“A strange modernity”: On the contradictions of the neoliberal university (original) (raw)
In various nation-states (including the UK) universities (or institutions of higher education) are being reformed along similar lines – to ensure that their aims and substance are closer to the ‘needs’ of the economy. This development undermines the historic aims of universities as sites where the widest range of people get access to the widest range of knowledge that society and the world needs. The crisis of the university is part therefore of the wider crisis of voice in neoliberal democracies. Moving beyond that crisis requires a counter-culture that defends and rebuilds the values of the university against the force of neoliberal culture. This article argues that in the today’s global crisis of finance and democratic legitimacy what societies need is precisely the open thinking about alternative futures that universities were once empowered to provide. The defence of the university against neoliberal attack is therefore part of the wider defence of democracy
Working in, against and beyond the neoliberal university
This paper explores some contemporary issues and challenges facing those working in Adult and Higher Education and possible responses: - contexts and critiques of the ongoing neoliberalisation of both university and wider society - possible responses rooted in critical educational theories speaking to the need for educations for eco-social justice
Neoliberalisation and the “Death of the Public University”
Anuac, 2016
The advance of neoliberalism is often linked to what many authors describe as the "death of the public university". Taking up this theme, we explore the idea of the "neoliberal university" as a model and its implications for academia. We argue that this model is having a transformative effect, not only the core values and distinctive purpose of the public university, but also on academic subjectivities of the professional ethos that has traditionally shaped academia.
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2017
Concern regarding capitalism, profiteering, and the corporatization of higher education is not new. A market focus that creates students as consumers and faculty as service providers has dominated global practices in colleges and universities for some time. Most recently, however, this more liberal market-driven focus has actually morphed away from a jurisdictional emphasis (with a potential focus on fairness) to forms of veridiction (neoliberal truth regimes) that legitimate intervention into all aspects of society, the environment, interpretations of the world around us, even into the physical individual bodies of human beings as well as the more-than-human. In higher education, this neoliberal saturation has led to changes that are of seismic proportion. The authors in this special issue describe their own research into, interpretations of, and life experiences as they attempt to survive within this neoliberal condition, and as they also generate counter conducts and ways of thin...
Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume II
Resisting neoliberalism in higher education: prising open the cracks, 2019
Aims of the Palgrave Critical University Studies Series Universities everywhere are experiencing unprecedented changes and most of the changes being inflicted upon universities are being imposed by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion, and with little understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or destroyed. The over-arching intent of this series is to foster, encourage, and publish scholarship relating to academia that is troubled by the direction of these reforms occurring around the world. The series provides a much-needed forum for the intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-conceived and inappropriate university reforms and will do this with particular emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have hitherto been ignored, disparaged or silenced. The series explores these changes across a number of domains including: the deleterious effects on academic work, the impact on student learning, the distortion of academic leadership, and the perversion of institutional politics. Above all, the series encourages critically informed debate, where this is being expunged or closed down in universities.
Universities: Neoliberal products or social institutions
There is little doubt that worldwide the policies, processes and practices of 21 st century universities are being shaped by neo-liberalism. The trend towards the marketization and corporatization of tertiary institutions continues to grow, along with the stresses arising from a 'lean' work environment characterised by competition, bureaucracy and mantras of hyper-efficiency. How do these moves affect students, academics and society in general? Are these the parameters within which universities can flourish?
Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume I
2019
Aims of the Palgrave Critical University Studies Series Universities everywhere are experiencing unprecedented changes and most of the changes being inflicted upon universities are being imposed by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion, and with little understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or destroyed. The over-arching intent of this series is to foster, encourage, and publish scholarship relating to academia that is troubled by the direction of these reforms occurring around the world. The series provides a much-needed forum for the intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-conceived and inappropriate university reforms and will do this with particular emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have hitherto been ignored, disparaged or silenced. The series explores these changes across a number of domains including: the deleterious effects on academic work, the impact on student learning, the distortion of academic leadership, and the perversion of institutional politics. Above all, the series encourages critically informed debate, where this is being expunged or closed down in universities.
This chapter is about the marketisation of the modern university and its transaction with students. It identifies opportunities for responding to the challenges associated with marketisation. While appealing to the idea of knowledge for its own sake as a public good is an important part of preserving the idea of a university, more needs to be done if there is to be an adequate response. Responding to the challenges of marketisation requires active and constructive engagement in means as well as ends while resisting their excesses. While the idea of the university is typically constructed as an end worth advocating for, there is growing separation between this and the reality of the contemporary means of engaging with students – in market terms, via the university–student transaction.