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The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities

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... The fourth text, Donoghue (2008) The last professors, moves in a new direction and explores the plight of the tenured professor. Donaghue explains that although tenure affords professors much-needed and valuable "time to research and write as well as teach" (p. ...
... Two addressed social change, one addressed pedagogy designed to promote social change (Peckham, 2010), another argued for more of a feminist presence in corporate authorship (Ede & Lundsford, 1990). The final text (Donoghue, 2008) illustrated the bleak future of the tenured professor. ...
... The other two criteria employed in these studies (instruments, data), again, do not appear to be exclusive to theoretical research. Two of the studies, for example, incorporated autoethnographic reflection (Gee, 2007;Peckham, 2010); three drew on the authors' own research (Ede & Lundsford, 1990;Gee, 2007;Peckham 2010); three drew on others' research (Gee's, 2007;Ede & Lundsford, 1990;Peckham, 2010); two offered literary excerpts, either poems (Gee, 2007) or prose (Ede & Lundsford, 1990); one included an exploration of parent-child conversation (Gee, 2007); one examined student texts (Peckham, 2010); and another employed an analysis of historical events (Donoghue's (2008). ...
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The research methods landscape has the potential to be quite diverse. However, the paradigmatic battles between the two empirical research camps (quantitative and qualitative) and the more recent embracement of mixed-methods research has narrowly focused many fields’ attention, including that of composition studies, away from other sorts of useful methods, such as theoretical research. To address this, this sequential two-part study compares and contrasts the (a) purpose, (b) instruments, (c) data, and (d) structure of quantitative and qualitative research. Drawing on this four-part structure, this study advances composition studies research methods literature by posing and testing a definition of theoretical research through an examination of full-length core composition studies texts (N = 12). The article concludes by explaining the study’s relevance to the field and offering directions for future research.
... It is now widely accepted that increased focus on responsiveness has led in many instances to a shift from Mode 1 to Mode 2 knowledge approaches (Gibbons et al. 1994), from academic/theoretical to 'professional' programmes that prioritize skills, application and problem solving, with profound implications for research, teaching and learning in the university. Donoghue (2008) in particular argues categorically that 'an ethic of productivity' and efficiency -the ultimate expression of utilitarianism -has already won the day; those academic fields deemed impractical in social and economic domains run the risk of being deemed unnecessary; and academic specialists in these fields may 'come to be seen by everyone (not just those outside the academy) as unaffordable anomalies'. In support, Frank and Grabler (2006: 20) suggest that the content of higher education has also been driven by intrinsic factors related to the changing conceptions of what constitutes valid knowledge in society. ...
... This new trend is reflected in recent literature through descriptors such as: 'academic capitalism' (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004;Munch 2014); the 'entrepreneurial university'; the 'exchange university' and 'corporatization of academic culture' (Chan and Fisher 2008); 'the morphing of academic practice' (MacFarlane 2011); and transition from 'Homo Academicus to Homo Oeconomicus'. Even more extreme are those apocalyptic images such as 'the university in ruins' (Readings 2006); 'the last professors' (Donoghue 2008); 'the academic dean: an imperilled species' (Gmelch 1994), inspired by nostalgia for the old days where knowledge concerns prevailed over profiteering. But in this scenario, is university knowledge production and dissemination a public good? ...
Article
This article discusses the nature of university–society relations in response to the calls on South African universities for greater social and economic responsiveness driven by external stakeholders. The adoption of constitu- tional democracy and the provision of institutional autonomy have provided them with considerable freedom to pursue their goals in society. However, they have also left them under considerable pressure from competing inter- est groups, intensifying the levels of internal and external determination, very often in a conflicting manner. The article argues that current forms of determination (e.g. Constitutional framework, policy and stakeholder demands) on university operations cannot per se provide adequate options for university–society relations. Critical to effective university–society relations is the structure of production and distribution of knowledge. The problem in this regard stems from the failure to recognize the encroach- ment of the profit motive into the academy (the shift from a public good knowledge/learning regime to a neoliberal knowledge/learning regime). Under such circumstances, progressive virtues (self-development, positive human relations and informed citizenship), democratic principles (equity and social justice) and the commitment to social transformation guided by altruism and common good encapsulated in the South African higher education vision are under serious threat.
... It is now widely accepted that increased focus on responsiveness has led in many instances to a shift from Mode 1 to Mode 2 knowledge approaches (Gibbons et al. 1994), from academic/theoretical to 'professional' programmes that prioritize skills, application and problem solving, with profound implications for research, teaching and learning in the university. Donoghue (2008) in particular argues categorically that 'an ethic of productivity' and efficiency -the ultimate expression of utilitarianism -has already won the day; those academic fields deemed impractical in social and economic domains run the risk of being deemed unnecessary; and academic specialists in these fields may 'come to be seen by everyone (not just those outside the academy) as unaffordable anomalies'. In support, Frank and Grabler (2006: 20) suggest that the content of higher education has also been driven by intrinsic factors related to the changing conceptions of what constitutes valid knowledge in society. ...
... This new trend is reflected in recent literature through descriptors such as: 'academic capitalism' (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004;Munch 2014); the 'entrepreneurial university'; the 'exchange university' and 'corporatization of academic culture' (Chan and Fisher 2008); 'the morphing of academic practice' (MacFarlane 2011); and transition from 'Homo Academicus to Homo Oeconomicus'. Even more extreme are those apocalyptic images such as 'the university in ruins' (Readings 2006); 'the last professors' (Donoghue 2008); 'the academic dean: an imperilled species' (Gmelch 1994), inspired by nostalgia for the old days where knowledge concerns prevailed over profiteering. But in this scenario, is university knowledge production and dissemination a public good? ...
Article
Contents Access to, and Success in, Higher Education in Post-apartheid South Africa: Social Justice Analysis Chika Sehoole and Kolawole Samuel Adeyemo ....................1 Revisiting the Postmodern Condition of a Higher Education Landscape: South Africa’s Higher Education Epochal Archive, 1999–2002 Chaka Chaka & Mashudu Churchill Mashige .......................19 A Decade of Biomedical Research in West Africa (2005–14): A Bibliometric Analysis of the Ten Most Productive Countries in MEDLINE Williams Ezinwa Nwagwu ......................43 A Review of Academic Freedom in Africa through the Prism of the UNESCO 1997 Recommendation Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua, Klaus Beiter & Terence Karran..................85 Reconnecting the University to Society: The Role of Knowledge as Public Good in South African Higher Education Michael Cross and Amasa Ndofirepi .............................119 Availability of Study Time for Undergraduate Finance Students at an Open and Distance Learning Institution in South Africa C.F. Erasmus and G.P.M. Grebe .........................141 Towards the Institutionalization of Research Uptake Management in Sub-Saharan African Universities Sara S. Grobbelaar and Tomas Harber ............................155
... Indeed, every year we see a slew of new books addressing the fiscal, ideological, and civic implications of a university system in crisis (Bennet & Wilezol, 2013;Childress, 2019;Craig, 2018;Ginsberg, 2011;Nussbaum, 2016). The attacks on higher education cut across the political spectrum, from the baneful impacts of corporatization (e.g., Donoghue, 2018;Giroux, 2014;Schrecker, 2010) to claims of leftwing indoctrination (e.g., Ellis, 2021;Mac Donald, 2018;Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020). It is fair to say that few observers look to the future of higher education with optimism. ...
... In the higher education context, the term is used as a pejorative by mostly conservative critics, who denounce what they see as a radical campus climate inimical to the values of meritocracy, free speech, and colorblindness. Critics highlight instances of cancel culture, where speakers have been censored or 1 Though perhaps cheeky, we find the heuristic value of this rhyming phrase especially helpful for recall of the trends affecting higher ed. 2 For literature on "broke" themes, see, e.g., Childress (2019); Craig (2018); Donoghue (2018); Carey (2016); Giroux (2014); Williams (2012); Schrecker (2010). 3 For literature on "woke" themes, see, e.g., Ellis (2021); Herman (2021); Saad (2020); Murray (2019); ...
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Unsustainable student debt and a precarious labor market continue to raise public doubts over the value of a college degree. Observers note decades of grade inflation, eroding confidence in academic standards. Yet little attention has been paid to the perceptions of professors themselves. This report fills the gap by surveying 223 tenured professors in U.S. public universities. We query faculty on sensitive questions central to debate over academic standards. Results show a substantial fraction of professors affirms the serious problems of grade inflation and declining standards. Moreover, political orientation is the best predictor of where faculty stand on these delicate questions. We close by encouraging viewpoint diversity in higher education and greater self-awareness among liberal faculty of our collective biases.
... 161-162). In contrast, academics now have the "option" of new career pathways -either to become part of the managerial structure, managing the fiscal side of this new business, or accepting that their original role as educators is now unrecognisably transformed (Donoghue, 2008). The latter course requires that academics engage in myriad tasks linked to systems that, while purporting to decrease workload and facilitate teaching and research, achieve exactly the opposite. ...
... In line with neoliberal "'managerialism", traditionally self-governed university 3 A direct quote from the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, Paul Johnson, justifying his decision to axe 300 jobs after recording an operating surplus of $A90 million (Hiatt, 2015). schools have also been stripped of their former decision-making power (Donoghue, 2008). Academics have no say in newly proposed changes. ...
Article
Over the last 30 years, we have witnessed the impact of "neoliberalism"-a peculiar form of reason that configures all aspect of existence in economic terms-that has contributed to the re-definition of the role of university academics. Rather than being facilitators of knowledge, reflection and critical engagement with ideas, academics have instead become part of a system that has increasingly privileged economic considerations over curriculum. Academic work has been transformed into economically calculable "outputs", which are forever changing. Academics and students are reconfigured on the model of "human capital" that they must perpetually improve in order to be ready for the next change of rules. Education becomes redefined as "training" for future economic entrepreneurs learning to pursue unattainable economic goals. To reflect on these changes, we will also consider the Enlightenment idea of education. We conclude that the logic of neoliberal governance cannot be confronted on its own ground, since, in this model, institutions are "hollowed-out"-maintaining the shell but emptying the substantive content in order to reconfigure the whole in economic terms. We must return to the task of critically and historically assessing the logic of neoliberalism by shifting the ground of the inquiry, combined with a resistance to the neoliberal reckoning by arguing that it is not the only way to reason-there is an alternative. JEL klasifikace: I23 Socioekonomické a humanitní studie 2/ 2017 Vol. 7 74 ABSTRAKT V průběhu posledních 30 let můžeme sledovat narůstající vliv "neoliberalismu", zvláštního typu myšlení, které přizpůsobuje všechny aspekty existence pohledu ekonomie a které přispělo k redefinování role akademických pracovníků na univerzitách. Akademičtí pracovníci se z role zprostředkovatelů vědění, uvažování a kritické práce s idejemi stali součástí systému, který stále více preferuje ekonomické aspekty nad učebními osnovami. Práce akademických pracovníků se transformovala v ekonomicky kalkulovatelné "outputs", které se neustále proměňují. Akademičtí pracovníci a studenti se mění v "lidský kapitál", který je nutné neustále vylepšovat, aby tak byli připraveni na další změnu pravidel. Vzdělávání se nově definuje jako "školení" pro budoucí podnikatele, kteří se učí sledovat nedosažitelné ekonomické cíle. Při našich úvahách o těchto změnách se budeme také věnovat osvícenské představě o vzdělání. Dospěli jsme k závěru, že s logikou neoliberálního řízení se nelze konfrontovat na jejím vlastním poli, jelikož v tomto modelu jsou instituce "vyprázdněné"-zachovaly si svou skořápku, ale jejich věcný obsah byl vyprázdněn, aby tak bylo možné celek proměnit dle zásad ekonomiky. Znovu zde kriticky a historicky zhodnotíme logiku neoliberalismu tak, že proměníme způsob zkoumání a zároveň budeme oponovat neoliberálnímu přístupu, protože tvrdíme, že toto není jediná možnost a že alternativa existuje.
... Those policies were designed to accommodate a small subset of instructors amongst a mostly tenured professoriate. However, given the increasing numbers of contingent faculty and decreasing numbers of tenured and tenure-track faculty (Donoghue, 2008), current policies contrast with the logics of a permanent class of contingent faculty in two ways. First, as evidenced by the sample in this study, policies are misaligned with faculty hiring practices and length of service. ...
... Contingent faculty increases also correspond with increased pressures on everdecreasing numbers of tenure-line faculty to carry the academic load (Donoghue, 2008;Taylor, 2017). Yet, faculty policies have not been sufficiently revised, faculty cultural norms have not been sufficiently reimagined, and the now-permanence of contingent labor has not been suitably challenged to allow more inclusive participation in the academy. ...
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Public universities have assumed business-minded practices and norms that more closely align with goals and values of corporations than social institutions charged with creating and disseminating knowledge. One pervasive cost-savings strategy is the outsourcing of instruction to a contingent workforce. This case study explores the experiences of part-time and full-time non-tenure track faculty from undergraduate colleges across a striving, public, four-year research institution midway through its ten-year plan to attain Tier I Carnegie classification status and rebrand itself as a “very high” research institution. Findings describe contingent faculty experiences of the double-edged sword of autonomy. Their contingent status freed them from many responsibilities and oversight of tenure-line faculty but also alienated them from other meaningful faculty roles and activities. Drawing from academic capitalism, we theorize their work lives—grounded in now-antiquated notions of non-tenure-track faculty as casual labor, regardless of appointment type—provide descriptive insights into faculty culture and infer potential consequences of economic-minded faculty labor policies.
... Moreover, its outcomes are just as critical for a balanced life for Ph.D. students. Donoghue (2018) mentions the chronic problem of humanities Ph.D. academic underemployment, develops an argument for the social value of high-level humanities research and teaching, and outlines a series of measures for the reform of the Ph.D. in the humanities. The paper examined recent studies and leads. ...
... Second, we contend that the prominence of privatization in the literature has diminished, and its fragmented nature results in limited dialogue across lines of inquiry. Almost all of the books that directly addressed privatization were published between 2000 and 2010 (Bok 2003;Canaan and Shumar 2008;Donoghue 2008;Duderstadt and Womack 2003;Gould 2003;Kirp 2003;Morphew and Eckel 2009;Newfield 2008;Priest and St. John 2006;Rhoads and Torres 2006;Schrecker 2010;Slaughter and Rhoades 2004;Washburn 2005;Weisbrod et al. 2008). While research on privatization has not disappeared, there has been an ebb in scholarship that explicitly addresses the topic. ...
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Privatization in US higher education has recently been framed as the new normal, or something scholars treat as the default state of affairs with little expectation of change in the foreseeable future. In this chapter we synthesize the literature on privatization, calling for a renewed research agenda that challenges this normalization and reinvigorates study of this important topic. More specifically, we analyze the conceptualizations, origins, catalysts, and manifestations of privatization in the literature. We advance five arguments about the privatization throughout the chapter, underscoring conceptual murkiness, fragmented lines of inquiry, unanswered questions, and methodological limitations. We propose a multilevel framework to understand the privatization literature and bring together disparate strands of inquiry. We conclude by outlining a renewed research agenda on privatization, highlighting several directions for future research and advocating for improved data and research methods.
... 128). Even more, the academic world is driven by competitive achievement, productivity, and efficiency ( Donoghue, 2008 ). Competition is about achieving and getting those achievements to market before your colleague does, productivity is completing tasks within a given timeframe, and efficiency 9 is about expediency. ...
Chapter
In this chapter, Han, Robinson-Morris, Wallace, and Eaton focus on incomprehensibility as practice of becoming. As opposed to knowing, an extractive practice that dictates scholars and theorists should seek answers to questions through rigid methodological approaches, the authors reflect on how scholarly reading practices, dialogues about difficult texts, classes-after-the-class, and everyday practice during their time at Louisiana State University (LSU) illuminated the path of unknowing. Each exhibited a curiosity beyond the standard curriculum that spurned them into living the questions of where concept and life meet. The authors seek to recollect and textually recreate the intra-active engagement of being with one another at LSU and illuminate how each was transformed by deep intellectual friendship and always unfolding onto-epistemological engagement. In this reflective chapter, the authors create a tapestry of incomprehensibility as key to their ongoing processes of becoming in the present: as teachers, leaders, project managers, grant writers, community activists, theorists, philosophers, writers, and contemplative, speculative thinkers. Incomprehensibility as practice makes daily lived practices of their present-time permeable. They think beyond the time-space-mattering of LSU to how ideas, texts, relationships, meetings, happy hours, conferences, travel, festivities, and ongoing dialogues permeate the ever-present.
... Para Readings (1997) (READINGS, 1997, p. 22). Esse diagnóstico de crise é acompanhado também por Donoghue (2008), que aborda o efeito da diminuição dos postos efetivos na instauração de uma lógica de competitividade e por Ruth Barcan (2016) que, focando-se nos casos inglês e australiano, aborda o processo através do qual a Universidade vai de benemérita do Estado à estratégia de improvement individual 6 . Nos termos da autora, No modelo corporativo, o vocacional é remodelado e redirecionado para servir a empresa ou, mais recentemente, a 'marca'. ...
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O artigo discute a emergência de um projeto educacional chamado “Singularity University”. Inicialmente criado no Vale do Silício, ele compreende um conjunto de pressupostos teóricos e procedimentais que, baseados na chamada “tecnologia exponencial” procuram criar um novo modelo de ensino superior, alinhado aos princípios do universo tecnológico. Abordo os principais componentes do ethos intelectual que compõe o projeto, as profecias de futuro que embasam a literatura sobre o tema e, finalmente, a vinda da Singularity para São Paulo, com atenção para os efeitos que essa vinda tem na vida intelectual da cidade e, sobretudo, para os impactos desse novo modelo educional no debate público sobre o papel da universidade e dos intelectuais.
... If leadership is essentially relational and learning is a social, dehumanized, automated process, with remote deans and overloaded instructors on precarious employment contracts, this does not support a sense of community or meaningful staff and student engagement and satisfaction. If deans over-engineer their approach to leading and managing people remotely through a dashboard of metrics for optimal efficiencies, with armies of adjuncts and teaching assistants, while focusing on student numbers and rankings for prestige using a corporate logic ( Donoghue, 2008), inevitably they will experience tensions. A model of a contingent, part-time and outsourced workforce, weak unions, and a few highly paid research professors is already well established in some triple accredited business schools. ...
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Business schools are critical players in higher education, educating current and future leaders to make a difference in the world. Yet we know surprisingly little about the leaders of business schools. Leading a Business School demystifies this complex and dynamic role, offering international insights into deans’ dilemmas in different contexts and situations. It highlights the importance of deans creating challenging and supportive learning cultures to enhance business and management education, organizations and society more broadly.
... Consequently, questions related to knowledge production and dissemination are often considered within the parochial bubble of a traditional conception of academic profession as a secure, unilinear career path tied to a civil servant status. Let us state bluntly that this type of academic career is vanishing: it does not constitute the predominant mode of career trajectory in the leading scientific countries; it certainly does not reflect the experience of the majority of academic workers anymore (Bäker, 2015;OECD, 2021: 17;Pankin & Weiss, 2011: 3;Donoghue, 2008). As stated previously, there is much to unpack and problematize about the concept of academic freedom in the form of tenure, for tenure was invented to provide state protection, and not collective/political/activist freedom, to the academic staff. ...
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With contributions from six leading scientific countries of the Global North and from the general European Higher Education Area, this book questions the predominant view on academic freedom and pleads for a holistic approach. While academic freedom has been a top agenda point for the global scientific community in recent years, the public and academic discourse has often been marked by a negative interpretation of the term understood merely as exemption from state intervention and censorship. The contributions in this edited volume demonstrate, however, that this is not where the story ends: the ability to exercise academic freedom not only involves the freedom of expression in its abstract sense but should involve the capability to determine research agendas and curricula independently from market pressures or threats of career sabotage, and to resist workplace misconduct without fear of losing future career chances. Providing a differentiated picture of contemporary structural limits to academic freedom in advanced democracies, this volume will be of great interest for not only scholars of higher education, but for the entire academic community.
... The initial ideas of managerialism applied to education, at least in theory, aimed to serve higher aims through an attempt to making access to higher education more available and affordable when universities were managed more efficiently. Since then, managerialism has slowly delegitimized the former principles of academic collegiality, professionalism, as well as faculty control over their most important professional functions in teaching and research (Donoghue 2008;Ginsberg 2011;. Nowadays faculty often seems to play only a support role in their organizations whereas administration has been placed in the center (Tuchman 2009). ...
Chapter
This chapter highlights the under-representation of women business school academics in the burgeoning research impact agenda. We call here for delegitimizing gender inequality for women scholars in business schools. Our main arguments are (1) that there is significant hypocrisy between symbolic and substantive legitimacy in business schools; (2) business school branding claims that promote the United Nation’s (2015) sustainable development goals (SDGs) are at odds with internal discrimination against female faculty; and (3) gendered research impact is detrimental for the quality of women scholars working lives as well as for business schools as important sites of impactful knowledge pro-duction.
... Higher educators and cultural critics in the U.S. have long offered counters to such attacks; in the last century the most prominent of these were authored by Bloom (1987) and Hirsch (1988), though the English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott was significantly engaged with this issue since at least the 1960s (Williams 1989). This debate has continued in the more recent critical literature on U.S. higher education up to the present day, when it is not assumed as an unstated premise (see, for example, Readings 1996, Donoghue 2008, Newfield 2008, Nussbaum 2010, and Collini 2012. To go further, anyone who has taught in a conventional American university over the same period cannot help but be aware of the degree to which the attitude of vocationalism has taken root in this academic culture. ...
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This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education by first drawing on Edmund Husserl’s conception of “world” and connecting this notion to education conceived as a “world-disclosing” activity. The essay will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and specialization manifest themselves in contemporary university culture, and how they work together to “de-world” the lives of our students and deprive them of possibilities that are part of what it means to be human. After showing how this impoverishment undermines the world-disclosing function of higher education, the essay will then suggest one way to counter this “de-worlding of world”: the teaching of the situated finitude of the human condition by reminding our students that our knowledge or sense of the world is always only partial. It is this realization that has the potential of placing our students once again before the vastness of the world in wonder and curiosity. In this realization they will gain a better sense of the world as a distant horizon still to be explored in all of its inexhaustible complexity and meaning. At the same time, coming to grips with their own ignorance will imbue them with an intellectual humility that will shield them not only from their own finitude, but the finitude of others as well.
... 10 Existe gran cantidad de material académico que muestra la proliferación de la tendencia hacia la precariedad laboral del personal docente en las universidades de todo el mundo (Amable et al., 2001;Pardo y García, 2003;Jiménez, 2013;Donoghue, 2008;Crow, 30 de noviembre de 2008;Fernández de la Rota, 2009;Gill, 2009;Pini, 2010;Galcerán, 2010;Edu Factory y la Universidad Nómada, 2010;Schulz, 2012;Lluch, 2013;Martínez, 2013;Connell, 20 También existen alrededor de 3187 personas empleadas en cargos administrativos, operarios, personal de limpieza, entre otros, cuya condición implica contratos temporales, pero que tienen vías más claramente definidas por la Oficina de Recursos Humanos para ir alcanzando puestos en propiedad y, por tanto, estabilidad laboral. Además, las personas contratadas por la ucr, aún aquellas que tienen contratos temporales, tienen la posibilidad de ser parte del Sindicato de Empleados de la ucr (sindeu), organización cuyos afiliados entre personal administrativo y docente sumaban 2000 personas para el año 2019 (Núñez, 25 de junio de 2019). ...
Article
Este artículo es el resultado de una primera indagación exploratoria y descriptiva sobre la tercerización de servicios de limpieza en la Universidad de Costa Rica. Se basa en análisis documental y de contenidos de redes sociales, así como en observación no participante, para dar cuenta de las características en que se establece y profundiza la precariedad laboral de un sector de la comunidad universitaria que ha sido invisibilizado. Este proceso tiene lugar en el marco de la “modernización” neoliberal de una universidad pública que todavía se dice humanista.
... Collini, 2012;Fleming, 2019). The university is populated by professionals who are used to a great degree of professional autonomy and whose work also seems exceptionally well-fit for self-governance and self-organization (Hallonsten, 2021), and so the ubiquity of branding and superfluous demonstrations of quality and 'excellence' has led to a major discrepancy between on one hand the ideals, beliefs and professional reality of university teachers, and on the other hand the official messages conveyed by university managers in speeches, pamphlets, and on websites (Readings, 1996;Donoghue, 2008;Münch, 2014;Fleming, 2021). University managers across Europe and the United States seem to have made a habit out of following fashions and concentrating on surface rather than substance, for example repeating shallow and essentially meaningless slogans in 'vision statements' (Ginsberg, 2011, p. 51-52), focusing on documenting and displaying that announced procedures have been properly followed rather than making sure that anything worthwhile is done within their ranks (Collini, 2012, p. 108), and implementing policies in order to make things look good, rather than actually enabling their organizations to deliver on their core missions (Alvesson & Spicer, 2016, p. 31-32). ...
Article
Organizational scholars have long studied and theorized the apparent divergence of discourse and practice in organizational settings, and how it affects leadership, management, and professional work. In this article, we review this work and connect it to an hitherto unexplored philosophical line of thought from the writings of the late Czech playwright, dissident and president Václav Havel. In 1978, Havel published an essay that discussed the consequences of the disconnect between official discourse, promoted by the communist regime, and the everyday life of Czechoslovak citizens. His ideas about the ‘yawning abyss’ between the two, and the resulting ‘pseudo-reality’, are explored in this article, as food for thought about organizational life in late modern capitalism.
... Confusion or misinformation from teachers and even university instructors about teaching moral education is compounded by how the educational system has become a consumer-based product (EdChoice, 2020). Somewhere in the late twentieth century, education became a business, why it became a business is debated, but education now is a business (Donoghue, 2018). ...
Article
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Kinesiology is the science of human movement. Within the United States, kinesiology encompasses different sub-disciplines of human movement, e.g., exercise physiology, biomechanics, sport psychology, and philosophy, as well as, the professions of teaching, leading, and training. This paper addresses one issue, the lack of moral education in the preparation of kinesiology pre-professionals. Moral education is imperative for kinesiology students to address issues of right and wrong as well as engage in higher order reasoning however, many problems exist in applying moral education to kinesiology. First, even though 37 states have some sort of requirement that moral education is a part of the general public education curriculum, apparently, no direct teaching of moral values exists in public elementary, middle, and high schools. Students arrive at the university with no background. Second, direct teaching of moral values is nonexistent because: teachers and college instructors are not content experts in moral education, consumer-based education drives and affects students’ value of education, and the fallacious argument that ethics should only be taught to the young. Third, moral pedagogy is seldom applied. All of which directly affects kinesiology students in making decisions of right and wrong in a service profession. Therefore, the purpose of this narrative philosophical paper is twofold: to discuss the problems and dilemmas incorporating moral education in kinesiology curriculum and discuss three specific solutions, the: a) creation of moral development courses, b) use of writing intensive courses, and c) development of courses in pedagogy. A narrative philosophical approach discusses theory and supports with real life examples.
... This set of contributions criticizes the tendencies to corporatize higher education and to commercialize research; it represents, above all, a counterpoint to the idea of 'the entrepreneurial university' (Clark 2004). Some lament what they see as policies leading to a general decline of universities, the quality of scholarship, and the position of faculty (e.g., Readings, 1996;Donoghue, 2008;Evans 2004). Collini (2017) focuses particularly on the increased social inequality resulting from steeply rising costs of study. ...
... However, in line with recent evaluations of TDR in higher education (e.g. Rudhumbu et al., 2017;Appel and Kim-Appel, 2018;Fam et al., 2019;Guimarães et al., 2019;Duncan, 2012;National Research Council, 2013), we felt that our approach to reflective, processual and solutions-oriented TDR sometimes sat awkwardly with the lived realities of an academic setting that is increasingly fuelled by corporate objectives (Donoghue, 2008) and resource pressures, particularly under pandemic conditions. Our complex, conceptually-developmental project, we perceived, was unlikely to progress quickly through university processes and would need greater time for formulation than most research ventures. ...
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Purpose Despite the need for such, little scholarly attention has been paid to transdisciplinary enquiry into gender inequities in workplaces. The authors provide a pragmatic evaluation of the transdisciplinary research (TDR) model by Hall et al. (2012) for framing the study of this societal issue, shedding light on the challenges, principles and values that could usefully inform subsequent TDR in organisational settings. Design/methodology/approach This paper evaluates the model in relation to TDR on gender inequities in New Zealand's public service by Hall et al. (2012) Content analysis on our reflective narratives from research team meetings, email exchanges, informal discussions and a workshop reveals TDR study insights. Findings show support for the model and its four broad phases and surface principles and values for applied TDR enquiry that addresses societal challenges in the organisational context. Findings The adoption of a TDR model to examine a study of equity in the public service revealed practical and conceptual challenges, encouraging ongoing reflection and adaptive behaviour on the researchers' part. The pragmatic evaluation also highlighted environmental constraints on undertaking TDR, with implications for the ambition of future studies. Research limitations/implications This evaluative enquiry encourages similar research in other organisational and national settings to validate the use of TDR to gain insightful, contextualised understandings of social challenges centred in the organisational setting. Practical implications This pragmatic evaluation of a TDR model's capacity to approximate the approach and phases of our applied enquiry lays the groundwork to refining TDR approaches used in subsequent studies aimed at addressing societal issues in the organisational setting. Social implications This paper can potentially promote greater collaboration between research scholars and other stakeholders wanting to develop TDR paradigms and applied enquiry that can meaningfully inform workplace and societal impacts. Originality/value This pragmatic evaluation of a TDR approach involves its initial application to the study of equity at work and develops principles and values that could inform TDR paradigms and methodologies of subsequent enquiries in the field.
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This chapter surveys the literature which discusses the so-called relevance of the humanities. This survey frames the rest of the essays that follow and introduces the book as a whole.KeywordsThe humanitiesDeclineCorporate decision makingEthicWisdom
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Tradicionalmente las instituciones académicas se han manifestado como la vía esencial para el crecimiento individual y profesional. Sin embargo, en pocas circunstancias se vislumbran como mecanismo para dividir a los ciudadanos en estratos sociales. Basado en los escritos de Max Weber, Karl Marx, Paulo Freire, Valentín ofrece un breve trasfondo histórico sobre el origen de las instituciones académicas en América, y cómo los estilos tradicionales de enseñanza mantienen a la clase trabajadora impotentes al tratarlos como receptores pasivos y silenciosos del conocimiento. Formar empleados para la industria dejó de ser el objetivo esencial para las instituciones académicas. La ambición es la estrategia fundamental para mantener a la clase trabajadora esperanzada en una economía incierta y sobresaturada de competidores. En los últimos años se han incrementado los programas de emprendimiento en las universidades, sin embargo, y paradójicamente, la probabilidad de que una pequeña empresa sobreviva en Estados Unidos es de aproximadamente el 35%. El autor propone un rediseño de la educación con el fin que las instituciones universitarias se conviertan en organismos de cambio social, no en herramientas del espíritu capitalista
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Since its publication in 1990, Clyde W. Barrow’s book, Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894-1928, has been a touchstone text for generations of scholars studying higher education. This conversation between Barrow, Heather Steffen, and Isaac Kamola examines the book’s legacy in order to explore how the interdisciplinary study of higher education has changed over the past three decades. In doing so, they examine the space and place of academic knowledge and academic labor, offering an interdisciplinary discussion of critical praxis within the university.
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In this book, university education in Germany is subjected to a comprehensive examination and evaluation from an ideological, historical and contemporary perspective. This multi-perspectival approach addresses two research objectives: Methodologically, there are few political science studies that combine the classical history of ideas with concrete policy area research. Content-wise, this book furthermore represents the first complete report on higher education policy and amendments to higher education legislation in North Rhine-Westphalia under different state governments between 2005 and 2019.
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Il saggio tenta di focalizzare i vantaggi che la DAD (Didattica a distanza) ha permesso di conseguire, in primis il fatto che, grazie alla connessione, la didattica non è stata del tutto bloccata durante la pandemia. Tuttavia la DAD, che è più sbilanciata sull’istruzione che sull’educazione, ha generato nuove disuguaglianze, povertà educative ed altri svantaggi di natura psico-sociale. Dopo l’assorbimento traumatico della DAD perché effettuato in tempi ristetti e con autoformazione da parte di docenti e di studenti, anche il sistema accademico italiano sembra ormai essersi attestato su di un nuovo equilibrio che sembrerebbe far continuare a svolgere un ruolo alla DAD, anche una volta che l’emergenza sanitaria sarà terminata. Da emergenziale e sostitutiva della didattica in presenza, la DAD diventerà integrativa (anche se il mix con quella in presenza potrebbe variare all’interno della stessa ora di lezione, all’interno di uno stesso corso, nell’ambito dei diversi insegnamenti di uno stesso Dipartimento, tra vari Dipartimenti in un Ateneo). Si parla in proposito di Didattica integrata digitale (DID). Il paper vuole mostrare come questa integrazione tra didattica in presenza e DAD dovrebbe essere saggiamente governata e non semplicemente subita, dovrebbe essere una scelta effettuata consapevolmente dal sistema socio-educativo piuttosto che semplicemente risultare il frutto maturo dei processi di resilienza innescati dalla pandemia. Da questo punto di vista l’introduzione massiccia della DAD ha avuto nella pandemia la sua accellerazione, ma la DAD già corrispondeva ad un certo spirito dei tempi (era del pragmatismo); era in linea con un certo tipo di razionalità dominante (razionalità secondo i fini e razionalità strumentale); con una certa ideologia (il neoliberismo); con una filosofia politica (il populismo). La DAD sugellava l’incipiente declino dei “Maestri” già messo in discussione dalla computerizzazione dell’insegnamento/apprendimento. Quindi la DAD aveva trovato già condizioni ambientali estremamente favorevoli al momento della sua introduzione forzata nel sistema educativo. Nella ricerca del giusto mix tra DAD e didattica in presenza nella pianificazione dell’Università del futuro che avverrà alla fine della pandemia da Covid 19 si tratta però di non dimenticare l’importanza dei Maestri e delle Maestre e di tenere ben presente che il rapporto educativo è una relazione di cura molto concreta, che si basa su di uno scambio di doni reciproci tra studente/docente che è favorito dalla prossimità, che si fonda su alcune passioni (l’amore per il sapere e l'empatia), che ha bisogno del corpo, che è importante avvenga in un luogo “pubblico” creando comunità. Bisogna anche interrogarsi su quali tipi di saperi saranno necessari per capire e governare la complessità della crisi pandemica (che è associata ad altre crisi: economica, sociale, ambientale, politica, bellica) e per poter affrontare le sfide correlate ad essa, incluso l’avvento di un vero e proprio cambiamento di paradigma economico-sociale in direzione di un'ecologia integrale.
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The study focuses on academic career attrition in the context of neoliberal academia and science policies emphasizing the need for excellence and social responsibility in academic production. The goal is to understand the relation between the development of academic identity and attrition among those who have left the academic path up to five years after PhD completion, with acknowledgement of the effect that academic identity has on academic career ambitions. Based on 28 narrative interviews with former academics from various research fields, we identified four trajectories of academic identity development (one of stable academic identity and three of lost academic identity), four narratives of attrition (disillusionment, a search for new purpose, refusal to sacrifice personal life and academic inadequacy) that explain these trajectories, and three ideals of “proper academic” (humanist, leader, absolute academic) that are reflected in these narratives. We conclude that the academic environment creates an academic identity paradox in which not only the loss of or obstacles to developing an academic identity but also its strength and stability can weaken academic career ambitions and contribute to attrition because of the need to perform only excellent academic work. The paradox seems to relate to the high-performance culture of neoliberal academia and to the specific gender aspects of the STEM field because it appeared to function differently in regard to discipline and gender. We show that neoliberal academia, despite the ideals of current science policies, loses academics caring for these ideals in STEM fields, especially women.
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Following an approach of cultural epistemology this chapter is dedicated to the examination of both the inner and outer factors which enable academic freedom for the faculty (i.e., university scholars, scientists, teachers). According to the author, universities today are increasingly forced “to navigate the treacherous waters of social usefulness and relevance” while attempting to preserve their nature as institutions “devoted to autonomous research and instruction.” Against the backdrop of Max Weber’s lecture Wissenschaft als Beruf (“Science as Vocation”) the author interrogates the subjective conditions of autonomous reason and the objective conditions of its free exercise. Max Weber’s lecture orients the argumentation towards the demands of a higher purpose—of an ultimate end—that requires and justifies free intellectual pursuit.
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Intellectuals are in a strict sense a product of the societies in which they are historically located and from which they could not assume a sense of themselves as an independent social force. Nor could they have developed an intellectual trajectory entirely peculiar to them as exclusively autonomous of the state. Their challenges, compromises and failings therefore, cannot be objectively evaluated in absolute disregard of their realities and social options. Rather, these must all be measured in clear reference to the determinate circumstances in which they operate—bearing in mind the material conditions encountered and transmitted to them from their past traditions. Drawing on the role of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in building and defending the academies and societies in Nigeria, this article discusses the engagement by African intellectuals with the decolonization project and their quest for academic freedom and institutional autonomy in their relations with the state. As an itinerary for future research, it shows that far from being democratically transformatory, given its character, namely, its lack of autonomy, its non-developmental orientations and other underlining problems endemic in its pathologies, the nature and role of the state in Africa in relation to decolonization, knowledge production and the universities, are subversive. Such subversion induces class conflict and socio-economic inequalities. It undermines ideational governance, institutional stability and respectful engagement with Africa as an autonomous location and original source of intellectual production, among other components of the pan-Africanist liberatory project.
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At the 2019 meeting of the AAR in San Diego, Dr. Brad Stoddard led a workshop that encouraged graduate students to look outside academia for potential jobs. As the academic job market tightens, many qualified people are left scrambling for careers in theirfield of study. As Stoddard suggests in his workshop, the answer may lie in pursuing work outside the field of academia. Following Kelly Baker’s example, Stoddard showcases how much work is available through a portfolio career, offering advice on reinventing oneself academically, obtaining freelance work, and finding employment in non-profits that likely will fulfill one’s intellectual hopes and dreams.
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Taking up the suggestions made by Eugene V. Gallagher and Joanne Maguire in their article, “Teaching Religion to Undergraduates in the 2020s: A Preliminary Reconnaissance,” this essay addresses one means of thinking about writing assignments in introductory religion courses at the undergraduate level with “broad goals” and “institutional mission” in mind. The essay begins with a description of the institutional context and proceeds to describe an argument analysis writing assignment for a general education religion course that attempt to draw out the “workforce competencies” developed in the exercise. Framing assignments explicitly in terms of the workforce skills students will hone offers teachers the ability to display the transferrable skills they help students develop and provides an avenue to connect assignments to the institution’s mission statement.
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Big Digital Humanities has its origins in a series of seminal articles Patrik Svensson published in the Digital Humanities Quarterly between 2009 and 2012. As these articles were coming out, enthusiasm around Digital Humanities was acquiring a great deal of momentum and significant disagreement about what did or didn’t “count” as Digital Humanities work. Svensson’s articles provided a widely sought after omnibus of Digital Humanities history, practice, and theory. They were informative and knowledgeable and tended to foreground reportage and explanation rather than utopianism or territorial contentiousness. In revising his original work for book publication, Svensson has responded to both subsequent feedback and new developments. Svensson’s own unique perspective and special stake in the Digital Humanities conversation comes from his role as director of the HUMlab at Umeå University. HUMlab is a unique collaborative space and Digital Humanities center, which officially opened its doors in 2000. According to its own official description, the HUMlab is an open, creative studio environment where “students, researchers, artists, entrepreneurs and international guests come together to engage in dialogue, experiment with technology, take on challenges and move scholarship forward.” It is this last element “moving scholarship forward” that Svensson argues is the real opportunity in what he terms the “big digital humanities,” or digital humanities as practiced in collaborative spaces like the HUMlab, and he is uniquely positioned to take an account of this evolving dimension of Digital Humanities practice.
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This study investigates to what extent activist-scholars in U.S. public universities are reassured by the safeguard of academic freedom when considering whether to express their politics publicly. Drawing from 31 in-depth interviews with a diverse pool of faculty from multiple institutions, this study interrogates activists-scholars’ sense of academic freedom protection as it intersects with their race and gender as well as their academic rank. This article argues that in order to ensure the effectiveness of academic freedom policies, not only is it necessary to assess the moments where academic freedom is overtly violated, academic freedom also must be assessed and reassessed constantly within its sociopolitical and economic context. The participants’ narratives reveal that academic freedom—the ostensible bedrock of the U.S. university system—is in fact a stratified freedom drawn across academic-rank lines, reflecting the racial and gender hierarchies of larger society, and that the culture of the academy encourages conformity rather than ethical risk-taking. In addition to advancing our understanding of how academic freedom operates, this study aims to inform institutional policies and practices contributing to higher education accountability efforts by elucidating ways of reinforcing the academy’s social mission.
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The skills and knowledge required to engage in entrepreneurship are vital elements of participating fully in contemporary society. We consider the “crisis” in the liberal arts in the USA and show why entrepreneurship can and should be considered fundamental to a renewed and contemporary conception of the liberal arts. Integral to our arguments is a pragmatic view that considers research and teaching in entrepreneurship to be inextricably intertwined. By examining the study of organizations across several social science and humanities disciplines, we highlight the relative narrowness of the current empirical domain of much entrepreneurship research associated with business schools and management journals and develop examples showing the potential theoretical value of substantially expanding the empirical domain of entrepreneurship as organization creation for both research and teaching. Our argument is that the study of entrepreneurship as a new liberal art can be an important source of individual and group emancipation and a fundamental means through which entrepreneurs can become who they want to be while creating the impact on the world they envision. We offer this as a statement of the appropriate domain of entrepreneurship to guide our approach to both research and teaching.
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Corporate university is a unique form of educational arrangement to accomplish an organization’s goals by building the intellectual capital of its employees. In the academia, it is a relatively new concept that gained foothold during the 1990s. While it is a fertile area of research with several works unravelling its diverse aspects, only a few studies have delved into building the knowledge blocks of the concept of corporate university. Therefore, this study aims at investigating the major clusters of corporate universities obtained from the extant literature. In this study, 207 pertinent articles were retrieved from Scopus, an online electronic database. Post this, co-citation and citation analysis was performed on the 207 articles and a co-citation matrix was formulated to enlist the clusters of corporate universities. Subsequently, multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques were used to extract the essential clusters of corporate university. Finally, five major clusters emerged: (1) corporate university as a source of competitive advantage, (2) corporate university as a layered concept, (3) reimagining corporate university through technology, (4) corporate universities: paradigms and models and (5) corporate university: performance metrics. Results of this study can act as leading insights for future studies and practitioners.
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Drawing on the conceptual work of “Bifo” Beradi’s colonising the soul, and Rose’s governing the soul, this chapter examines the possibilities of academic resistance to neoliberalism. Using narrative practice and biographical double-listening, the authors explore what is understood as the first and second stories. The first story captures rich description of social and mental suffering occurring within neoliberal academic spaces. The second story elicits the values, skills and knowledges being used by both authors to navigate the space in generative ways. Giving voice to these narratives enables shared analysis, re-gaining a literacy about experience of academic life, which in turn opens up further cracks for agency as a practice of resistance. These agency ‘cracks’ are explored in what is discussed as a delicate activism.
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Between 2013 and 2015, the ensemble yMusic collaborated with graduate student composers in a residency at Duke University. This article positions the residency as a result of the transformation of the university and the new-music ensemble from a technocratic Cold War paradigm to their contemporary status under the market- and branding-oriented logics of neoliberalism. The works written for yMusic by the Duke composers were deeply informed by the ensemble's musical brand, including its idiosyncratic instrumentation, preexisting repertory, collaborative ethos, and relationship to popular music. In accounting for the impact of these institutional developments on the production of musical works, this article argues that the economic and ideological practices of neoliberalism have discernible aesthetic consequences for American new music. Given the key role of the ensemble and the university in the contemporary music landscape, the issues raised by my ethnographic and historical analysis have significant implications for new music in the twenty-first century, and for the way composers work in the United States and beyond. © 2018 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved.
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Dieudonné observes changes between 1890 and 1920 in industrial financial capitalism through an examination of the emergence and needs of new figures in US higher education. This chapter focuses on different visions of the institutionalization of business training in higher education. A war for power between institutions erupted with the explosion of business schools competing with the university. The stakes is to underline the issues of power and governance of educational institutions which are torn in a conflict of interest between higher education financing modalities, their initial purpose as an academic body and the will of businessmen. With an underlying Veblenian reading, the chapter raises the question of power and competing interests between industry, finance and education at the turn of the century in the United States.
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The attacks that concern us began with the overblown and sweeping conservative-versus-liberal rhetorical dichotomy of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.” They have been filled out by the arguments of the “conservative” institutional infrastructure funded by the network organized by the Koch brothers described in Jane Mayer’s 2016 Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. They have two components, as documented in the largely anthropological literature on “audit culture” and the film Starving the Beast. One is the diffuse attack described in the literature on “corporatization” that is associated with the general defunding of higher education. The other is the direct and focused attack on governance, peer review, faculty control of the curriculum, and tenure.
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