Melissa Hubbard (Educational Leadership and Policy)

Zoom Link: https://buffalo.zoom.us/j/98338792973?pwd=cE54RGlMTFZpOTVteVR3bGhLOTR2dz09

For the past several decades, the role of higher education as a public and/or private good in United States (US) society has been a matter of significant discussion and debate in research and policy communities (Kezar, 2004; Kezar et al., 2005; McMahon, 2009; Pasque, 2010). This discussion often focuses on the question of funding higher education: if the institution is primarily a private good for those who obtain degrees, then it should be funded by those individuals; if it is primarily a public good that benefits all of US society, then it should be funded publicly through taxation (Kezar, 2004; Kezar et al., 2005; McMahon, 2009). There has been a significant shift over the past fifty years, from thinking of higher education in the US as primarily a public good, toward thinking of it as primarily a private good (Gildersleeve, et al., 2010; Giroux, 2014; Kezar, 2004; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). This changing relationship between higher education and society has led to practical changes within the industry, the consequences of which include decreased funding for instruction, increased commercialization of academic research, and the corporatization of higher education management with an associated decline in faculty governance (Bok, 2004; Kezar, 2004; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). How has the privatization and marketization of higher education impacted academic libraries, which have traditionally been spaces that disseminate scholarly knowledge to the general public? Slaughter and Rhoades (2004) argued that one of the consequences of what they call  academic capitalism  has been the systemic defunding of academic libraries.