The Academic Manifesto: From an Occupied to a Public University

Abstract

Universities are occupied by management, a regime obsessed with ‘accountability’ through measurement, increased competition, efficiency, ‘excellence’, and misconceived economic salvation. Given the occupation’s absurd side-effects, we ask ourselves how management has succeeded in taking over our precious universities. An alternative vision for the academic future consists of a public university, more akin to a socially engaged knowledge commons than to a corporation. We suggest some provocative measures to bring about such a university. However, as management seems impervious to cogent arguments, such changes can only happen if academics take action. Hence, we explore several strategies for a renewed university politics.

Decolonialidade como epistemologia para o campo teórico da internacionalização da Educação Superior

“…Entre as contradições evidenciadas no domínio da internacionalização da educação superior, pode-se mencionar: 1. o "big business" do recrutamento de estudantes internacionais (Altbach & Knight, 2007;Knight, 2012;Le Ha & Barnawi, 2015;Lima & Contel, 2011;Lima & Maranhão, 2009); 2. a hegemonia dos países do Norte no fornecimento de serviços e no recebimento dos fluxos de mobilidade acadêmica (Altbach & Knight, 2007;Kehm & Teichler, 2007;Kim, 2017;Walker, 2014); 3. a constituição do Sul como "cliente" (Altbach & Knight, 2007;Lima & Contel, 2011;Lima & Maranhão, 2009;Robertson & Komljenovic, 2016); a "drenagem dos cérebros" (Kim, 2017;Maringe, Foskett & Woodfield, 2013;Unesco, 2016); a ascensão dos provedores de serviços educacionais privados exclusivamente orientados para o lucro (Altbach & Knight, 2007;Robertson & Komljenovic, 2016;Schulze-Cleven & Olson, 2017); o "produtivismo acadêmico" (Faria, 2011;Halffman & Radder, 2015;Kim, 2017;Watermeyer & Olssen, 2016); a competição excessiva pelo selo de "World Class University" (Le Ha & Barnawi, 2015;Vieira & Lima, 2016); o elevado status atribuído aos rankings acadêmicos (Maringe, Foskett & Woodfield, 2013;O'Connell & Saunders, 2012;Reitz, 2017;Yemini & Sagie, 2015); bem como a homogeneização decorrente da internacionalização curricular (; Jooste & Heleta, 2016;Lima & Maranhão, 2011;Rizvi, 2007); e das políticas de idiomas (Giampapa & Cana...…”

The Silenced Students: Student Resistance in a Corporatized University

“…Thus, during our collective teaching experience of over 40 years we have seen dramatic changes not only in university policies but also in how students are positioned, how they are treated, and how teaching, knowledge and the university itself have been defined (see FitzSimmons 2014;FitzSimmons 2015). While Finnish students are encouraged to go through the diploma mill as soon as possible, teachers are increasingly becoming entrepreneurs required to search for funding grants to preserve their jobs (Levidow 2005, 156;Halffman & Radder 2015). In the beginning of the lecture, one of the students started to oppose current cutting policies loudly in both national languages: Finnish and Swedish.…”

What Would Les Back Do? If Generosity Could Save Us

“…Some speak of the Bedu factory^ (Edu-Factory Collective 2009;Roggero 2011) or Bthe University in ruins^ (Readings 1996); others of Bacademic capitalism^ (Slaughter and Leslie 1997); still others document the horrors wrought by Bnew public management^ (Lorenz 2012;Shore 2008;Halffman and Radder 2015), performativity (Ball 2000;Blackmore and Sachs 2000), or Bneoliberalism^ (Gill, 2010); or indict the marketization and corporatization of academia (Barcan 2013). Some highlight the catastrophic effects of student fees and debt (Ross, 2014); others condemn casualization and precariousness (SIGJ2 2012; Adsit et al 2015;Nash and Owens 2015;Luka et al 2015;Murgia and Poggio 2010); a few document the profound intersectional inequalities that still marginalize and exclude black, queer, and female scholars (Gutiérrez y et al 2012;Bailey and Miller 2015;Johnson 2015), positioning them in what Diane Reay (2004) has called the Blumpen proletariat^of academia.…”