Introduction
Under the ethos of neoliberalism , universities have been transformed. In Australia, the alignment of higher education provision with neoliberalism began in the 1980s, as successive governments advocated the need to boost efficiencies, productive competition and public accountability , all deemed lacking within the system of university self-governance.1 The economic logic of reform ran counter to dominant conceptions of universities as collegial institutions concerned with public and democratic purposes.2 The dominance of market-driven business models instituted by governments through regulatory regimes and a volatile, mainly lean or declining funding policy environment has similarly reshaped higher education in variegated yet consistent ways in the global north and south.3
Twenty years of scholarship on the neoliberalisation of higher education has captured its features in designations such as the corporate 4 or enterprise university,5 the entrepreneurial university6 and the overarching descriptor, the neoliberal university.7 All universities are now entrenched in academic capitalism, 8 internally distorted by an audit culture 9 and governed by managerialism that is intensified in internal conflicts over the purpose and conditions of academic work .10 These shifts and their collateral damage to academic autonomy and professional standing are captured in new designations of the measured university11 and the toxic university .12
However, there are cracks in the neoliberal university that still present opportunities for academics to pursue alternative priorities, resistances and refusals .13 Seeing through neoliberalism is anchored in the strong traditions and values of academic freedom , autonomy, participatory and cultural democracy and the public good . In this book, as Readings14 noted, âdwelling in the ruinsâ of the university is our starting-point for interrogating, understanding and articulating new ways of seeing the substance and politics of change.
Resisting neoliberalism in higher education : seeing through the cracks and a second volume, on prising open the cracks, aim to shed light on how academics are surviving neoliberal changes and working the spaces15 of managed life in universities. We use the metaphor of seeing through the cracks to emphasise the diminished space of âtraditionalâ academic purposes within neoliberalised universities. It references the double meaning of academics seeing neoliberal and authoritarian managerialist processes for what they are; and articulating how we are continuing to find spaces to work in collegial ways that defy neoliberal logic : that is, a logic of bringing closure to non-economic aims of academic work 16; a logic of seeing ourselves as brands, cost centres and purveyors of education and research .
This collection furthers our understanding of current trends in working conditions under corporate managerialism in higher education in diverse contexts, with a focus on teaching-research-service academic work alongside critical responses and initiatives. This chapter provides a brief account of how the books came about, then discusses some key features of the increasingly ruthless managerialism that drives universitiesâ internal reshaping of academic work . We then place our focus on resisting neoliberalism within the tradition of critical studies in higher education and explain how seeing through the small âwindowâ of free education in Australia situates our view of academic work . Finally, we introduce the chapters of this volume, organised around the themes of seeing outside-in and inside-out. Throughout this chapter, we refer to âthe universityâ as a shorthand for the diversity of institutions and to emphasise that our concerns are connected into ongoing struggles over the idea of the university.17
Back Story
As our initial work on this volume was conducted in Melbourne, Australia, we respectfully acknowledge the Ancestors, Elders and families of the Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung of the Kulin who are traditional custodians of these lands and have been for many centuries. We pay respect to the deep knowledge embedded within the Aboriginal community and unique role of the Kulin Nationâs living culture in the life of this region. Thinking about the transformation of universities, the cultural protocol of Acknowledgement of Country brings to the fore questions of power , privilege , equity. The colonial establishment of Eurocentric universities deliberately excluded Indigenous people, their knowledge, science and culture18 and thus entailed the âlogic of eliminationâ19 that undergirded genocidal massacres, expropriation of lands and resources, Stolen Generations and a school-to-prison pipeline, all carried into the present through widespread societal refusal to acknowledge systemic racism and White privilege . Because neoliberalism is built on structures accomplished through the dispossession, colonisation and the empire building of industrial and corporate capitalism, the issues we raise concerning contemporary universities âmust be understood within the context of historical struggles for voice, participation and self-determination â20 that shaped contemporary universities and continues in the present.
This book and Volume II grew out of several research events conducted at local and national levels. These research activities were very much inspired by the opportunity to work with Professor Antonia Darder, an eminent critical theorist, Freirean scholar, activist and Leavey Endowed Chair of Ethics & Moral Leadership , Loyola Marymount University and Professor Emerita, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. As part of a Visiting Professorship at Victoria University, Melbourne, Antonia gave a keynote presentation on The Legacy of Paulo Freire: The Continuing Struggle for Liberation and facilitated resear...