The New Spirit of Managerialism

Abstract

of Europe (CEC 2005 ) and Delivering the Modernisation Agenda for Universities : Education , Research and Innovation (CEC 2006 ). These communications invoked the challenges facing European universities: internationalisation, relations with industry, the reorganisation of knowledge, etc. Global Networks and Local AgenciesSlaughter and Leslie's analyses, like those of Clark, characterise the two extremes in the debate between the pros and cons of academic capitalism. The transformations of higher education are seen through a structural opposition between the state and the market while the comparison is limited to nation-states. As Simon Marginson ( 2006 ) writes, these theories have not taken into account a refl exion on agencies and the processes which participate in transnational and local changes in academic institutions and activities. The metaphor of academic capitalism reveals a powerful global trend but ignores the power of national traditions, agencies and agents in shaping the work of higher education, as well as local agencies exercised by students, the faculty, nonfaculty professionals and administrators, pursuing prestige, knowledge, social critique and social justice (Marginson and Considine 2000 ; Rhoades 1998 ). This is why Marginson and Rhoades suggested considering the 'glonacal agency' to capture the global, national and local transformations of the new spirit of academic capitalism (Marginson and Rhoades 2002 ). International organisations, states and professional groups interact at different scales and beyond national borders to frame policies and practices in higher education. The analysis of these global fl ows and agencies reveals interconnections between institutions, and politico-economical resources have signifi cantly restructured higher education policies, created new equivalences between programmes driven by international organisations and adapted to national/local governance and management.Reasoning in terms of 'glonacal agency' makes it possible to highlight adjustments and resistance to the globalisation of higher education and to take into account national and local specifi cities. For example, the World Bank is very infl uential in developing countries through its funding mechanisms, while the OECD and the European Commission mainly have a structuring effect on Western countries in terms of standards and best practices. Indeed, professional associations and networks, such as foundations, think tanks and agencies, participating in the defi nition of standards and the circulation of expertise, are confi gured differently from one continent to another. It is the same for the collecting and management of data which legitimise expertise and justify government by numbers in higher education.These arguments are shared by Stephen Ball. He sees neo-liberalism in education as a complex, incoherent, unstable and often contradictory set of practices and projThe New Spirit of Managerialism