Those working in higher education now face a choice - capitulate to the de facto privatisation of universities, or fight it.
The neoliberal approach to higher education is turning social science academics into brand managers and commercial researchers.
Some issues pass through many organs of the body politic like a barium meal, rendering visible flaws and faults that might otherwise escape detection.
Despite what Spiked may claim, protecting our campuses from fascists, aggressive pro-life campaigners and sexism is entirely proper - 'free speech' debates must recognise the issue of power imbalance.
The neoliberal paradigm is economically dead but ideologically still very active especially in the education sector, which has assumed a far more business-like and 'entrepeneurial' value system.
In the neoliberal epoch the humanities have undergone a radical transformation.
The ethos of 'new managerialism' is stripping public services of moral and ethical values and replacing them with the market language of costs, efficiencies, profits and competition. Anything which is not easily quantified becomes undervalued or abandoned.
A liberal approach in neo-liberal times means learning about work and not just learning to work. Westminster remains stuck in a rut of recycling failed ideas entirely unsuited to its economic model of low wage, low skill work.
The dismissal of Professor Steven Salaita is a wake up call as to the limits imposed on "diverse" debate within our commercialised universities.
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Universities no longer function to ameliorate social status and inequality, but are part of a renewed patrimonial capitalism; the private benefits of higher education to its graduate beneficiaries are today used to justify the removal of public
