In “The Death of American Universities” Noam Chomsky analizes the neoliberalization, marketization and managerialization of higher education (in general, not only in the US).
As universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is being imposed by force. “The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence… And the same is true in universities… Using cheap and vulnerable labor is a business practice that goes as far back as you can trace private enterprise, and unions emerged in response. In the universities, cheap, vulnerable labor means adjuncts and graduate students. “