Chapter 6: SKETCH OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY -- EDUCATION
3.1. Universities – strongholds of the intellectual class system
Universities, which stand at the top of the higher education system in each country, are the strongholds of the intellectual class system that rise above the foundation of the knowledge capital system. Under capitalism, the university has become a stronghold of the intellectual class system because today a college degree is required for virtually all of the high-paying jobs that capitalist society offers.
Today, the executives of capital companies are selected from among the senior workers who are candidates for management executive positions, rather than the hereditary succession of the founding family. Most of the certification qualifications for these senior workers are also college graduates or higher graduate school completions.
In addition, in countries where there is a hierarchy between universities, obtaining a diploma from a higher-ranking university guarantees the path to becoming a top-class capital company executive. As a result, both parents and children are frantically competing to become a "first-class university."
At present, the most developed system of memory-reactive education toward the goal of a university is in Asian countries, where the university system was imported from Western Europe, rather than in Western Europe, where the university system originated.
There, the test system for testing memory and reactivity dominates, with the university entrance exam at the top. Passing the university entrance examination is the first big goal in the first half of life. If that is not achieved, unless you are very lucky, you must be prepared to end up as a general worker for the rest of your life. And children of the general working class, whose families cannot have enough investment in education, have no choice but to make such a decision at an early stage in their lives.
3.2. Becoming an academic research center
If you hear about the abolishment of the university system, you may be wary of the return of the Khmer Rouge, which plots to kill intellectuals. Absolutely not. The abolishment of universities does not mean sending university professors to internment camps, but simply transforming universities into "academic research centers" (hereafter referred to simply as "research centers") as collections of research institutes.
Although the current university has the character of a research institution, its basic character is that of an educational institution. Because of this dual nature, some people lament the excessive burden on university teachers and the lack of research time. Converting universities into research centers will change this situation and provide an environment in which researchers can concentrate on their original research activities. In this case, far from being sent to a concentration camp, would it not be sent to paradise?
At the same time, it will also change the current situation in which universities are being subordinated to capital in the name of "industry-academia collaboration," and will enable more equal and mutual "academic-industry association." For example, there are hopes for collaboration between research centers and production sites in new academic fields such as environmental engineering, which supports the development of cutting-edge environmental technology, communist management studies, which examines management methods for new communist production organizations, and labor and human sciences, which reflect on the nature of work after the abolition of the wage labor system.
Universities, including private universities, will be turned into research centers all at once, and the former national and public universities will maintain their public character as socially owned corporation-type research centers.
Along with this, each research center will be responsible for training researchers, which was previously handled by universities and graduate schools. In other words, each research center recruits and employs trainees according to its own methods and conditions, and trains researchers through its own training process. This trainee selection is different from conventional admissions such as university entrance exams, and is a kind of "employment" for research applicants, and is a selection system purely specialized for researcher training.
Furthermore, by making universities (undergraduate) or graduate programs that have been responsible for training advanced professionals such as medicine, law, and education independent from research centers as “advanced professional academies” such as medical academies, law academies, and education academies, respectively, more practical professional training can be expected.
