Beyond the multiversity: neoliberalism and the rise of the schizophrenic university

Abstract

The restructuring of New Zealand's universities is often considered a paradigmatic case of neo-liberal reform and governance. While tertiary education is increasingly central to government's ideas about the future global knowledge economy, a new set of discourses has emerged around universities and their role that draws together different, often contradictory, agendas. This heralds not the death of the liberal idea of the university but a shift towards a new, multi-layered conception in which universities are expected to fulfil a plethora of different functions. This article examines the implications of this emerging 'schizophrenic university' paradigm and its effects on academic subjectivities.

Producción científica en Chile: las limitaciones del uso de indicadores de desempeño para evaluar las universidades públicas

“…En este contexto, diversos países han desarrollado sistemas de aseguramiento de la calidad o sistemas de rendición de cuentas que permitan a los gobiernos evaluar el quehacer de las instituciones de educación superior (Davies y Thomas, 2002;Neave, 2001;Power, 1997;Rabovsky, 2012;Saravanamuthu y Tinker, 2002;Saunders, 2010;Seshan y Jain, 2011;Shore, 2010;Suspitsyna, 2010;Torres y Schugurensky, 2002). Así por ejemplo, en Europa se han desarrollado sistemas de indicadores de desempeño vinculados a tasas de retención de estudiantes, graduación, productividad científica de sus académicos, inserción laboral de los titulados, entre otros, (McLendon y otros, 2006;Molas-Gallart y otros, 2002;Saunders, 2010;Suspitsyna, 2010).…”

“…Así por ejemplo, en Europa se han desarrollado sistemas de indicadores de desempeño vinculados a tasas de retención de estudiantes, graduación, productividad científica de sus académicos, inserción laboral de los titulados, entre otros, (McLendon y otros, 2006;Molas-Gallart y otros, 2002;Saunders, 2010;Suspitsyna, 2010). En este sentido, la tendencia de los gobiernos a evaluar a las universidades a través de una serie de criterios de desempeño es un fenó-meno global, sumándose a esta tendencia países como Inglaterra (Hoecht, 2006), España (Palomares-Montero y otros, 2008), India (Seshan y Jain, 2011), Nueva Zelandia (Shore, 2010) y países latinoamericanos (Ordorika y Lloyd, 2013;Torres y Schugurensky, 2002).…”

Funding Science with Science: Cryptocurrency and Independent Academic Research Funding

“…The result often is that current funding systems remain underexamined or that critics such as Shore and Strathern offer few practical ways to redress fundamental, systemic problems. 24,26 In contrast, the proposed approach offers concrete steps to create one potential alternative path for funding scientific inquiry. Moving away from merely theorizing the dynamics of power within scientific funding, this work proposes that its financial tool can help to fund science without any intermediaries-in other words, without the obligations entailed by accepting National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, or other types of external funding.…”

“…Shore described such appropriation as "neoliberal," in that it attempts to privatize public goods-in this instance, scientific research. 24 With neoliberal ideology and practices firmly entrenched, there often appears to be little incentive, particularly for the well-funded scientific researcher, to challenge the current system. Lehner and Finley contended that university researchers could easily follow a careerist path, publishing in high-ranking academic journals and collecting funding from traditional sources 25 ; yet these strategies are void of more substantial contributions to science and often undermine the student-focused mission of higher education.…”

Carpe the academy: Dismantling higher education and prefiguring critical utopias through action research

“…By neoliberalism, we refer to the doctrine and campaign for internationalization of market economy, for intensive society-wide privatization as well as extensive globalized market deregulation… [which] include[s] stunning increases in poverty and inequality worldwide… as well as considerable authoritarianism in defense of market prerequisites by national and international actors. (Collins, 2008, xiv) Our experience is of universities in the United States and United Kingdom, and yet the geopolitical scope of the issues addressed here is much broader, as universities across the developed world are subsumed into what from a neoliberal viewpoint is framed positively (or at least neutrally) as a 'global knowledge economy' (Shore, 2010), and as the global commodification of higher education serves to entrench international inequality to the detriment of developing countries (Naidoo, 2008) and to further devalue, colonize, and coopt indigenous epistemologies and practices (Brayboy, Castagno, & Maughan, 2008;de Oliveira Andreotti, 2016).…”