Varieties of academic capitalism and entrepreneurial universities

Jessop, Bob

doi:10.1007/s10734-017-0120-6

Cited by 150 publications

(103 citation statements)

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“…It often focuses on shifts in internal management organization and capabilities, the introduction of internal markets and quasi-markets, quality assurance mechanisms, differentiated career tracks and growing precarity, new intermediary bodies for managing and transferring knowledge internally and with external partnerships (Slaughter and Cantwell 2012). Conversely, I suggest here that the rise of academic capitalism can be plotted in terms of five analytically distinct and potentially overlapping stages (for the theoretical rationale and more empirical details, see Jessop 2017). Accordingly, this section identifies some limits to academic capitalism that hinder a complete traversal of all stages short of reaching a fully financialized neoliberal dystopia.…”

Section: Economization Marketization and Financializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

On academic capitalism

Jessop

2017

Critical Policy Studies

Self Cite

135

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Section: Economization Marketization and Financializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

On academic capitalism

Jessop

2017

Critical Policy Studies

Self Cite

135

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“…Universities can also go further and merge to create larger bodies in order to obtain world-class proportions and secure research grants. 13 We recognise, with Jessop (2017), the varieties of academic capitalism, we identify a general trend towards the imposition of a unique globalized university model (Laval et al 2011), inspired by American academic capitalism. This tendency entails projects to increase tuition fees in many localities: Quebec (Martin and Ouellet 2011), Chile , France (Collectif ACIDES 2015), UK (Cruickshank 2016) etc.…”

Section: The Student Customer and The Entrepreneur-teachermentioning

confidence: 92%

Academic Labour, Digital Media and Capitalism (Combined PDF of all articles)

Allmer¹,

Bulut

2018

tripleC

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Modern universities have always been part of and embedded into capitalism in political, economic and cultural terms. In 1971, at the culmination of the Vietnam War, the Chomsky-Foucault debate reminded us of this fact when a student asked: "How can you, with your very courageous attitude towards the war in Vietnam, survive in an institution like MIT, which is known here as one of the great war contractors and intellectual makers of this war?" (Chomsky and Foucault 2006, 63). Chomsky responded dialectically, but also had to admit that the academic institution he is working for is a major organisation of war research and thereby strengthens the political contradictions and inequalities in capitalist societies.Edward P. Thompson (1970), one of the central figures in the early years of British cultural studies, edited Warwick University Ltd in the 1970s. Thompson was working at the University of Warwick then and published together with colleagues and students a manuscript that discovered, as the title suggests, the close relationship of their university with industrial capitalism. The book also revealed some evidence of secret political surveillance of staff and students by the university, which was uncovered by students occupying the Registry at Warwick at that time.In a more recent context, the renowned Marxist geographer David Harvey faced an interview question about managerialism and the pressure to raise external funding at his university, City University of New York: "I had a dean saying to me that I wasn't bringing in any money. You're worthless, he said, as far as we're concerned. So I asked what I was supposed to do. Was I supposed to set up an Institute of Marxist Studies funded by General Motors? And the dean said, 'Yes, that's a good idea. I'll support you if you can do that'" (Taylor 2010).The relationship between state control and global capitalism has intensified in the last decades. With the collapse of the welfare state and the drop of public funds, universities are positioning themselves as active agents of global capital, transforming urban spaces into venues for capital accumulation and competing for profits derived from international student populations. In this environment, students have to pay significant amounts of tuition for precarious futures. Similarly, teaching and research faculty across the globe have to negotiate their roles that are often strictly defined in entrepreneurial terms. Increasingly, the value of academic labour is subject to new forms of control, surveillance and productivity. As the recent cases of Steven Salaita (USA), Academics for Peace (Turkey) and the crackdown against students in India reveal, academic labour and academics in general are also facing immense challenges in terms of state control and freedom of speech.Situated in this economic and political context, the overall task of this special issue of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique is to gather critical contributions examining universities, academic labour, digital media, and capitalism. The artic...

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“…Universities can also go further and merge to create larger bodies in order to obtain world-class proportions and secure research grants. 13 We recognise, with Jessop (2017), the varieties of academic capitalism, we identify a general trend towards the imposition of a unique globalized university model (Laval et al 2011), inspired by American academic capitalism. This tendency entails projects to increase tuition fees in many localities: Quebec (Martin and Ouellet 2011), Chile (Martin 2011), France (Collectif ACIDES 2015), UK (Cruickshank 2016) etc.…”

Section: The Student Customer and The Entrepreneur-teachermentioning

confidence: 92%

University Transformations and the New Knowledge Production Regime in Informational Capitalism

Ouellet¹,

Martin²

2018

tripleC

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This article examines undergoing transformations in universities in the context of the structural crisis of capitalism, which began more than 40 years ago. This crisis is at the heart of one of the main contradictions of capitalism: while capital needs living labour to produce value, the dynamic of accumulation requires the replacement of human labour by machines. We will show how capital attempts to overcome this contradiction by modifying the nature of knowledge, learning institutions and human beings to turn them into productive investments, whose profitability can be measured. The contemporary mutations of universities are linked to the globalization, financialization and commodification of knowledge. We also observe transformations in universities' institutional arrangements and in individual human consciousness. Our perspective combines institutionalist political economy and Marxian critique of value, showing how material, institutional and cultural transformations are dialectically articulated in a new form of social regulation. We will show how there is a complementarity between the transformations of political, economic and learning institutions and their linkage with a new mode of knowledge production. The general goal being that advanced mastery of knowledge and information will increase the efficiency of the technological and economic system and its endless acceleration.Keywords: Informational Capitalism, Value Theory, University, Globalization, Financialization, Commodification of Knowledge The purpose of this article is to analyse ongoing transformations within higher learning institutions in the context of the structural crisis that has plagued capitalism in the last 40 years. This crisis is at the heart of one of the main contradictions of capitalism: while capital needs living labour to produce value, the dynamic of accumulation requires the replacement of human labour by machines (Postone 1999;McChesney and Nichols 2016). We will show how capital seeks to overcome this contradiction by altering the nature of knowledge and human beings to transform them into productive investments whose profitability can be measured. We will show how the mutations of contemporary capitalism, described by some as informational (Castells 1996) or as cognitive capitalism (Hardt and Negri 2000), characterised by globalization, financialisation and the commodification of knowledge, are linked to institutional transformations within universities and changes in human consciousness. From a perspective combining both the institutionalist political economy (Mirowski 2011) and the Marxist critique of value (Postone 1993), we will see how material, institutional and cultural transformations are dialectically articulated within a new mode of social regulation. It is important to describe the complementarity between transformations of political, economic and educational institutions, as well as their common belonging to a

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Varieties of academic capitalism and entrepreneurial universities

Cited by 150 publications

References 44 publications

On academic capitalism

On academic capitalism

Academic Labour, Digital Media and Capitalism (Combined PDF of all articles)

University Transformations and the New Knowledge Production Regime in Informational Capitalism

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