The storm breaking upon the university
The marketization and instrumentalization of British higher education
In The Idea of the University: A Re-examination (1992) Jaroslav Pelikan used a phrase from Newman's The Idea of a University (discourse 6) to describe the chorus of political attacks on American universities as a 'storm breaking upon the university'. Today it may not be an exaggeration to that there is a storm breaking upon British universities. Beginning especially with the 2003 White Paper 'The Future of Higher Education', the government has been progressively imposing a set of demands on the sector that are at odds with the very idea of a university as we know it. In a nutshell: students must be reconceived as customers paying for a service; teaching as the manufacture and delivery of course products to these customers; research as intellectual work carried out for payment to meet the needs of external funders; and universities themselves as private corporations that must compete to sell their products on a global market in order to survive. If they have a contribution to make to the public good beyond that of helping the government to achieve policy objectives, it is to be understood entirely in terms of a contribution to the UK economy: their role is to train students for future employment and to produce research that is usable by businesses or the government. Today the agenda set by these demands dominates the media coverage of the university sector. This blog aims to document the present drive to marketize and instrumentalize the British university system, to investigate its consequences, and to act as a forum for a discussion of how universities can respond to it so as to preserve their essential humanistic values of knowledge and education. Discuss this article in the forums. (0 posts)
Editors
Andrew Chitty
(Philosophy)
Gordon Finlayson
(Philosophy)
John David Rhodes
(English)
Kees van der Pijl
(International Relations)
University of Sussex
Contact:
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Events
• 'University Science: A Public Good?', Demos, London, 15 May 2008
• 'Challenging the Market in Education', UCU, London, 18 May 2008
Campaigns
• Education not for Sale
• Sussex not for Sale
• Cambridge Education not for Sale
Blogs
• Managerialism in academia (Alexandre Borovik)
• The volumizer (Glenn Rikowski)
Recent press
• Staff give sector managers low marks, Times Higher Education, 27 March 2008
• Abolish tuition fees, says youth parliament, Education Guardian, 26 March 2008
• EPSRC cuts to blue-skies funding raise concern, Times Higher Education, 20 March 2008
• 'I didn't become a scientist to help companies profit', Independent Education, 13 March 2008
• 'You can't apply market tests to universities', Independent Education, 13 March 2008
• Lesson one: no Orwellian language, BBC News, 16 February 2008
• Researcher fears moral bankruptcy, Times Higher Education, 31 January 2008
• New order of service as 'customers' are ditched, Times Higher Education, 24 January 2008
• Nurture sceptics, not industry fodder, critic says, Times Higher Education, 24 January 2008
Critiques (Britain)
• Reclaiming academia from post-academia, Philip Moriarty, January 2008 [pdf] [interview]
• The English Question or Academic Freedoms, Thomas Docherty, 2008 [interview]
• Entrepreneurialism and critical pedagogy: reinventing the higher education curriculum, Lambert, Parker and Neary, 2007
• Universities in a Neoliberal World, Alex Callinicos, 2006 [review]
• New Labour's neoliberal Gleichschaltung: the case of higher education, Robinson and Tormey, 2003 [pdf]
• Marketizing higher education: neoliberal strategies and counter-strategies, Les Levidow, 2002 [pdf]
• Education in an Age of Nihilism, Nigel Blake et al., 2000
Critiques (international)
• University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education, Jennifer Washburn, 2005 [interview]
• Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State and Higher Education, Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004 [review]
• The University in Ruins, Bill Readings, 1996
Official statements
• The future is bright, Philip Esler, 27 March 2008
• Wellcome Trust speech, John Denham, 29 February 2008
Government documents
• Innovation Nation, White Paper, 13 March 2008 [pdf]
• A New 'University Challenge', consultation document, 3 March 2008 [pdf]
• The Sainsbury Review: The Race to the Top, October 2007 [pdf]
• The Warry Report: Increasing the Economic Impact of Research Councils, 2006 [pdf]
• Science and Innovation Investment Framework, 2004
• The Future of Higher Education, White Paper, 2003 [pdf]
• The Haldane Report, 1918 (see section on Research and Information)
Government websites
DIUS
HEFCE
Research Councils UK
Research Council delivery plans [pdf]
AHRC
BBSRC
EPSRC
ESRC
MRC
NERC
STFC |
