By Daniel Rigney
Once upon a time, the word campus referred to the buildings and grounds of academic institutions. Not every school had a campus. Harvard, being Harvard, had a “Yard” instead. UVa had a"Lawn." Stanford’s academic real estate was called “the Farm” because it was once a real farm before it became a corporate greenhouse for seeding and growing startups. But nearly every other college or university, and not a few primary and secondary schools as well, rested on what we called campuses.
Lately, though, nearly every sort of institution in the world seems to be morphing into a ‘campus.’
Private corporations like Google and Microsoft have their sleek ‘campuses’ now. Public and non-profit enterprises have campuses. Religious institutions no longer have churchyards or sacred grounds. They have campuses. Retirement communities have campuses. Kennels have canine campuses.
Even prison facilities are now called campuses, aptly enough, since our implicit public policy of mass incarceration has made prisons a major component of the American educational system, though we rarely acknowledge them as such.
Near where I live, ExxonMobil is erecting what it proudly calls a ‘campus’ in a planned corporate suburb thirty miles north of the city. (Maybe their curriculum will include courses on the pernicious effects of carbon dioxide emissions on climate.)
Next thing you know, sewage treatment plants will be campuses. But wait. They already are (e.g., at this state-of-the-art facility near Roswell, New Mexico).
I’m not complaining about the campusing of everything, exactly. I’m just noticing it, and wondering what it says about the kind of world we’re becoming. Does it suggest, perhaps, a world in which a wide spectrum of institutions are striving to become intensive learning organizations, engaged in the continuous development of their personnel in a frantic effort to keep up with the quickening pace of new discoveries, inventions and best practices?
That would be a good thing, I suppose. How else are we going to survive on this accelerating global treadmill except by turning all of our institutions into intensive teaching and research complexes?
Stay in school kids. For the rest of your lives. Then it’s on to the cemetery campus for a long vacation.
As a sociologist, I’m legally authorized to give this curious cultural trend the clunky suffix, “ization,” meaning “the process of becoming.” ‘Urbanization’ is the process of becoming city-fied. ‘Secularization’ is the process of becoming less traditionally religious. ‘Civilization’ is the process of becoming more civil, a process clearly still in its early stages in the United States.
Accordingly, ‘campusization,’ is the process of becoming (or at least seeming to become) ever more like an academic institution. Calling one’s institution a ‘campus’ has a certain caché. It confers on the institution a prestigious and classy jenny say qua. But more importantly, it says something revealing about the direction toward which information societies are evolving.
It may say, among other things, that the so-called ‘real world’ of business and industry is cultivating a grudging respect for intellect, formerly disdained as a mental faculty best confined to the ivied towers.
So say goodbye to your ‘headquarters’ and your ‘administrative centers.’ Say goodbye to ‘facilities' and ‘physical sites.’ It seems our white-collar factories are fast becoming campusized.
But the campusization of the world poses a paradox. At a time in history when businesses and other institutions are scrambling to look more like academies, academic institutions are reengineering themselves, rather uncritically in my view, to become ever more like businesses, complete with brands and marketing plans.
It’s as though business and the academy are converging upon one another and becoming indistinguishable, as aca-businesses.
Nowadays, some academic businesses, such as the University of Phoenix, are made mostly of electrons rather than bricks, mortar and grass. Maybe, in the deep future, every campus will be a virtual campus, and every teacher and student a disembodied “account.” (Stop me before I say “Facebookization.”)
I have more to say on the subject of campusization, but right now I have to go fill up the car at the fuel campus, and then stop by the grocery campus to pick up a few things on my way home to the family campus to make supper and work on the kids’ homework.
Gotta run. Hope to see you next semester.
Danagram
;] for The Progress Report, a magazine that doesn't exist yet
Once upon a time, the word campus referred to the buildings and grounds of academic institutions. Not every school had a campus. Harvard, being Harvard, had a “Yard” instead. UVa had a"Lawn." Stanford’s academic real estate was called “the Farm” because it was once a real farm before it became a corporate greenhouse for seeding and growing startups. But nearly every other college or university, and not a few primary and secondary schools as well, rested on what we called campuses.
Lately, though, nearly every sort of institution in the world seems to be morphing into a ‘campus.’
Private corporations like Google and Microsoft have their sleek ‘campuses’ now. Public and non-profit enterprises have campuses. Religious institutions no longer have churchyards or sacred grounds. They have campuses. Retirement communities have campuses. Kennels have canine campuses.
Even prison facilities are now called campuses, aptly enough, since our implicit public policy of mass incarceration has made prisons a major component of the American educational system, though we rarely acknowledge them as such.
Near where I live, ExxonMobil is erecting what it proudly calls a ‘campus’ in a planned corporate suburb thirty miles north of the city. (Maybe their curriculum will include courses on the pernicious effects of carbon dioxide emissions on climate.)
Next thing you know, sewage treatment plants will be campuses. But wait. They already are (e.g., at this state-of-the-art facility near Roswell, New Mexico).
I’m not complaining about the campusing of everything, exactly. I’m just noticing it, and wondering what it says about the kind of world we’re becoming. Does it suggest, perhaps, a world in which a wide spectrum of institutions are striving to become intensive learning organizations, engaged in the continuous development of their personnel in a frantic effort to keep up with the quickening pace of new discoveries, inventions and best practices?
That would be a good thing, I suppose. How else are we going to survive on this accelerating global treadmill except by turning all of our institutions into intensive teaching and research complexes?
Stay in school kids. For the rest of your lives. Then it’s on to the cemetery campus for a long vacation.
As a sociologist, I’m legally authorized to give this curious cultural trend the clunky suffix, “ization,” meaning “the process of becoming.” ‘Urbanization’ is the process of becoming city-fied. ‘Secularization’ is the process of becoming less traditionally religious. ‘Civilization’ is the process of becoming more civil, a process clearly still in its early stages in the United States.
Accordingly, ‘campusization,’ is the process of becoming (or at least seeming to become) ever more like an academic institution. Calling one’s institution a ‘campus’ has a certain caché. It confers on the institution a prestigious and classy jenny say qua. But more importantly, it says something revealing about the direction toward which information societies are evolving.
It may say, among other things, that the so-called ‘real world’ of business and industry is cultivating a grudging respect for intellect, formerly disdained as a mental faculty best confined to the ivied towers.
So say goodbye to your ‘headquarters’ and your ‘administrative centers.’ Say goodbye to ‘facilities' and ‘physical sites.’ It seems our white-collar factories are fast becoming campusized.
But the campusization of the world poses a paradox. At a time in history when businesses and other institutions are scrambling to look more like academies, academic institutions are reengineering themselves, rather uncritically in my view, to become ever more like businesses, complete with brands and marketing plans.
It’s as though business and the academy are converging upon one another and becoming indistinguishable, as aca-businesses.
Nowadays, some academic businesses, such as the University of Phoenix, are made mostly of electrons rather than bricks, mortar and grass. Maybe, in the deep future, every campus will be a virtual campus, and every teacher and student a disembodied “account.” (Stop me before I say “Facebookization.”)
I have more to say on the subject of campusization, but right now I have to go fill up the car at the fuel campus, and then stop by the grocery campus to pick up a few things on my way home to the family campus to make supper and work on the kids’ homework.
Gotta run. Hope to see you next semester.
Danagram
;] for The Progress Report, a magazine that doesn't exist yet
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