'Prisons we choose to live in' : A Life in Squares

'Universities are traditionally non-market institutions. They have grown up with governance structures more suited to ensuring the equitable distribution of public money across their range of objects, such as the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. This is instantiated in charitable status, which requires that the institution only pursue public goods.

This is the major fault line in the coming years. The mindset of policy champions, politicians and executives revolves around entrepreneurship, social enterprise, knowledge transfer and exports, where revenue generation is primary (particularly if run through joint ventures where equity investors must be compensated). We are constantly reminded of the role of universities in local economics, industrial policy and macroeconomic growth: 600,000+ jobs, more than £5.3 billion in exports and an overall output in the region of £60 billion.

But pushing towards business is not just one component of privatisation: it leads away from charitable status.

This is the acid test for what is meant by ‘institutional autonomy’. We are used to it indicating freedom from direct political interference; it is increasingly used by senior management to mean the freedom to act like a profit-led company.'

--McGettigan.

'Do any of us ever complain about the overproduction of research and ideas in academia, particularly in journals, time that could be better spend educating, writing thoughtful and groundbreaking books developed through a decade of scholarship, making creative use of social media, forming alliances between society’s growing but marginalised intellectual class?'

--from bulliedacademics.blogspot 

~

Working in a university is a highly privileged job-especially if you're at a mediocre place in some backwater because then the chances of avoiding all of the needless pressure to do any work are actually quite good. 

But what is happening in western universities sounds quite horrific and since 'the East' is always trying to ape 'the West' it won't be too long before this madness comes our way. In fact, it's already started, but given our lack of organization, discipline, and given our inability to take a methodical approach to anything the structure of power remains largely old-world, feudal, and ad hoc. For the moment. Nothing like the institutionalized control and political and economic intrusion one sees in an advanced capitalist society (for the strange twining of greater bureaucratization and market expansion Graeber's new book is indispensable).

I suppose what is most startling is the pettiness-perhaps to be expected given that the stakes are so small. Really, get a life! The administration's shenanigans are a great source of amusement, though. 

~

It's probably fair to say that "it" hasn't gone yet but if one were to guess by the trends then the following things are on their way out and nearly dead: books, universities, society, religion and conversation.