Robert Frank Ovetz was born in New York City, New York, on January 8, 1967, the son of Maxine Ratzkin Ovetz and Arye Ovetz. After completing his degree at Taylor High School, Katy, Texas, in 1985, he entered the University of Texas at Austin, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts in August, 1989. He entered The Graduate School in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin in September, 1989, receiving a Master's of Art degree in December 1992. During his stay at the University, he has co-founded two alternative student newspapers, Ecesis and The Other Texan, was elected Vice President of the Council of Graduate Students (1992-93), was a disc jockey at KTSB for two years (1990-92), and has written for a number of local, national and international publications such as The Daily Texan, (sub)TEX, The Hays County Guardian, Nokoa-The Observer, the Polemicist, Earth Island Journal, Anarchy, Progressive Student News, Threshold, Yippie!, Earth Island Journal, Processed World, Common Sense (Scotland), Capital & Class (UK), the California Sociologist, Our Generation (Canada), and the New Liberation News Service. His research will also appear in two forthcoming books on the crisis of the California State University System and the Right-wing in the universities. Robert has also free-lanced for the Cable News Network (CNN), breaking the news of the EZLN uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, January 1-2, 1994, and providing the first ever interview with Sub-Commandante Marcos in English which was later translated and published in Japan and aired on Canadian radio.

- from the Vita of Robert Ovetz's 1996 dissertation

• Entrepreneurialization, Resistance and the Crisis of the Universities: A Case Study of the University of Texas at Austin
  (Spring 1996)

  Robert Ovetz's dissertation argues that universities are changing their financial structure to fit the market through a process of "entrepreneurialization," a process which rewards departments and colleges for becoming profit-oriented and punishes those that don't. He calls for a (positive) student struggle centered around multiculturalism and wages for students.

• Turning Resistance into Rebellion: Student Movements and the Entrepreneurialization of the Universities
  Capital & Class, 58 [96]. Pages 113-152. Spring 1996.

  A good summarization of Ovetz's dissertation, written during the same time period.

• Capitalism in West Campus: Exposing and Resisting George Kozmetsky's IC²
  (1994)

  This piece focuses on George Kozmetsky's baby, IC², to give a case study of the 'new' form of business and the "technopolis" - cities whose all aspects of life, education, recreation, and work are organized around the interests of a newly implanted high tech industry. "Entrepreneurialized" universities play a central role in this.

• "UT's Broke" and Other Complete Bullshit or Why UT Can Afford Tuition/Fee Waivers & More
  Fall 1992 (1 of 2); Pages 5, 18-21, 11; #1. The Other Texan.

  An very in-depth study of UT-Austin's finances, showing where the money is going and where it isn't.

• UT's Broke? Bullshit!
  Spring 1993 (1 of 2); page 10; #3. The Other Texan.

  A good summarization of the in-depth study.

• A Guide to Investigating and Subverting the Entrepreneurialization of UT-Austin and Other State Universities
  September 1994; Volume 1, Issue #2. (sub)TEX.
• Who Says It Can't Be Done? A History of Graduate Student Organizing and Unionization in the U.S. and at UT
  Fall 1992 (1 of 2); pages 8, 14-17; #1. The Other Texan.
• Other stories in The Other Texan.