"Higher education exposes a key paradox of neoliberalism. The project of neoliberalism was said to be that of rolling back the state to liberate individuals, by replacing government bureaucracy with the free market. Rather than have the market serve individuals however, individuals were to serve the market. The marketisation 'reforms' in higher education, which sought to reshape knowledge production, with students investing in human capital and academics producing 'transferable' research, to make higher education of use to the economy, has resulted in extensive government bureaucracy and oppressive managerialist bureaucracy which is inefficient and expensive. Neoliberalism has always had authoritarian aspects and these are now coming to bear on universities. The state does not want critical and informed graduate citizens, but a hollowed out public sphere defined by consumption, willing servitude to the market and deference to state power. Attempts to reshape universities with bureaucracy are now accompanied by a culture war, attacking the production of critical knowledge. The authors in this book explore these issues and the possibilities for resistance and progressive change"--
Authors from the social sciences and humanities discuss the neoliberal re-structuring of higher education and the possibilities for progressive change to the social production of knowledge (teaching and research) in universities.
Acknowledgements
Editors Introduction
Part 1 Authoritarian Neoliberalism Challenged
1. The Feudal University in the Age of Gaming the System
Cruickshank, J.
2. Ethnoracial Populism: An Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization?
Antonio, R.J.
3. On Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Poetic Epistemology
Hall, R.
Engagements
4. The Perils of Radical Subjectivity. A Comment on Antonios Ethnoracial
Populism: An Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization?
Queiroz, R.
5. The American University, the Politics of Professors and the Narrative of
Liberal Bias
Tyson, C. and Oreskes, N.
6. Epistemic Institutions: The Case for Constitutionally-Protected Academic
Independence
Milne, O.
7. Let us Build a City and a Tower: Figures of the University in Gregor
Reischs (1503) Margarita Philosophica
Hudson-Miles, R.
8. Toward a Civic Ethic for Education: Arnold, Eliot (George) and Du Bois
Lybeck, E.
Part 2 Technology: Problems and Potentials
9. The Anthropocene as a Figure of Neoliberal Hegemony
Abbinnett, R.
10. Challenges to Public Universities: Digitalisation, Commodification and
Precarity
Holmwood, J. and Marcuello-Servós, C.
11. Core HR in British Higher Education: For a Technological Single Source
and Version of the Truth?
Di Muccio, E.
Engagements
12. Open Access and Neoliberalism: A Response to Holmwood and
Marcuello-Servós
Eve, M. P.
13. Geographies of the Knowledge Economy on the Semi-Periphery: The
Contradictions of Neoliberalisation and Precarity in Portugal
Standring, A. and Tulumello, S.
14. Changing Behaviour: Hierarchy and Bureaucracy in the Corporatized
University
Garland, C.
Part 3 Neoliberalism as Subject and Object
15. Knowing Neoliberalism
Bacevic, J.
16. The Accident of Accessibility: How the Data of the TEF creates Neoliberal
Subjects
Addendum for The Accident of Accessibility
Morrish, L.
17. Economic Freedom and the Harm of Adaptation: On Gadamer, Authoritarian
Technocracy and the Re-Engineering of English Higher Education
Cruickshank, J.
18. Statist Marketisation and Culture Wars in Authoritarian Populism Times:
From Nudging Student-Customers to Changing Providers Supply
Cruickshank, J.
Engagements
19. Action and Civil Death in the Securitized University: A Comment on Jana
Bacevics Knowing Neoliberalism
Bose, L. S.
20. The Neoliberal University and the Common Good
Sassower, R.
21. The Making of Bullshit Leadership and Toxic Management in the Neoliberal
University
Smyth, J.
22. The Uncomfortable Transformation of Discomfort in Neoliberal Higher
Education Contributors
Craddock, E.
About the Contributor
Index
Justin Cruickshank is a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, with research interests in critical university studies, critical responses to authoritarian neoliberalism, and the philosophy of social science.
Ross Abbinnett is a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, with research interests in classical and contemporary critical theory, and the social theory and philosophy of technology and technocracy.