Coming Soon, To a Bookshop Near You: "The Good University"

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 Good University is my report on these issues, ending with proposals for a new vision for universities, and thoughts on the politics of change. I don’t offer a blueprint, though I do sketch some possible designs. I’m basically offering starting-points for readers to work from, in the circumstances they face themselves. Democratic change will demand collective struggle and inventiveness.

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:

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