There's a bitter irony at the heart of modern higher education, which too few universities, and even fewer of their leaders, seem willing to confront. This is that universities have, for decades, nurtured within their own institutions the ideology that now aims to destroy them. That ideology is neoliberalism.
Let me explain.
Firstly, neoliberalism's core is anti-thought. At its heart, neoliberalism is not just an economic project. It is a project to restrict the whole basis of debate, of imagination, of critique. This should be obvious, and yet apparently it has not been. Neoliberalism insists that there is:
- no alternative to markets,
- no alternative to private property,
- no alternative to profit maximisation as the ultimate measure of success.
Anything that dares to challenge these assumptions is dismissed as naive, dangerous, and, ironically as ideological. That argument has been used against me for a long time.
Secondly, let's not pretend otherwise, our universities eagerly imported this ideology. Beginning in the 1980s, universities across the UK, and across much of the world, embraced market models. Their leadership welcome the idea for one simple reason: they saw an opportunity for personal gain from doing so. As a result, they welcomed competition for funding, league tables that reduced education to a race for rankings, and a commercial mindset that turned students into customers. They applied “return on investment” logic to courses, to research, even to the arts and humanities. They sold off their own assets, outsourced their services, squeezed their staff, and congratulated themselves on running “efficient” businesses, and were very happy to be treated as such as they used this status to justify their excessive salaries and bloated PR functions that were engaged to maintain this myth.
Third, universities even changed what counted as knowledge. Neoliberalism infiltrated academic disciplines. Economics departments became dominated by neoclassical models that ignore power, inequality, and the environment. Business schools churned out managers trained to cut costs and maximise shareholder value, but rarely to serve society. Even humanities departments too often tied themselves to corporate partnerships and employability agendas. Intellectual autonomy was surrendered for the promise of private sponsorship, and the ability to attract that private money was seen as the true indication of academic success.
Fourth, now all of this has backfired, spectacularly. Neoliberalism never did believe in competition, or access, or diversity. All it believed in was the accumulation of power and wealth for a few. And now we see the consequences of that. Across the UK universities are cutting courses and making job cuts and despite this they are unable to contain the financial crises in our universities. The arts, languages, and critical social sciences are especially at risk. Meanwhile in the US, where the US goes the UK usually follows, the far right is explicitly attacking universities, cutting funding, banning diversity programmes, dictating what can and cannot be taught. And they can do that because once you persuaded a whole generation that education is just a market good to be valued solely by short-term economic returns then anything that encourages people to think differently, whether that be to question power, to explore history, culture, ethics, or alternatives to the market, is just a threat.
Fifth, then, universities sowed the seeds of their own crisis, and the attack upon them. By embedding neoliberal metrics, for example, by treating students as consumers, staff as costs, and education as a business, universities made it easy for political opportunists to finish the job. If a course is judged by immediate graduate earnings alone, why fund philosophy, or sociology, or even fundamental science? If knowledge has no worth beyond the pay packets it produces, why not let politicians decide which degrees are “low value” and shut them down? The point we have arrived at is not an accident: it was created by design.
Sixth, and importantly, the same ideology that is dismantling universities is also dismantling the NHS, local councils, the BBC, even the right to protest. Neoliberalism despises:
- anything collective,
- anything that is rooted in shared endeavour,
- anything that might empower people to question the rules of the game.
It demands compliance, not curiosity. The requirement is loyalty to markets, not loyalty to truth.
It is undoubtedly true that our universities are in crisis. But that crisis is not just financial. It is existential. They have helped create the conditions for their own decline by swallowing the neoliberal promise of efficiency, competition and ‘value for money', never apparently having the imagination to foresee that this would inevitably lead to a future where knowledge is only worth what it can be sold for, and where anything that cannot be sold is simply scrapped.
The tragedy is that our universities should have been the places that warned us all of this. They should have provided the intellectual resistance, the historical perspective, and the moral arguments against reducing every human endeavour to a transaction. They did not do that. Instead the economics departments of every major university promoted the culture of neoliberalism as if it was based on a human truth when very obviously it is destructive of everything of true value. And now, unless they rediscover the courage to champion thinking for its own sake, to defend knowledge that serves society rather than markets, they may find they have little left worth defending at all.
The question is, will our universities and the academics within them fight back against the neoliberalism that has paved the way for the fascist thinking that is now seeking to destroy their freedoms, or will they succumb? The biggest ever challenge in intellectual history mighty be under way. Who will win?
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“the culture of neoliberalism” – does it have one?
It uses circular logic & promotes “everyman for himself & the devil take the hindmost”.
Thus it is anti-human & its supporters should be regarded as such.
Indeed, people such as Thatcher and Ray-gun were not fully human – since they lacked that core human quality – empathy.
& one can extend their ideology to the current LINO political crop e.g. hungry children (cold grannies?) – yup were’re Ok with that (cos mine arn’t).
Bolt in the educative imbecility contained within PPE degrees &…. here we are.
Very fine blog btw. Doubtless Peter Abelard is rotating at speed in his grave.
OBlair messed up.
“It demands compliance, not curiosity. The requirement is loyalty to markets, not loyalty to truth”
Orwell
Literary and self censorship is no different to totalitarianism/ fascism. If you have a good education you have instilled into you that there are certain things ” it would not do to say ”
You say truth is lost in Universities? Explain postmodern takeover please
My goodness, this was a long one! Good read. My wife, who is a teacher, used to go into a number of schools to advise teachers on behaviour in West Dorset. She saw the negative results of the market where school image is more important than learning, and where children that struggled were to be got rid of after seeking the advice of my wife to demonstrate a willingness to try. We have moved to Scotland where the academy school isn’t an issue, although still named, “Academy “, universities still tout for business and we are starting to look for universities for our eldest to study, maybe chemistry, as it’s her favourite subject. The interface between university and business will be interesting as Olive is an environmentalist who will wish to practice in that area. With changes in the environment is could be a fascinating field to work in. Will there be internships in this area, or will business be further down the route of planet destruction and big profits rather than saving ourselves?
Good questions
And remember, no university is likely to provide the answer
But Olive can learn how to do so
Given what I’ve written several times in comments on this blog about the demise of political economy – citing my own experience as both a mature student and then an academic from the early 1990s – you won’t be surprised to learn that I agree with every word. Additionally, I share the sense of anger that underpins this blog.
I should add, however, there were occasions – indeed, quite a lot – where people (and academics in particular) did try to hold out. I well remember at my first university the person who taught political economy, and who was also the head of department (Politics and Economics) trying valiantly to hold back demands from senior management to drop or change all courses that had any content that could be regarded as “left wing” (e.g. a colleague taught a second year course on political thinkers the title of which included the word ‘Marx’ which was unacceptable). And many of us tried as hard as we could to slow the move to a customer based model (I never once referred to my students as “customers”), and to resist the dumbing down of teaching.
But there was only so much you could – particularly once universities got wise to the fact that the quickest way to become commercial was get all those academics who thought their job was primarily about educating out of management, and replace them either with failed academics (people who were shite at teaching, basically) who were only too willing to tow the line, or bring in “proper” managers from outside HE.
On top of that you had successive governments – starting inevitably with Blair, with the Dearing Review and then the Browne Review (2010) – who ALWAYS want to follow the US system, never once pausing to consider that universities and HE system in general is actually much better in many European countries (but they don’t speak English, do they).
And so we are where we are. And universities deserve it too, as you say. But sadly, students still get a raw deal, and one that’s become increasingly raw ever since that paragon of virtue, Blair, stepped into Number 10.
So much to agree with
Thank you, Ivan.
It won’t surprise you that the Foreign Office and Department for Business promote British universities abroad for income from overseas students AND the expertise of managing higher education. Some institutions are opening campuses abroad as it’s cheaper and gets round immigration controls.
Many are doing that. We are not alone. The market for overseas universities in China is huge.
I studied sociology with associated course units in social psychology and social anthropology. They are all by their essence antithetical to closed neo-liberal thinking. Each encourages the student to think critically about the society in which they live. Social anthropology requires the student to move outside of the comfort zone of modern industrially advanced socially mobile western/northern society to see groups of humans living collectively in many different ways: polygamy, differing ages of consent, matriarchal societies, collective agrarianism, etc. All sorts of different, but all human, ways of living.
Sociolinguistics -especially the work of fellow LSE student, the late Basil Bernstein-teaches you how different social classes use different language codes: the working class typically use the restricted code (short term horizons) whereas the middle classes use an elaborated code( which includes delayed gratification). Having only access to the restricted code limits an individual’s chances of progressive social mobilisation.
There is a reason why most social scientists (except most economists!) lean leftward: their tools of the trade question the social status quo to see how it works (some politically also want to change it: to paraphrase Karl Marx “the purpose is not the study the world, it is to change it!”).
Hence Margaret Thatcher ‘s famous denial there was any such thing as “society”, only individuals.
She would have made a very poor sociologist!
Thanks
I agree with all you say with one proviso, Bernstein can be said to have not understood the richness of much working class language since he was outside of it and possibly biased towards the richness and elaborateness of middle class language!
Neo liberalism does have a culture Mike. The sort of culture that anthrax, bubonic plague and Ebola have.
Let’s hope there is an epiphany in the university sector – Thomas Hobbes felt that Universities could help legitimise bad ideas many moons ago, likening them to a trojan horse.
The universities have at their own expense done as they are told with a little help initially and expanded just like a lot of sectors have – for example the housing association sector did the same – only for government to then undermine it so that the private sector could make huge gains on destressed assets or be a dominant part of the proceedings.
Capitalism is a play thing of the rich in the West – it is no more serious than that.
I read that the Koch brothers offered to fund the economics Dept. of a University in Florida. The offer was taken up but it seems the brothers sent in inspectors to make sure the ‘right stuff’ was being taught.
I did a course on Soviet Government and politics as part of my OU degree back in the 1970s. I see a convergence.
One feature of soviet society was that people had to pretend to be and be seen to be, believers in the system.
When I was counselling, clients both in private and public employment, were increasingly pressured to do the same. To a degree it was the same in teaching but got worse after I left 20 years ago.
My hope is that one day there will be a Ceausescu moment. That was when the Romanian dictator was giving one of his speeches and some of the crowd started booing. He looked amazed then realised that the spell was broken. He had lost it.
Is it likely? Few people really accept the corporate BS they are told to support. We have all heard, after half an hour on the phone,’Your call is important to us”. That’s among the least annoying. ‘Efficiency savings’ is among my pet hates.
I understand why people go along with it. They have a lot to lose.
But I feel there may be a tipping point at which people are no longer afraid to speak out. Maybe like eastern Europe after Gorbachev said he would not intervene militarily?
We can hope. I wonder if others feel the same.
Each year at the Labour party conference, one or two people who have miraculously made it past the screening process, make a protest, sometimes its a very old Holocaust survivor, protesting about genocide of Palestinians, or a young person protesting about benefit cuts or a war veteran protesting about our latest foreign adventure.
Security guards bundle them out of the building, rip up their banners and everyone else remains silent even though they KNOW what just happened was wrong.
I dream of the day when as that is happening, 50 or 100 other people stand up and turn their backs on the platform speaker while the first person is being removed, perhaps hissing quietly. Then another 100, then the platform party leave the hall in embarrassment “for security reasons”.
But they don’t of course.
Conformism is the curse of our country and politics
Liked you comment on the SoVU – & (sigh) “Late Soviet Britain” by Abbey Innes does a good job comparing neolibtard Uk with the SovU (both utopian projects that could only fail).
you convince me, Mike. I will get a copy.
Just on the financial returns from university education – which is of course only one narrow lens, and the personal and social benefits for most in terms of experience and friends and outlook and horizons and so on are difficult to quantify but absolutely there – the IFS published some work in early 2020, just before the pandemic lockdown. https://ifs.org.uk/publications/impact-undergraduate-degrees-lifetime-earnings
To quote a few of the findings (with some minor edits):
* The average lifetime earnings gain from undergraduate degrees is substantial for both men and women
* The subject studied at university is hugely important. Net (ie after tax) discounted lifetime returns for women are close to zero on average for creative arts and languages graduates, but more than £250k for law, economics or medicine. Men studying creative arts have negative financial returns, while men studying medicine or economics have average returns of more than £500k
* However, studying a subject with high average returns is no guarantee of high returns. While average returns to law and economics are high, many students will see much lower benefits from studying those subjects, and a few will see much higher returns. In contrast, subjects such as education and nursing do not have very high returns on average, but women who study these subjects almost universally achieve positive returns.
* Overall, they expect 85% of women and around 75% of men to achieve positive net lifetime returns.
* Financing undergraduate degrees is expensive for the taxpayer, but on average increased tax revenues more than make up for it. Overall, they estimate that the expected gain to the exchequer of an individual enrolling in an undergraduate course is around £110k per student for men and £30k per student for women.
* But revenue gains are driven mainly by the highest-earning graduates. They expect the exchequer to gain more than £500k on average from the 10% of graduates with the highest exchequer returns, but to make a loss on the degrees of around 40% of men and half of women.
The degrees with the most impact on earnings are medicine, economics, maths, engineering, pharmacology, the harder sciences (physics, chemistry, biology), law, architecture. You can see the career path into higher paying jobs on average.
And subjects like creative arts, agriculture, social care and sociology, education, nursing and English at the bottom. Which is an awful indictment of the economic value we collectively (don’t) allocate to nursing, social care, social work more generally, and education. And it is not very surprising that these essential but relatively poorly paid pro-social caring jobs are often done by women.
In summary, for most people, university education increases their expected lifetime earnings. For a substantial fraction of graduates – perhaps a fifth overall – that is not true. And there are positive overall returns for the taxpayer. But it is not evenly distributed. Financial returns are skewed by a long tail of the top 10% at the upper end, and about 40% of graduates do not give positive financial returns to the exchequer, but many of them are still making more money than that would have otherwise. But you can’t really pick which will be in which decile, and many of those people at all income levels are doing valuable work even if it is not well paid.
Many of those gains are going.
Medicine has a bleak outlook.
So do accounting and business.
There are economists struggling to get work.
If I was starting out now I would not study law as AI is already starting to erode opportunities. Add to this is the fact that the law of the land is giving way to the law of the jungle where might is right.
I’ve done two degrees. One, a 5 yr veterinary degree, at a leading uni, the other a part time Univ of Wales theology degree, 15 years later at an evangelical (UK) Baptist college
The first degree was almost all rote learning, an enormous amount. Hardly any essays. Not a lot of thinking involved except in clinical diagnostic tutorials in final two years.
The second, the theology degree, done in middle age, taught me to think, to debate, to face challenge, to disagree, to find common ground, to question, and I had to write a lot of essays. I wish I’d learned to think like that a bit earlier in life.
Academia is in deep trouble and has been for some time. So busy “not rocking the boat” that they didn’t see the storm coming.
That is the troublke with vet / medic training
Almost no actual teaching in how to think
And it shows in the NHS…
Yes the situation is dire in the universities. Maybe what is needed is a revival of student activism such as the 1968 rebellions a la Cohn-Bendit that nearly bought down De Gaulle in France and was a powerful influence in the US to stop the Vietnam war and enhance Luther Kings’s civil rights for black people.
It’s very weird really right at the heart of Neoliberalism lies a contradiction. Supporters of it want growth so they can make money yet fail to understand their use of money has two aspects Active and Inactive. Active obviously supports demand but saving can reduce demand because it renders it Inactive especially when safe saving in government securities takes place and the rich especially like the safe but liquid advantages of these. Balancing the government’s books obviously generates a lot of government securitities so government acts as a fund manager to the rich to some degree. Government deficits obviously counteract the creation of Inactive money.
Thank you, Richard. I came across a quote from the late Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s partner) the other day: –
“People calculate too much and think too little.”
That seems so true to me. It resonated with me, and with others, no doubt, because I see the current enthusiasm for AI as further devaluing the importance of human thought. Although the current crop of “generative AI” models present human-like abilities to create text, images or videos, it would be a mistake to believe that they possess an ability to think. They do not.
I see lots of use for AI
BUT, as a tool to assist me, not replace me, much as I view the computer I am typing on in the same way.
I work in this sector and have over 40 years experience on and off of Higher Education Institutions – your observations resonate with me..And of course, it’s not just the unthinking acceptance of economic orthodoxy but also the paucity of any other view as education just as a stepping stone to economic success and nothing else…The use of AI is increasing this poverty of thought..in spite of its possibilities – students now use it as a solve all issues crutch in completion of assignments and course goals, meanwhile year on year library book issues decrease and intellectual curiosity is hard to find.
The only hope is the one you hold out of questioning the status quo..We are perilously close to the failure and amalgamation of a clutch of Universities as beleaguered staff are expected to soak up poor pay (I’m non teaching and receive just over national minimum wage)and continuing and unrelenting reorganization and cut backs while being bombarded with HR goobledegook such as ‘onboarding’ and ‘job crystallisation’…a true reflection of where we are all at…and believe me it used to be better…
Apologies for the long rant and first post but what you wrote touched a nerve…as has the trite ‘mission statement’ of my current august institution which rates ambition over everything else and could have been written as a motto pulled out of a Christmas cracker…live and learn would have been better….
I understand the reason for the rant.
The great reason for the success of neoliberalism is the lack of intellectual curiousity, which it created.
Looking back to my time as a student at the LSE 1989-1992 one can see the first shoots of this.
A compliant student body is important, so the percentage of overseas students gets increased, far less likely to be concerned with anything other than getting the qualification. The SU was fined for electing Winston Silcott as honoury president, Silcott was of course later cleared of the murder he had been convicted of.
Now I believe the LSE is 80% overseas students.
Making Uk students pay for their tuition also means students are less likely to strike or occupy or protest, thus deradicalising.
I well remember a Larry Elliott article in the Guardian on just this point, way back in about 1982, when the full horrors of Thatcherism were becoming clear.
The gist of the article was that asking universities to become efficient businesses was both back to front, and would have been had UK management been effective, which it wasn’t.
As regards the latter, businessmen loved to criticise government enterprise and management of the economy, arguing that “business discipline” was the answer – a solution that has worked wonderfully in the USA with Musk’s risible DOGE, an exercise in knocking the wheels off the wagon and expecting to have movement.
Equally true with all the Blairite nonsense about academies and “business discipline”, which holed Comprehensive education below the waterline, while leading to ludicrously inflated salaries for the Managing Directors – no longer Head Teachers – of the new “cost centres” that Academies became.
As regards the “back to front” argument, Larry Elliott argued that it was business that needed to learn from academia, which had a clear understanding of its objectives and how to achieve them, so didn’t need all the guff about Mission Statements etc.
This is well summed up in Cambridge University’s motto of “hinc lucem et sacra pocula” – “from here comes light and sacred draughts” – in other words, its job was to provide illumination of the mind, by drawing on the reservoirs of knowledge.
Once that is the aim, things fall into place – rigorous standards of research and teaching in the cause of enlightenment, which is of value in its own right, without needing to be justified in monetary terms.
Academia had a clear vision – and the Cambridge motto applies equally to every other seat of learning – and a clear understanding of how to attain that vision for that seat of learning, its staff, students and society as a whole, where much of UK management was blundering around blindfold in a darkened room!!
Memories of British Leyland spring to mind!!
Thanks, Andrew
Off topic.
I am aware that you are extremely productive and are considering or engaged in writing a book.
I think it would be great if you could also produce a book containing selected articles from this blog,along with comments from some of the more frequent contributers.
The blog’s insight ,diversity of topics and readers’ life experiences make it so worthwhile.
There might be a big overlap between the books and workload demands would make such a book unnecessary.
If so, perhaps consider adding comments to a new book,with their permission,from the more frequent contributers.
OK, so here’s the challenge.
What are the best posts to include?
Suggestions on the back of a postcard please to….here
Read: “The Dark Truth of the Educational System Shaped by John D. Rockefeller” (2023)
“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” — John D. Rockefeller
https://medium.com/@sofialherani/the-dark-truth-of-the-educational-system-shaped-by-john-d-rockefeller-77bf1b0167dd
Oddly, I want the opposite.
Not up to speed with all the University scene – but it seems half of them may be in danger of financial collapse – and many academics cant have anything approaching a secure career – lots of short term contracts. Not conducive to independent thinking.
Significant numbers are at risk of faiulure, and Labour are gloating about it. I have no idea why.
UK GOVT & can’t run of money/not dependent on finance markets/surpluses/
Neoliberal economics work of fiction/QT/Curse of household analogy/
Starmer never understood/Reeves/No growth what should Labour do ?/Labour & private equity/Streeting & PFI/’Grit,kids’ mental health/Labour picking on vulnerable
TRUMP and Musk will fall out/at war with the US/done with the dollar/
Farage/drop dogma from politics/Nationalising water/energy prices/
Housing costs/City of London/the wealthy/
Pensions tax relief/inheritance tax farmers
The wealthy/unemployed gps/sugar / universities//people & hobbies/
A world that cares (ideal ending)
I studied economics at university from 1981 to 1985 (from which you will gather it was in Scotland). My memory is not what it once was, but I genuinely think I never heard the name John Maynard Keynes once in lectures those four years. I doubt degree courses have subsequently become any more wide-ranging…
That is desperate.
In 76-79 (my time at university) he was required reading.
Excellent, and tragically true piece. I used to lecture at a local College and University, but the war on ‘the liberal arts’ has indeed crossed the pond, and my role in both establishments succumbed to cuts in humanities funding in 2009.
As you point out though, its not just the subjects that promote critical thinking under assault. My wife’s uncle was an award winning Nuclear physicist, and the head of the physics dept at the Uni he last worked for. Three years ago, his former colleagues (he’s retired) informed him the dept is being shut. Yes, a Physics dept, once famed for its importance has been shut.
Govt has made it clear what it wants from unis these days. Endless numbers of business courses, arts and humanities shunted off into oblivion, unis forced to crack down on protests (wouldn’t want any right wing investors upset now, eh?), and the student experience reduced to occasional lectures, online learning, and as little contact with each other as possible.
In other words, the complete opposite of why modern unis thrived in the first place.
Is there no well neoliberalism cannot poison?
No, none.
Sorry – but that is true.
On what most universities across the ‘U’ K have become and on their thralldom to neo-liberal culture, no thinking observer could disagree. However having lived as a member of academia for 46 years – undergraduate student (twice), reseacher and teaching academic – I would suggest a somewhat more nuanced account of how and when the present sorry situation has come about.
The principal economic poison was injected by the Centre for Policy Studies after 1974 and was echoed in Callaghan’s 1976 Labour Conference speech. Cost-cutting on the provision of Higer Education had been on the agenda of Labour ministers since the late 1960s. Many were the work of supposed educational Labour progressives like Crosland (overseas student fees 1967) and a programme of closing Colleges of Education (Williams 1976) – but the really fundamental damage was the abandonment of the UGC (by then with its independence much weakened) by the Thatcher government in 1989. It was this change away from the principle of an ostensible arms-length funding of universities as a public good that led to all the tawdry comercialisation, the infection of fourthrate management speak, the mania for competition/leage tables (a 90s disease) and the steady corruption of the fundamental idea and purpose of universities, of higher education as a whole and of academia itself.
We may live among the ruins but it is imporatnt to know that they are the battered remains of a battlefield which has been fought over with great determination by many whose entire careers have been works of resistance against the anti-educational viruses incubated and spread by the neo-liberal philistines. I cannot speak of the struggles among followers of “the dismal science” – your own contributions show the issues are still contested, but in the case of history, and down to my own departure from the full-time field, the battle in my own patch was more often won than lost – and with many remaining academics the war continues. I am watching with a mixture of horror and fascinated admiration the contests taking place in Trumpland. Some ghastly betrayals of former colleagues and yet also some brave, costly and effective resistance. Sadly we have discoivered that the intellectual and educational civilities and freedoms, which we had regarded as won, are never safe unless defended and reborn for each generation – but we and many, many in the academic community know it now – even if the battle is harder today than it has been for several hundred years. Universities have been in danger of rotting from the top – but they will be regenerated, as in the past, from below.
Many thanks, Nigel.
Thanks, great read. Schools too. At the ‘academy’ where I work, requests for voluntary redundancies have been made, presumably as a precursor to compulsory ones. Just recently, the CEO of the Trust (‘trust’!) received a huge bonus. For what we don’t know, doing his ‘job’, whatever that is. Anyway, how is it that schools have ‘CEOs’?
I find that idea utterly bizarre.
“ Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
T. S. Eliot
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Such a good quote.
Such an incisive analysis of neoliberalism, the cancer that demand utter compliance as it eats us alive.
Thanks
Typos:
desolate –> despite
The point we have arrived it –> The point we have arrived at
… never apparently having the imagine –> … never apparently having the imagination
Thanks. Appreciated.
A really interesting read. The colonial or imperial boomerang is well documented
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/4383-the-imperial-boomerang-how-colonial-methods-of-repression-migrate-back-to-the-metropolis
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
Neoliberalism is the vehicle of the economic and social repression boomerang as it comes back to the centre.
My experience of academics is a core of them are as nasty as investment bankers but infinitely more devious and smarter. Only these minds could develop neoliberal ideas. Just my thoughts.
My main point: I used to think for westerners it was ok to destroy the colonies on the periphery and kill the natives by their millions because they were an inferior species – eugenics.
Is that now wrong? The boomerang is now destroying the races at the top of the eugenic pyramid. So was it just about extraction and vicious accumulation ?Eugenics was then just the emotional
mechanism to justify it? UCL had a department of Eugenics with a professor of Eugenics as late as the early 20th Century. Academia seems to me the seed of the colonial then neoliberal ideas which sprouts in the grand universities and forms forests in the corporate world.
Regarding which of your blogs should be included in a future book, this one should be on the list. A brilliant, detailed expose of, and rallying cry against, the neoliberal cancer. Thank you, Richard
Thanks
Richard, I think this blog should very definitely be in your book of “Blogarithms” I’d also like to suggest the piece you wrote on linear and non-linear thinking.
Thanks
Richard every now and then you produce something really brilliantly insightful and I’m not just saying this because I agree.
A number of academics have over the years voiced concerns. The most recent for me was titled “What are Universities for” by Stefan Collini.
Ever since the great expansion of Unis under Blair and the demise of polys and technical colleges. We seem to have created Education establishments that are simply factories producing human outputs for the marketplace.
Universities as custodians of scholarship and charged with carrying forward intellectual endeavour from one generation to the next has been a poor second.
This level of social and intellectual harm to our society is probably difficult to calculate but I suspect it is huge.
Thanks
Thank you
Richard,
A very fine post indeed; but that’s not saying much given that your blog is crowded with them on a daily basis!
Like many who have responded, I have followed the “progress” of higher education policy over the last 40 years with increasing dismay. As a long-standing subscriber to The London Review of Books, I could handily follow that progress via the regular contributions from Stefan Collini (Emeritus Professor of English Literature and Intellectual History, Oxford) as the sorry policy caravan trundled on (the Browne Review of 2010 was an especially low point, admirably exposed here by that fine historian Keith Thomas):
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n24/keith-thomas/universities-under-attack
The whole saga has been sad, unedifying, and deeply damaging.
We are light years away from Michael Oakeshott’s “gift of an interval”, the idea that university offers the opportunity for learning for its own sake, a valuable, precious – indeed, essential – component of human intellectual experience and development. It is an idea, it seems to me, to be in need of urgent resurrection.
Thanks
Great blog and reflections on the destruction of universities by people with the neoliberal world view. As a strong cultural bubble it’s hard to challenge. I resigned from higher education lecturing in the mid 1990s as the college had become a business, students had become customers, class sizes became very large and customers thought they all deserved 2.1s. Returning for a semester, I found tired uk students with large debt … working as well as studying, wealthy overseas students whose fees were essential for the unis business model, mostly underpaid lecturers on zero hours and more….Maybe it’s time to reinvent higher education? What would that look like? And is it already happening ?
We are trying with Accounting Streams