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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

the neo-liberal university « Previous | |Next »
March 4, 2011

According to David Harvey, neoliberalism is the idea that “the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market.

In Neoliberal Arts and the 21st Century University in The Post-Corporate University ----part of the experimental series of Liquid Books by Culture Machines Stefano Harney says that in a neo-liberal university:

higher education promises... “success.” And in the 21st century, success refers to specifically to an integrated relationship between the daily life and capitalism, held in place by a career. Those who do not have a career, who are “unsuccessful,” are consigned to a lower tier of existence, characterized by fewer rights and privileges. While success may find representation in many socially valuable signs (a fit body, a manicured mind, a well-planned family, a managed portfolio, and a learned approach to stylish consumption), at the end of the day, these signs are only the symptoms of late-stage capitalist development, when every expression of the self can become an exploitable resource.

The consequence of all this is that we live in a culture which teaches that success is reflected in signs of care and management (what Foucault calls “governmentality”), but that these signs both emanate from the economic means to pursue them and, in the end, result in economic opportunity. In this mode of governance both as an end point and origin for human life, capitalism is elevated to a formidable metanarrative in our neoliberal era, and the university administration’s agenda tends to be driven by market concerns.

The university is no longer a site of knowledge --it is also a site of business:

Not only does it produce the workforce of this new economy, from bond traders in the business school, to graphic designers in the art school, to biochemists in the science labs, but it increasingly enters that urban economy directly. This is so not just in the old ways of land speculation and urban development, so characteristic of American urban universities in the last thirty years, but also with joint ventures with the private sector, intellectual property right controls, more targeted state-funded policy research, and privatised education and health management. It shows its hand as an employer in this new economy seeking flexibility and specialization from its graduate student workers, and it reaches into the global economy for overseas students and cheap sports team shirts.

Such a university is no longer a special place in capitalism one removed from incessant comparison and competition in preparation for exchange. It is an educational business.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:46 PM |