Universities after neoliberalism: A tale of four futures

Dossier: Unmaking the university

We’re used to one-way neoliberalism, regardless of party, in which we keep getting more of its familiar features: public budget austerity, marketisation, privatisation, selective cross-subsidies favouring business and technology, precarisation of professional labour, and structural racism. But under the pressure of international social forces, neoliberalism is increasingly breaking down. These forces include the Covid-19-induced public […]
Cartesian graph. X axis labeled Commons / publicly funded; -X axis signifies privatisation; Y signifies Democratic - rhizome-networked storefronts; -Y signifies Platform; post democratic. X/Y; 3. Equalized: -X/Y; 4. Autonomous. X/-Y: 2. Debt-free; -X/-Y: 1. Fragmented.

University finances: update

On 11 July, David Willetts, minister for universities and science, confirmed a new ‘operating framework’ for higher education in England. This pulled together the results of various consultations and the work done by the ‘Regulatory Partnership Group’ to set out regulatory arrangements through to 2015.1 A week earlier, Willetts had written to the Higher Education […]

Looting the university: Sussex occupation over privatization

The recent campaign at the University of Sussex against the outsourcing of 235 non-academic jobs has confronted certain organizational and ideological limitations of the struggles in higher education so far. It constitutes an escalation of the anti-privatization movement in the UK. Porters, security, catering, maintenance, and other non-academic staff at the university face their employment […]

The Right To Protest

News The right to protestAs Quebec erupts over plans to increase tuition fees by the equivalent of £200, and twelve people (including Professor Joshua Clover) who protested against a campus bank at University of California–Davis begin a trial that could see them imprisoned for eleven years and fined $1 million each, what of the scores […]

Pirate Radical Philosophy

Comment Pirate Radical Philosophy Gary hall Pirate … from the Latin pirata (-ae; pirate)… transliteration of the Greek piratis (pirate; πειρατής) from the verb pirao (make an attempt, try, test, get experience, endeavour, attack; πειράω). … In modern Greek… piragma: teasing [πείραγμα] … pirazo: tease, give trouble [πειράζω].1 Much has been written about the ‘crisis […]

Of course… however

Michael Bailey and Des Freedman, eds, The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance, Pluto Press, London, 2011. 200 pp., £14.99 pb., 978 0 74533 191 1. Matthew Charles The conceptual poles that orient the collection of essays edited by Des Freedman and Michael Bailey in The Assault on Universities are, on the one hand, […]

Student problems (1964): Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy (with an introduction by Warren Montag)

Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Dossier Thealthusser–Rancière Controversy Introduction to Althusser’s ‘Student Problems’ Warren montag For those familiar with Louis Althusser’s published work, reading his relatively early essay entitled ‘Student Problems’ may be a surprising and even disconcerting experience. Part of the surprise lies in the fact that the essay exists at all. Although it was published in Nouvelle Critique […]

Architectural Deleuzism: Neoliberal space, control and the ‘univer-city’

For many thinkers of the spatiality of contemporary capitalism, the production of all social space tends now to converge upon a single organizational paradigm designed to generate and service mobility, connectivity and flexibility. Networked, landscaped, borderless and reprogrammable, this is a space that functions, within the built environments of business, shopping, education or the ‘creative […]

Eduction for Industry

that needs to be put into question. For Althusser only repeats in Spinozist form the operation which is common to all epistemological theories of demarcation of science from other kinds of theoretical discourse. That is, to attempt to provide a philosophical justification for a particular social selection and hierarchical distribution of theoretical discourses, a certain […]

The examined life is not worth living

The examined life is nol worlhliving George Molnar The sort of tests which involve graded assessment of students for purposes of certification, I’ll call examinations. Examinations characteristically, though not invariably, issue in little or no feedback on the details of the performance to the student. For purposes of present discussion I shall not in general […]

Not in front of the students

Nol in fronl of Ihe sludenls JonDavies ‘Because of the Welfare State’, wrote one of our first year students, ‘there has been a great increase in participation.’ (She had been reading a textbook). I asked her: ‘On what public issue or what public debate have you personally ever participated, even just by writing a letter […]

The Huntingdon File

Y~~————————————————————————————————————- The Huntington File In June 1973, Samuel Huntington, Professor of Government at Hc.rvard University, former consultant to the Secretary of Defense, and distinguished advocate of ‘forced draft urbanisation’ (concentration camps) in Vietnam, came to Sussex University to give a lecture and a seminar. As a result of a demonstration organised by the Sussex Indochina […]

Searle’s Idea of a University

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• SEARLE’S IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Colwyn W’illiamson The following remarks are about the nature of universities and their supposed political neutrality, about relations between students and teachers, and about the notion of the ‘academic’. To gain a foothold in the problems arising from these topics, I will focus attention on a book written […]

Professional Philosophers

People who don’t know anything about philosophy courses are likely to be astonished and dismayed by their effects. The main thing they will notice is that the philosophy student acquires a very mannered way of speaking and a knack of shrugging off serious ideas with half frivolous complaints about the words in which they are […]

Women philosophers and the RAE

News Women philosophers and the RAEThe Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) is an organization which attempts to reflect and represent the views and interests of women working in all fields and all traditions of philosophical inquiry. It also supports the publication of the Womenʼs Philosophy Review, which provides the only British forum for the […]

Compulsory downshifting

News Compulsory downshiftingThe landmark case of the Open University v. its part-time staff is grinding its way through the courts towards likely victory for the associate staff on pro-rata fulltime employment benefits. Whilst this highlights a particularly bad case of handme-down employment conditions in the HE sector (one recent estimate puts pay at £8.00 per […]