Bad Education by Malcolm Harris

Bad Education by Malcolm Harris Of course. Here is a comprehensive overview and analysis of Malcolm Harris’s book, Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them.

Overview

Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them is not your typical critique of higher education. Instead of focusing on campus culture wars or free speech debates, Malcolm Harris, a leftist economic critic, attacks the very foundation of the modern university as a financialized, exploitative corporation. He argues that the system isn’t just in crisis; it is functioning exactly as designed in a late-capitalist economy—to extract wealth from students and generate profit for a privileged few.
The book is a direct challenge to the narrative that college is a guaranteed path to upward mobility, positing instead that it has become a massive engine of inequality and debt.

Key Themes and Arguments

Harris structures his argument around several core, interconnected themes:

The University as a Corporation:

Harris rejects the romantic idea of the university as a pure sanctuary of learning. He meticulously analyzes it as a business. Key points include:

Financialization: Universities are not just non-profits; they are massive financial entities with huge endowments, real estate portfolios, and complex debt structures.
Administrative Bloat: The explosive growth of well-paid administrators, not faculty, is a sign of a management class optimizing for growth and revenue, not education.
The “Endowment Model”: He criticizes how universities invest their endowments in private equity and hedge funds, arguing this aligns them with the interests of the financial elite rather than their students and communities.

The Student as a “Human Capital” Factory:

Bad Education by Malcolm Harris This is one of Harris’s most provocative arguments. He contends that students are not just consumers of education; they are producers.
Students (and their families) take on massive debt to finance an “investment” in their future earning potential (their “human capital”).
The university acts as a factory that refines this raw human capital, with the student’s future labor as the product.
The degree is not a certificate of learning but a branded seal of approval on that human capital, making it more valuable on the job market.
This system forces students to internalize the pressures of capitalism, treating every activity (classes, internships, extracurriculars) as a line on a resume to maximize future earnings.

The Exploitation of the “Edu-Factory”:

Harris extends the labor theory of value to the campus. He argues that the real work of education is done by the students themselves, yet they pay exorbitant tuition for the privilege. Furthermore, he highlights the systemic exploitation of:

Graduate Students: Who perform the bulk of teaching and research for poverty wages.
Adjunct Professors: Who make up the majority of instructors yet have little job security, low pay, and no benefits.
Non-Teaching Staff: Often unionized but under constant pressure for cost-cutting.

The Student Debt Crisis as a Feature, Not a Bug:

Harris argues that the $1.7 trillion (and growing) student debt burden is not an accident. It is a crucial mechanism for:

Bad Education by Malcolm Harris Disciplining Labor: Debt forces graduates to accept any job, suppress wage demands, and avoid risky career paths like activism or the arts.
Wealth Transfer: It functions as a massive transfer of wealth from young, typically less wealthy people, to banks, the government, and the university system itself.
Creating a New Class of Indentured Professionals: Even those with “good jobs” are often shackled by debt for decades, limiting their economic freedom and life choices.

The Collapse of the “College Premium”:

He systematically dismantles the myth that a degree is always a good investment. While a degree from a top-tier school may still pay off, for the vast majority of students at non-elite institutions, the rising cost of tuition is outstripping the wage premium. The return on investment is plummeting, making the debt risk increasingly untenable.

Proposed Solutions (The “How We Can Fix Them” Part)

Harris’s solutions are as radical as his critique. He is deeply skeptical of piecemeal reforms like debt forgiveness plans that don’t address the underlying system. His proposals include:

Free College and the Abolition of Tuition: A straightforward, publicly-funded model for higher education, divorcing it from the market.
Cancel All Student Debt: A full jubilee to unshackle an entire generation and stimulate the economy.
End the Endowment Tax Loophole: Force universities to use their massive wealth for public benefit.
Empower Workers on Campus: Strengthen unions for graduate students, adjuncts, and staff to redistribute power and resources.
Fundamentally Reorganize the Purpose of Education: Shift the goal from producing “human capital” for the market to fostering critical thought, democratic citizenship, and learning for its own sake.

Strengths and Criticisms

Strengths:

Powerful and Original Framework: The “human capital” thesis is a compelling lens through which to view the modern student’s experience of anxiety and competition.
Rigorous Economic Analysis: Harris backs his claims with extensive data on tuition, debt, administrative costs, and endowment growth.
A Unifying Critique: It cuts across traditional left/right divides by attacking corporatism and financialization, appealing to those frustrated with the system’s economic injustice.

Criticisms:

Overly Economistic: Some critics argue he reduces every aspect of university life—learning, community, personal growth—to a cold economic transaction, ignoring its non-monetary value.
Radical Solutions: His proposals are dismissed by many as politically unfeasible or utopian.
Dense and Data-Heavy: The book can be a challenging read for those not accustomed to economic theory and data analysis.

The Intellectual Engine: What Fuels Harris’s Argument?

Harris isn’t just offering an opinion; he’s building a case using specific theoretical frameworks:

Bad Education by Malcolm Harris Political Economy: This is the core of his method. He insists you cannot understand the modern university without understanding its financial structure—its debts, assets, investments, and revenue streams. He treats the university as a key node within the broader capitalist system.
The “Human Capital” Theory (and its perversion): The concept of “human capital” was popularized by neoliberal economists like Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz. They argued that education is an investment in oneself that yields future economic returns. Harris turns this theory on its head. He agrees that students are being treated as human capital, but he argues this is a form of exploitation. Students are financing their own exploitation by taking on debt to build a product (their skilled labor) that the system then profits from, while they are left with the liability.

Marxist Labor Theory: Harris applies a classic Marxist analysis to the campus:

Graduate Students & Adjuncts: The clear proletariat, selling their labor power to the university.
Tenured Professors: A shrinking labor aristocracy, with privileges that insulate them from the worst of the system.
Administrators: The managerial bourgeoisie, whose function is to maximize surplus value extraction from both workers (adjuncts) and “producer-students.”
Students: A unique class of “producer-consumers” who pay to perform the labor of creating their own future commodity.

Deeper Dives into Key Chapters and Concepts

The “Crisis” Myth:

Harris spends significant time debunking the idea that universities are in a financial crisis. He shows that while they constantly plead poverty to justify tuition hikes and adjunctification, their collective wealth (in the form of endowments, property, and bond-raising capacity) has exploded. The real crisis, he argues, is one of legitimacy and purpose.

The Plight of the “Producer-Student”:

This is where the book feels most personal for anyone who went to college in the 21st century. Harris describes a world where students are forced to become entrepreneurs of themselves:

Every choice is a strategic investment.
Social life becomes “networking.”
Passion projects are valued only as “extracurriculars” for a resume.
Mental health crises are the logical result of this immense, internalized pressure to optimize oneself as a financial asset.

The University as a Landlord and Police Force:

Harris extends his critique beyond the classroom. He details how universities act as major urban landlords, driving gentrification and influencing local politics. Furthermore, he analyzes the growth of campus police forces, arguing they exist not just for safety, but to protect the university’s corporate property and manage the “human capital” within it—disciplining student and worker dissent.

How “Bad Education” Fits into the Broader Critique

It’s useful to see Harris’s work in conversation with other prominent critiques:

Vs. Conservative Critiques: While conservatives often blame “woke” ideology and bloated humanities departments, Harris argues these are surface-level symptoms. He sees the focus on culture wars as a distraction from the underlying class war happening on campus.
Alongside Fredrik deBoer (The Cult of Smart): deBoer argues that meritocracy is a myth that legitimizes inequality.

Lingering Questions and Criticisms (Expanded)

Bad Education by Malcolm Harris What About Learning for Its Own Sake? The most common critique is that Harris’s economic determinism leaves no room for the transformative, non-monetary value of education.Harris would likely respond that his job is to analyze the system, not the individual experiences within it, and that the system is increasingly making those pure pursuits impossible for all but the wealthy.
Is There Any Room for Reform?
What should a student, professor, or administrator do tomorrow? The book is stronger on diagnosis than on a practical political pathway to its proposed cure.
The Elite Exception: His critique is most potent when applied to the vast majority of non-elite public and private universities. However, the logic stumbles slightly at the very top (e.g., Harvard, Stanford).