Knowledge matters, for a democratic and sustainable world.
Universities are at the centre of the global economy of knowledge. And
universities are in trouble.
That’s not the official view. To managers and media, the
higher education sector is booming. There are more than 200 million students
worldwide, many of them ‘first in family’. Unprecedented amounts of money are
flowing, and university presidents, rectors and vice-chancellors earn enormous
salaries.
Yet universities are now unhappy places to work – for an
increasingly precarious workforce, under heavy-handed managerial control.
Corporate capital has moved in on the sector, siphoning off profits from
research, tuition and loans. There are enormous worldwide inequalities in
university research, and growing economic inequalities within universities.
Many market-oriented governments have practically abandoned the idea of public
universities, redefining higher education as an industry of vocational colleges
operating as competing firms.
How has this come about? What can be done about it? What alternatives
have there been? How can we democratise universities?
Like many other university staff and students, I have been
wrestling with these questions for a long time. To answer them we need to think
carefully about the work that universities do, the character of their
workforce, the social effects that universities produce, and the worldwide
picture of knowledge. We need to understand what has happened in the recent
market turn and managerial takeover. And we need to learn from the many
attempts, over the last two centuries, to invent new and more democratic models
for universities. Only then can we offer a transformative agenda for
universities.
The book will be published in
the next couple of months: internationally by Zed Books https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/the-good-university/forthcoming/
and in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand by Monash University Publishing http://www.publishing.monash.edu/forthcoming.html.
Here is the chapter list:
Here is the chapter list:
Introduction
1. Making the knowledge: research
2. Learning and teaching
3. The collective intellectual:
university workers
4. The global economy of knowledge
5. Privilege machines
6. The university business
7. Universities of hope
8. The good university
