you: Education. Retrieved July
8, 2007, from http://www.xenos.org/MINISTRIES/crossroads/dotedduc.htm
Hardy C. & Palmer I. (1999). The organizational behavior teaching society. Pedagogical
practice and postmodernist ideas. Journal of Management Education, 23(4), 377-
395.
Jencks, C. (1987). What is post-modernism? (2nd ed.) London: Academy.
Miller, R. (1998). As if learning mattered: Reforming higher education. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Wortham, S. (1999). Rethinking the university: Leverage and deconstruction.
Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press.

Formatted by Dr. Mary Alice Kritsonis, National Research and Manuscript Preparation
Editor, National FORUM Journals, Houston, Texas. www.nationalforum.com