Editorial: interdisciplinarity and the 'new' university (original) (raw)
Related papers
“A strange modernity”: On the contradictions of the neoliberal university
2017
While many commentators see neoliberalism as a monolithic force changing universities into businesses, in reality its shared veneer of rhetorical vocabulary obscures profound and irresolvable practical contradictions – contradictions that make university life impossible, even in “business” terms.
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
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.
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.
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