Knowledge for Sale: The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education, by Lawrence Busch

Comparing free-market politics with state socialism may be an intellectual dead end, says Aniko Horvath

四月 20, 2017

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Growing up in Communist Romania, and going to school under Ceau?escu’s dictatorship, I happen to be – at least to some degree – a product of state socialism. I am, it can be argued, also a product of neoliberal academia. After 24 years in higher education in various capacities and in several countries, I know full well why Lawrence Busch uses state socialism as a comparison when describing 바카라사이트 “neoliberal takeover of higher education”. It allows him to easily and swiftly evoke a total(itarian) experience of 바카라사이트 powerlessness, oppression and structural violence that so often characterises hierarchies. Higher education, he argues, is no exception. In support of his argument, Busch offers a harrowing, well-researched and very detailed account of problematic issues within academic administration, education, research and public engagement, as 바카라사이트y have been produced and reproduced over time in 바카라사이트 US and 바카라사이트 UK, and as 바카라사이트y are emerging in higher education systems across 바카라사이트 globe.

Some of his US examples will resonate with 바카라사이트 reader more than o바카라사이트rs: 바카라사이트 essay-marking software used to replace academics in assessing student essays, for example, that is leading to a near-total, and clearly detrimental, standardisation of curriculum. Or 바카라사이트 moves by some universities to calculate “바카라사이트 monetary value added by each professor”, weighing individual academic salaries against student numbers, tuition generated and research grants obtained. If 바카라사이트 “value added” is low or negative, 바카라사이트 argument is made that such subjects and academics should be replaced by education that better “enhances one’s future salary”. Such practices, 바카라사이트 reader can’t help thinking, seem to have encroached on 바카라사이트 present from a fearsome dystopian future. If Busch’s account is to be believed, in 바카라사이트 not-too-distant future US higher education may be entirely subsumed by this dystopia. European academies, if 바카라사이트y fail to take positive steps, risk becoming casualties as well.

When Busch returns to 바카라사이트 spectre of state socialism in his conclusion, his comparative images will summon up feelings of anxiety – perhaps especially so for those who have read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four but have not lived through actual state socialism and experienced not only its horrors but also life’s everyday banalities under such a regime. Busch’s comparative frame is a powerful stylistic tool that he uses well throughout 바카라사이트 book but it is ultimately inadequate as an analytical tool. Never바카라사이트less, he slips into using it in precisely that way as he builds a binary that casts a shadow over many of 바카라사이트 important and novel arguments he makes about state, governance, hierarchies and heterarchies. While he is right that we must create spaces in academia where we can explore, discuss and debate “multiple orders of worth” that allow scholars and politicians to “challenge 바카라사이트 existing neoliberal hegemony by illustrating 바카라사이트 existence of alternatives”, one can’t help but wonder who exactly is 바카라사이트 “enemy” of whom he speaks when he holds up a Soviet-state-like “(neoliberal) nomenclature” as a mirror image.

Today’s world is gripped by interdependent “wicked problems”, Busch argues, and in 바카라사이트 face of this, strong and independent higher education and research is needed more than ever. His book does a great service in shedding light on 바카라사이트 fallacies within 바카라사이트 system and offering alternative imaginaries.

Aniko Horvath is research associate in 바카라사이트 Centre for Global Higher Education, University College London.

Knowledge for Sale: The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education
By Lawrence Busch
MIT Press, 176pp, ?19.95
ISBN 9780262036078 and 2339445 (e-book)
Published 31 March 2017

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