Dangers of transactionalism

In the current national environment, one based substantially if not completely on a transactional way of relating to the public, opposition, and former international partnerships, higher education has to hold the ground of individual, collective, and public transformation.

Kathy Johnson Bowles Inside Higher Education article warns that "The corporatization of education attracts people in direct opposition to many in the sector who believe education serves the public good. Education in the service of the public good isn't always for tangible, monetary effect. It is a pathway for self-actualization, knowledge development, independent thought and agency. It provides tools for communicating, problem-solving and betterment. Students are seen as individuals with innate value and potential for success, defined by their capacity, strengths and beliefs. Here, education is society's great leveler - egalitarian and democratic."

Bowles critique includes critical insights that signal transactionality. These include cults of personality, invisible webs of communication, over-reliance on relationships over evidence, and the wielding of power and money. Transactional colleagues and the networks they create "benefit the self and the acquisition of power, prestige and money" yielding the ultimate public good that many have believed education was all about virtual impossible to achieve.