(Palgrave Critical University Studies) Michał Izak, Monika Kostera, Michał Zawadzki (Eds.) - The Future of University Education-Palgrave Macmillan (2017)

Palgrave Critical University Studies
Series Editors
John Smyth
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield
United Kingdom
Universities everywhere are experiencing unprecedented changes and
most of the changes being inflicted upon universities are being imposed
by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion, and little
understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or destroyed.
The over-arching intent of this series is to foster, encourage, and publish
scholarship relating to academia that is troubled by the direction of these
reforms occurring around the world. The series provides a much-needed
forum for the intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-
conceived and inappropriate university reforms and will do this with
particular emphasis on those perspectives and groups whose views have
hitherto been ignored, disparaged or silenced. The series explores the
effects of these changes across a number of domains including: the
nature of academic work, the process of knowledge production for
social and public good, along with students’ experiences of learning,
leadership and institutional politics research. The defining hallmark of
this series, and what makes it markedly different from any other series
with a focus on universities and higher education, is its ‘criticalist agenda’.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14707
Michał Izak • Monika Kostera • Michał Zawadzki
Editors
The Future of
University Education
Editors
Michał Izak Monika Kostera
Lincoln Business School Durham University
University of Lincoln Durham, UK
Lincoln, United Kingdom
Michał Zawadzki
Institute of Culture
Jagiellonian University
Cracow, Poland
Palgrave Critical University Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-46893-8 ISBN 978-3-319-46894-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5
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SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
Naming this book as a Critical University Studies Series gives it a very

distinct and clear agenda. The over-arching intent is to foster, encourage
and publish scholarship relating to universities that is troubled by the
direction of reforms occurring around the world.
It is a no-brainer, that universities everywhere are experiencing unpre-
cedented changes. What is much less clear, and there are reasons for the
lack of transparency, are the effects of these changes within and across a
number of domains, including:
• The nature of academic work

• Students’ experiences of learning
• Leadership and institutional politics
• Research and the process of knowledge production, and the
• Social and public good
Most of the changes being inflicted upon universities globally are being
imposed by political and policy elites without any debate or discussion,
and little understanding of what is being lost, jettisoned, damaged or
destroyed. Benefits, where they are articulated at all, are framed exclusively
in terms of short-term political gains. This is not a recipe for a robust and
vibrant university system.
What this series seeks to do is provide a much-needed forum for the
intensive and extensive discussion of the consequences of ill-conceived and
inappropriate university reforms. It does this with particular emphasis on
v
vi SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
those perspectives and groups whose views have hitherto been ignored,
disparaged or silenced.
The defining hallmark of the series, and what makes it markedly differ-
ent from any other series with a focus on universities and higher education,
is its ‘criticalist agenda’. By that we mean the books raise questions like:
• Whose interests are being served?

• How is power being exercised and upon whom?
• What means are being promulgated to ensure subjugation?
• What might a more transformational approach look like?
• What are the impediments to this happening?
• What then, needs be done about it?
The series intends to foster the following kind of contributions:
• Critical studies of university contexts, while they might be local in

nature, are shown to be global in their reach.
• Insightful and authoritative accounts that are courageous and that
‘speak back’ to dominant reforms being inflicted on universities.
• Critical accounts of research relating to universities that use innova-
tive methodologies.
• Looking at what is happening to universities across disciplinary fields,
and internationally.
• Examining trends, patterns and themes, and presenting them in a
way that re-theorizes and re-invigorates knowledge around the status
and purposes of universities.
• Above all, advancing the publication of accounts that re-position the
study of universities in a way that makes clear what alternative robust
policy directions for universities might look like.
The series aims to encourage discussion of issues like academic work, aca-
demic freedom and marketization in universities. One of the shortcomings of
many extant texts in the field of university studies is that they attempt too
much, and as a consequence their focus becomes diluted. There is an urgent
need for studies in a number of aspects with quite a sharp focus. For example:
(1) There is a conspicuous absence of studies that give existential

accounts of what life is like for students in the contemporary uni-
versity. We need to know more about the nature of the stresses and
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE vii
strains, and the consequences these market-driven distortions have

for the learning experiences of students, their lives and futures.
(2) We know very little about the nature and form of how institutional
politics are engineered and played out, by whom, in what ways and
with what consequences in the neoliberal university. We need
‘insider’ studies that unmask the forces that sustain and maintain
and enable current reform trajectories in universities.
(3) The actions of policy elites transnationally are crucial to what is
happening in universities worldwide. But we are yet to become
privy to the thinking that is going on, and how it is legitimated and
transmitted, and the means by which it is made opaque. We need
studies that puncture this veil of silence.
(4) None of what is happening that is converting universities into
annexes of the economy would be possible without a particular
version of leadership having been allowed to become dominant. We
need to know how this is occurring, what forms of resistance there
have been to it, how it has been suppressed and the forms of
solidarity necessary to unsettle and supplant this dominant
paradigm.
(5) Finally, and taking the lead from critical geographers, there is a
pressing need for studies with a focus on universities as unique
spaces and places—possibly in concert with sociologists and
anthropologists.
We look forward to this series advancing these important agenda and to

the reclamation and restitution of universities as crucial intellectual demo-
cratic institutions.
John Smyth, Series Editor

Professor of Education and Social Justice
University of Huddersfield, UK &
Emeritus Professor, Federation University Australia
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: The Future of University Education 1

Michał Izak, Monika Kostera and Michał Zawadzki
Part I Dissecting the Status Quo
2 Academic Freedom in the Corporate University:

Squandering Our Inheritance? 19
Carl Rhodes
3 The University of the Common: Beyond

the Contradictions of Higher Education
Subsumed under Capital 39
Krystian Szadkowski
4 “The Last in the Food Chain”: Dignity of Polish Junior

Academics and Doctoral Candidates in the Face of
Performance Management 63
Michał Zawadzki
5 The Culture of Control in the Contemporary University 85

Łukasz Sułkowski
ix
x CONTENTS
Part II University in Context
6 Living in a World of Foam: Global Ideas, Bubbles,

Institutions and the Fairy Tale of Business
Education 111
Carmelo Mazza and Paolo Quattrone
7 The Future of the University? Social Activism among

Young Polish Scholars 123
Krzysztof Leja and Anna M. Kola
8 University as a Terminal: Socio-Material

Infrastructure for Post-Neoliberal
Society 145
Krzysztof Nawratek
Part III Teaching and Research
9 McLearning and the So-Called Knowledge Society:

An Essay 159
Roy Jacques
10 Neoliberalism’s War against Higher Education

and the Role of Public Intellectuals 185
Henry A. Giroux
11 Re-Imagining Business Schools of the Future as Places

of Theorizing 207
Hugo Gaggiotti, Peter Simpson
and Svetlana Cicmil
12 Re-Integrating the Professional Learner:

The Complementarity of Teaching
and Research in Academic Life 227
David Sims
CONTENTS xi
Part IV Into the Future
13 Escape from the Neo-Liberal Higher Education Prison:

A Proposal for a New Digital Communist University 245
Roger Hallam
14 A Curious and Collaborative Future 271

Todd Hannula
15 Speculations on University Futures in 2025: Corporate

Cloning, Intellectual Underground, and a New Critical
Awareness 293
George Cairns
16 2021: A Campus Odyssey 309

Monika Kostera
17 Anti-Coda 329
Index 337
LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1 Dignity at work 66

Table 5.1 Selected “neoliberal” management methods in public
sectors 88
Table 5.2 The axis of cultural change in universities 103
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Future of University

Education
LEGACY
Gazing at Raphael’s masterpiece The School of Athens, one is confronted with
a range of characters epitomizing distinct branches of knowledge – predo-
minantly represented by ancient philosophers, and firmly presided by Plato
and Aristotle positioned in the centre of the composition – debating, dis-
cussing and arguing. The spirit of theoretical exchange and intellectual pur-
suit imbues the canvass; whether protagonists are freely gesticulating,
reading or plunging deeply in their thoughts, they are clearly at liberty to
choose their style and their way of seeking for truth and understanding.
M. Izak (*)
University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
e-mail: mizak@lincoln.ac.uk
M. Kostera
Durham University, Durham, UK
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden
e-mail: monika.m.kostera@durham.ac.uk
M. Zawadzki
Institute of Culture, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
e-mail: michal.w.zawadzki@gmail.com
© The Author(s) 2017 1

M. Izak et al. (eds.), The Future of University Education,
Palgrave Critical University Studies,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_1
2 M. IZAK ET AL.
Indeed, both Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum (although – if

Cicero is to be believed – neither of the two was the actual founder of his
respective institution) could hardly be farther from the educational frame-
work of top-down instruction, and certainly in neither institution a model
of the modern master teacher was embraced. While Raphael’s work
suggests some sort of institutionalization, likely of ecclesiastical origin
(Janson and Janson 1997), despite both educational initiatives having
physically emerged in ancient Athens, they have not intended to concep-
tually re-appropriate the premises for pure educational purpose:
Academeia was considered a public park and Lyceum a gymnasium in its
proper sense, in which apart from intellectual displays physical (including
military) displays would also likely take place (Lynch 1972). Rather than a
formal institution, Academy was a gathering of people interested in pursu-
ing a particular field of study, e.g. mathematics, philosophy or astronomy,
through dialectical exchange with their tutor, leading to establishing an
argument or solving a disagreement. Lyceum was just as informal, though
Aristotle’s decades-long experience as a member of Academia filtered
through his unique methodological sensibility and resulted in emphasizing
the importance of research in addition to teaching: the sound judgement
was to be formed on the factual grounds following from inquiry, and the
former was easier to establish if the facts were first acquired and only then
discussed (Pedersen 1997). In both cases, however, learning was an inher-
ently intellectual process empowering the learner – to be able to reason
better, using available methods and clues as well as (especially in Lyceum)
mastering new ones, was its very goal. Both also stressed the comprehen-
sive development of the learner, not only his (almost exclusively his,
although Academia admitted women, exceptionally) narrowly defined set
of skills, in this way anticipating the humanist notions (Pedersen 1997).
Consequently, the instructor would be a master of method rather than a
data bank; he would facilitate the inquiry process, while the student could,
in fact should, surpass him in terms of factual expertise. Those gatherings
were relatively non-hierarchical and open (although caveats, e.g. gender
related, would apply to both), in opposition to many other schools active at
the time (e.g. Pythagorean). The key was to create a sense of community of
the pursuers/lovers (Philo) of wisdom (Sophia).
The Justinian reforms (529 AD) temporarily put an end to this philo-
sophically inclined educational activity (in fact, it is likely that Peripatetic
school had already been inactive at that point), and for the following three
centuries educational activity was performed almost exclusively in
1 INTRODUCTION: THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 3
monastic communities. While due to turbulent times most Carolingian

reforms (ninth century AD) were short-lived, Charlemagne’s dream to
establish the monastic education as a source of know-how and leadership
within, but also beyond, the Church, resulted in the emerging of a limited
number of schools, the curriculum and rationale of which were bounded
to serve Church’s needs1. While the trivium’s (grammar, rhetoric and
logic) goal was to endow the priest with the ability to speak well and be
inspiring, the higher course of study, quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy and music), was largely designed to make him a good manager
of (again, Church’s) property and income. Starting from the eleventh
century AD, the four-part curriculum enabled for developing of expertise
and thus introduced a variation between the types of instruction provided
in different schools (e.g. Orlean school specialized in classical studies, and
Bec monastery headed by Anselm in Law studies). However, the monastic
form of learning showed little variety – a text generally accepted as
important (e.g. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius) would be read
aloud by the instructor and copied by the students. Then, instructor’s
further explanations would follow and would be noted by the students on
the margins. While manifold political and social factors also came into play
(see: Pedersen 1997), it is against this background and largely in opposi-
tion to the ex cathedra model of instruction that in late eleventh and early
twelfth century the university would emerge.
The Paris and Bologna Universitas – the unions of students and masters –
were inspired by the political drive to independence as much as motivated
by the will to teach and learn differently, the latter and former being
mutually associated with one another. Unidirectional instruction gave way
to the right to debate, scrutinize arguments and criticize in the spirit of
scholastic method. The rationale of developing future members of clergy
became transformed in developing oneself as a skilled thinker, speaker and
researcher. University as a concept – so keenly embraced in many European
countries from the mid- twelfth century throughout the high Middle Ages –
drew from ancient roots embodying the principles of freedom of inquiry
(even if bounded towards particle types of consideration or directed towards
developing particular types of mind frames characteristic to e.g. law and
medicine) and independence from particular ideologies or social pressures
(even if those were also historically infringed on numerous occasions
[Minogue 1973]).
According to some accounts, to modern days, the right to academic
freedom is – next to the right to some form of self-government and the
4 M. IZAK ET AL.
right of conferring its own degrees – one of the major determinants

making an educational institution a university (Hamlyn 1996). It is not
to say that university education ever was or should be considered in the
utter disconnection from wider social and institutional frameworks in
which it is unfolding: freedom to pursue knowledge may come at a cost,
especially if the state is involved in financing it (Hamlyn 1996). On the
contrary, institutional freedom is supposed to be conscious of the condi-
tions of its own existence. Within these very frames, academic freedom can
blossom, potentially turning those very limitations into objects of inquiry
(Hamlyn 1996). This freedom however needs to be further qualified; after
all, surely, it does not entail every possible aim, course of action or agenda
(some of which could potentially be explicitly anti-humanist in every
possible sense). In addition, as we are reminded in this volume by Carl
Rhodes and Roy Stager Jacques, respectively, that academic freedom must
never be taken for granted and should never be reified, as it has been
differently construed in different times and places.
While Allen Philip Griffith’s attempt to deduce the very essence of
university can be rightfully criticized for methodological reasons
(Hamlyn 1996), nevertheless his proposition that universities essentially
aim to pursue the deeper understanding of universal objects, and that this
process entails the reciprocal relationship between the learner and the very
object of learning (1965), in many ways approximates the sentiments
shared by the editors of this volume. First, we believe, university and the
educational process within it should assume deep study – an attempt to
embrace the object of learning from a multiplicity of angles and appreciat-
ing the different roles it may fulfil in different social and political agendas.
For example, a particular historical fact may demonstrate itself differently
depending on the context (e.g. national and cultural) in which it is being
discussed. Second (and consequently), studying at the university level
would mean enabling for the object of study to come into dynamic
relationship with its agent: how we approach what we learn affects the
outcome, and the latter may, reciprocally, affect the learner. As we learn
more, we change our attitude towards the objects of learning (e.g. by
contextualizing them), and also potentially affect the future modes of
existence of those objects by e.g. reshaping their social perception.
Finally, the things we learn are expected to be sufficiently universal to
allow for this multiplicity of perspectives and dynamism of the learning
process to occur; i.e. there are other educational contexts for learning how
to cut hair, while hairdressing as a socially embedded practice could be an
object of study for e.g. a candidate for the BA degree in Sociology.

The university, therefore, should enable for an open-minded, thorough,
contextualized and self-reflexive inquiry regarding objects of general inter-
est – such inquiries push forth our understanding of a variety of phenom-
ena, but should not be compelled to contribute to only particular,
narrowly defined interests and agendas.
Conceiving of university through a historical process of its emergence,
both as a notion and as a practice, provides a platform for reconsidering
the current attempts to reshape it, conceptually as much as practically. This
volume hopes to provide an opportunity for reflection on such changes in
terms of identifying their main characteristics and rationales. To the extent
some of them are deemed disconcerting by students and faculty members,
it also aims to initiate the process of formulating a well-informed response.
PAIDEIA
The cultural mission of the university is defined by Henry Giroux (2010)
as an obligation to constantly critically reflect on the sociocultural envir-
onment and intervene in the reality in order to initiate changes to it.
According to the philosophy of radical pedagogy, which we consider
important for our reflection upon academia (Freire 2001; McLaren
2002; Giroux 2010), the university remains a unique place to prepare
students both to understand and influence the larger social forces that
shape our lives. It is a special fragment of the public sphere, where people
should be able to combine hope and moral responsibility with the pro-
ductivity of knowledge as a part of broader emancipatory discourse.
Higher education must be considered a vital component of a mature
public sphere (Bloom 1987). Only then can it offer students and aca-
demics the opportunity to involve themselves in the most acute problems
of the society and acquire the knowledge, skills and ethical vocabulary
necessary for modes of critical dialogue and forms of a broadened civic
participation.
It is important to develop a proper educational context for students, so
that they can come to terms with their own sense of power and train their
public voice as individuals and as potential social agents (Collini 2012).
Universities should assist students-citizens by enabling them to examine
and frame critically relevant questions. Students-citizens should be aware
that what they learn in the classroom is part of a much broader and
fundamental understanding of what it means to live in a global democracy
6 M. IZAK ET AL.
(Nussbaum 2010). That is why the main element, which allows the
university a possibility to generate democratic changes in the society, is
cultural competence; thus it is first and foremost knowledge acquired in a
reflexive way by academics and students. The ability to think critically,
enabling to intervene in the reality, results from the development of such
cultural competence based on symbolic capital. This kind of capital can
only be accumulated as a result of passionate interaction with knowledge.
Today, such interactions are disappearing under the influence of the
short-term demands of the societies and markets. Surrender of universities
to these demands turns them into closed systems incapable of critical
intervention in the reality (Biesta 2013). The current instrumental pres-
sures relieve the university from its traditional obligation to teach students
how to think critically, how to make a connection between self-knowledge
and broader social issues, how to take risks and how to develop a sense of
social responsibility. Turning its back on public interest, the academy has
largely opened its doors to serving private market interests and in doing so
has compromised its role as a democratic public sphere (Furedi 2006). This
is very dangerous because the cultural role of the university is strongly
linked with the condition of democracy in the society. Democracy cannot
work, if citizens are not autonomous, self-reflective, critical and indepen-
dent – these are qualities which people should acquire at the university, and
which are indispensable for citizens and students, if they are going to make
vital judgments and choice about participating in and shaping decisions
that affect everyday life, institutional reforms and governmental policies.
From our point of view, introducing both internal (at the university)
and external (in the society and culture) changes is connected with acquir-
ing knowledge by students and academics, which is possible through
critical dialogue with texts and authorities. Through the reflexive and
critical communication people are able to develop cultural competences,
which are necessary to establish a civic attitude to acting in the society. But
the process of critical interpretation in communicative action cannot be
structured, if we want it to have a potential to bring about change; people
must be autonomous in making interpretations in order to be able to
develop communicative and critical skills (Rorty 1989).
Learning by experiencing requires deliberative communication in
which different opinions and values face one another, and where care is
taken to acknowledge each individual holding some position – by listen-
ing, deliberating, seeking arguments and evaluating others – while at the
same time making a common effort to articulate values and norms which
everyone could agree with (Habermas 1985). Communication in educa-

tional processes must be based on the possibility to constructively use the
power of argument. While such a possibility is potentially associated with
questioning authorities, it also entails due respect for them and for all
other interlocutors as well. The key seems to be to render the vision of an
authority (teacher, author) as someone who is worth discussing with –
without imitating – embedded in the teaching process.
We need to return to the true meaning of education as paideia: to
recreate the true desire for knowledge and true interaction with knowl-
edge, which can empower the human. Knowledge arises from profoundly
salient personal experience with text and a systematic deliberative dialogue
with other people – this is what makes up the contents of symbolic culture
allowing insight into the complexity of the reality, the development of
critical reflection, imagination and a sense of quality. Knowledge facilitates
the development of symbolic capital and makes critical intervention in
social reality possible, while the level of knowledge capital – and not the
position occupied in social structures with their pecking orders – deter-
mines one’s elitist status. Preparing people to be the cultural elite and not
a social cluster of careerists and philistines is one of the main tasks of the
university. The quality of this task’s fulfilment determines the level of
democratization of the public sphere.
STATE OF PLAY
Recently, much has been said about the crisis, or indeed the fall, of the
university as a profession, idea and social institution (e.g. Ritzer 1993;
Schuster and Finkelstein 2008; Nussbaum 2010; Ginsberg 2011; Collini
2012). Universities used to be sites of dissent, civil courage and societal
conscience but have now instead become pseudo-businesses.
Under casino capitalism, higher education matters only to the extent that it
promotes national prosperity and drives economic growth, innovation, and
transformation. But there is more at stake here in turning the university into
an adjunct of the corporation, there is also an attempt to remove it as one of
the few remaining institutions left in which dissent, critical dialogue, and
social problems can be critically engaged. (Giroux 2011)
Instead of raising awareness, academics have turned into fierce rivalling

individuals, seeking grants, increasingly disconnected from other
8 M. IZAK ET AL.
academics and from any sense of wider obligation or professional commu-

nity (Morgan and Havergal 2015). Academic freedoms have been more or
less completely abolished in Western Europe and the US and are now
undergoing the same process in other parts of the world. Research is being
increasingly subordinated to the interests of grant-givers. Systems of
tenure that used to guarantee a security of employment that could result
in vocal expression of social criticism are becoming eroded and in some US
staftes even legally outlawed (Giroux 2011). Students, who once used to
be the driving force of all social change, on the first lines whenever and
wherever there were demonstrations, social movements, revolts, are nowa-
days a rather passive and puzzled crowd, burdened with a future of likely
unemployment and gigantic debts:
Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are
unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system
of debt, they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a
disciplinary technique, and, by the time students graduate, they are not
only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the disciplinarian culture.
(Chomsky 2011)
George Ritzer coined in 1993 the term “McUniversity” to refer to the

emerging depersonalized, business-like and mechanistic provider of higher
education, which was increasingly replacing the traditional university, erod-
ing academic ethos and professional judgement. It offers mass education on a
mass market and produces quantifiable and predictable research. Knowledge
is now considered to be a resource, to be bought and sold, measured,
submitted to systems of ranking and accreditation and efficiency-oriented
streamlining and impersonal control (Ritzer 1993). Higher education today
fails to “cultivate the capacities for critical thinking and engaged citizenship”
(Giroux 2011). The discourse about measures and measurability has replaced
the conversation able to voice social concerns about “good education”
(Biesta 2010). The “banking model” (Freire 2000) of education, where
prepackaged knowledge is disposed into the students minds for storage as
an “investment” has conquered the world. And, unsurprisingly, universities
fail at this strategy, they do not fulfil the financial or vocational aims that they
promise and they are just not adapted to performing such a social and
economic role (Collini 2012).
Stefan Collini, in his much cited book What Are Universities For?
(2012), argues that universities still have different missions and aims
than those officially upheld and advertised in terms of investment and

realization of concrete political and social ends such as decreasing of
unemployment. And yet, whatever universities are today, their social
impact remains stronger than ever – they are replacing factories in their
role as largest single employers and the “fulcrum of society, the institution
on which society pivoted” (Haiven and Khasnabish 2014, p. 38). They are
today’s “key of struggle” (Haiven and Khasnabish 2014, p. 36) and thus,
for anyone interested in the future of society, they present both a theme
and the site for discussions about where we, humanity, are collectively
heading. Even though diminished, eroded and changed beyond recogni-
tion, universities are still sites of pleasure and resistance (Berg and Seeber
2016), if not on the surface and within the official institutional frames,
then as nomadic underground spaces, alive with lines of flight (Deleuze
and Guattari 2004) which academics, old as new, open and use. “The line
of flight is a deterritorialization” (Deleuze and Parnet 1987, p. 36), a line
of disruption: creation and change, a radical critique and a revolution,
beyond the taken for granted spaces that are subject to defining control.
Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber’s delightful book, The Slow Professor
(2016), remind academics of who we are, of why we entered this particular
path of life, “uncovering the secret life of the academic, revealing not only
her pains but also her pleasures (2016, p. 12).
The university is both there and not there; an institution profoundly
immersed in wider global processes, which, at the moment, can perhaps
best be described as intensely uncertain. This book focuses on one area of
this crises’ consequences – that of higher education. Zygmunt Bauman
proposes that this phase of the already greatly unstable liquid modernity
(2000) can best be described as an Interregnum (2012). He adopts
Antonio Gramsci’s metaphorical expression to depict a society where the
old systems and institutions have ceased working, the old order has already
collapsed, but no new order is yet at place. This is a moment of not only
extraordinary insecurity but also possibility: new ideas which may have
seemed absurd or impossible under the old order can now be at least
tasted, discussed and tested against a completely unknown future.
What will it bring us? To some degree, it may depend on the current
quality of our conversations. Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish (2014)
suggest that we use radical imagination to envisage the research of the
university of a post-capitalist future. This book proposes to explore, by
radical imagination and dialogue, the possible future of higher education
in a post-interregnum society. Some of the contributing authors believe
10 M. IZAK ET AL.
that a post-capitalist state will emerge, whereas others envision a kind of

reformed, democratized and enlightened capitalism. All see a place for
universities as providers of higher education, but not as a continuation of
the current tendencies. Most also would not like to see a return of the pre-
liquid university, based on hierarchy and solid modern (Bauman 2000)
reproduction of systems of privilege and rank, such as patriarchy and class
structure. All, in their own ways, discuss the manners of embracing this
shift, whether they perceive it as imminent, imperative or both.
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The chapters adopt different styles of writing, from realistic to poetical.
Such a hybrid structure is not only one of the book’s unique traits, but
also a manifesto in itself: the book is an expression of all the contribu-
tors’ faith in more dynamic times yet to come, after the bleak era of the
interregnum. In dynamic times hybrids, explorers of borderline realities
are very much appreciated, because they bring challenge, amusement
and hope. In harsh times, the choices seem, for most people and
organizations, to be limited to avoiding the greater evil. Such times
are binary and there is no place for hybrids. In the best case, they are
unseen. Hybrids are rare, never form mainstreams, and are not very
visible. Cultural and social blends, genre fluidity, the ambivalent,
ambiguous and fluctuating inspire and provoke, wake up the mind to
think and imagination to flow. Thus, while being marginal themselves
they induce the emergence of ideas that form larger streams, some of
which become main. Hybrids also are an accurate barometer of the
times. The day when hybrids are welcome and visible again will mark
the end of the interregnum, which is detrimental towards diversity and
abundance, which make creativity and renewal possible.
The questions that the chapters take up concern themes that all of the
contributors find pertinent and of great importance. What is the role of
the university going to be after neoliberalism and liquid modernity?
What kind of place in society (if any) will it have? What and whom will it
educate – and who will be doing the educating? What is the relationship
between research and teaching going to be? Between training for a job/
profession and studying? Is academia going to, once again, become a free
profession or is there no way out of work alienation? What is the role of
the university in the context of change and emancipation? When the
interregnum is over, who will be needing universities and for what aims?
The book consists of 15 chapters grouped according to 4 broader

themes: “Dissecting the Status Quo”, “University in Context”, “Teaching
and Research”, and “Into the Future”. Without delimiting the richness of
content of each of the chapters, which in line with our request for con-
tributions often indeed span between categories, we hope that such group-
ing enables the reader to easily identify the pivotal area where the
contribution is made. The book is a tale, a collectively told story, which is
why we have chosen to base its structure on narrative logic. The chapters are
organized around a plot, or, in Aristotelian terms (2006), a whole consist-
ing of three parts: beginning, middle and end. Barbara Czarniawska (1997)
adds that “plot is the basic means by which specific events, otherwise
represented as lists or chronicles, are brought into one meaningful whole”
(p. 18). There is a fundamental uncertainty in our collective tale, a radical
discontinuity between the past and the future creating suspense within it.
We have accentuated the suspended “middle” of the plot by splitting it into
two parts, in which we are looking for ideas and possibilities of a resolution
on the outside, as well as the inside of the academy.
The four opening chapters “dissect the Status Quo” in their own respec-
tive ways. Carl Rhodes makes a powerful argument for academic freedom
and how it can be reclaimed. Managerialism and the idea that humans
should always engage in competitive individualism has turned universities
around the world into businesses: something very distant from the academic
ideal. In order not to lose its meaning and sense of existence, academics
need to accept responsibility for academic freedom and fight for it, so as not
to squander our inheritance. Krystian Szadkowski’s text discusses contra-
dictions that afflict higher education sector subsumed under capital. The
author employs Marxist critique to argue that the capital should be con-
sidered as a pole of coordination of the higher education sector. Michał
Zawadzki explores the relation between performance management ideology
at the Polish university and the dignity of junior academics and doctoral
students. Using his research findings the author examines how neoliberal
reforms of the university affect the academic dignity, which is dependent on
the autonomy, freedom, and discursive and deliberative communication, as
well as space for resistance and non-conformity, among others. Łukasz
Sułkowski presents his critique of the neoliberal style of university manage-
ment, which is strongly connected with an audit culture. “Point scoring
obsession”, “culture of control”, “productivity” or “accountability” are the
examples of the modern nomenclature in the contemporary, corporate
university. Do we have and need a third way in developing contemporary
12 M. IZAK ET AL.
university, which might overcome negative factors connected with neolib-

eral and Humboldt models?
The second theme is focused on providing the wider context in which
discussion on the future of the university education unfolds. Thus,
Carmelo Mazza and Paolo Quattrone reflect on the homo oeconomicus
as a prevalent idea shaping contemporary work at the university. From the
author’s point of view, the current neoliberal narration in the higher
education involving such terms as “efficiency”, “cost cutting” or “quality
control” is a kind of fairy tale, which must be deemed dangerous. Anna
Kola and Krzysztof Leja consider the possibility of a “third way” in the
development of universities, neither going along with tendencies of neo-
liberalization, nor steering universities back into a feudal past. They call for
a bottom-up approach, based on initiatives coming from the inside of the
academic community. The chapter presents a study of the Polish social
movement Obywatele Nauki (the Citizens of Science), uniting of young as
well older activists, working for the common good and the good of the
university seen as an important social institution. Krzysztof Nawratek takes
up urban development as theme and, based on his pedagogical experience
from the Silesia region of Poland, proposes an inclusive approach to
campus planning. A university space, excluded from thinking in terms of
profit, but instead focusing on human needs and values, should bring
people closer together and allow space for social experiments, testing the
possibility for a post-capitalist future.
In “Teaching and Research” section, Roy Stager Jacques offers a well-
considered exploration of “Mclearning” – a fast food-inspired educational
model – attempting to better understand its origins and assumptions, as well
as, without downright rejecting it, taking an issue with its totalizing and
dangerous aspects. Among others, he ponders its applicability in the uni-
versity context, emphasizes the issue of shared responsibility for its existence
and points towards professoriate as potential agent of change. Henry
Giroux’ chapter addresses economic, social and cultural threats to higher
education and calls to defending this public good against neoliberal
attempts to perceiving it in purely economic and pragmatic terms, poten-
tially leading to moral and agentic impoverishment of future generations. In
this vein, he exhorts to embrace pedagogy of wakefulness: creating space for
critical thinking, informed interpretation, and entailing possibility of inter-
vention in the world. In another radical twist, Hugo Gaggiotti, Peter
Simpson and Svetlana Cicmil, propose to re-examine the institutionalized
realities of business schools in terms of both their role and practice. They
propose to transform business schools into places of theorizing, able to

critically reflect on existing dominant epistemologies in management edu-
cation and keen to produce theoretically informed meanings, rather than re-
produce neoliberal discourses on business and management. David Sims’
chapter argues that teaching and research cannot be separated, that they are,
in fact, complementary activities, each of which declines if not accompanied
by the other. The current times bring a loss of meaning in several areas of
social life, including academia. Atomistic modes of thinking lead to splitting
apart of things that should not be separated and create pathologies such as
narcissism and a failure to create learning communities.
Finally, the remaining four chapters discuss distinctive future scenarios
offering insights regarding theoretical, sociopolitical and technological
trajectories of development. Roger Hallam’s chapter is a bold statement
in favour of change. On the basis of astute critical analysis of the current
dynamics in the area of higher education, he proposes an outline for a
radical reformulation of university as an institution towards “digital com-
munism”: an inherently co-operative project, eluding traditional economic
and (despite its name) political distinctions, and conceptually drawing from
the heritage of social institutions traditionally occupying the fringes of the
social system. Todd Hannula, a highly original voice, uses his experiences as
reflexive management practitioner to explore the following key elements:
curation, technology, distribution and teams, and predicts the future uni-
versity to be based on the idea of distributed education. Not location, but
the human being and his or her creativity will be the focus of such higher
education. George Cairns presents his own conjectures regarding the state
of the university in the year 2025, using critical framework to analyse the
factors, which might determine the future form of academia. In doing so,
he identifies the key determinants responsible for bringing universities to
where they are now. Monika Kostera’s chapter is an exploration of the
domain imagination of various contributors and specifically to how they
envisage the future of the university. This text is based on a study carried
out as a narrative collage, i.e. a method focused explicitly on investigating
imaginary spaces. The contributors were asked to write short fiction taking
place in the future in a campus setting. The stories were collected, inter-
preted and made sense of by the author.
We envisage that this varied collection of texts, going well beyond
stating the facts or providing ready-made recipes, will generate momen-
tum for further discussion on the future of university education, and,
potentially, will became a small contribution towards change.
14 M. IZAK ET AL.
NOTE
1. In the Arabic part of the world the first educational institutions, madrasas,
were also founded as early as in the mid ninth century.
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Michał Izak, PhD, is a senior lecturer in management at the University of

Lincoln, UK. His research interests include emerging organizational discourses,
critical management studies, fiction as a reflection of organizational dynamics and
organizational storytelling. He publishes regularly in peer-reviewed journals, and is
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16 M. IZAK ET AL.
Management at the Durham University, UK, and Guest Professor at Linnaeus

University, Sweden. She holds several visiting professorships. She has authored and
edited over 35 books in Polish and English, including her last book, Management
in a Liquid Modern World with Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman and Jerzy
Kociatkiewicz (Polity), as well as a number of articles published in journals includ-
ing Organization Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management and
British Journal of Management. She is associate editor of Management Learning
and is serving on several editorial boards. Her current research interests include
archetypes, narrative organization studies, ethnography and the humanistic turn in
management. Her website is: www.kostera.pl.
Michał Zawadzki, PhD, works at the Institute of Culture at the Faculty of

Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University, Cracow. He
has authored several books, articles and book chapters which occupy a range of
topics within the area of humanistic management, especially critical management
studies. He is a Visby Program scholar (Gothenburg Research Institute).
PART I
Dissecting the Status Quo

CHAPTER 2
Academic Freedom in the Corporate

University: Squandering Our Inheritance?
Carl Rhodes
Corporate style management and its attendant culture of competitive

individualism is increasingly prevalent as the mode of governance used in
universities around the world. At a time where neoliberalism has all but
succeeded in becoming the master discourse that defines the workings of
all social, political, cultural and economic institutions, it is at the hands of
“management” that the vision of market-driven research and education
will be realized. This management is conceived such that it can and
should, through its own volition, control an organization that thrives
under competitive market conditions, or at least conditions that are con-
structed on an idealized model of a market. In such a scenario manage-
ment becomes conflated with the whole organization, such that the will of
the collective exists only with those charged with managerial tasks. As per
the classic corporeal metaphor, managers are the at the head doing the
thinking, planning and directing, while the rank-and-file are willingly
obedient limbs entrusted only to do the heavy lifting.
The liberation that is offered by neoliberalism is one of the market and
of the institutional actors that compete within that market. Inside the
economic black box of the institution, however, it is liberty that has been
C. Rhodes (*)
UTS Business School, The University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: carl.rhodes@uts.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_2
20 C. RHODES
put at stake, most especially, in university settings, the liberty of the

individual academic subject. It is this question of liberty, in particular the
legacy of academic freedom, that I will address in this chapter. I will do
this with specific attention to my own professional context and experience
as it relates to research in business schools in Australia and the United
Kingdom. In one sense my reason for this focus is simply that, having
worked in these two countries, I might claim some experience and insight
into their machinations. As well as this, however, the business school itself
has in many ways been the innovator and progenitor of the neoliberal
university, and these developments are paralleled in the university systems
in these two countries.
In Australia, for example, education is the country’s fourth largest
export, with 3 in every 5 international students graduating from a business
school. This amounts to a massive export industry of $5.4 billion (ABDC
2016). In the UK one in seven undergraduates and one in five postgrad-
uates study business and management in some 120 business schools;
figures that seem even more astounding when one thinks that prior to
1965 there were no UK business schools (AIM 2006). If the university is
transformed, under neoliberalism, into a quasi-corporation competing for
revenues and pursuing an endless dream of growth, then it is the business
school that exemplifies and has lead this transformation. It is in this
context that I will consider the pressing issue of academic freedom,
ultimately, through a temporalization that connects an inherited past to
a future to come. Academic freedom, through this articulation, is less an
old reality as much as it is a promise and a commitment. Structured as a
promise, this is a freedom that we have inherited from the democratic
tradition of the university and the belief that free inquiry is a central part of
social liberty; not just liberty for individual scholars but for society as a
whole. Academic freedom has been central to the meaning of the uni-
versity, as it can be traced back in Europe at least to the thirteenth century.
Since then, however, it is not something that has ever been realized
historically, instead marking an ongoing struggle for the democratic
necessity of the creation of knowledge that defies the dictates of dogma,
whether it be that of the state or the church.
At a global level this struggle continues, and the direct suppression of
academic knowledge and persecution of academics continues. The events
in Turkey in early 2016 are a telling example of the real dangers of speak-
ing out against the will of political power today. It was on 10 January that
a group of scholars under the name “Academics for Peace” signed a letter
2 ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY . . . 21
calling for independent international observers to be allowed into the

country as a means of dealing with state violence against civilians in the
Kurdish provinces. President Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan responded immedi-
ately, accusing the organizers of the group of treason and beginning
prosecutions under anti-terrorism laws. The letter was deemed to be
“terrorist organization propaganda”. The result was a widespread crack-
down involving academics being dismissed or suspended from work, and
in some cases imprisoned (Ugur 2016).
The terrible events in Turkey present a contemporary example of how a
state government can wilfully and overtly oppose academic freedom
through the exercise of judicial and police powers. The present era has,
however, seen a further extension to the limitation of academic freedom,
especially in countries like Australia and the UK, and it is this that I wish to
focus on in this chapter. Under neoliberalism it is a new set academically
internalized and ideologically mediated market and financially based
values that pose an additional threat. In other words free inquiry is not
just under attack from external power, as in Turkey, but also, in more
subtle ways, from within. This new threat is not so extreme as to involve
individual academics facing legal charges of terrorism and resulting in
imprisonment, and no such comparison should be made. It is however a
significant extension of the same problem and one that deserves attention.
Whereas in Turkey the “Academics for Peace” were persecuted through
the execution of state power, under neoliberal conditions it is market and
financial power that prevail. The question that arises is how, despite these
conditions, the promise of academic freedom can still be kept, and how
the values that connect the university with democracy can remain unde-
pleted by the forces of neoliberalism as manifest in the corporate
university.
This chapter begins with a brief historically informed review of the
meaning of academic freedom. This review shows how attestations to
academic freedom have, since the European Middle Ages, revolved around
the need for academic inquiry to be pursued without either constraints or
imperatives from church or state. Indeed, in the time of the
Enlightenment it was this very freedom that became a defining value of
the modern university, even though struggles and debates over academic
freedom have been present up until contemporary times. The second
section considers the position of the university under prevailing conditions
of neoliberalism, understood following Wendy Brown (2015) as the
encroachment of economic and market logics on all forms of human
22 C. RHODES
endeavour, not the least education. This discussion paves the way for
assessing the political pressures on academics that mark out new limita-
tions on academic freedom in the present age, focussing especially on
research audit and ranking regimes in place in the UK and Australia. The
third part of the chapter goes on to consider how the corporate university
has emerged as a response to these conditions, and to assess the implica-
tions of this for academic freedom. In this context the university is con-
ceived less as an institution founded on democratic values, and more as
one governed through managerial imperatives with which academics are
expected to comply. Freedom, thus understood, is the freedom to pursue
a set of metricized goals that are centrally defined by university managers
who respond positively to state injunctions for quasi-market competition.
The fourth section examines the impact of the corporate university, and
its systems of ranking and audit, on individual academics. Here it is
suggested that academic freedom is under threat from a form of university
management that is driven by an expectation of compliance. One common
response by academics is to “play the game”, with managerial impositions
on academic freedom proving difficult to resist. The final section of the
chapter considers the future of academic freedom under conditions of
neoliberalism. While no specific end-state is predicted, it is argued that
academic freedom has always been a subject of contestation based on a
resistance to that which threatens it. It is in this sense that academic
freedom is presented as a promise that it inherited, rather than a reality
that has been lost. Moreover, to give up on academic freedom is to
squander our inheritance, rather than accepting its gift and nurturing it
for future generations of scholars.
FREEDOM!
In considering academic freedom, we can ask at the outset exactly what is
it that academic inquiry should be free from. Since its emergence in the
Middle Ages as a value centrally defining the meaning of universities,
academic freedom has been asserted against the influences of two domi-
nant institutions: freedom from the church and freedom from the state. In
terms of the former perhaps the most classic illustration can be seen in
Galileo’s seventeenth-century defence of the heliocentric model of the
universe. Against the church’s view that the earth was the centre of the
universe, Galileo provided telescopic observations to prove that this was
not the case. The church responded, through Inquisition, by instructing
him to abandon his opinions such that he was to never speak of them
again, and certainly not teach them. Not doing so meant that Galileo was
accused of heresy and threatened with torture and imprisonment.
It was a desire to overcome the dominance of religion over science and
philosophy that centrally informed the institutionalization of the modern
university in Germany in the eighteenth century. Through the
Enlightenment academic freedom came increasingly to define the mean-
ing of the university in Europe, especially as it related to the pursuit of
secular knowledge unconstrained by theological dogma. It was at this time
that the meaning of academic freedom was explicitly and definitively
formulated in relation to the capacity of universities to be self-regulating
so as to be free of external interference or threat from church or govern-
ment (Connolly 2000). This formulation built on traditions that had been
present since the inception of European university’s in the Middle Ages.
Indeed, as early as 1220 the University of Bologna was embroiled in a
conflict with local government over whether students should be com-
pelled to pledge allegiance to the city. In that case, Pope Honorius III
intervened by insisting that the university resist the city in the name of
“libertas scholastica” (Hoye 1997).
As Geoffrey Stone (2015) recounts, the history of academic freedom
can be traced back even further to twelfth century Europe and the forma-
tion of prestigious autonomous universities run by officials who were
elected by the members. While this, importantly, marked out self-manage-
ment as being central to universities, that did not translate simply into the
absence of external controls when it came to scholarly inquiry, as the
University of Bologna case suggested. Indeed, at that time while university
self-governance was beginning to be enshrined, scholarly inquiry itself was
far from free, with knowledge being constrained within the limits of
religious dogma. The association of truth with religion was, and remained,
dominant throughout the Middle Ages, and beyond.
Academic freedom did not exist in a historic idyll, it was always some-
thing that had to be fought for. Indeed, despite growth of secular and
humanistic knowledge during the Enlightenment, this era cannot be
regarded simply as a “golden age of academic freedom”, with there having
been many examples of state encroachment on scholarly inquiry using
theological rationale as its justification (Hoye 1997, p. 410). The success-
ful secularization of knowledge finally took hold in the Industrial
Revolution as a result of the increased demand for technological, industrial
and commercial knowledge (Boden and Epstein 2011). Even then,
24 C. RHODES
however, no singularly dominant perspective was in place, especially when

it came to science. A central example is the public debate over Darwin’s
theory of evolution in the late 1800s and its refutation of the biblical
account of creation. Despite public consternation, however, this did mark
an important juncture in that the view increasingly dominant in scientific
circles was that if knowledge was to advance then it must arise from
dissent, such that “science and education joined forces to attack both
the principle of doctrinal moralism and the authority of the clergy”
(Stone 2015, p. 4).
By the time Michael Polyani was writing about academic freedom in the
mid twentieth century a new set of limits had begun to appear that,
echoing the case of the University of Bologna more than 700 years earlier,
were more exclusively concentrated on freedom from political authority.
What Polanyi feared was attempts both to direct research towards state
sponsored projects, or to restrict it, so as to avoid politically sensitive
issues. The contemporary academic freedom that Polanyi (1947) defended
was defined by him as “the right to choose one’s own problem for
investigation, to conduct research free from any outside control, and to
teach one’s subject in the light of one’s own opinions” (p. 583). The
purpose of this freedom was not for the existential benefit or happiness of
the individual scientist or researcher. Instead, freedom was considered the
best way through which research could be organized and knowledge could
be advanced. Polanyi claimed that, for researchers, “any attempt to coor-
dinate their efforts by directives of a superior authority would inevitably
destroy the effectiveness of their cooperation” (p. 583). Simply put,
Polanyi valued academic freedom because spontaneous self-organization
is the best route to scholarly achievement. This is not, of course, to say that
individual scientists should benefit from engaging in an idiosyncratic or
solipsistic agenda of inquiry. Polanyi was clear that scholarly progress is
buttressed by individual curiosity and creativity on the one side, and the
traditions of one’s disciplinary location on the other. Intellectual self-
determination and intellectual discipline go hand in hand.
While he was writing about academic freedom in the 1940s, Polanyi’s
ideas echo the issues of today. What he recognized was that if university
research is, at least in part, funded by the state, then the state may well “bring
to bear on [academics] a pressure deflecting them from academic interests
and standards” (p. 585). If this was to happen, Polanyi suggested, then the
very fountain of academic excellence would dry out. Such excellence can
only flourish, he argued, based on a love for one’s work: “to be urged on by
one’s creative passion” (p. 585). The choice is clear: “you must choose
between dedication to the advancement of a system of knowledge which
requires freedom, or pursuit of applied science which involves subordina-
tion” (p. 586); at worst subordination to a totalitarian state. It would appear
that these matters are still salient in today’s business schools where, despite
accentuated performance pressures, academics’ sense of self-identity has
been shown to draw on a conception of their work as a “labour of love”
informed by a “passionate commitment to knowledge for its own sake”
(Clarke et al. 2012, p. 14)
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE UNIVERSITY

What the brief review of academic freedom canvassed above demonstrates
is a long history of church and state intervention into scholarly research; as
well as a long history of resistance to it. Indeed, discussions of academic
freedom are based on an opposition, or at least a fear of an opposition,
between the independent production of knowledge and the desire of
dominant political institutions to align that knowledge either with their
own interests or with their own beliefs. To understand academic freedom
today, then, requires first an appreciation of the institutions of political
power as they are currently in place. It is on these grounds that academic
freedom in contemporary liberal democracies such as Australia and the UK
must be considered in relation to the dominance of neoliberalism.
As articulated by Wendy Brown (2015) neoliberalism can be under-
stood, at its root level, as “a form of reason that configures all aspects of
existence in economic terms” (p. 17). Not just any economics, these are
the terms of a free market economics wherein all individuals and institu-
tions are conceived of as market actors whose objectives are to maximize
their capital value, and whose values rest on enterprise and investment.
Moreover, any alterative values, notably the democratic commitments to
“equality, liberty, inclusion, and constitutionalism are now subordinate to
the project of economic growth, competitive positioning, and capital
enhancement” (p. 26). Notably, neoliberalism has a significantly different
character to simple laissez-faire economics. Neoliberalism does not encou-
rage an anything goes market place where the economy is released to the
benevolence of the invisible hand. Quite the contrary, the neoliberal state
is the hand that is visible; visible in how it directs its powers to creating
markets where they did not exist prior. What distinguishes neoliberalism is
the admission that, rather than occurring naturally, market conditions
26 C. RHODES
must be instituted and maintained politically. What we have, then, is an

argument for “the existence of a strong state as both producer and
guarantor of stable market conditions” (Mirowski 2014, p. 54).
This role can clearly be seen across many dimensions of higher educa-
tion, as for example, in both the UK and Australia, state funding of
universities has been increasingly replaced by market income, and user-
pays systems instituted through state organized loan schemes that have
replaced direct government funding of university places. Business schools
have, in particular, been the financial beneficiaries of these changes. On
the one hand, the growing social value of business activity under neoli-
beralism has prompted an increased demand for an education in business.
Universities have responded through a massive expansion of business
education, heralded by Fortune magazine’s assertion that the Masters of
Business Administration degree, the flagship of the business school, is
hands down the “the most successful educational product of the past 50
to 100 years” (Byrne 2014). On the other hand, many business schools
have become the cheerleaders of neoliberalism, and the chief conduit of its
ideology as related especially to the idea that “individualism, profit max-
imization, and self-interest […are…] inexorable traits of human nature”
(Fotaki and Prasad 2015, p. 565). The position of the business school in
the neoliberal university is thus especially exaggerated in that it has been
an active part in the development, and normalization of neoliberalism, that
neoliberalism has boosted the “demand” for its “products”, and that
neoliberal deregulation has meant that these changes have rendered the
business school as a major revenue stream for universities domestically and
internationally.
The specific position of the business school in the neoliberal university
is also marked out by approaches taken to the governance of research
activity, and it is here that issues of academic freedom become especially
salient. In the UK and Australia this is similarly characterized by the
employment of audit practices designed to measure research “excellence”
together with the development and institutionalization of journal ranking
systems which ostensibly provide a comparative rating of the quality of
research outputs. Most especially, these systems are used to provide ratings
that allow individual institutions and schools to be compared to one
another, and for their relative value as hubs of research to be quantified.
In the UK, research is measured through the Research Excellence
Framework, known through the acronym of “the REF”. Even at this
level, the neoliberal competition built into the system is evident as the
process is positioned as a referee, metaphorically monitoring the academic

game to ensure that play is fair and that the field can be divided between
the winners and the losers. The REF (2016) is jointly administered by
higher education funding bodies in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland
and Wales, and in its own words, is designed to assess “the quality of
research in UK higher education institutions” (n.p.) with a view to using
the outcomes to inform relative government funding levels to the indivi-
dual universities. In relation to individual academics, the system, as it was
last implemented in 2014 measures performance through a peer review of
an individual’s notionally four “best” research “outputs” over a 5-year
period, also considering case studies outlining the “impact” of research
outside of the university.
Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) is a comparable system,
defined by itself as “a comprehensive quality evaluation of all research
produced in Australian universities against national and international
benchmarks” (ERA 2016: n.p.). As with the UK system, the publications
of individual academics are submitted and their quality is ranked through
a peer-review process, and the system is managed by the government
funding body the Australia Research Council. In ERA’s most recent
implementation culminating in 2015, individual disciplines within each
university were required to submit what they collectively saw as their best
publications (30 % of the total) over an 8-year period, as well as details of
research income. With both the REF and ERA the final assessments
made for each university and each discipline area are published publically.
The ERA results are summarized by rating research performance on a
scale of 1–5, with 1 indicating “performance well below world standard”
and 5 indicating “performance well above world standard”. REF results
across the areas of outputs, impact and environment are ranked on a
4-point scale ranging from “1 star” (“recognized nationally”) to “4 star”
(“world-leading”).
In terms of business school research, closely linked in practice to the
REF and ERA have been the use of journal ranking systems to assess the
quality of the journals in which business and management academics
publish their research. Although the REF and ERA have disavowed the
use of such rankings in their own assessment processes, they are widely
used by academic managers and individual academics as a proxy for
research quality. In Australia the Association of Business Dean’s Council
(ABDC) has, since 2007, published its “journal quality list” which divided
journals into four categories of “quality” – A*, A, B and C (ABDC 2015).
28 C. RHODES
In the UK a similar list is produced by the Association of Business Schools

with “quality ratings of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 4*” (ABS 2015). These lists effect a
“one size fits all” logic that privileges place of publication over scholarly
content, enables a numeric comparison of substantively different journals
and papers, and offers a seductively simple means through which to assess
research performance at group and individual levels (Willmott 2011).
While ostensibly the use of research audits is designed to improve
research performance at both a national and international level, key
dimensions of their effects have been to direct inter-university competi-
tion. What systems like the REF and ERA have achieved is the creation of
“scorecard” on the basis of which success in research can be reduced to a
simplified set of metrics, enabling universities to rank themselves in rela-
tion to their competitors. Clearly evinced here is a neoliberal strategy that
seeks to render research as a quasi-market where universities compete on
one level for government funding, but also for status indicators that in
turn allow them to attract students. The neoliberalization of research is
thus achieved through the creation of a set of performance indicators that
create the conditions for competition between universities to be put in
place. And, of course, like any process of market competition “the law of
numbers determines that only a minority can be fully successful” (Clarke
et al. 2012, p. 6).
MANAGING THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY

If we accept that neoliberal universities, exemplified in the business
school, have increasingly sought to govern research through a process
of metricization and audit that fosters inter- and intra-university compe-
tition, what effect does this have on academic freedom? Clearly the
political intervention into research present under neoliberalism is differ-
ent to the forms of censorship and control to which academic freedom
was originally opposed. Indeed, the way that academic freedom is cur-
tailed under neoliberalism works more subtly and coercively. For the
individual researcher, the question that one is prompted to ask oneself is
less about “what should I research” and more about “what should I
research so that I can get published in outlets that will give me currency
in the REF/ERA”. The process of audit thus seeks to direct researchers
to produce outputs that are “excellent” with the criteria for excellence
being defined by the state in the form of pseudo-objective market-
oriented measures and metrics. Metricization, in this schema of competi-

tion, colours research as a tradable commodity.
Given that these systems relate directly back to the share of the dimin-
ishing pot of public funds awarded to individual universities and their
ability to make claims to prestige that allow them to compete for tuition
income, university managers have generally responded positively and
compliantly. As such university management becomes subservient to the
state, and in practice, the two work together to govern and reward the
“outputs” produced by individual researchers. Here academic freedom is
curtailed not by direct limitations on areas of inquiry, but rather by
reducing the value of research to being a merely a factor at play within
competition between neoliberalized universities.
What this reflects more generally is the development of the neoliberal
university as having eschewed the idea of education being a public good in
the service of democracy, and replaced it with a set of values and practices
borrowed from the corporate world. If there was a time when social
scientists might be accused of being the “servants of power” prostrating
themselves before industry, eager to provide knowledge that would serve
industry’s interests (Baritz 1960), today this has exacerbated to the point
where the very values and models of industrial and commercial competi-
tive management have come to structure the university itself. As Henry
Giroux (2002) describes it “the new corporate university values profit,
control and efficiency” (p. 434). Concomitantly, these changes have seen
education becoming less about learning and more about securing job
opportunities, just as degrees are considered to be products, and research
has become the production of saleable intellectual property treated as a
market commodities. Increasingly commercialized in all of its operations,
the university behaves more and more like a corporation such that:
Management models of decision making replace faculty governance […]

corporate planning replaces social planning, management becomes a sub-
stitute for leadership, and the private domain of individual achievement
replaces the discourse of public politics and social responsibility. (p. 438)
The corporate university is one where interest in justice, ethics and equal-
ity wanes as knowledge capital is exploited for financial gain and market
position. The university becomes, principally, an economic institution
rather than a democratic one, such that freedom (including academic
freedom) is subordinated to economic imperatives.
30 C. RHODES
As part of an encroaching (or perhaps already encroached) facsimile of

corporate managerialism, centrally central planned blueprints for success
are developed by university managers in the hope of controlling the future.
These best laid plans are backed up by all sorts of key performance
indicators, measurement systems, reward programmes and so on. With
research this commonly includes a series of targets or “benchmarks” that
set out in numerical terms the nature and volume of “outputs” that are
expected not just institutionally, but individually. Excel spreadsheets will
thus document, for example, the number and frequency of publication
that an individual is expected to produce and which journals they are to
publish them (that is what the ranking of the journals must be as dictated
by the journal ranking lists). As well as this, the amount of research
funding to be applied for and granted is specified. In the case of business
schools in the UK and Australia, one’s success in meeting and exceeding
the benchmarks can have a direct impact on one’s remuneration in the
form of salary increases, performance bonuses and promotion. Above all
individual research effort is expected to be guided towards enhancing
one’s university’s scores in ERA or the REF. When it comes to promotion
and selection, the journal raking lists are never far away so as to provide a
handy means to assess the research performance of applicants without as
much as having to read the titles of the papers. At risk is that the content
and intellectual value of research is rendered institutionally irrelevant. All
that matters is how many points one amasses.
This point scoring approach was a very real game that played out in the
UK’s REF, where, as described earlier, what are deemed each individual’s
four best publications are considered for submission. If those publications
were in journal ranked as 4* in the ABS list then the person was commonly
referred to as a “4-by-4 academic”. It is easy to see how such systems can
reduce a person’s work, as well as their contribution to the university that
employs them, to a number on a scale of 16. As Caroline Clarke, David
Knights and Carol Jarvis’ (2012) study of UK business academics reveals
the result is a negative motivation driven by individual insecurity over
one’s REF “score”. The threat to academic freedom comes in the form
of how the “performance measures were highly influential in shaping and
determining the type of work carried out” (p. 10) in the sense that for
many the factor that drives choice is less about intellectual curiosity or
intrinsic scholarly value, and more about publishability.
Simon Hussain argues that the connection between journal ranking
lists and research assessment in business schools has led deans and research
directors to become fixated on measuring individual academic research

performance solely based on the number of publications they have in the
journals listed as being top-tier. The situation is this one where senior
business school managers “have accepted that journal ranking guides
provide an authoritative source from which to infer the quality of pub-
lished individual research items” (p. 120). The effects on scholarship,
Hussain argues, are deleterious and include inhibiting novel and creative
research, promoting methodological conservatism and enhancing the
power of editorial gatekeepers. Hugh Wilmott (2011) pulls no punches
when he assesses the implications of ranking and audits for business school
management:
When it takes hold, scholarly work that many of us would consider first-rate
in terms of its originality, significance and/or rigor is devalued simply
because it appears in a lesser ranked journal. Academics are terrorised by
university managers (e.g. Deans) who, as champions or tyrants of list fetish-
ism, apply pressures upon us to confine our work to topics, methods and
approaches that are suitable for publication in a small number of so-called
elite journals. Refusal or reluctance to comply with this pressure invites the
judgment, and perhaps also the self-assessment, that our scholarship is
“second rate” or perhaps that we are outright, “research inactive” failures.
(p. 430)
In the corporate university’s business school it is professional managers

who determine highly specific expectations from researchers in terms of a
reductionist set of numeric criteria. Freedom is not expected from the
academics to whom these goals are targeted, only compliance with man-
agerial fiat.
THE GAME OF EXCELLENCE

How then might individual academics respond to the compliance driven
performance pressures inherent in the corporate university? What we have
is a situation that Nick Butler and Sverre Spoelstra (2012) refer to as “the
game of excellence”. In this game the individual academic submits to
pursuing the criteria for “excellence” enshrined in the journal lists and
audit regimes, and if successful expects repayment in career progression,
professional esteem and direct financial remuneration. Put slightly differ-
ently, as one professorial respondent to Butler and Spoelstra’s study puts
32 C. RHODES
it, the reason to publish in journals ranked highly on the “list” is to “lick
the ass of my employers” (p. 899). The somewhat pessimistic conclusion
they reach is that the ascendency of journal rankings and public research
audits has been embraced wholeheartedly by universities who have in turn
inflicted their criteria on individual academics. The academics response has
largely been to “play the game” that has been presented to them whether
they like it or not, and frequently at the expense of their scholarly values.
In the corporate university, the mould is set for the assumingly malle-
able character of the scholar-cum-knowledge worker to fit into with will-
ingness, speed and stealth as they pursue journal ranking, prestigious
grants and research impact. The demands flow down to the front line
with the ease of a raging river through corporate style communications,
performance management systems, and sheer might of managerial desire.
Central to this is that for individual academics “compliance with manage-
rialist demands [is] a discourse often constructed as unavoidable especially
in terms of career ‘success’” (Clarke et al. 2012, p. 12). As well, interna-
tional ranking systems, often called “league tables”, pit institutions against
each other in a crude pretence of offering the type of freedom of informa-
tion that neo-classical economics defines as typifying perfect competition.
This approach to the management of the neoliberal university is well
documented both as a phenomenon and as the subject of disdain from
academics who might still feel that the expertise relating to what needs to
be researched and how it is best disseminated lies with them. They might
feel too that, despite seemingly insurmountable demands for compliance
and sanctions for non-compliance, there is more to their motivations and
desires than can be found in a Pavlovian canine or economic human.
What then is the fate of academic freedom under these conditions?
Whereas in the past the battle was between freedom of inquiry and the
impositions of state prerogatives or theological dogma, today, at least in
the UK and Australia, we are more in danger of academic inquiry being
controlled by the corporate university system’s response to state imposed
neoliberalization. In cruel echo of Polyani’s fear of the totalitarian state,
the development of strategic research plans and their attendant metrics,
coupled with their bureaucratic enforcement and sanctions for failure, are
not so far removed from the central planning processes of the worst
totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, even though they are
defended in the name market competition. Bitter with semantic irony it
would seem that there is no liberation (for academics) in the neoliberal
university. Quite the contrary our intellectual liberties are being limited or
eroded by the edicts and injunctions from university managers and gov-
ernment bureaucrats alike. Martin Parker sums this up when considering
the state of the business school modelled corporate managerialism:
If it [the University] is entirely constituted and legitimated on the basis of

narrow key performance indicators, of predictably obedient economic actors
managed by someone who assumes absolute authority, then in what sense is
it capable of providing the sort of autonomous reflection which justifies the
idea of a university as a different space for thought? (Parker 2014, p. 289)
Parker’s answer is far from affirmative. Universities in both the UK and

Australia have responded to neoliberal pressures, by and large, with enthu-
siastic approval and have engaged fully in the competitive quasi-research
market, while academics caught in the middle have either failed to resist –
either failed to resist at all, or failed to resist effectively.
Commenting specifically on the UK and Australian contexts, Terri Kim
(2008) has argued that the new regimes of state intervention have meant that
universities are exhorted to act as traders in a knowledge market, and to do so
through the adoption of corporate forms of management that emphasize:
the value of management perceived as innovative, performance-centred,

consumer-centred, transparent, externally accountable, market-tested, result
oriented, pragmatic and strategic, in comparison with the old academic self-
regulating professionalism and bureaucracy […] The neoliberal public man-
agement has also altered the discourse of public accountability: i.e. instru-
mentalise, individualise, standardise, marketise and externalise
“accountability relationships” at the expense of democratic values such as
participation, professional self-regulation, collegiality, and collective delib-
eration. (p. 36)
It would appear that the threat to academic freedom is coming not just
from an external authority but from within the university itself.
THE INHERITANCE OF FREEDOM

As has been argued in this chapter, a central dimension of the neoliber-
alization of universities in Australia and the UK is that research has
become the subject of both state imposed competition and managerial
“strategy”. Armed with journal rankings through which assessments of
research quality can be reached without even knowing what the research is
34 C. RHODES
about, and shadowed by a set of government criteria that ranks research

along short term one-dimensional criterion, the task taken on by the
neoliberal university is to compete for financial gain. For research this
produces a quasi-market that reduces the value of scholarly inquiry to a
comparison based on a violently reductionist set of measures that evade an
evaluation of the substantive nature of the research being undertaken. This
has been particularly the case in business schools where the independence
and self-governance have been replaced by accountability, measurability
and expectations of compliance.
While debates over these matters have, by and large, not explicitly
engaged with the notion of academic freedom, its implicit presence is
palpable. Indeed, criticisms of the fate of research in the corporate
university have revolved around the conviction that under neoliberal
conditions the intersection of state governance, university management
and individual academic response has led to a situation where decisions
about business school research and its publication are dependent on
market-oriented dictates and criteria based assessments set by people
not involved in the research. Moreover, these changes have proved
difficult to resist on the part of individual researchers. This marks a
shift in agency away from the researcher, and towards remote locations
of both university and state governance. In other words, the freedom of
the individual academic to pursue a research agenda formulated princi-
pally on intellectual or scientific grounds, as well as to attempt to publish
their research in forms and outlets of their choosing has been
jeopardized.
Is it not then the unequivocal case that the systems of audit put in place
by governments in countries like the UK and Australia, and enthusiastically
implemented by business school managers, are a direct affront to the
academic freedom long heralded as being a defining value at the centre of
the meaning of the university? Is it not possible that what Polanyi feared of
totalitarianism is being progressively achieved by neoliberalism? Is this not
a situation where an obsession with market-based organization has meant
that the imposition of quasi-market criteria on research has replaced self-
organization through intellectual traditions focussed on the generation of
knowledge? What is significant in the UK and Australian contexts is not just
the effect of regimes of state research audits and calls for public academic
accountability, but the ways that these calls have been so openly embraced
by business schools themselves. The distal monitoring of publications
enabled by the journal ranking lists for example has resulted directly from
professional associations: the ABS in the UK and the ACBD in Australia.

It would seem that the competitive individualism that is championed under
neoliberalism, and the associated need for scorecards to mark the competi-
tion, has arrived not just from freedom being supressed by an external
agent, but rather from the internalization of neoliberal values within aca-
demia itself. In one sense, this might be regarded as a form of academic self-
regulation that has been the bedrock of academic freedom since the Middle
Ages. In another sense, however, what we have witnessed in the neoliberal
university is the internalization market-based values in both the state and
the university. The result is that academic identity is corrupted both from
without and within.
In this era of the corporate university it is tempting to give up on
academic freedom, to regard it a quaint and idealistic curio from the past.
At the same time, there is a temptation to conclude my discussion here
by proposing a framework for action on how “we” might respond to
erosion of traditional academic values: a veritable to-do list for reinstat-
ing academic freedom. Both options, I suggest, are unrealistic. The
former unrealistic in its hopeless nihilism, the latter unrealistic in its
messianic utopianism. We need to recall that academic freedom has
always been contentious and never something to be taken for granted.
The value of academic freedom as emergent in the Middle Ages, articu-
lated in the Enlightenment and realized variously through the Industrial
Revolution and beyond, has always been an ideal that has been pursued
rather than a reality fully achieved. It is in this sense that it is worth
remembering, that while our own contemporary times are unique, to
inherit academic freedom is not so much to inherit a right as it is to
inherit a promise. This is a freedom which, like democracy itself, can
indeed be understood in Jacques Derrida’s (1993) terms as being struc-
tured as a promise.
As promise, freedom is not something one can expect to happen at a
distinct time in the future such that it will arrive once and for all. With
the promise an inherited past launches into an unknown future that is
always to come. The intellectual duty that this proffers is one that is
dedicated to criticizing totalitarian dogma, relevant today not just as
religions of gods, but also of the “religion of capital” (1993, p. 18).
The promise of academic freedom is one that commits precisely not to
give in to such dogma, to always render it questionable. It is in this sense
that academic freedom is not something one has, it is something one
does without possession. It is of course possible to conceive of academic
36 C. RHODES
freedom selfishly as a right to self-determination such that no other can

impinge on the exercise of one’s own will. As inheritance, however,
academic freedom presents itself not as a right to individual free expres-
sion, but as a responsibility to uphold the traditions of the past as they
relate to the possibility of democratic freedom more generally. To accept
academic freedom is to accept responsibility for it, and for its passage
from the past to the future (Rhodes 2009).
Moreover to fail pursue academic freedom, as can be seen in the
governance of the corporate university, is to squander our inheritance.
In the context of business school research this means to waste the possi-
bility of open inquiry, instead pushing research in a direction identified
only by the points it would yield when the government auditors do their
counting or maybe to yield the most points as measured by a journal
ranking table; or maybe to align with a set of research questions deemed
desirable by the government or the management of the day. Given the
situation we are in, if there is anything to do surely it begins with claiming
our inheritance, rather than seeing it squandered in the single and narrow
minded strategic pursuits of the corporate university. But this does not
amount to laying claim that an assumed right to academic freedom will be
bestowed up on us. Instead it means keeping the promise that academic
freedom is something worth fighting for as well as to keep fighting for it.
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38 C. RHODES
Carl Rhodes is Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Technology

Sydney, Australia. His current research investigates the ethical and political envir-
onments in which contemporary organizations operate, and its effects on their
behaviour. This work endeavours to contribute to the rigorous and critical ques-
tioning and reformulation of what the purpose of work organizations in the
context of persistent neoliberal attacks on democracy.
CHAPTER 3
The University of the Common: Beyond

the Contradictions of Higher Education
Subsumed under Capital
Krystian Szadkowski
INTRODUCTION
For decades, authors from all sides of the political scene of academe have
been competing in developing critical narratives on the crisis of the con-
temporary university. A common feature of most such critiques has been
that they all remain within the conceptual horizon delineated by the liberal
philosophy and political economy. Corporatization (Schrecker 2010),
commodification (Oliveira 2013), privatization (Ball and Youdell 2008),
marketization (Jongbloed 2003), and the expansion of academic capital-
ism within the walls of the university (Leslie and Slaughter 1998) are
therefore most often contrasted with the desired strengthening of the
public character of the HE institution (Barnett 2015) or its re-publicization
(Marginson 2006).
A convincing diagnosis of the issue at stake, as well as its potential
resolution that escapes the limitations of the abovementioned narratives,
K. Szadkowski (*)
Center for Public Policy Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
e-mail: szadkowski.k@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_3
40 K. SZADKOWSKI
has been proposed by autonomist Marxists (Hall 2015). Publications,

such as the book by Edu-factory Collective (2009) or Production of
Living Knowledge by Italian sociologist and activist Gigi Roggero
(2011) have once again stimulated the imagination of radical activists
worldwide (Haiven 2014), contributing to the enrichment of the discus-
sion. The focus is placed here rather on a double crisis (Edu-factory
Collective 2010) that penetrates both academic institutions and capitalist
knowledge economy. The economic crisis is understood as a crisis of
capitalism, a permanent condition, which consists above all of the inability
to measure and effectively coordinate the biopolitical production processes
(Hardt and Negri 2009). According to Roggero, the potential solution of
problems with the commodification of knowledge and education as well as
with the introduction of the profit logic in the university is no longer
possible by just applying tighter state control over the sector. Public
universities affected by the reforms tailored according to the paradigm of
“New Public Management” are becoming hybrids (Ferlie et al. 2008) and,
as Izak et al. (2017) rightly observed, hybrids are an “accurate barometer”
of the epochs and times. Through the successive waves of reforms of
public universities the intensiveness of competition among institutions,
faculty, and students increases dramatically. The new budget instruments
based on performance indicators, greater emphasis on outputs and their
direct measurement, and a focus on channeling the funding to the most
“efficient” academic units and subject areas contribute continuously to a
vertical differentiation of institutions in national higher education systems.
At the same time, the continuing emphasis placed on private benefits from
education (wage premiums) leads to the conclusion that education is
increasingly seen as a private good.
In this chapter, I will present the four most general contradictions that
afflict contemporary higher education sector subsumed under capital. The
reflection presented here does not, of course, aspire to exhaust the issue.
Despite the adoption of such a limitation, it seems that an attempt made
here can be seen as a contribution to the ongoing debates within the field of
higher education research. The very method of revealing the contradictions
within a socioeconomic subsystem subsumed under capital is the most basic
way of practicing critique in the Marxist sense. The aim of such critique
should be open, clear, and properly argued unveiling of inflammatory points
of the contemporary capitalist structure of a system, a sector, or a field.
The contradictions, which I would like to point at in this chapter, are
fundamental in their character. They are not just inherent to the capitalist
3 THE UNIVERSITY OF THE COMMON: BEYOND THE CONTRADICTIONS . . . 41
mode of production (Harvey 2014), although the entire list of such

contradictions could be described here and tailored to the conditions of
higher education sector. They relate mainly to the most general categories,
of the private, the public, the common (also addressed in its corrupted,
hierarchical form) and capital. Assuming, following Simon Marginson
(2004) and Fernand Braudel (1982), that markets and capitalism, the
relations of exchange and the relations of subsumption of labor under
capital within production, are something different (considering the market
and exchange as economic and cultural phenomena much older than
capitalism), capital will be given here a separate ontological status. Thus,
capital should be considered as yet another, disunited from the market,
pole of coordination of the higher education sector (Clark 1983).
THE COMMON AS A CONCEPT AND AS A PERSPECTIVE IN HIGHER

EDUCATION RESEARCH
If the public no longer creates a compelling exit option from the
current crisis, where is the path that would lead us beyond it? A regime
which would be constitutive for academic field as such, but which is
also becoming fundamental for either academic production or the
contemporary cognitive capitalist economy, is that of the common
(Roggero 2010). To elaborate on the possibilities that open through
this approach some key concepts need to be clarified – beginning with
the often overlooked difference between “the common” and its plural,
“the commons.”
On the one hand, “the commons” refer to the most fundamental, sine
qua non elements of a given reality, including the basic resources, either
“natural” and “material” or “social” and “intangible”. The defining fea-
ture of the commons is that they cannot be separated from the collective
entity, a group or the entire class that uses, reproduces, and organizes
them. Therefore, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval (2014) rightly empha-
sized that commons entails a living tie between a thing and the activity of
the collective that takes charge of it. They need a process that has the
ability to transform itself into the form of an institution. “The commons”
then constitute crucial resources and practice sets that are combined
together through praxis for the reproduction of a life of a given commu-
nity. In the context of the university, the knowledge commons lay at the
foundation of every academic endeavor.
42 K. SZADKOWSKI
On the other hand, “the common” brings forth the most general
ontological level where the communal aspect of a sociopolitical and eco-
nomic reality can be grasped. The common is both the form of wealth and
the ultimate form of social relations. The specificity of the materialist
theory of the common, deployed here to facilitate an analysis, the analysis
of the university in crisis, is that unlike many sociological or economic
theories of the commons (Ostrom 1990; Hess and Ostrom, 2007;
De Angelis 2007) it integrates all these levels, instead of focusing solely
on the issues of narrowly understood resources. However, in contrast with
political, religious, or ethical considerations on the common good
(Śpiewak 1998), that pose it as something transcendent in relation to
the field of socioeconomic system (whether it being treated as a regulatory
ideal, the divine order or an autonomous sphere of the political), the
materialist perspective sees the common as an immanent process of self-
constituting and self-transforming subjectivities. The materialist theory of
the common is based on the ontology of immanence and, therefore,
presupposes a processual and dynamic concept of the common, which,
in the constant practice of commoning transforms the surrounding world
and itself, while it maintains a relation to shared resources subordinated to
democratic decision processes by their (re)producers.
To proceed with the argument, a number of critical assumptions with
regard to the contemporary transformations of higher education, first
elaborated at greater length elsewhere (Szadkowski 2015), also require
revisiting.
First, following the theorists of cognitive capitalism (Moulier-Boutang
2011), the emergence and entrenchment of “knowledge economies”
can be understood as the next evolutionary stage in the antagonistic
relationship between labor and capital, that includes areas related to the
production of knowledge, affects, and social relations, and where the
central role is played by mechanisms of capture of the surplus generated
by autonomous producers. The methods of capture, depending on the
type of activity and the degree of its subsumption under capital, do not
necessarily and always differ to those used by capital for extracting
surplus value in industrial production (in earlier periods or even
today). Yet following the post-operaists, capitalist rent is found to
play an increasingly important role (Vercellone 2010) in the contem-
porary organization production, where “rent” refers to the form of
extraction of surplus that capital uses when it is located outside the
direct production processes.
Second, although the massification of higher education and an inten-

sive development of research were crucial for the inauguration of the crisis
of Fordism and the transition to cognitive capitalism (Vercellone 2015),
today both of these spheres serve as direct production sites dominated by
capital. In this context, we find a “transnational association of capitals”
(Hall 2014; Szadkowski 2015) that subsumes higher education and
research as a general global system rather than as specific institutions.
This association entails and implicates, three different forms of capital:
productive capital (private for-profit universities or those involved in
transnational for-profit activities of public and private not-for-profit uni-
versities, Breneman 2006), money/finance capital (banks offering com-
mercial student loans, McGettigan 2013; or management of universities
endowment funds, Cantwell 2016), commercial/merchant capital (for
example, large international corporations of oligopolistic academic pub-
lishers, Peekhaus 2012).
Third, various forms of hegemonic norms, values, language, as well
as institutional forms in which these standards are implemented,
strengthened, and developed can be tracked within the global higher
education landscape (Marginson and Ordorika 2011). Hegemony
within the sector is exercised primarily by Western institutions, that is
large American and, to a lesser extent, the UK ones (Peters 2011a,
p. 1014). On the one hand, the hegemony within the field of higher
education and science is reinforced by strong capitalist economies of
the Anglo-Saxon countries, but at the same time the strength of science
and higher education is a contributing factor to the success of Anglo-
Saxon economic projects. The institutional forms in which hegemony is
embedded include the processes of the evaluative state (Neave 2012)
and implementation of the reforms of higher education systems in the
paradigm of “New Public Management” (Ferlie et al. 2008) as well as a
model form of a modern research university, that is, the public entre-
preneurial university (Clark 1998). Both have been disseminated on a
global scale, partly due to the rise of global rankings of universities that
strengthen the processes of institutional isomorphism in the global
higher education sector (Hazelkorn 2011). These two institutionally
sustained forms of hegemony, consisted with the general neoliberal
program tailored for the global economy at large, contribute to the
process of blurring the boundaries between, and therefore the hybridi-
zation of, the private and the public in what used to be the public
university (Roggero 2011).
44 K. SZADKOWSKI
Finally, the reflections that follow assume that the productive dialectic
between the private and the public, or between the state and the market as
coordination mechanisms in higher education, has come to an end. This,
in turn, undermines the analytical efficacy of explanations (concerning the
university in crisis) that rest on the concepts of marketization, commodi-
fication, and corporatization, as used both in mainstream higher education
research and in some of their critical counterparts.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY HIGHER

EDUCATION SYSTEMS
Contemporary higher education systems are traversed by a series of ten-
sions and internal contradictions. First, as already noted, under the influ-
ence of the transformations taking place at the global, national, and local
levels, the areas of private and public, as observed by mainstream higher
education researchers, are becoming increasingly blurred. Understood
here as hybridization (Jongbloed 2015), this is a process through which
formally public institutions are gaining further-reaching autonomy (per-
sonnel, financial, and organizational). At the same time, universities have
experienced a constant flow of encouragement from public policy to adopt
an entrepreneurial behavior and place their activities within the economic
sphere. The institutions associated with the public higher education sector
are increasingly involved as active agents in all kinds of markets, created
and/or produced spontaneously within the sector, and operate on the
basis of the “internal effectiveness” principle, demanding continuous cost
reductions and expansion of their business activities as well as the range of
available sources of revenue.
In light of the above, the hybridization of public and private assumes a
functional role within the process of capital accumulation in the sphere of
knowledge production. Without necessitating an ultimate cutoff of the
public higher education sector from strict, yet conducted at a distance,
state control (which constantly re-designs its priorities in alignment with
the development of the capitalist economy) or from public funding (which
enables depreciation of risk inherent to investments in the field of innova-
tion and development), hybridization is an optimal outcome for capital.
The hybridization of the public and the private does not constitute a
transitional state between public control of the sector and its full privatiza-
tion, combined with the total subordination of the university to market
mechanisms. Rather, in its mediation through the neoliberal state, this

hybridization emerges as a framework for the organization and manage-
ment of relations between higher education and capital, corresponding to
the needs of the latter’s valorization and accumulation.
The phenomenon outlined above exceeds the explanatory power of
interpretations depended on the binary opposition of private and pub-
lic. Moreover, we see that the very distinction between public and
private is functional for capital, played out in accordance with its
general interest in each and every sphere where capital locates its
activities. The blurring of boundaries between public and private
noted in mainstream higher education research (Marginson 2007,
p. 187; Kwiek 2010, p. 247) turns out to be merely an epiphenomenon
of a broader process, occurring on global, national, and local levels: the
preparation of the sector for the advanced requirements of “the trans-
national association of capitals” (Hall 2014; Szadkowski 2015) that is
developing primarily on the basis of knowledge.
In addition to the various forms of direct subordination of academic
labor to capital, processes of an ideal subsumption of labor under capital
are taking place within the public higher education sector (Szadkowski
2016). Ideal subsumption is a purely ideological form of subordination,
taking the realms of discourse and social imagination as its main field of
reference. Sectors where the relations of subsumption of labor under
capital have been installed in ideal form are driven by a different logic
than those where subsumption has occurred in formal or real terms.
Obviously, this hardly excludes the possibility that ideal subsumption
within a particular sector may be, for example, a preliminary step toward
the further subordination of the labor processes to capital that is function-
ing on a different level. However, they are often mistaken for the direct
(formal or real) subsumption of academic labor in public universities
under capital.
Insufficient analysis of the phenomenon of subsumption (and its var-
ious forms) within the sector is one of the most important limitations in
narratives of privatization, marketization, and corporatization of the latter.
The same can be said about analytical efforts that detect the emergence of
a new type of factory in the contemporary public university. The intro-
duction of an analytical approach that sees the opposition between capital
and the common as the most important factor in the contemporary
transformation of the university allows for a more convincing explanation
of hybridization, providing a more accurate picture of crisis faced by the
46 K. SZADKOWSKI
university, and seeing higher education as one among many sectors of

production in the capitalist economy.
The prioritization of the opposition between capital and the common is
not proposed to replace one binary with another but rather as a means to
complicate a map of higher education drawn primarily with reference to
the assumed tug-of-war between private and public. However, although
the antagonistic opposition between capital and the common has much
greater ontological density and crosses the reality of the higher education
sector, with greater or lesser intensity, in all its aspects, not all conflicts
within this socioeconomic subsystem are reducible to this antagonism.
CLASSIFICATION OFCONTRADICTIONS OF THE HIGHER

EDUCATION SYSTEMS
A number of studies suggest this or that manifestation of the hybridization
of public and private as the source of the crisis faced in contemporary
higher education. This sense of crisis is in itself nothing uncommon.
However, the crisis is inherent to the functioning of capital, and the
contemporary university is currently in its tight embrace. According to
Marx, a crisis is capital’s response to the barriers encountered, opening up
the possibilities for further transformations. In the words of David Harvey
(2014), “crises are moments of transformation in which capital typically
reinvents itself and morphs into something else” (p. 4). Nonetheless, it is
during a crisis when the salient contradictions of the system surface. In the
context of the university, this situation introduces a specific kind of
instability that could provide an emancipatory opportunity for the aca-
demic producers.
Higher education researchers often conclude that the one solution to the
current crisis would be to return to the times before it, as if the changes
which have taken place in recent decades could somehow be reversed. Yet
nostalgia for the way the sector was organized long ago is no match for
capital’s determination in looking forward. A crisis is a moment of decision-
making, and critique, in revealing the contradictions in their clearest possi-
ble form, may enable such a process to run in favor of those suffering the
consequences of systemic instabilities. The critique put forward here seeks
to unveil precisely the systemic nature of the contradictions plaguing higher
education today. For this reason, it does not adhere to contradictions in the
Aristotelian sense, as in the classical principle of contradiction which says
that contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at

the same time. Rather, the analysis relies on a dialectical understanding
of the contradictions, of Hegelian provenance and widespread within
Marxism, as a necessary starting point for grasping the essence of social
phenomena. Any system where we have to deal with a real development
contains contradictions. The contradiction is a fundamental feature of
development as well as its basic principle. The dialectical understanding
of contradiction was, for example, well elaborated by dissident Soviet
Marxist Evald Ilyenkov (1977):
Objective reality always develops through the origin within it of a concrete

contradiction that finds its resolution in the generation of a new, higher, and
more complex form of development. Within the initial form of develop-
ment, the contradiction is unresolvable. When expressed in thought it
naturally appears as a contradiction in the determinations of the concept
that reflects the initial stage of development. And that is not only correct,
but is the sole correct form of movement of the investigating mind,
although there is a contradiction in it. A contradiction of that type in
determinations is not resolved by way of refining the concept that reflects
the given form of development, but by further investigating reality, by
discovering another, new, higher form of development in which the initial
contradiction finds its real, actual, empirically established resolution.
(p. 341)
The dialectical movement of contradictions would, in this perspective, be

the driving mechanism of history or the cause of shifts between the social
and economic formations. Yet Antonio Negri (2003) contends that today
this movement has come to an end or has completely depleted its power.
Such a statement does not imply consent with liberal “theories” proclaim-
ing the fulfillment of the dialectic of history in the final victory of capital-
ism, delivering us to a variation of “the end of history.” Concerning the
end of the dialectical movement in the current stage of development of
social relations, Negri’s vision proposes that the tension that connects
capital with the exploited common can only be resolved by splitting this
relationship up, through the exodus from the relations of exploitation.
Arguably, the current situation in higher education proves this diagnosis
with full force.
The general contradictions within the higher education sector can be
divided into two separate groups. The first such group can be viewed as
the “apparent contradiction,” encompassing the range of contradictions
48 K. SZADKOWSKI
that occur on the surface of phenomena and are both mystified and
functionalized by capital. The poles of these contradictions exist in anti-
nomic tension; however, the boundaries between them are porous, occa-
sionally obliterated, and subject to far-reaching hybridization. Opting for
any of the poles of such an apparent contradiction does not entail its
dissolution. The contradictions of the second group can be grasped as
“real contradictions” of a non-dialectical character. This means that the
dissolution of any such contradiction does not lead to the elimination (and
thus the preservation in the transformed mode of the elements of the
relationship) but rather to a breakdown and final disappearance of one
of the poles of contradiction in question. While one of its poles urges to
enter into a dialectical relationship with the other, feeding itself through
this very relationship, the other pole has the potential for pure autonomy.
I will present a pair of contradictions for each of the above categories.
APPARENT CONTRADICTION (I): THE PRIVATE AND THE PUBLIC

The hybridization of the public and the private is symptomatic of the fact
that the productive dialectic between these two orders has come to an end
(Roggero 2011). The degree of their blurring (and let’s assume here,
against solid philosophical argumentation, that they were ever clearly
separated; Latour 1993) is so high that it is difficult to discuss the possi-
bility of bringing the things “back where they belong.” Therefore, not
only it is hard to imagine that the cure for the ills of the public sector could
come from its even greater marketization (internal or external) but it is
also impossible to envisage the intervention of the neoliberal state, espe-
cially when it functions within a global environment dominated by trans-
national neoliberal institutions. In other words, the contemporary state
can function less and less as a solution to the problems arising from
the shortcomings of market coordination. This weakness becomes appar-
ent on the global level, where, according to many theorists, the threat
of commodification of global knowledge public goods is growing.
Advocates of a more active and robust state policy should also remember
that the capitalist state is not only a guarantor of private property but
also the leading actor in establishing, promoting, and maintaining the
markets.
In the case of a present-day higher education, it is difficult to pinpoint
even one area where pure forms of state and public control prevail whereas a
return to the old bureaucratic state form of sector coordination is virtually
unimaginable. In fact, the state is still responsible for the introduction of

market mechanisms into the sector, and government agencies (including
research councils) are the main source of demand for research offered on
the competitive quasi-markets where public resources get allocated. The
public sector is also responsible for financing the lion’s share of basic
research, with the stated or implicit expectation that it will be privatized
by universities, individual researchers, or capital. Furthermore, a range of
institutional incentives for the creation of knowledge that can be easily
commodified or privatized are constantly formulated and distributed.
A public agent that, in the name of restoring the old order, would
carry out a thorough revolution, cutting the links between the sector and
markets or capital, does not currently exist. Furthermore, researchers in
higher education, or, more generally, mainstream theorists, sociologists,
or economists, do not give us much hope as regards to this matter. A
great example is Nobel Prize winner economist Joseph Stiglitz (1999)
who writes about the need to create and maintain global public goods,
while having in mind only a healthy and balanced functioning of the
private sector companies that in this way would be saved from “market
failure.”
For these and many other reasons I define the tension that perme-
ates the relationship between the private and the public in higher
education as “the apparent contradiction” that is, a contradiction that
reveals only the surface of phenomena while keeping the proper source
of its internal dynamic hidden, being merely an epiphenomenon of
deeper processes.
APPARENT CONTRADICTION (II): ACADEMIC OLIGARCHY

AND CAPITAL
The reality of higher education cannot be reduced just to the (alleged)

opposition between market and state. A key element of this reality is also a
relatively autonomous academic community, a collective subject which has
coordinated, transformed and developed the institution of the university
through the centuries. But is the academic community in its hierarchical
form, essentially antithetical to capital?
Let’s name just the two most basic examples of hybridization of private and
public in higher education, that is (a) academic entrepreneurship as a way to
maintain the autonomy of the academic community (Clark 1998) and (b) the
50 K. SZADKOWSKI
emergence of academic capitalism (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Cantwell

and Kaupinnen 2014). Both demonstrate clearly that the hierarchically orga-
nized community of scholars is a rather non-antagonistic force to capital.
Especially within centrally located systems and institutions, academic elites
were always eager to join or even lead the processes of transformation of
their own institutions into the engines of the knowledge economy (Berman
2012). Rules exercised by the academic elites in institutions under their con-
trol, are based on separation, undermining democracy in the workplace and
often aspire to strengthen the tendency to managerial control. Academic elites
that functioned in a national higher education were usually victorious when it
came to the general capitalist transformations of the sector. We should there-
fore ask whether the condition of ideal and in many respects real subsumption
of labor under capital in various institutions of higher education makes it
impossible to speak of such a thing as non-hierarchical academic community.
Hierarchical divisions, even with regard to the forms of employment (rapid
dissemination of precarious positions) introduced by the hands of collegiate
academic managers undermine the idea in question. Leading representatives of
the world of science make eager use of their place at the top of the academic
hierarchy, to further strengthen their own position in a favorable relationship
with capital.
But the problem is not just a question of more or less democratic
regulation of relations within the academic workplace. The fact that
capital harnesses, manipulates, and transforms mechanisms that have
been used for centuries to regulate the hierarchy within the academic
community in its own processes of valorization is even more important.
As Karl Marx (1981) wrote in the third volume of Capital, commercial
capital, which is a substantial fraction of the transnational association
that is subsuming academic labor around the world “in the first
instance, is simply the mediating movement between extremes it does
not dominate and preconditions it does not create” (p. 447). It is
though a short-term situation, because, as Marx pointed out, “trade
always has, to a greater or lesser degree, a solvent effect on the pre-
existing organizations of production, which in all their various forms
are principally oriented to use value. But how far it leads to the
dissolution of the old mode of production depends first and foremost
on the solidity and inner articulation of this mode of production itself”
(p. 449). The university and more broadly the academic community are
among the oldest institutions in the Western world: they are defined by
a strong internal organization and are relatively resistant to change.
Therefore, it is reasonable that capital does not attempt to decompose

them, but rather adjusts existing methods of articulation of this com-
munity and harnesses them for its own purposes.
Together with the involvement of capital in the higher education sector
and the latter’s transformation into one among many sectors of produc-
tion, the form that has contained hundreds years of academic production,
with its competition for prestige, has largely been preserved. Moreover,
today, in its most general form, mediated through the global rankings of
universities, this academic race for prestige is contributing to a crucial
mechanism of producing inequalities among scientists, institutions or
national systems on a global scale. However, let me emphasize once
again, the ruling elite within the academic community is able to avoid
many of the negative consequences affecting academic staff as a result of
the transformation of the sector. While the academic elites from centrally
located systems are able to benefit from controlling so called “consecra-
tion centers” (Münch 2014), that is, the academic journals and book series
that determine the distribution of prestige within the academic field, in the
case of elites from the peripheral systems, the power gained from hierarchy
allows (besides a number of other benefits) for staying outside the direct
relations imposed by capital. Academic oligarchy is therefore in reality a
corrupted form of the common.
REAL CONTRADICTION (I): CORRUPTED FORMS OF THE COMMON

AND THE COMMON
Before moving on to outline the next contradiction, the first one to be

defined as “real,” another concept is in need of clarification. Much could
be written about the common. Yet, as mentioned earlier on, in this chapter
I deploy a materialist theory of the common, one also suited to the analysis
of the aforementioned academic oligarchy. If the move toward the uni-
versity of the common is to be successful, the common in higher education
must be set free from a double grip: from the embrace of capital and from
precapitalist relations of hierarchy proper to the oligarchic academic com-
munity, which can be conceptualized as a corrupted form of the common.
In Commonwealth Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2009) wrote
that “every social institution rests on the common and is defined, in fact,
by the common it draws on, marshals, and creates” (p. 159). Which is no
different in the context of the centuries-old institution of the university.
52 K. SZADKOWSKI
Creation and distribution of the commons and the common is an essential

aspect of the activities of the academic community. However, not all of the
forms of the common are equally beneficial. Hardt and Negri focus their
attention on the three key social institutions present in capitalism, within
which the parallel processes of production and corruption of the common
occur. These institutions are as follows: the family, the corporation, and
the nation. They all engage the common in a certain way and organize it.
At the same time, however, they impose a specific blockade to its devel-
opment, traversing it with multiple hierarchies and “reducing the powers
of social production” (p. 160). They punish alternative practices by using
exclusion or/and division. As the authors state in Commonwealth: “all
these institutions present networks of productive cooperation, resources of
wealth that are openly accessible, and circuits of communication that
simultaneously whet the desire for the common and frustrate it.”
(p. 164). In this way, despite a significant boost of desire for the common,
its fulfillment gets ultimately blocked. So these forms are accompanying
and complementing capital in its processes of putting the limits on the
common. As clearly emphasized by Hardt and Negri, we cannot over-
estimate their importance for the organization and reproduction of the
common, which makes them important starting points for the projects of
emancipation from the rule of capital.
We can think of the hierarchical and precapitalist university in these
very terms. And we can easily find the remains of this kind of corrupted
form of the common in the forms of collegiate representative democ-
racy or almost the guild-like ways of organizing science in networks of
societies and academic journals, as well as in the internal mechanisms of
regulation of the life of academic community. This is obviously not the
only social institution in the academic field that generates hierarchies
that impose the limitations on the productivity of the common. Prestige
and status, the principal mechanisms of regulation of the academic
community that are necessary for determining the hierarchy within the
academic field, have become a basis for capitalist measure used, not only
to divide and hierarchize areas of higher education on a global scale,
but also to enhance and accelerate academic work around the world.
The emergence of the global race for prestige (Liu and Cheng 2005;
Hazelkorn 2011), taking place completely outside the scope of control
of academic producers, is now one of the key blockades of the devel-
opment of science and higher education. The overinvestment of institu-
tional giants, that takes place with a greater or lesser success in different
regions of the world, contributes to accumulation of resources on such

a large scale that a further increase does not contribute to their, already
significant, scientific productivity (Münch 2014). The struggle for aca-
demic performance that could respond to the vital needs of society (not
capital) around the world is increasingly being displaced by the struggle
for quantitatively measurable achievements that only partially overlap
with social needs. Apart from this, the whole movement in science is
instrumentally transformed into the process of valorization of the com-
mercial faction of transnational association of capitals. It should be
emphasized here, that the lasting productive relevance of the antinomy
between prestige and science based on the common was the driving
force of the precapitalist stage in the development of science and higher
education. The contemporary subordination of mechanisms of regula-
tion of status within the academic field under capital removed from this
antinomy any signs of productivity, transforming it into a contradiction
of a non-dialectical character. Today, the only way to recover the
common, which is the indelible foundation of all intellectual work, is
the final farewell to the individualizing positional status game in science.
This will be the starting point for the exodus beyond the relationship of
capital, which in itself is the “highest corrupted form of the common”
(Hardt and Negri 2009, p. 160).
REAL CONTRADICTION (II): THE COMMON AND CAPITAL

As already noted, a contradiction of the most fundamental nature is the
one that occurs between the common and capital. We could say that both
poles of the contradiction are the general forms of a social relationship, a
matrix that reflects the order of the social. The common is what is
currently exploited by capital, as well as the basis for an autonomous and
democratic production (Roggero 2010). The relationship between capital
and the common should be seen as a non-dialectical relationship. They
form together nothing like a kind of a “unity of opposites,” but rather
create two separate entities. Moreover, one of them, in spite of the para-
sitic nature of the second, is capable of independent and autonomous
existence.
To emancipate the common from the tight embrace of capital, despite
its autonomous nature, it is not enough to fight back the private form of
knowledge ownership or even to postulate the increasing importance of
openness in higher education and the contemporary capitalist economy at
54 K. SZADKOWSKI
large (Peters 2011a). For this reason, various postulates of “the techno-
political economy of openness” (Peters 2010, p. 250) as an “alternative
non-proprietary model of cultural production and exchange” that “threa-
tens traditional models of intellectual property” (Peters 2009, p. 203),
through “growing and overlapping complexities of open source, open
access, open archiving, open publishing and open science” (Peters
2011b, p. 395), no matter how important they could be as a component
of a wider post-capitalist program, taken as a sole strategy seems to
approach a crucial limitations when confronted with the contemporary
strategies of transnational association of capitals within higher education.
The control that capital exercises extends far beyond the proprietary
relations. Focusing exclusively on escaping private property form is then
insufficient. Capital is able to compromise in this area, to form the so
called “communism of capital,” that is “the capture and transfiguration of
the common through rent, where rent is the power of the appropriation of
value that is increasingly created by social cooperation without the direct
intervention of capital” (Roggero 2014, p. 205). The perfect example
comes from the strategies of large academic publishers that aim at the
transition into the mode of service provision and charging APCs [Article
Processing Charge] for publications in open access (Eve 2014). The only
thing that capital cannot voluntarily resign from is the overall dominance
over the field, or power (often exercised with the important help of the
state) to impose a set of social rules (for example, the logic of the law of
value), on which all social life is consequently organized (Cleaver 1992).
This effect is achievable with the aid of a politically established systems of
measurement of academic labor. This does not mean that the struggles in
the area of ownership of knowledge, opening the educational resources or
the preservation of open access to the knowledge products, both past and
present, are insignificant. Struggles for open access create a step toward
the recovery of the conditions of reproduction of autonomously organized
community of knowledge producers and therefore are necessary.
However, if we want to break free from the grip of capital, we cannot
confine our struggles to such tactics.
If in the case of corrupted forms of the common, hierarchical relations
in higher education are based largely on the mechanisms regulating the
economy of status, then in the contradiction between the common and
capital the fundamental relationships of domination are not property
relations, but primarily the mechanisms of measure. The cleavage between
capital and the common cannot assume a return to precapitalist reality.
Rejection of the measure cannot entail the readjustment of the pure

hierarchical relations of feudal academy. The exodus from the relations
of exploitation and domination of capital in higher education has been and
is continuously implemented through a series of initiatives that take up the
form of institutions of the common.
THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY: THE UNIVERSITY

OF THE COMMON
What then can we conclude about the considerations and practices of

the post-capitalist university as a result of the above argumentation? For
sure, all strategies for the achieving of the university of the common
should be guided by the radical principle of active equality and demo-
cratic control over both the institution and the system as a whole. The
struggle for the abolition of artificial feudal hierarchy at the universities
as well as the detrimental managerial control, should be preceded by a
recognition of the productive role of all of the members of academic
community, therefore, primarily students, graduate students, and
administrative or technical personnel (Neary 2016). This should lead
toward the realization of the idea of the university as a co-operative of
producers (Winn 2015; see also this volume Hallam 2017), where
everyone will have a voice and the opportunity to develop and satisfy
their needs.
Universities all over the world have certainly more common than
divergent interests. The status and economic competition between insti-
tutions is alien to autonomous field of science. Moreover, as clearly
demonstrated by Richard Münch (2014), the economic benefits derived
from obtaining, reproducing, and accumulating prestige advantages do
not proportionally translate – after reaching a certain level of saturation –
onto increased academic achievements. In other words, from the perspec-
tive of the development of various fields of scholarship the concentration
of resources in certain parts of higher education system is simply econom-
ically ineffective. The development of the organization of the university
toward the common lays at the center of the general benefit of science.
In this case cooperatively organized production on a global scale cannot
be separated from the cooperative consumption. Universities are in fact
the main producers of knowledge and prime consumers of their own
globally produced outputs. One of the rational alternatives to university
56 K. SZADKOWSKI
subsumed under capital may therefore be an association of universities as a

system of producer and consumer cooperatives.
However, within the framework of liberal debates, including those
within the field of higher education research, commons are treated
mainly as a fuel for the knowledge-based economy or as basis of
open science economy that plays “complementary role with corporate
and transnational science” (Peters 2009, p.221). The only question
that interests most of the disputants concerns of how to produce as
much commons as possible at the lowest possible cost. Producer
cooperatives proposing a socialized form of property escapes this lib-
eral vision, at the same time exceeding the apparent contradiction
between private and public. They are an attempt to escape the limita-
tions of the hierarchy of both corrupted forms of the common and
managerial steering.
As Greg de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford suggest “for worker coops
to avert a co-optive fate they must be part of a larger transformation vector
of moving beyond capitalism.” (2010, p. 44). For the universities, this
means that it is not enough to reorganize the exploitative conditions at the
workplace. Both undermining of the overall power of the transnational
association of capitals over the global academic field, and coming up with
an alternative logic for reorganization of the conditions within the whole
global system of higher education are then necessary. The assumption of
the unique and separate character of the contemporary institution of the
university is unfortunately more difficult to maintain than ever before. And
yet a frail shadow of the Mertonian “communist ethos of science,” that lies
still on this institution, sustains hopes that the university could create a
more suitable space for the development of democracy and equality pro-
jects than others. However, the change within this context is impossible
without the parallel efforts to transform social relations as a whole.
Nonetheless, the university is still a very good starting point for this
wide transformative struggle.
De Peuter and Dyer-Witheford propose a broader scheme that would
allow for the wide circulation of the common within the system of coop-
erative production. They distinguish three main components of the
scheme. On the one hand, the “eco-social commons” or “institutions
managing the biosphere not as a commercial resource, but as the shared
basis for any continuing forms of human association” (2010, p. 45). On
the other hand, “networked commons” or “communication systems that
unleash [ . . . ] the tendency [ . . . ] to create a non-rivalrous goods [ . . . ]
that overflow intellectual property regimes” (2010, p. 45). This is com-

plemented by cooperative control over the sphere of production, that is
“labor commons” or “democratized organization of productive and
reproductive work”, organized in workers’ cooperatives, in which “work-
place is an organizational commons, the labor performed is a commoning
practice, and the surplus generated, a commonwealth” (2010, p. 45). The
process of circulation of the common is a combination of activities in these
three areas.
In the context of higher education the “eco-social commons” should
be understood as projects aimed at opening the access to knowledge and
education, the whole infrastructure created from the bottom up or from
public funds in order to maintain and develop the production of knowl-
edge and education. “Networked commons” of higher education are the
circuits of scientific communication that enable moving beyond the prin-
ciples of hierarchy and logic driving the distribution of prestige and status.
Finally, the site of “labor commons” at the university should be seen as a
participatory process of control over all areas of the production of knowl-
edge and education. De Peuter and Dyer-Witheford have aptly described
both the relationship between all components of the circulation of the
common, and the real differences that distinguish them from analogous
moments of the circulation of capital. Let quote their argument here in
length:
The three moments in our model of the circulation of the common –

ecological, labor and network or communicational – map onto the three
moments of the circulation of capital – financial, industrial, and mercantile –
yet also signal a profound alteration in their logic. While the financial circuit
of capital defines that system’s prime directive, making money from money,
the ecological circuit specifies a contrary priority, the preservation and
enhancement of the biospheric commons; where the industrial moment of
capital’s circulation concerns the appropriation of productive surpluses by
owners, the labor moment in commons circulation specifies the sharing of
these surpluses by workers and their communities; and while the mercantile
moment of capital hinges on commodity exchange as capital’s most impor-
tant form of social interaction, the communicational moment in the com-
mons involves the dialogic interaction necessary for democratic planning
and an economics of association. Thus the circuit of the common and the
circuit of capital are symmetrical yet shifted, homologous but displaced
from one another by transition to a set of alternative social priorities.
(2010, p. 46).
58 K. SZADKOWSKI
This is a really good description of what has been considered in this article
as the common. An alternative way of regulation of social relations of
production, distribution, exchange and consumption. At the same time, a
different form of wealth which focuses on social needs rather than max-
imization of profits. Institutions of the common, especially the university
of the common, face the need to give the logic of the common a hege-
monic status. Although it is certainly a difficult task, its implementation
certainly seems possible. However, the university of the common will not
emerge as a result of automatic and dialectical movement of relentless laws
of historical development. It will not come out when the frame of the old
neoliberal university will be blown up spontaneously by its real contra-
dictions. This is not a reason for pessimism. Historically speaking, the
development of the university creates conditions conducive to liberation.
The material manifestation of this situation is the common that lays at the
core of both, academic endeavor and the capitalist knowledge economy
under the needs of which the contemporary university is constantly being
subsumed. Thus the university of the common is something that we need
to continuously be fighting for.1
NOTE
1. The text has been written with support from the research project funded by
National Science Centre (UMO-2013/10/M/HS6/00561).
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Krystian Szadkowski researcher at the UNESCO Chair for Institutional

Research and Higher Education Policy of Adam Mickiewicz University in
Poznań, Poland. His research interests cover Marxian political economy, autono-
mist Marxism and transformation of higher education systems in Europe. He is the
author of Uniwersytet jako dobro wspólne (University as the common: Foundations
of critical higher education research; 2015). Recently, he co-edited a collected
volume Joy forever: The political economy of social creativity (MayFly 2014). He is
also an editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Praktyka Teoretyczna and
managing editor of Nauka i Szkolnictwo Wyższe.
CHAPTER 4
“The Last in the Food Chain”: Dignity

of Polish Junior Academics and Doctoral
Candidates in the Face of Performance
Management
Michał Zawadzki
INTRODUCTION
Dignity is a feature that allows a human to fully accomplish his humanity.
It signifies the ability to sense one’s own worth, as well as respect both for
oneself and for other people (Pirson 2014). On the one hand, following
the reasoning of Immanuel Kant, dignity is a moral category that does not
require any preconditions to be fulfilled: it belongs to every human by the
very reason of being a human (Rosen 2012). On the other hand, dignity is
not only an immanent feature of the human, but it also represents a
potentiality that should be updated, that is perfected in action (Wojtyła
1979). This means that in conditions not allowing personal fulfilment,
autonomy and freedom, one has to take care of one’s own and other
people’s dignity or even struggle for it heroically at times (Kateb 2011).
M. Zawadzki (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_4
64 M. ZAWADZKI
The main aim of this chapter is to explore the relation between perfor-
mance management at Polish university and the dignity of junior academics
as well as doctoral students. There is a growing number of critics who claim
that modern changes of the university, based on the market fundamentalism
and performance management paradigm, undermine the academic culture,
ethos and trust and weaken the cultural mission of the university. I focus on
the following question: how instrumental, neoliberal reforms of the uni-
versity affect the academic dignity, which is dependent on the autonomy,
freedom, humanistic quality of management processes, discursive and delib-
erative communication, research and teaching courage, space for resistance
and nonconformity? I present the first reflections concerning the in-depth
interviews I made with Polish doctoral candidates and junior academics who
decided to go away to Sweden. So far, there have been no research projects
about performance management and dignity of academics at Polish uni-
versities, which means that we are dealing with a significant cognitive gap in
the humanistic management discourse.
DIGNITY AND WORK

The key space that is worth diagnosing in terms of conditions for fulfilling
dignity is the workplace where we spend the most of our lives. In the
opinion of Sharon Bolton (2007), it is worthwhile to distinguish subjec-
tive and objective factors that affect the understanding of dignity in an
organization, constituting two complementary dimensions. “Dignity in
work” is a subjective feeling of the meaning of the performed work along
with the feeling of the level of the enjoyed autonomy, as well as respect
and reverence from others. In turn, “dignity at work” refers to the
structural organizational solutions that influence the level of the employ-
ees’ dignity, such as the quality of safety at the workplace, “audibility” of
the individual and collective voice, terms and conditions of employment or
the level of social justice (Bolton 2007). The subjective and objective
dimensions of dignity need not necessarily go hand in hand: despite
working in conditions indicating care for the good of the employees,
they may be experiencing humiliation – likewise, they may perceive a
high level of autonomy, and yet the diagnosis of the organizational
structure may point to solutions that restrict freedom, etc.
According to Andrew Sayer (2007), the realization of dignity at the
workplace firstly requires honest respect from colleagues, including people
in power: this that will enable respect towards one’s own and other people’s
4 “THE LAST IN THE FOOD CHAIN”: DIGNITY OF POLISH JUNIOR ACADEMICS… 65
work, constituting an impulse for the feeling of fulfilment and for further
development. A prerequisite for respect towards oneself and others is a
definite level of autonomy allowing an independent control of one’s orga-
nizational actions. Autonomy is also shaped on the basis of the possibility of
being noticed and listened to in a serious manner, as well as deliberative
organizational communication, in which there exists the possibility of
expressing constructive criticism without the threat of being humiliated
even in the case of having no convincing arguments (Lynch and
Ivancheva 2015). Dignity at the workplace also requires a non-instrumental
system of motivation, one that is not reduced to functionalistic solutions
based on material punishments and rewards, but one in which the employee
is respected in the first place as a human. Admittedly, adequate remunera-
tion for work is also a prerequisite for the fulfilment of dignity; however, it is
people management, based exclusively on material benefits disrespecting
the non-material respect and reverence, which leads to demotivation and
erosion of dignity. However, such a perspective on the system of
motivation does not imply an unconditional acceptance of the employees’
actions: it is based on a just and reliable evaluation of the quality of their
work (Sayer 2007).
An interesting view on dignity at the workplace is presented by Randy
Hodson (2003), who distinguishes and systematizes several actions lead-
ing to both negation of dignity and defence thereof. In his opinion, the
fundamental form of protection of dignity at the workplace are the
uncountable acts of employees’ micro-resistance against the abuses direc-
ted at them. Other forms include building democratic relations with co-
workers based on a relationship of trust, respect and reverence, as well as
creating an alternative, independent system of meanings at the workplace,
one that provides for a critical distance towards the eventual pathologies.
Dignity is also protected thanks to selfless civic organizational actions
aimed at the protection of the good of co-workers (Hodson 2003).
In Hodson’s opinion, one of the major factors negatively influencing
human dignity in an organization is the instrumental manner of managing
people leading to abuses towards employees (Hodson 2003). Treating
employees as resources and means of achieving pre-imposed organiza-
tional goals leads to the loss by them of autonomy and also respect with
regard to the work performed. This type of management is based on
acknowledging conformism as a desirable organizational value, which
results in overworking and also punishing those who do not consent to
the proposed organizational solutions or do not conform to the imposed
66 M. ZAWADZKI
Table 4.1 Dignity at work

Safeguarding dignity Denials of dignity
Resistance to attacks Mismanagement and abuse

Organizational citizenship Overwork
Independent meaning systems Constraints on autonomy
Group relations Contradictions of employee involvement
Source: Hodson 2003, p. 18
performance standards. This instrumental approach rewards submissive-

ness and workaholism, which features negatively affect the possibility of
preserving dignity at the workplace (see Table 4.1).
In the following parts of the chapter, I present the results of research in
which I am exploring the connection between performance management
at Polish university and the dignity of junior academics as well as doctoral
students. I focus on the following question: how do instrumental, neo-
liberal reforms of the university affect the academic dignity, which is
dependent on the autonomy, freedom, humanistic quality of management
processes, discursive and deliberative communication, research and teach-
ing courage, space for resistance and nonconformity? First of all, I present
the specificity of neoliberal changes in the contemporary university and the
most characteristic features of Polish higher education as a research con-
text. Then I describe the methodology of my research. Finally I present
the first reflections concerning the in-depth interviews I made with my
respondents.
Dignity and the University

The exploitative management of people, analysed by Hodson, creating
negative conditions for preserving the employee’s dignity, is nowadays a
characteristic of not only corporations, which are the subject of special
criticism from representatives of the Critical Management Studies
(Alvesson et al. 2009; Zawadzki 2012; Sułkowski and Zawadzki 2015),
but also public organizations, including universities. The current fashion
to reform the public sector using the market, overeconomized model of
New Public Management (Diefenbach 2009; Arnaboldi et al. 2015) leads
to implementing a performance-based imperative for managing academia
(Chandler et al. 2002; Mazza et al. 2008) and reinforces the negative
results of the managerial revolution that began within the higher educa-
tion institutions already in the mid-twentieth century.
University is an institution with the potential of opposition, whose
mission includes cultural democratization of social life, social solidarity
and critical reflexivity (Giroux 2011; Collini 2012). Preparing students as
well as academics for the role of critical citizens and conducting innovative
research that go the immediate market demand, enabling the development
of civilization, are the basic functions that make up the furtherance of
public interests by universities. In its more than nine-hundred-year his-
tory, the university had cared about it with the help of an organization
based on collegial democracy, carried out by its members.
The situation began to change in the 1960s – first in the United States
and then in Europe – when the so-called “managerial revolution” began in
higher education (Rourke and Brooks 1966; Amaral et al. 2003), which
has nowadays intensified its form. It involves adaptation of instrumental
methods, coming from the business sector, to the management of uni-
versities: employees of the university are to be managed and controlled by
a small group of professional managers trained in the economics, operate
as corporate workers and meet the standards of economic efficiency. The
rationale for market reforms is the increase of the comprehensiveness and
the size of the university, due to the growing interest in higher education
and the growing pressure on the need for reporting against the outside
environment. The ideology of managerialism, which underpins the New
Public Management model also envisages control of social actors from
outside the university on evaluation of its work using externally-imposed
quality criteria.
Critics of instrumental market solutions in academic institutions point
to the fact that their use in the case of the university is based on dubious
arguments: neither scientific research nor organizational practice clearly
indicate that the market model of university governance can be a real
answer to the problem of massification of education and the need for
transparency and reporting of educational institutions (Alvesson 2013;
Craig et al. 2014). On the contrary, the university managed in accordance
with the corporate principles seems not to be capable of dealing with those
tasks (Prichard and Willmott 1997; Tuchman 2009). Moreover, as indi-
cated by the critics, the corporatization makes its indigenous cultural
mission erode, causing that it does not prepare students for the role of
critical citizens and it does not generate research that would really affect
social and cultural changes (Bogt and Scapens 2012; Münch 2014). One
68 M. ZAWADZKI
of the diagnosed causes of this situation is the progressive loss of the

humanistic dimension of academic culture, as subjected to the pressures
of instrumental market solutions and ideology of excellence (Amit 2000;
Davies et al. 2007; Svensson et al. 2010).
PERFORMING ACADEMICS
Adapting the managerial methods to universities is the result of the
implementation of neoliberal reforms by the modern governments
(Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Jemielniak and Greenwood 2013).
These reforms, according to Mats Alvesson, in the hidden layer, are
based on the false assumption of the market fundamentalism (Alvesson
2013) – it is taken for granted that the role of education and scientific
research is to meet the needs imposed by the labour market and that the
market provides the best solutions for the organizational problems.
Meanwhile, adapting the market management to universities, basing on
the use of quantifiable performance indicators (Pettersen 2015) and
resulting the projectification of research (Fowler et al. 2015), forces
academics to focus on selfish scientific achievements, at the expense of
social ties at the university, the academic ethos, teaching, family life and
even mental health (Besley and Peters 2005; Sievers 2008; Gill 2009;
Parker and Weik 2014; Gibbs et al. 2015). More and more academics
seem to conduct research mainly to meet the reporting requirements and
the excellence of ranking lists (Hazelkorn et al. 2014; Tourish and
Willmott 2015). As a result, work at the university – teaching, scientific,
but also administrative work – becomes an autonomous goal in itself and
often takes place in accordance with the logic of the survival of indivi-
duals (Shore and Roberts 1995). According to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory
(1988), we currently have to deal with an increasingly visible ritualiza-
tion of the appearance of the functioning of the university. Research
and teaching work without internalized humanistic values that shape
the academic culture become merely a technological project designed
to meet the requirements of instrumental audit culture (Power 1997;
Shore 2008).
Performance management system used as a mechanism of control very
often results in conformist attitudes, which ultimately is related to a
reduction of cognitive rationality among the organizational actors
(Alvesson 2013): the cognitive horizon is reduced to the common
denominator claiming that only constant excellence is something correct
and required. This way of management of organization is compared by

Hugh Willmott to the ways totalitarian systems function and calls it
“corporate culturism” (Willmott 1993). Its characteristic feature is
expanding the space of instrumental rationality in the organization by
way of constituting a homogeneous monoculture which is the conse-
quence of the functional management of the people regarded as a resource
and a tool for increasing the effectiveness of the organization (Zawadzki
2015).
Life subjected to performance pressure diminishes the chances of hav-
ing a family, and particularly children, who by default are considered by
academics as an obstacle in the career (see: Parker and Weik 2014; Gibbs
et al. 2015). An exemplary social actor that would fulfil the requirements
of the new performance management at higher education institutions is a
childless person being on their own, having no interests or concerns apart
from the number of points scored through the academic work and work-
ing non-stop. Failure to fulfil these requirements results in non-fulfilment,
shame and a sense of guilt. The neoliberal pressure has a lot in common
with the primitive styles of management represented by Taylorism and
Fordism: what really matters is only work performance and score effec-
tiveness, irrespective of the workers’ emotions or private life. The univer-
sity has become a machine in which academics are small cogs entangled
in the pathology of workaholism. This machine strips the human of
dignity: their emotions, leisure time, family relations are irrelevant –
what really matters is only work that additionally does not give any chance
of fulfilment.
The crisis of the cultural formation of the university in the world
particularly affects young academics – doctoral students as well as junior
academics – who were forced to rapid and often uncritical adaptation to
the changing working conditions of the academic environment (Teichler
2006). The few and rudimentary research on this topic in the world point
to the apparent erosion of academic culture among representatives of
younger scholars, which results from the pressure of having to meet the
quantitative criteria in research work at the expense of quality criteria and
with the participation of devaluation of teaching and personal life crisis
of researchers (Butler and Spoelstra 2012; Prasad 2013; Knight and
Clarke 2014; Malsch and Tessier 2015; Raineri 2015; Maclean 2016).
Nevertheless, it is far from clear how performance management imperative
is affecting the dignity of junior academics and doctoral students who
work in the university.
70 M. ZAWADZKI
RESEARCH CONTEXT: POLISH HIGHER EDUCATION

The problem of transforming academic cultures seems to be particularly
acute in Poland, where there has been a rapid process of marketization and
massification of education (Dakowska 2015; Kwiek and Antonowicz
2015). At the same time, equally fast is the progress of the changing
standards of science understood as a public good in favour of the standards
of commercialized science and the New Public Management model
(Szkudlarek and Stankiewicz 2014).
Polish higher education seems to be interesting case because the liberal-
ization and managerialization of public services seems to be more widely
supported than in some Western European countries (Kargulowa et al.
2005; Szwabowski 2014; Aarrevaara et al. 2015; Kwiek 2015) – also
because of its opposition to the communist period, its economy of
shortages and central planning. The 2005 Higher Education Act was the
first attempt to translate proposals elaborated during the Bologna minis-
terial meetings into a legal framework. This reform has been revised and
updated by a new Act of March 2011 (Higher Education Act 2011, with
further updates), which entered into force in October 2011. The 2011
Higher Education Act reinforces the tendency to employ academics on
temporary contracts. Individual researchers and academic teachers are
evaluated at least every 2 years – evaluation strongly based on research
activity (list of publications, research grants). There is also strong focus on
assessment of teaching/learning activity – faculty government takes into
consideration student’s opinions, quantitative as well as qualitative assess-
ment made by them about the particular courses.
Paradoxically, what is absent from the Polish performance management
system, however, is any clear definition of what constitutes “quality” or
“excellence”. The official line in documents is that all institutions can
achieve excellence, measured against the objectives which they set for
themselves. As a result, the performance management and audit system is
seemingly decentralized and institutions and individuals are empowered in
the sense that they are invited to define their own yardsticks for excellence.
However, this apparent freedom is counterbalanced by the existence of
externally imposed inspectorates and the publication of results in competi-
tive and hierarchical league tables. Should this prove insufficient to guaran-
tee maximum productivity, sanctions can be mobilized against individuals.
These include the policy of linking performance with departmental funding
and, beyond that, with individual salaries and promotion prospects.
The neoliberal pressure to align research with the world standards of

perfection – even though it has its reflection in the latest acts reforming the
Polish universities – does not translate into the necessary increase of
financial means from the budget allocated to the system of education or
into structural solutions on the organizational level. Polish universities still
struggle with the problem of overinflated bureaucracy and feudalism in the
structures of power (Antonowicz 2015): one can even get an impression
that the problem is aggravated along with the growing market pressure
(Szadkowski 2015; see: Graeber 2015).
The average salary of a young academic (including doctoral scholar-
ships) in Poland is several times lower than the salary of those after
habilitation and does not enable them to achieve at least a minimum of
economic independence (Kowzan et al. 2015). It is also worth to add that
young Polish academics have to deal themselves with the administration of
their projects – from preparation of the application to the settlement of the
grant – due to the lack of professional research project management offices
at Polish colleges and universities.1 The financial situation of Polish doc-
toral candidates is also dramatic. The pool of low scholarships (the average
doctoral scholarship in Poland is below the poverty line) is disproportio-
nately small in relation to the enormous number of students, which forces
the doctoral candidates to take up full-time employment outside the
institution (Szadkowski 2014). At the same time, a large number of
teaching hours is imposed on them – older academics themselves do not
want to waste their time on teaching since they only have to account for
their research results (Kwiek 2015). On the other hand, a large amount of
teaching hours is often the only way for them to earn enough money but,
however, they often have to deal with a lack of any infrastructural facilities
(lack of an own room at the university or access to a kitchen). Due to the
disadvantageous conditions for the academic and personal development,
more and more Polish doctoral candidates and junior academics decide to
go abroad (Batorski et al. 2009; Wagner 2011).
Below, I present the first reflections concerning the in-depth interviews
I made with Polish doctoral candidates and junior academics who decided
to go away to Sweden for a scholarship. The topics concern reactions to
the neoliberal changes in Polish universities in the context of human
dignity. Due to the small number of interviews made (the surveys are
currently ongoing) the presented results should be treated as a pilot
studies the purpose of which is only to preliminarily elucidate the research
problem.
72 M. ZAWADZKI
METHODOLOGY
Methodological approach in the presented research is based on humanistic
methods, founded on qualitative methodology (Kostera 2007). From the
beginning of 2015, I have been conducting field research using in-depth
interviews derived from ethnography. The use of qualitative methodology
in the research program is justified by the complexity of the topic and poor
knowledge on academic culture in the contemporary theory of organiza-
tion and management. Moreover, the use of qualitative methods and
techniques is the most valuable cognitive approach to studying phenom-
ena of education and dignity, being difficult to measure quantitatively
(Dierksmeier 2011). In the data collection a precept of abduction having
been used (also called “the logic of discovery”, see: Czarniawska 2014):
instead of amassing “data”, from which a theory can be “induced”, a set of
double-back steps is performed. I move from the field to the desk and
back, step-by-step, refining the emerging theory (Czarniawska 2014).
DATA COLLECTION
Between January 2015 and June 2015, seven in-depth interviews with
Polish junior academics and doctoral students from different academic
fields (natural science as well as humanities) having short-term scholar-
ships and working at the Swedish universities (doctoral and postdoctoral
positions) took place. My method of sampling was purposeful (particular
group of people) and self-selecting as participants responded to my
detailed invitation to take part in this study. These interviews were “con-
versations with a purpose” (Burman 1994) – an attempt to understand
how academics experience their working lives, and so I invited participants
to talk generally about themselves, and their lives and affinities with the
profession. In attempting to research thoughtfully, I ensured that partici-
pants were happy to talk about the subject, understood our research and
were confident in their anonymity.
It is worth noting that the choice of respondents – Polish junior aca-
demics and doctoral students who held scholarships in Sweden – might
affect the results of research in a particular way. Staying abroad may result in
rather negative opinions about the Polish university. On the other hand,
expressing opinions from the foreigner perspective may allow to provide
more courageous and profound information about the employer, not con-
stricted by the feeling of providing confidential opinions.
DATA ANALYSIS
The collection of field material, its classification and interpretation were
conducted simultaneously (Czarniawska 2014). I was interviewing, at the
same time transcripting and coding, trying to find out similarities and
differences between the samples of the field material and looking for a
relevant categories and connections between them.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How working conditions of Polish junior academics and doctoral students
are shaped by the pressure of performance management in the university?
What is the role played by performance management in underpinning
working and private lives of Polish junior academics and doctoral students?
How do performance management affect the dignity of Polish junior
academics and doctoral students?
FINDINGS
Workaholism: Protection of dignity at the workplace involves respect for
the employee’s personal life and providing them with the possibility of
establishing a satisfying balance between work and family life. Overwork
impacts negatively on dignity, reifies it and burdens it with the yoke of
being a useless, disturbing element in achieving the best possible perfor-
mance (Hodson 2003). Feelings, emotions and family relations – that is
the phenomena that determine the uniqueness of man and condition his
dignity – lose their meaning in the context of excessive work.
According to my respondent’s view, the present performance system at
Polish universities creates the feeling that work is never done: you can
always do something more to achieve a better result. The pressure is
enhanced by the feeling of insecurity resulting from the fact that young
people prior to habilitation are employed on precarious, temporary con-
tracts. Both doctoral candidates and junior academics live in the feeling of
the necessity of constant work: neoliberalism creates in their minds an
illusion that the more they work, the more chances they will have to stay at
the university (doctoral candidates) or have their contracts extended
(junior academics). Living in constant fear, as well as the resultant worka-
holism, is founded on the lack of clear criteria defining the quality level of
the work performed at the university, on pressure towards the injurious
74 M. ZAWADZKI
rivalry with others and on helplessness concerning the viability of making

any changes. As one of the doctoral candidates point out:
There is a constant feeling of having to do more . . . We fall into the trap,

that it is never enough, so that you have two, three publications for a year,
well, when you think rationally about it, it should be quite enough, yes,
but when you are in a situation when you do not know how much your
colleague, friend did, then you have the feeling that it is not enough and
that you must do more, well, and in consequence there is no balance
between the family life and professional life, there is no sense of security
(doctoral student 1)
Unethical behaviours: My interlocutors are also aware of the unethical

mechanisms adopted by the academic circles in order to fulfil the standards
characteristic for the system of performance management. Very frequently,
statements contain the thread of an intellectual cartel based on private
relations and mutual citations, as one of the postdoctoral researcher
claims:
I hate working under pressure, unfortunately it is a work under pressure,

that you have to produce appropriate number of something. Now I for-
mulated a particular argument in my head, for example: a pressure of
citations. People produce a citation network: “Quote me, and I will quote
you”. It is not necessary, it is not appropriate. Of course, we do not live in a
perfect world, but it should not be like this (postdoctoral researcher 1)
Symptomatic in this context is also an utterance by one respondent who

stated that one of the chances for her to survive at the university are joint
publications with her more experienced husband, who is also more famil-
iar with the academic environment.2
Erosion of teaching and lack of academic conversations: In the opinions
of the respondents, the performance pressure negatively affects both the
quality of teaching and the quality of the academic conversations, giving
rise to the lack of the culture of discussion and hyper-individualism in the
research work, also contributing to the fact that teaching is considered a
necessary evil that prevents one from obtaining the desired scores. As one
of the doctoral students observed,
Well, certainly the fact that there is more equipment available at one place,
this lets me conduct this research that I deal with and as it is a research and
development institute, then, well, there is no such teaching pressure, no,

I don’t have to devote my time to teaching, just to my research. (doctoral
student 2)
As a consequence, paradoxically, as one of the survey participants – post-

doctoral researcher – points out, scores ascribed to journals as well as those
being the results of evaluation of the academic achievements make the
only tangible proof giving meaning to her work at the college:
But now, well, there is some sort of suspiciousness among the employees,
well, it’s mutual, who did what, where they published and will they have a
better score or worse. And this, this is of course not good, while I myself
quite, I mean, this system somehow appeals to me, that is, I have an
impression that as far as it’s about what I do and the things I do are quite
far, somehow, from the profile of the faculty, but this is the only tangible
proof to me that what I deal with really does make sense. (postdoctoral
researcher 2)
Limitation of autonomy: Autonomy in academic and teaching activity

signifies freedom in the scope of teaching and conducting academic
research, which is not restricted by unjustified interference based on
control or external pressure (Enders et al. 2013; Lynch and Ivancheva
2015). It enables taking up research subjects in accordance with the
researcher’s personal interests, free discussion on the results of research
in the circle of other researchers and students, and publishing papers
without censorial control. Academic autonomy also includes the possi-
bility of voicing their needs freely by the workers, doctoral candidates
and students, as well as work on the basis of jointly agreed and mutually
observed, overt terms and conditions. Understood as such, autonomy is
a prerequisite for fulfilment of workers’ dignity at the university, based
on the possibility of autonomous management of one’s own freedom
(Hodson 2003).
The pathology of being instrumentally abused occurs particularly fre-
quently in the utterances of Polish doctoral students. They stress the
problem of imposing the administrative and teaching burdens on them,
as well as being treated merely as a resource necessary for the fulfilment of
requirements to obtain the academic title. At the same time, there is the
predominant awareness that survival at the university depends on the
ability to accept the lack of autonomy:
76 M. ZAWADZKI
On the other hand, well, as in most cases, well, this is a sort of abuse related to
using doctoral students to fill in gaps in human resources at research and
teaching institutions in Poland, that is what it is all about. (doctoral student 1).
Misuse of power and feudalism: The contradiction that arises between the
requirements of the academic perfection on the part of the macro-dis-
course of the external environment institutions (the Polish Ministry of
Science and Higher Education, European Union acts, ranking lists) and
the real rules of managing the organizational culture of the university
creates dissonance and schizophrenic feeling (see: Shore 2010) of being
lost among Polish junior academics and doctoral students. On the one
hand, they feel the pressure on fulfilling the requirements of the interna-
tional standard of research perfection – on the other one, they are forced
to act within the scope of the intra-institutional policy, consenting to the
loss of dignity by being pushed to the margin and disrespectful attitude on
the part of the workers being higher in the feudalistic academic hierarchy.
Those who cope neither with the standards of international perfection nor
with the feudal hierarchy might be fired.
One of the female doctoral students used an interesting phrase, “cult
of dignitaries”, to describe the Polish environment of supervisors of
doctoral theses: people with habilitation and the professor title, stres-
sing this way their impunity and the necessity of submitting oneself to
their will in order to survive, and pointing to their pomposity assuming
grotesque forms because of the mediocre quality of their academic
achievements. The pompous grandeur creates the problem of author-
itarianism and often muzzles the younger interlocutors (the professor
only discussed with that lecturer, the rest just sat politely and listened,
postdoctoral researcher 3). Sadly, this goes hand in hand with having
hegemonic power and the unjust right to deciding on the basic needs of
the junior academics and doctoral candidates: You can ask for something
but generally, well, we are the last in the food chain, so, well, you will get
what you want unless someone higher up in this food chain wants it
(doctoral student 1)
Being “the last in the food chain” involves a disrespectful attitude on
the part of the independent workers who do not show interest in the
research conducted by the junior academics and doctoral candidates. What
is more, there is no culture of discussion within the community of the
juniors, either: the individual mode of work oriented at scoring points
prevails. Any cooperation and interest begins first when one of parties can
offer participation in a research grant. As one of doctoral students sums up

this situation, as a matter of fact, people only chase money and pretend to be
intellectuals (doctoral student 3)
Conflicts and logic of survival: At the same time, and it is worthwhile to
pay special attention to this issue, doctoral students often mention in their
statements the problem of reproducing conflicts taking place among the
independent academics who are their supervisors, which negatively influ-
ences the relations between the doctoral students:
That is, you know, this is so that this is a complicated question, I mean . . . there’s
this problem, the personal tensions between the professors in our circle, and this
somehow affects the relations between the doctoral students, yes, I mean,
although this sounds rather bizarrely, the doctoral students from different
institutes . . . well, they approach each other with quite a lot of mistrust, don’t
they? (doctoral student 1).
Ultimately, the college or university is frequently perceived as place to be

avoided as much as possible. The logic of survival is based on actions that can
make the impression that you are a valuable employee but at the same time
you work at the lowest possible cost. As postdoctoral researcher observed,
Well, at least in my case, at the faculty, generally there’s some culture of the
daily living, it consists in spending as little time at the institution as possible.
That is, generally people come to their classes that they have with students,
and then they leave. And so, generally, we only see each other in passing,
that is it is not so that we sit together or whatever, we only meet at some
meetings, some major meetings (postdoctoral researcher 2).
The reluctance to spend time at the institution is certainly enhanced by the

poor facilities, and it may not be so easy to feel comfortably there. At
Polish universities, there is a deficit of rooms for doctoral students and
junior academics, computers or common spaces:
And another thing that is somehow related, that is the issue of this physical
surroundings, I happen to work in a building where you can’t just sit down,
like here, and have a normal chat. And so there is no, well, I mean I always try
to avoid being at work too long, actually, I have no conditions for work there,
I mean . . . it’s all very crowded, nowhere to have a meal or have a rest, so it’s
no wonder, I do it myself, I avoid the place. (postdoctoral researcher 2)
78 M. ZAWADZKI
INSTEAD OF CONCLUSIONS
If higher education is to be an essential sphere for doing valuable research
and educating citizens equipped to understand others; to exercise freedom
in concert with larger concerns over social justice and democracy; and to
ask questions regarding the basic assumptions that maintain human dig-
nity and govern democratic political life, first of all we have to renew the
relationship between academic work and the formation of engaged
thoughtful citizens. That is why intellectuals must take sides, speak out,
and engage in the hard work of debunking neoliberalism’s assault on
teaching and learning. They must orient their teaching and research
work toward social and cultural change and constitute a democratic
space that should enable confront ethically and politically the connecting
tissue of experience and thought, theory and praxis, ideas and public life.
We have to renew a real critical dialogue at university which will be
focused on posing and addressing problems rather than giving answers
in the highly ranked journals. As Paulo Freire shows (2001), critical
dialogue is a crucial part of the process of becoming more fully human,
because it allows participants to develop a deeper awareness of themselves
as unfinished beings.
The university has to be an elitist institution. But it should not be based
on neoliberal elitism measured by the position in the ranking list. The
elitism of intellectual merit is based on exclusivity arising from high levels
of symbolic capital. These, in turn, allow to achieve a high level of critical
reflection. Elitism of this meritocratic type allows to argue for and mobi-
lize resistance against the obvious social dangers that often – as for
instance performance management based on economic rationality – hide
undetected cultural pathologies and threaten the sustainability of our
universities. The level of democratization of the public sphere in
Western societies depends on the quality of liberal elitism of this merito-
cratic type at the university.
In Henri Giroux’s opinion, which I agree with, while higher educa-
tion is only one side of ongoing social struggles and negotiations, it is
one of the primary institutional and political spheres where democracy
should be shaped, democratic relations experienced and anti-democratic
forms of power identified and critically engaged (Giroux 2011). It is
also one of the few spheres left, where younger and older people should
be able to think critically about the knowledge they gain, and where
they get a chance to become familiar with the values that might help
them reject the reduction of a citizen’s duties to an obligation to go

shopping – to neoliberalism and consumerism.
Reflecting on the possibility to change the adverse working conditions of
doctoral candidates and junior academics in Poland, it is worthwhile to take
into consideration the suggestion provided by Hodson in whose opinion the
fundamental form of protecting dignity at the workplace are the uncountable
acts of employees’ micro-resistance against the abuses directed at them
(Hodson 2003). In the case of Polish institutions it appears necessary to
build separate trade unions protecting the rights of doctoral candidates and
junior academics that would give the impulse and arguments allowing eman-
cipation and resistance. It is worth mentioning that at the moment there
already exist a few informal organizations that fight, using symbolic pressure
(social consultations, public conferences, happenings, pickets, uncomforta-
ble questions asked to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education), to
improve the working conditions of doctoral candidates and junior academics
(Obywatele Nauki [Citizens of Science], Komitet Kryzysowy Humanistyki
Polskiej [Crisis Committee of the Polish Humanities], Uniwersytet
Zaangażowany [Engaged University]), Nowe Otwarcie Uniwersytetu [New
Opening of the University]. The existence of these organizations and the
building of trade unions would fit into another element of the theory of
protecting dignity at the workplace by Hodson, who speaks of the necessity
of creating an alternative, independent system of meanings at the workplace
that would enable a critical distance towards the pathologies and counter-
acting them. The two other forms, building democratic relations with the
fellow workers based on the relationship of trust, respect and reverence, as
well as taking up selfless, civic actions aimed at protecting the good of the
fellow workers, seem feasible only after achieving a definite level of emancipa-
tion and awareness of the necessity of putting up resistance.
Protecting the young academic staff’s dignity, consisting of huma-
nistic norms and cultural values, including democratic social relations,
humanistic ethos of academic skills, the ability of critical discussions
with authorities and tradition, the ability to act for the common good
and the ability to think critically – is a prerequisite for the develop-
ment of higher education, and the key factor enabling scientific pro-
gress and ensuring an adequate standard of education that enables
graduates to take on roles of citizens and the acquisition of profes-
sional, academic skills. Humanistic academic culture requires moving
away from the formal, quantitative evaluation of research and teaching
in favour of alternative models of assessment based on qualitative
80 M. ZAWADZKI
criteria, the most important of which is the quality of research and

teaching output based on the capacity for deep reflection and critical
reasoning and the ability to deliberate with authorities (Nussbaum
2010). They can enable the execution of the primary objective of
the university as a public institution, being the social and cultural
responsibility for the quality of society democratization. Only high-
lighting and integrating humanistic values and standards of organiza-
tional culture that promote the dignity of academics and make up the
academic culture can lead to a real improvement of the quality of
education and research at the universities, which may enable their
public mission to be carried out.
NOTES
1. Junior academics are often challenged with a clause in their temporary
contracts on the necessity of performing administrative tasks during the
year – it is however vague and does not specify the exact hours and tasks
but only defines the per cent share in relation to the teaching and research
duties. This might provide for a large scope of exploitation.
2. An interesting thread that often occurred in the utterance of my female
respondents was stressing by them that they did not see any chances for
entering into a relationship with anyone from outside the institution. It
could even be argued that the neoliberal performance system at universities
affected the choices of partners in academic workers’ relationships.
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CHAPTER 5
The Culture of Control

in the Contemporary University
Łukasz Sułkowski
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this chapter is to present a critique of the fundamental
ideas of neoliberal university management, where the culture of control
and the culture of evidence play key roles. It is based on the concepts of
new public management as applied to universities, which have been
reflected on in a critical management studies stream and other radical
trends in social sciences. This chapter puts forward a question about the
effectiveness of applied neoliberal management solutions and the legiti-
macy of their criticism under the radical trend in management, pedagogy
and social sciences.
Along with making public goods, such as healthcare, welfare and higher
education, accessible to the general public in the twentieth century, the
problem of growing costs of such services emerged as well. A solution that
is chosen in line with a new public management approach or, more
broadly, neoliberalism, is privatisation of public services combined with
the transformation of the public good into the private good and offloading
Ł. Sułkowski (*)
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
The University of Social Sciences, Lodz, Poland
e-mail: lukasz.sulkowski@uj.edu.pl

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_5
86 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
its maintenance costs on to the purchaser (Bullen et al. 2004; Amaral and
Meek 2003; Lynch and Moran 2006; Steier 2003). This also refers to
higher education, which is being increasingly privatised in many regions,
especially in developing countries. Researchers identifying themselves with
the critical trend perceive at the same time the expansion of neoliberal
ideology that justifies the changes made (Giroux 2002, pp. 425–464;
McLaren 2005).
The argument structure is based on a dialectic approach, according to
which the neoliberal position and the culture of control concept (thesis)
have been presented, then submitted to criticism (antithesis), and even-
tually possible synthesis has been sought. First, the most important neo-
liberal management methods and the characteristics of the culture of
control have been gathered. Next, the essence of neoliberal management
of universities, which is based on the concepts of new public management
and its reflection in the cultural sphere, has been described. And then they
have been submitted to criticism with an attempt made to balance neoli-
beralism and the culture of control.
NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY
The academic culture in the heyday of the research university and the
Humboldt-type university was generally not the subject of scientific reflec-
tion, because it existed as an obvious, assimilated pattern of functioning of
the university. Cultural studies began to appear along with the symptoms
of profound change, the traditional models of the university have been
subject to for the last few decades. One of the axes of this change is the
evolution from a culture based on trust to a culture based on verification,
audit and control. Traditional academic culture bestowed academic staff
with trust, based on the assumption that the professor’s ethos of university
faculty commits them to decent scientific and didactic activity. In the
course of history, under the influence of many cultural, social and eco-
nomic factors, among which the development of new public management
played an important role, decomposition of the traditional model of the
university occurred and the patterns of the culture of trust disappeared.
A new formation, in the literature of the subject called evidence culture,
audit culture, control culture or assessment culture, is developing to
replace it (Shore and Wright 1999, pp. 557–575). Evidence culture is
based on the concept of managerial control and management of processes
and quality at the university. Its underlying assumptions are taken from
5 THE CULTURE OF CONTROL IN THE CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITY 87
new public management and applied to universities, namely (Shore and

Wright 1999, pp. 557–575):
• embedding competitive mechanisms in the education system and the

activities of universities;
• economisation of higher education sector activities that will create
constant pressure on savings in universities and permanent reduction
of the share of public finances in the activities of state universities;
• partial privatisation of higher education by creating the possibility to
open private universities as well as the outsourcing of some services
in public universities;
• transformation of the management systems of universities from a
traditional academic and collegial administration system into a man-
agerial-corporate system, modelled on business applications;
• implementation of the accounting system (accountability), which
will allow for controlling university management (financial, quality
assurance) processes,
• change of education orientation from academic to professional, by
adjusting teaching programs to the needs of the labour market.
NEOLIBERAL MANAGEMENT METHODS

The concept of neoliberal management methods is criticised by the radical
trends in the social and management sciences. The neoliberal management
methods are usually largely identified with the concepts of new public
management, and thus they adopt the assumptions that organisational
solutions used in the business sector should imitate the concepts known
in business (Lorenz 2012, pp. 599–629). This involves orientation
towards competition within the sector, limiting state interventionism,
freedom of competition, managerial decision-making methods and strate-
gic, and structural and cultural solutions modelled on corporations
(Table 5.1).
The new public management trend is one of the fundamental points of
reference in public sector analyses (Boston et al. 1996). Business activity
models are transferred to public activity, which is also the subject of
criticism (Chang 2008; Dunleavy and Margetts 2006). Jan-Erik Lane
describes numerous examples of effective implementation of the new
public management concepts in various countries, indicating also the
88 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
Table 5.1 Selected “neoliberal” management methods in public sectors

Area of management Concepts
Organisation theory and 1. Higher effectiveness of private organisations

methodology (privatisation).
2. Creating conditions for free competition (limiting state
interventionism).
3. Focus on economic effects in the public sector.
Strategic management 1. Public organisation management following the business
model.
2. Economic effectiveness as the strategic criterion of
measuring the effectiveness of public organisations.
Organisational structures Decentralisation
Diversification and restructuring
Marketing 1. Regarding public organisation activities as services
addressed to customers.
2. Consumerism in the activities of public organisations.
Human resource 1. Employee selection and motivation due to work
management effectiveness.
2. Development of the group of professional managers in the
public sector.
3. Reduction of employment costs.
Quality management 1. Effectiveness and quality measures, indicators and
standards.
2. Process management in public organisations.
Finance management 1. Business methods (costs centres, reductions and cost
restructuring).
2. Development of financial analysis and management
accounting in the public sector.
3. Accountability of public organisations.
Source: Own elaboration, based on: Sulkowski 2016
role of the cultural context and institutions (Lane 2002). In the cultural
sphere, public organisations can also reflect business solutions, which is
not devoid of controversy (Barzelay 2001). In his attempt to synthesise
the new public management trend, Christopher Hood indicates the
existence of a conflict of values between striving towards “effectiveness”
and “equality” in public management. A solution might be referring to
the possibility of “endless reprogrammability” of the new public manage-
ment trend allowing for balancing between these values (Hood 1991,
pp. 3–19).
NEOLIBERAL MANAGEMENT OF UNIVERSITIES

Traditional universities were founded on the ethos of science, and education
was understood as the Enlightenment inheritance (Lynch 2006, pp. 1–17).
The ethos of science is understood as creating the fundamental common good
for the development of humankind and improvement of prosperity. According
to Robert Merton’s norms, science referring to communalism, general avail-
ability, disinterestedness and universality remains the public good by its nature
and should not be privatised (Merton 1973). Higher education in a traditional
university, being the community of researchers and students, was inseparably
interwoven with scientific research and for this reason alone had the status of
the public good. The universities were also to protect valuable, disinterested
and critical education, which prepares for the role of a citizen and develops
humanistic values (De La Fuente 2002; Lieberwitz 2004). Over the last few
decades, we have been observing gradual transition of the universities from
universal human values orientation to market orientation. Higher education
has ceased to be perceived as the public good, and started to be the private
good for which you pay. Rutherford says that the universities have become
“corporate consumer-oriented networks” (Rutherford 2005). Summing up,
the critics of market changes raise a number of important topics that question
the directions of changes to the contemporary university:
1. Higher education in the traditional university used to be perceived as

the “public good”. Over the last decades, however, it has been per-
ceived more and more as the “private good”, and thereby as the type
of investment in a personal or family career (Marginson 2011,
pp. 411–433). Therefore education is losing its mission of civic educa-
tion to foster community and collaborative spirit (Sławek 2013).
2. Universities submitted to market pressure, beside charging stu-
dents with tuition fees, seek other sources of income, which
include: commercialisation of research (e.g., patents, licences,
spin-offs and the renting of infrastructure) (Perkmann 2013,
pp. 423–442), which might lead to the instrumentalisation of
university activity and the decline of the ethos of science.
3. The application of management methods taken from business,
which allow for the increase of economic effectiveness and at the
same time make the universities resemble corporations by applying
the concept of new public management (Guglietti 2012).
90 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
4. A shift to more hierarchical and managerial forms of organisation

consisting in empowering the managing functions (chancellors and
presidents) at the expense of collegial decision-making; establish-
ing supervisory bodies with broad prerogatives, where business
sector representatives play a significant role; and the weakening of
academic and trade union liberties and academics’ participation in
making decisions on the university (Deem 2008).
5. Creating a new organisational hierarchy within the university con-
sisting in distinguishing a new group of academic managers,
expanding and enhancing the prerogatives of university adminis-
tration. Employing more administrative workers and increasing
pays for the university management (Webster and Mosoetsa
2002, pp. 59–82).
6. Making university employment more flexible by switching to con-
tracts and making employment less stable. More people employed
under temporary contracts and focusing on teaching only (Shore
and Davidson 2014, pp. 12–28; Vernon 2010).
7. The development of audit, evidence and control culture consisting
in implementing quantitative measures of effectiveness to the key
aspects of university activity. Implementing motivation mechan-
isms for the academics consisting in measuring scientific achieve-
ments and making promotion, and even remuneration, conditional
upon them. In consequence, pressure appears to publish and apply
quantitative measures to scientific activity, which is not very mea-
surable (Castree 2002, pp. 222–229).
8. Linking higher education closely to the needs of business and
labour market, which removes universal meaning from education
to replace it by specialist professional education (Levidow 2002,
pp. 1–21).
9. University functioning becomes more and more determined by
economy and measured using effectiveness measures. However,
the problem actually consists in the immeasurability of creative
work. The result of creative work marketisation is that the uni-
versity and academics must in many cases compete with corpora-
tions or serve them with their research results. Such an
ideological shift in the concept of knowledge largely limits
research and teaching in humanities and social sciences reducing
them to the role of professional education (Zabrodska 2011,
pp. 709–719).
10. Universities service the professional interests of many groups very

well. Professional associations in many disciplines, such as medi-
cine, dentistry, law, pharmacy, psychology, building engineering
and many others, have a considerable impact on university educa-
tion in many countries by shaping standards, course content and
certification of professional qualifications (Lynch 2006, pp. 1–17).
11. The neoliberal trend manifests itself in the privatisation of the
majority of public services, including education above all, especially
at the higher level (Angus 2004; Bullen et al. 2004; Dill 2003;
Lynch and Moran 2006; Steier 2003; Stevenson 1999).
CRITICISM IN RESEARCH ON NEOLIBERALISM

A question can be put forward whether narrative of neoliberalism, forced
by the representatives of the critical current, is not an oversimplification.
Let us consider a few arguments here that might question the cognitive
value of the very notion of neoliberalism and indicate the value of imple-
mented changes, unperceived by the critics of neoliberalism. First, the
“neoliberalism” term derives from political life rather than from in-depth
scientific reflection. A simplified division into the left and the right result-
ing in a dichotomised manner of looking at the reality is a sort of
Manichaen perception of contemporary social reality. Many representa-
tives of the academic community and activists sympathising with leftist
views tried to find a “banner” they could unite under. There is no better
method of internal integration than to clearly identify and stigmatise the
“enemy”. Therefore, an “anti-neoliberal” camp started to crystallise in the
1990s and it built an alternative reality versus the political and scientific
establishment. The opposite side did not lack radicals either who treated
the assumptions of classical economy as a dogma and moved towards
market fundamentalism without trying to enter into dialogue and reach
compromise. To quote an example referring to UK educational policy: a
clause on the confirmation of “academic freedom” by the legislator, which
underlay the system of neoliberal changes to British education, disap-
peared completely from the original version of the Education Reform
Act of 1988 designed by Lord Kenneth Baker. Only the actual threat of
its rejection by the House of Lords caused reintroduction of academic
freedom to the Act (after: Antonowicz 2013, p. 37). The academic discourse
did not lack dogmatic standpoints either Radical approaches, which
92 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
sometimes disavow in an emotional manner new public management and

the direction of changes implemented to higher education, also started to
prevail among the representatives of the critical current (Antonowicz 2013,
p. 38). For example, Chris Lorenz defines new public management in
scientific texts as “bullshit discourse”, which can be translated more
elegantly as “bull discourse” (Lorenz 2012, pp. 599–629). There are
also political groups formed that often refer to Marxism and organise
active resistance against the educational system, e.g. ROU (“Really
Open University”), an organisation occupying institutions and referring
to the slogans, such as: “Strike/occupation/transformation” (Pusey and
Sealey-Huggins 2013). Thus, mixing up academic and political discourses
as well as ideological and emotional stigmatisation by both parties to the
dispute are not conducive to calm reflection on occurring changes. On the
other hand, however, maybe creating the potential for resistance and a
critical approach to changes could deter political decision-makers from
implementing even more radical privatisation changes. Maybe also thanks
to that, universities in many countries retained their partial autonomy, and
science and university education have not been privatised completely. The
unquestionable value of the critical camp seems to be triggering discussion
on the problems of new public management and neoliberalism. While
giving credit to critical and “anti-neoliberal” researchers, perceiving the
values in occurring changes is also worthwhile in order not to limit oneself
to criticism only. Undoubtedly, the changes over the past few decades
have included the egalitarianisation of education achieved through the
process of making university education widely available. Popularisation of
higher education and social mobility increase are the value that the critical
researches cannot question either. Of course, it gave rise to a number of
problems related to: education quality, limiting availability for the poorest,
the development of purely profit-oriented universities, strengthening the
position of elite universities, but it removed the aspect of upper-class
privilege from university education. From the point of view of the left
wing acting in favour of giving equal opportunities to social groups, and
especially the disadvantaged ones, the value of egalitarianism is hard to
question. Referring to the Polish example, it seems that a scholarisation
ratio leap from approximately 8 % in 1990 to over 40 % in 2015 could not
be achieved without partially transferring education costs to students and
without opening the sector for founding private schools (Sulkowski
2016). It would seem that retaining free full-time studies at public uni-
versities throughout 25 years helped the individuals from the lower
income groups. Unfortunately, as research shows, the members of higher

income families, living in big cities, used free studies in Poland statistically
more often, whereas paid courses at private universities or part-time
courses were taken up more often by less wealthy individuals. Thus, the
lack of tuition fee does not always contribute to the increase of egalitar-
ianism in education (Domański 2010, pp. 7–33).
It also seems that critical but balanced look at the development of the
contemporary university might bring higher value than a radical view-
point. Of course, the voices of radical criticism are the loudest, most
spectacular and thereby they sometimes inspire thinking and questioning
of seemingly obvious solutions. On the other hand, however, radicalism is
not conducive to decision-making, dialogue and reaching compromise
solutions. The consequence of permanent criticism of changes forced by
politicians can be the opposition of part of the academic community,
which leads to defiance, resistance and rejection of changes or complete
twisting of their true meaning. It seems to be the Polish case, where, as
research shows, a significant part of the academic community rejects
changes, while the simultaneous arrogance of central authorities makes
dialogue very difficult (Merton 1973). One of the solutions can be seeking
a compromise on contemporary university governance. There is no going
back to the Humboldt-type university, which picture is actually often
idealised by the representatives of the critical current. Making education
widely available has initiated an avalanche of changes that transforms the
university. However, it needs to regain controllability and the academic
and managing community should search for the solutions together.
Radical researchers do not have a monopoly on criticism here. Philip
Altbach, representing the mainstream, also objects to treating higher
education solely as a market commodity and “private good” and perceives
the threats of the decline of the academic ethos and the pauperisation of
academic staff (Altbach 2015). In consequence of that criticism, however,
he offers solutions the implementation of which is based on dialogue that
underlies democracy and on understanding that change to the university
model has been effected already and the subject of discussion is in fact the
level of marketisation of higher education and science. Some researchers
who also assume a standpoint identified as neoliberal perceive the value of
the academic ethos and culture. E. Grady Bogue and Kimberely Bingham
Hall emphasise the value of the ethos recognising it as the out-of-system
components of education quality. The authors describe case studies where
university managers transformed the system of education quality to the
94 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
better with courage, passion and integrity (Bogue and Hall 2003,
pp. 215–217). A good example here is the author of “The Best
American University”, who, as the president of Cornell University, helped
to make it one of the best universities in the world (Cole 2012). It is also
hard to question the value of the competition mechanism, or rather
collaboration of universities, for the importance of image, quality of
education and effective leadership (Bakonyi & Humanitas 2011).
CULTURE UNDER THE PRESSURE OF CHANGE

The academic culture in the heyday of the research university and the
Humboldt-type university was generally not the subject of scientific reflec-
tion, because it existed as an obvious, assimilated pattern of functioning of
the university. Cultural studies began to appear along with the symptoms
of profound change, the traditional models of the university have been
subject to for the last few decades. One of the axes of this change is the
evolution from a culture based on trust to a culture based on verification,
audit and control. Traditional academic culture bestowed academic staff
with trust, based on the assumption that the professor’s ethos of university
faculty commits them to decent scientific and didactic activity. In the
course of history, under the influence of many cultural, social and eco-
nomic factors, among which the development of new public management
played an important role, decomposition of the traditional model of the
university occurred and the patterns of the culture of trust disappeared. A
new formation, in the literature of the subject called evidence culture,
audit culture, control culture or assessment culture, is developing to
replace it (Farkas 2013, pp. 13–31). Evidence culture is based on the
concept of managerial control and management of processes and quality
at the university. Its underlying assumptions are taken from new public
management and applied to universities, namely (Singh 2001, pp. 8–180):
• embedding competitive mechanisms in the education system and the

activities of universities;
• economisation of higher education sector activities that will create
constant pressure on savings in universities and permanent reduction
of the share of public finances in the activities of state universities;
• partial privatisation of higher education by: creating the possibility to
open private universities as well as the outsourcing of some services
in public universities;
• transformation of the management systems of universities from a

traditional academic and collegial administration system into a man-
agerial-corporate system, modelled on business applications;
• implementation of the accounting system (accountability), which
will allow for controlling university management (financial, quality
assurance) processes;
• change of education orientation from academic to professional, by
adjusting teaching programs to the needs of the labour market.
The strength of university culture was embedding academic self-control

mechanisms in the activities of the university. The internalised academic
ethos’ mechanism was not 100 per cent effective, but the costs of func-
tioning were low. A professor felt bound in the didactic area to deliver
classes of proper quality, set requirements for students, control younger
workers and advise them and to participate in the development of curri-
cula. In the scientific area, the need to carry out research and publish was
connected with pursuing a scientific career and sprang from inner motiva-
tion. In practice, only part of the academics carried out research, the
others focused on teaching. Research staff enjoyed higher professional
status proportionate to their scientific position (Altbach 2015). Such
awards were ingrained in the academic culture and they were not reflected
in financial motivation. Traditionally, the academic work system was rela-
tively unformalised and gave a lot of freedom to choose activities, working
time as well as research issues. It was also characterised by collegiality and
teamwork orientation, which often led to slowing down decision-making
mechanisms, but gave the academic staff the sense of participation and
engagement in the functioning of the university.
Transformation into control culture is combined with departure from
trust in the employee to the mechanisms of motivation and control. The
result is to be higher effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the new system.
Solution implementation costs are connected first of all with hiring profes-
sional administration and IT system implementation, which however
should be compensated by higher teaching and research productivity
and quality. The key values for control culture are productivity, effective-
ness, quality of scientific work and teaching, and cost-efficiency. A tradi-
tional collegial and team approach is being transformed into a quasi-
corporate model. Academic staff have been formally divided into the
groups of academics and teachers. Assessment, motivation, and control-
ling systems and mechanisms have been implemented in both research and
96 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
teaching areas. In the cultural sphere, the system transparency is growing,

because employees’ achievements can be measured and compared, but the
oppressive nature of the system is growing at the same time. The employ-
ees are subject to pressure on scientific achievements, which are parame-
terised and serve as the basis for prolonging employment, promotion and
granting awards. The didactic staff are formally appraised by superiors and
students, which provides data used for improvement, but sometimes is
also a painful confrontation of the employee with his/her ideas of own
work value (Sułkowski 2016). The direction of cultural transformation
taking place is defined, and Polish universities are at the various stages
of change as compared to the universities worldwide (Kwiek 2015,
pp. 77–89; Kwiek and Antonowicz 2015, pp. 41–68). Drawing from the
experiences of other countries, we can learn about the consequences of
cultural changes occurring in higher education, in the area of culture.
Culture of Academic Quality

The academic culture changes under economic pressure, which is reflected
in governance and accountability processes. Marylin Strathern calls this
change a transition towards “audit culture”, which is a radical change
versus Humboldt-type academic cultures (Strathern 2000). “Audit cul-
ture” is connected with the development of the “audit society”, where all
actions, if they are to be recognised as legal, must be audited and submitted
to potential public control (Power 1997). In case of the academic culture,
communitarianism and organised scepticism, which is based on the values
similar to audit culture but refers to science only and not to education, exist
in the Mertonian ethos – Communalism, universalism, disinterestedness,
organised scepticism (CUDOS) (Merton 1996). In the traditional aca-
demic ethos, teaching remained within the individual responsibility of a
professor. Formalisation of the education quality management systems
eliminates the culture of trust, and replaces it by audit culture. The change
of the university ethos is connected with the assimilation of the “rites of
passage” characteristic of the culture of trust and academic ethos in control,
supervision and accountability culture characteristic of the accountability
concept (Power 1997; Douglas 1982). Thus, the heart of the system is the
mechanism of bureaucratic control, which is forced by the state but can
cause inertia and demotivation at the same time.
The UNESCO Glossary of Quality Assurance and Accreditation defines
quality culture as “a set of shared, accepted, and integrated patterns of
quality to be found in the organisational cultures and the management

systems of higher education institutions” (Vlăsceanu et al. 2004, p. 14).
The awareness and engagement in creating quality and evidence culture lead
to the effective functioning of the quality system. An alternative notion is
used in respect of quality culture, namely evidence culture, which can be
juxtaposed with a traditional academic culture based on trust. Evidence
culture was intended to be the system of values, norms and cultural patterns,
which is characteristic of the university and where the emphasis is put on:
self-assessment, teaching effects, academic staff and administration commit-
ment to gathering, analysing and interpreting the data on the functioning of
the university. According to some researchers, evidence culture forms the
basis for quality culture (see: Bensimon et al. 2004). Thus, according to the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), evidence culture
requires the organisation and its employees to deliver data verifying the
achievement of strategic goals (Appleton and Wolff 2004, pp. 77–101).
CULTURAL CHANGE PROCESS

Ernest Grady Bogue and Kimberly Bingham Hall describe tension
between two cultures in the contemporary higher education system in
the United States. We have the culture of stewardship on the one hand,
which treats higher education as the public good that needs to be fostered
and its autonomy needs to be preserved. On the other hand, we have the
ideal of quality improvement culture focusing on teaching effectiveness,
transparency of accounts, professional administration and effective man-
agement (Bogue and Hall 2003, pp. 224–225). Tension between these
two cultures can be reflected in seven dilemmas:
• improvement versus stewardship,

• peer review versus regulation,
• processes versus results,
• enhancement versus compliance,
• consultation versus evaluation,
• trust versus evidence,
• interpretation/holistic versus measurement/specifics (Bogue and
Hall 2003, p. 229).
The general direction of transition is from peer review, enhancement and

trust culture towards more control, evaluation and regulation culture.
98 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
Attempts to reconcile the concept of stewardship with improvement

orientation should put emphasis on entrepreneurship with the academic
ethos culture. Peter Drucker says that American universities are a model
example of entrepreneurship development, although he has simulta-
neously projected that the universities would cease to exist by 2030
(Gumport and Sporn 1999; Drucker 1997). For the universities to con-
tinue to exist in the future, there might be a need to establish public-
private partnerships that will allow for maintaining an increasingly expen-
sive trend of science and higher education development (Bogue and Hall
2003, p. 234). An attempt to reconcile these “two cultures” should take
the following demands into account:
• continued application of peer reviews,

• working out and application of university effectiveness indicators,
• application of effectiveness audits,
• enhancing academic partnerships and market-oriented universities,
• university accountability for the achievement of goals and missions.
It is worth to note that organisational culture changes relatively slowly in

comparison with other subsystems. Change to strategy, structure and then
to organisational procedures is usually implemented in a controlled man-
ner and relatively fast in the organisational system. The organisational
culture functions implicite, is assimilated, refers to the mentality of culture
participants and therefore it will change in a much slower manner.
Cultural change is also hard to foresee and control. Control culture is
secondary to changes to structures, strategy and as organisational proce-
dures are developed, but it becomes autonomous after some time and
operates in combination with other subsystems. This means that the
impact of organisational culture, which is not a controllable passive med-
ium but an active subsystem, must also be taken into account when
interpreting the functioning of the university as an organisation. At the
stage of transformation from the culture of trust to control culture, there is
a considerable resistance from a petrified and conservative academic cul-
ture. It is also hard to foresee whether the values, standards and cultural
patterns shaped in the process of change implementation will be conducive
to or hinder change implementation. Marvin Peterson and Melinda
Spencer indicate two aspects of academic culture functioning, which on
the one hand assumes the form of a rational and planned activity, while, on
the other hand, it is rather contained in the intuitive and subconscious
sphere. The authors indicate that tension in discourse on culture and

describe paradigm change towards qualitative and intuitive orientation
(Peterson and Spencer 1990, pp. 3–18).
Thus many problems with creating a new university model and its
operation can be interpreted at the cultural level. Control culture was
faced by considerable resistance from the academic community which
assimilated the values of the culture of trust. Academic autonomy and
freedom were reflected in a responsible, but not very formalised and
restrictive approach to teaching and research. Thus, tension arises between
formalism, countability and precision of control culture versus openness,
autonomy and freedom of the culture of trust. There are more of such
cultural confusions. The culture of trust is based on the authority of
professorial staff, whereas control culture makes managers and developed
central regulations the source of authority. The level of prerogatives
related to authority, participation and rights bestowed on the academic
staff is different in both cultural formations.
These tensions are permanent and lead to a few possible options of
change implementation that can be defined as: repression, adaptation,
hybridisation, superficiality and regression. Repression is an attempt to
implement management changes that largely ignores the issues of resistance
and cultural response. In the knowledge-oriented organisations with dis-
persed and loosely coupled management, this solution is rarely possible and
even more rarely effective (Weick 1976, pp. 1–19). The repression model
happened during change implementation in the universities, but it led to
the escalation of tension, e.g. in the form of strikes, or contributed to the
loss of strategic resource, namely the eminent representatives of the aca-
demic community (Krause 2007). Repressive solutions are more often used
in private universities due to centralised authority. Compared to repression,
adaptation through negotiations consisting in making change less nagging,
gradual and enabling the parties to the dispute to save “face”, is much more
frequent in public universities. For example, negotiations combined with
gradual transition from the collegial model to the managerial model during
university transformation were and are a relatively frequent practice used in
many countries. The process of adaptation and negotiation is also accom-
panied by gradual evolution from the culture of trust to control culture.
Hybridisation means creating own transitional solutions that combine the
features of various models and cultures. In practice, hybridisation is also
effected through the process of negotiation and is a form of adaptation, but
it is a more radical solution consisting in seeking own route between the
100 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
model and culture of academic trust and the rules of managerial controlling.
A debate on university governance and critical reception of some solutions
from the area of new public management applied to higher education
opened the path for such solutions in some developed countries. Yet in
many developing countries and growing markets, including Poland, depar-
ture from a state monopoly on establishing universities and legal changes
led to the transformation of universities, which operate according to hybrid
solutions. Superficiality means apparent change, namely only superficial
unimportant transition that can be presented as significant change, as the
need arises. Superficial change of strategy means adding some clauses that
do not lead to more thorough transformation. For example, the Polish Law
on Higher Education of 2012 has imposed an obligation to consult strate-
gies with external stakeholders, which prompted many universities to add a
clause to their strategies about cooperation with their social and economic
environment, without doing anything more. Superficial change of organisa-
tional structures means establishing units or positions that have very limited,
sometimes only apparent power. Equality or diversity officers have been
appointed at some universities over the last decade, but they have been not
equipped with proper prerogatives. Apparent change refers to organisa-
tional culture to a small extent and only in the sphere of artefacts (e.g.,
rhetoric), while leaving the core values unchanged. Regression means total
withdrawal from planned or even implemented change. It is a solution
rarely practiced due to its cost, both in financial and organisational terms.
Transformation from the culture of trust to control culture, taking place in
the majority of universities, is part of planned change to the higher educa-
tion management model. Therefore, regression is impossible in most cases.
DISCUSSION AND PROPOSALS OF CHANGE

So is there a compromise solution to that fundamental tension between
traditional academic values and market pressure? A multi-paradigmatic
and neo-pragmatic perspective seems to be the solution. Dialogue and
an inclusive approach are needed for university development and the
fulfilment of its culture-creating, democratic, didactic and scientific mis-
sion. The multitude of viewpoints, from neoliberal to radically critical,
makes it possible to gain a proper perspective and seek practical solutions
that allow for the achievement of university mission.
What would be the role of management sciences in that? They should
provide the methods of effective management at all levels. At the micro level,
universities need effective tools to monitor education quality, cash flows and
scientific research value. There is no harm in using management methods
and improving the effectiveness of university operation, but it is important
not to lose its social mission at the same time. Thus, the management tools
should not be fetishised, which means that not everything is measurable and
controllable. Organisational culture, university identity and academic ethos
are largely immeasurable and uncontrollable, which means that you can only
create incentives to improve them. Exerting excessive pressure on control
and change of culture can prove counterproductive in fact, namely enhance
the opposition, resistance and the development of countercultures objecting
to official narrative prepared by the authority structures. At the mezzo level,
the methods of collaboration between universities and entities in the social
and economic environment need to be developed. In our times, this is
effected through technology transfer institutions, incubators and career
offices, and needs to be thought through due to limited effectiveness of
such solutions. Relations between the university and the state at the macro
level are also the subject of interest of the management sciences, since
educational strategy and policy are created and university governance is
shaped here. Management can deliver valuable reporting and monitoring
methods and tools (accountability). On the other hand, however, centralis-
tic, autocratic and neoliberal inclinations of the managing bodies can be
analysed from the point of view of the critical current.
Thus, the neo-pragmatic solution will be seeking balance between the
need to implement controlled changes and their costs. In consequence of
implemented changes, the universities might develop “third mission”,
improve activity and retain institutional continuity.
SUMMARY – CRITICAL REMARKS ON CONTROL CULTURE

The expansion of control culture in contemporary universities occurs at a
rapid pace in many countries, but it also faces criticism or even resistance
from parts of the academic community at the same time. This results from
the fact that control culture, which is to be derived from change to the
university management and accountability method, is imposed on univer-
sities by regulatory bodies (state, ministries and accreditation bodies).
Control culture criticism focuses on a few aspects, as follows:
• economisation of university activity,

• decline of the traditional university ethos,
102 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
• bureaucratisation of teaching and research processes,

• over-formalised system of teaching quality management,
• superficial system of research result assessment focusing only on
measurable achievements,
• departure from the ethos of modern science (CUDOS),
• reduction of creative and prestigious aspects of the academic
profession.
Control culture is euphemistically called evidence culture, which means

that you have to prove and document the productivity and effectiveness of
the university and its staff to supervisory bodies. According to the critics of
the university market model, there is no research confirming that the
quasi-corporate solutions are more effective in comparison with the aca-
demic tradition (Becher and Kogan 1992; Mazza 2008; Alvesson 2013).
Economic thinking becomes therefore a dominating system logic which
prompts the application of the measures of effectiveness, controlling and
incentive systems. Departure from traditional values, mission and univer-
sity ethos understood as the autonomous community of researchers and
students serving the development of science and teaching is observed
(McLean 2006). This is accompanied by considerable increase in formalis-
ing teaching and research processes. The teaching quality systems expand
and become autonomous fast by hiring managers and administration,
forming requirements for documentation and reporting, enforcing the
formal aspects of the quality system in the accreditation processes and
the documentation requirements by the university supervisory bodies
(McKelvey and Holmén 2009; Kwiek 2010).
Pressure on the achievement of scientific results by the universities
becomes ludicrous sometimes and is criticised as “point-scoring obses-
sion”. Instead of reflexive and critical review of scientific achievements,
production of scores on a mass scale is promoted. Uncritical attachment to
bibliometric indicators is departure from the traditional ethos of science
(Leja 2015). This refers not only to managers and administration, but also
to deans and the whole academic staff, and in consequence leads to
replacing critical dialogue and reflection with purely bureaucratic indica-
tors (Weingart 2004). Pressure put solely on scoring points is therefore
dangerous for the value of the academic culture, because bureaucratic
measures suppress creativity and criticism. Cultural change refers then
also to the ethos of an academic, who loses authority and prestige by
submitting to the quasi-corporate system of control (see Table 5.2).
Table 5.2 The axis of cultural change in universities

Criterion University yesterday University today University tomorrow
Basic values Authority of science, Scientific work, Productivity

university and a teaching students, and economic
professor economic pressure effectiveness of
education and
science, reporting
Ethos of science Communalism, Tension and choices Private ownership,
universalism, between CUDOS local character,
disinterestedness, ethos (R. Merton) authoritarianism,
organised and PLACE work to order,
scepticism (J. Ziman) expertise
(CUDOS) (PLACE)
Basic system Status system, based Hybrid system, Corporate system,
assumptions on authority and economisation, controlling,
prestige in the bureaucratisation, managerialism,
community formalisation of economic
scientific activity effectiveness,
and higher reporting
education, (accountability)
university professor
status
Standards Custom regulations, Combination of Formal regulations
unwritten, custom regulations accompanied by
permanent, with a growing the system of
internalised, number of formal codified sanctions
enforced socially regulations, such as: and motivators
and charged with codes, rules and
informal sanctions procedures,
(ostracism) sanctions of legal
and informal nature
Dominating Collective and Collective and Corporate/
authority communitarian, individual, managerial,
structures senate, president president president,
(chancellor) (chancellor), supervisory bodies
senate, supervisory
bodies
Dominating Inside the university, Inside the university, Outside the
communication between the staff between the university,
networks and top authority representatives of through image
various professional building
groups (authorities, (marketing) and
academic staff, relations with
administration, supervisory bodies
students)
(continued )
104 Ł. SUŁKOWSKI
Table 5.2 (continued)
Criterion University yesterday University today University tomorrow
Scientific Lack of formalisation Growing The system

research and planning with bureaucratisation of corporate
frequently limited and need to plan document
funds and budget in workflow, full
grants and budgeting and
documents reporting
Teaching Open, unformalised, Regulated, Regulated,
assimilated quality formalised by the formalised
culture quality system through the
quality system and
control culture
Academic staff High social Reduction of creative Role of a
authority, ethos and prestigious professional expert
and prestige of a aspects of the responsible for
university professor academic teaching and
profession research
Source: Own elaboration, based on: Sulkowski 2016
Table 5.2 shows how the university cooperated previously, what changes
have been made until now and what trends are probable in the future. This
comparison allows a deeper view on cultural changes of the universities
within the years (more: Sulkowski 2016).1
Acknowledgement Chapter was written as a result of the research project

No. 2014/13/B/HS4/01581 financed by the National Science Centre.
NOTE
1. The chapter is result of research grant NCN nr 2014/13/B/HS4/
015812014/13/B/HS4/01581, “Quality Culture at University”,
Jagiellonian University, 2015–2017. Grant has no restrictions that the
publisher should be aware of.
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Łukasz Sułkowski is a full professor of economic sciences and in humanities. His

research interests include organisation and management, and in particular critical
management studies, epistemology and methodology of social sciences and the
humanities, organisational culture and intercultural management, public manage-
ment and management of family businesses. He is currently a professor at the
Faculty of Management and Social Communication of the Jagiellonian University,
at Clark University and the Chair of the Management Department at the
University of Social Sciences in Lodz, Poland. He was member of the Polish
Accreditation Committee since 2012, and is, from 2016, vice-president of Polish
Accreditation Committee. He has been the editor-in-chief of the quarterly Journal
of Intercultural Management since 2008 and the editor-in-chief of the quarterly
Organization and Management from 2004 to 2011.He is author of approximately
300 publications (also JCR) and 10 books. He was the main investigator of 11
research grants (including grants from the State Committee for Scientific Research
and the National Science Centre). He is also active in the associations: Academy of
Management, IFERA, Reseau PGV (Steering Committee) and holds numerous
awards from the Rector of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Clark University
and University of Social Sciences.
PART II
University in Context
CHAPTER 6
Living in a World of Foam: Global Ideas,

Bubbles, Institutions and the Fairy Tale
of Business Education
Carmelo Mazza and Paolo Quattrone
As every morning, Irina laced her bike on the bike rack, trying to be as quick
as possible to avoid the mist. Weather was usually awful in Eastern Europe
winter evoking some Čechov landscape. Once in the grandiose building
hosting her school, with its Van der Rohe’s chairs adorning the lobby to
reassure unstable identities that they are corporate selves, she went to the
post room. She was surprised to find a parcel in her pigeon hole. The first copy
of her book on changes in the educational field had arrived. It took a while to
get that book published but in the end it was there with its glossy cover. That
book collected contributions reflecting on various policy-making choices in
dealing with educational institutions, the dangers and opportunities of the
changes for this complex field.
C. Mazza (*)
Department of Management, University of Malta, Msida, Malta
e-mail: carmelo.mazza@um.edu.mt
P. Quattrone
Department of Accounting, Governance and Social Innovation,
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
e-mail: paolo.quattrone@ed.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_6
112 C. MAZZA AND P. QUATTRONE
“These are important issues!” Irina thought, and thus the book deserved a
bit of publicity; and so she decided to contact Mikhail, the marketing man-
ager of her school, to get the good news on the main page of the school’s website.
As the business school was eager to display the result of relevant research on
business, this had happened in many other cases for research on private equity,
risk assessments, entrepreneurship and the like, so why not having news on the
managerialization of education? The marketing function of a business school
is a very important one; marketing is where the business school is projected
into the external world but, more worryingly, it is sometimes where the
external world is projected into the business school. We often think of resisting
to the impact of marketing on our academic work; however, we have to
acknowledge how it may determine our institutional visibility and career
much more than our sophisticated, double-blind peer-reviewed papers.
As any young researchers, Irina, proud of her recent PhD diploma in
Education and Learning from a new university in the country, truly believed
(and still believes) that business schools could be the avant-garde of a new
genre of education, open to interdisciplinary research, nurturing managers
as civic beings. With this idealistic view in mind, Irina sent an email to
Mikhail, the marketing manager.
Irina: Dear Mikhail, do you remember that I mentioned of a book on

education coming out? It has finally been published! Can you
please make sure that the news appears on our website? Thanks!
Mikhail: Irina, it is one of the rotating items on the faculty and research
pages. We are currently taking a “snapshot” of the website every
night, which means that it might not appear in the news box on
these pages every day. Best,
Irina: Dear Mikhail, Thanks but I fear though that that space is
virtually invisible. I thus wonder whether there is a policy about
“who” and “what” is publicized on the main News page as some
members of faculty get their academic achievements and publica-
tions there and some others do not (and some of these news remain
there for a long time). Is there a policy for this? I understand
there might be a marketing implication and thus it would be nice
to understand what drives what.
Mikhail: Irina, the news items that go onto the homepage are usually those
that are most closely aligned with the School’s mission, while
appealing to the widest possible audience in terms of geography
and role (prospects, journalists, corporates, researchers,
6 LIVING IN A WORLD OF FOAM: GLOBAL IDEAS, BUBBLES, INSTITUTIONS… 113
academics etc.). I tend to choose stories that reflect themes with

immediate business implications such as world-changing (e.g.
Social World Forum), University lifestyle (e.g. sport), elite pass-
key (networking events), entrepreneurship (e.g. alumni new
ventures), research-driven (e.g. research on hedge funds) and
so on. As you know, your book, as well as featuring in the faculty
and research news channel, has also been promoted via a press
release to our business education press contacts. However,
because it does not focus primarily on business, I felt the fit
with the School’s mission was not strong enough to put it on
the homepage. I hope your publisher will be able to support you
with further promotion. Best wishes,
Irina: Dear Mikhail, Thanks for the clarification. It is interesting to
learn more about the school’s mission. It is also useful to know
that my research does not fit into those and it is not considered
as to be able to attract the widest possible audience. It is even
more interesting to be told that by the marketing department.
I now gather that there is a definition of such a mission which
is clear enough to make decisions of this kind. It would be
interesting to know how, by whom, where, and where this
mission has been defined and the role of the academic faculty
in this process.
The book is titled “Higher Education on the Move” where the “move” is from
higher education as an intellectual activity to higher education as a business
enterprise and it warns about the dangers and risks of this global trend and
transition for the institution, freedom of expression and the production of
knowledge. I’d say this exchange of email testifies the value of the book’s
arguments.
Irina still likes the idea of being part of the avant-garde of education
and sometimes she speaks this way at dinners with her friends.
Nevertheless she now questions herself on whether this story is only a
fairy tale and has begun to wonder where the driver who offered her a
ride towards top higher education is actually taking her now. Meanwhile
at the school the new course on private equity has been launched, a
seminar of a professor of strategy who happily defines himself a positivist
who believes in truth and science has been announced, and selected CEOs
have delivered lectures on the topic “competition, democracy and firms”.
Business schools: what else?
THE STRANGE CASE OF THE UNIVERSITY AS INSTITUTION

AND THE FAIRY TALE OF BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
Education is undergoing profound changes. The managerialization wave

shaping most of the debate around university (for a sample of the
key contents of this debate, see Mazza et al. 2008) praise a turn of
universities into business-like organizations. This is not surprising, as
“performance” (at least in the contemporary economies and societies)
evokes powerful and positive ideas of success, so powerful this idea is that
it would be difficult for anyone to argue against it (Hansen and
Mouritsen 1999). Universities, for instance, are under increasing pres-
sure to contribute to the production of national wealth and thus need to
“perform” and contribute to create value immediately through the com-
mercialization of the knowledge produced via patents, spin-offs and the
like, and/or indirectly, by forging new identities that can be termed as
“entrepreneurial citizen”1 that through their daily work can also offer a
contribution to national wealth. Despite the lack of any stable and
significant correlation between regional, national and transnational per-
formance and academics’ achievements in higher education (Schofer
et al. 2000, see also Robinson and Brown 1994), it is hardy thinkable
to question the validity to such relationship.
Business principles offer ready-made rhetoric for addressing this per-
formance issue. “Efficiency”, “performance”, “marketing” and “govern-
ance” have entered not only the language of university reforms but also
the classrooms of primary and secondary schools: better run education will
better contribute to national wealth. We are witnessing an interesting
short circuit where ideas and principles developed in university depart-
ments, such as economics accounting and finance are coming back to their
birthplace.
However, in this move something is no longer working as these global
ideas are increasingly being questioned, and when questioned they are
found to be empty: they are empty semiotic spaces where everybody can
project their own meanings and actions making of diverse and often
conflicting agendas a unified whole (see Barthes 1971; Quattrone
2009). For instance, this is the case, in the regulation of financial report-
ing, of the idea of “fair value”, which constitutes the accounting declina-
tion of the idea of transparency and efficient capital markets; an idea that
has been problematized and put aside in the light of the recent economic
crisis as its effects were becoming themselves too transparent and thus not
able to make everyone happy as someone could then clearly disagree if not
with the notion at least with the effects of fair value accounting.
The Master in Business Administration (MBA) is another example of
this kind. As lucidly illustrated by Florence Noiville (2010) in her pamph-
let describing her experience as student of a top European business school,
and how argued by Khurana (2007) in his book showing the failure of the
business schools’ mission in the USA to create a new professional figure,
ideas such as “efficiency”, “profit maximization” etc. are no longer able to
be linked to specific learning practices. The result is that there is still a large
demand for the MBA but then students seem to care less and less about
the content of the curriculum of studies and more and more about the
label, the legitimating value of the title. Yet, they are fully aware that, at
the level of the individual, to recover skyrocketing fees is increasingly more
and more difficult in the current economic milieu.
There is an interesting paradox and at least one effect results from this
detachment between idea and practice. The paradox lies in the continuous
(and still growing) diffusion of some global ideas despite their evident
failure (see also Czarniawska and Sevón 2005). Apparently, the more these
ideas fail the more people rely on them to solve the problems that the ideas
themselves have created: the market fails and the policy makers’ solution
to it is a call for more market; we (accountants) know that transparency in
financial transactions is impossible to achieve (a fairy tale) and regulators’
solution to the lack of transparency is a call for greater transparency
(people clearly tend to believe in fairy tales). This has an interesting effect
for explaining, from an institutional rather than economic perspective,
why bubbles eventually explode: these ideas tend to grow to a dimension
that will no longer be manageable when people suddenly realize that they
do not deliver what they promise. At that point, the entire institution
becomes scrutinized as organizational members will no longer enact those
truth-generating practices that leave room for alternatives to emerge and
eventually modify and reinforce the processes maintaining the bubble.
So unless some wisdom intervenes along the process of diffusion of
the global idea and manages the air inflating the bubble by linking it to
some practices that allow the reinvention of the idea itself, the bubble
explodes.
An example may help illustrate the point. If people go to mass, and
keep going to mass, the church as institution is powerful, diffuses and
persists. But this does not mean that the institution homogenizes people’s
minds and beliefs, as the believer is able to recreate each time the idea of
God and religion: what the experience means to her or him depends on
practicing the liturgy, the orthopraxis.2 In this sense, there are not mean-
ings to be shared among believers. What they share is the liturgy and this is
what needs to remain unquestioned as, otherwise, the institution
“church” would not have instruments to fill with meaning the empty
space provided by ideas such as “God” and “salvation”. It would lose its
power to engage believers for it to diffuse and persist. In our view, the
adoption of global ideas provides legitimacy to adopters not necessarily by
displaying conformity with norms and values (DiMaggio and Powell
1983), but by making adopters access the rituals and ceremonies the
institutions undertake, whatever meaning is implied by the participation
to the rituals and ceremonies by a multitude of adepts.
In the strange case of the university, administrators, donors, students
and families still believe that business ideas will solve all the problems of
the university, from finance to daily administration. The problem with
these ideas though is that they are supported by reductionist practices that
praise minimization of costs and maximization of profit, where cash and
making money (fungible but very concrete things) are the only gods to be
praised, leaving no alternatives to this vision. When people realize that
business ideas have rendered the mission of the university as institution
too narrow and short term, it will be too late to react. The diversity and
complexity of the university and its legitimacy as institution will have
disappeared for the sake of profit seeking and money making.
Nowadays, global ideas are rooted in economics and are used to explain
the whole world from that perspective. The homo oeconomicus may not
exist in reality (MacKenzie 2006) but it does as an appealing idea proffered
by professors of economics, corporate finance and market-based research-
ers in accounting. The fairy tales about “efficiency”, “cost cutting”, “mer-
gers & acquisitions”, “customer orientation”, “quality control” and
various other dragon-like ideas are all available there to be recounted by
a platoon of consultants, opinion makers, professional deans and admin-
istrators to a mass of academics, and researchers who know the emptiness
of these terms far too well.
In this grey landscape, we listen to the words by Roberto Benigni, the
Oscar-winning Italian film director and actor, as told in the TV program
“Via con me” in 2010:
“Le favole non è che dicono ai bambini che esistono i draghi,

i bambini che esistono i draghi lo sanno già da soli.
Le favole dicono ai bambini che i draghi possono essere sconfitti.

Quella è la cosa meravigliosa”
“It is not that fairy tales tell kids that dragons exist,
kids know already by themselves that they exist.
Fairy tales tell kids that dragons can be defeated.
That is the marvellous thing”
This is yet another fairy tale, but one in which we would like to believe. We
work as academics with the hope that Benigni’s idea will diffuse and
persist. But we also know that linking this other fairy tale to concrete
practices as an alternative to those inspired by neo-classical economics is
likely the last opportunity for the university to reproduce itself.
CONCLUSION: LOOKING FOR ANOTHER FAIRY TALE

Is another fairy tale possible in the academic world? This question lies at
the root of this chapter. Assuming that the education bubble is ready to
explode, another set of practice and rhetoric have to emerge in order to
save the university and other higher education institutions. Some attempts
are on the ground and already deserve scholarly attention.
First, we see in many countries the rise of a proud defence of the
academic prerogatives against the emerging managerialization of academic
life. We refer here to several critiques challenging key aspects of academic
institutions adopting management solutions such like the growth of low
salary, on demand, teaching positions in business schools. This manage-
ment solution for the acquisition of faculty members is at the opposite of
the old concept of Faculty. As the Oxford Etymology Dictionary reports,
the word “Faculty” comes from Latin and older French meaning wealth,
skills, learning. “Academic sense ‘branch of knowledge’ (late 14c.) was in
Old French and probably was the earliest in English (it is attested in Anglo-
Latin from late 12c.), on notion of ‘ability in knowledge’ or ‘body of persons
on whom are conferred specific professional powers’” (www.etymonline.
com). Faculty is therefore a group, and the wealth and skills belong to
the group and the interactions the group establishes. Turning educational
institutions into networks of weak ties among academics temporarily
sharing teaching resources represents a transformation of the concept of
“Faculty”. Faculty becomes the sum of professional CVs rather than a body
of persons with specific professional powers. In this sense, the development
of a class of a teachers and researchers without strong faculty ties is consistent
with the overall process of individualization in the academic domain as well

as in society (Bauman 2001). A fairy tale we need is one where the dragon of
individualization of academic life is defeated.
Second, we see in many contexts the rise of critiques against the
research assessment procedures. In the UK such critiques have been rising
for many years now. In other countries where research assessment has
been more recently implemented, like in Italy, these critiques are now
emerging, with the rejection of participating in the assessment exercises.
However, those critiques challenge the very meaning of research assess-
ment. As part of the need to make all the public sector accountable
through rituals of verification (Power 1998), evaluation in educational
institutions represents a ritual to enforce the diffusion of managerial
practices, such as rankings, sanctions and rewards systems, since it appears
to share the same (managerial) value system or ideology if this word is still
in use. Open challenge to this assessment logic is leading to the rise of
alternative forms of free co-operative university aiming at the rediscovery
of the essence of university role in society and of internal university work-
ing. Indeed, these two aspects are the two sides of the same coin.
The university’s role in society is shaped by the way it works internally.
A managerialized university can only play a role in society supporting the
reproduction of management practices and ideology. A fairy tale we need
is one where the dragon of management ideology is defeated.
Finally, increased criticisms rise against the “product” of university educa-
tion, i.e. graduates. Interestingly, the rise of criticism against the MBAs, for
instance, immediately follows the rise of management education (Khurana
2007). Nowadays, the adequateness of university education to provide busi-
ness with appropriate “hired hands” is questioned. During the recent eco-
nomic crisis affecting most of the Western Capitalist world crisis, there arose a
novel rhetoric of self-made entrepreneurs able to turn their ideas into suc-
cessful enterprises outside the academic environment (or against it) and it is
becoming more and more popular. In many European countries, university
education is failing in its traditional role as social lift. Graduation is not per se
able to provide access to top positions in several European countries. MBA is
no longer a pathway towards top management positions. Entrepreneurship is
the individual talent that replaces university degrees as the way to climb the
social ladder. A fairy tale we need is one where the dragon of the uselessness
of university education is socially defeated.
We have depicted here a few elements of the fairy tale we need to diffuse
following Benigni’s words. We have also outlined some of the dragons
that are affecting the role of university as an institution. Many of those

dragons have been nurtured and developed within university rooms. Some
of them received scholarly attention and were even theorized within
universities. We believe it is time to make a conscious, collective effort to
stop creating dragons and devote ourselves to spread new fairy tales of the
social role of university to change the world once again.
Acknowledgement: This chapter represents the result of authors’ ongoing
reflection on the globalization theme and on its implications on institutional
view of society. By no means does it tell real events; all references to place,
names and organizational roles are purely fictional although external condi-
tions and internal tensions may look similar to those experienced every day in
several educational institutions. It is therefore impossible to account for the
long array of people who have unconsciously contributed to these reflections
by discussing papers, ideas, simple intuitions. This said, we wish to acknowl-
edge some of those scholars with whom we discussed most of the ideas in the
chapter: Lars Engwall, Gustavo Fischman, Renate Meyer, Chiqui Ramirez,
Angelo Riccaboni and Belhul Usdiken.
NOTES
1. This is an expression coined in conversation with Gustavo Fishman to whom
we are grateful.
2. See Carruthers 1998 and her notion of orthopraxis, where belief is created
through the performance of some learnt practice rather than by adhering to
a text or a given social belief, as in orthodoxy.
REFERENCES
Barthes, R. (1971). Sade, fourier, loyola. Paris: Editions de Seuil. (Engl. trans. by
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux Inc., The John Hopkins University Press 1976).
Bauman, Z. (2001). The individualized society. Cambridge: Polity.
Carruthers, M. (1998). The craft of thought: Meditation, rhetoric and the making of
images. 400–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Czarniawska, B., & Sevón, G. (2005). Global ideas. How ideas, objects and practices
travel in the global economy. Malmö: Liber & Copenhagen Business School
Press.
DiMaggio, P., & Powell, W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional
isomorphism and collective rationality. American Journal of Sociology. 48:
147–160.
Hansen, A., & Mouritsen, J. (1999). Managerial technology and netted networks.
“Competitiveness” in action: The work of translating performance in a high-
tech firm. Organization, 6(3): 451–471.
Khurana, R. (2007). From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of
American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a
profession. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
MacKenzie, D. (2006). An engine, not a camera: How financial models shape the
markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mazza, C., Quattrone, P., & Riccaboni, A. (Eds.). (2008). European universities
in transition: Issues, models and cases. Cheltenham, UK: Elgar publishing.
Noiville, F. (2010). J’ai fait HEC et je m’en excuse » (Editions Stock). (it. Trans.,
Ho studiato economia e me ne pento). Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Power, M. (1998). The audit society. rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Quattrone, P. (2009). Books to be practiced. Memory, the power of the visual and
the success of accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34: 85–118.
Robinson, R., & Brown, I. (1994). Education and the economy. In N. Smelser &
R. Swedborg (Eds.), Handbook of economic sociology. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Schofer, E., Ramirez, C., & Meyer, J. (2000). The effects of science on national
economic development, 1970–1990. American Sociological Review, 65
(December): 877–898.
Carmelo Mazza is currently Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Department of

Management, University of Malta. Before joining the University of Malta, he
was Professor of Organizational Behavior at IE Business school in Madrid. He
holds a PhD in organization theory from IESE Business School, Barcelona. His
research has been focusing for the last 20 years in the diffusion of institutional
practices within different fields and industries, ranging from universities, media
and creative sectors. Carmelo Mazza has combined a wide teaching experience in
leading business schools such as CBS, IESE, Grenoble Ecole de Management
among others, with an intense managerial and consulting activity.
Paolo Quattrone is Professor and Chair of Accounting, Governance and Social

Innovation at the University of Edinburgh. Before joining Edinburgh, he was
Professor of Accounting and Management Control at IE Business School, Madrid,
and Reader in Accounting at the Saïd Business School, and Official Student (i.e.
Fellow) of Christ Church, at the University of Oxford. A truly international
scholar, he has conducted research and taught at the Universities of Catania,
HEC-Paris, Kyoto, Madrid Carlos III, Manchester, Oxford, Palermo, Siena,
Stanford and Luigi Bocconi of Milan. His work addresses questions related to
the emergence and diffusion of accounting and managerial practices in historical

and contemporary settings. More recently, he teaches, consults and researches in
the area of Major Programme Management, where he is developing a series of case
studies on reporting, governance and leadership practices to address issues of risk
and uncertainty in complex organizations for courses that he teaches at Oxford,
and for the Major Projects Leadership Academy of the UK Cabinet.
CHAPTER 7
The Future of the University? Social

Activism among Young Polish Scholars
Krzysztof Leja and Anna M. Kola
INTRODUCTION
The general question “Quo vadis, Academia?” is posed by scholars,
research administrators, journalists and is also found in public opinion
in Poland in different contexts. We do not call into question the
necessity of changes of contemporary universities, but we believe that
the source of changes should be characterized by a bottom-up
approach, especially by those who have already achieved notable scho-
lastic success and understand the requirement for “creative destruction”
of traditional forms of the university. The aim of the text is to present
and argue for the thesis that changes in universities should not be a
result of administrators’ and university managers’ decisions (as a top-
down approach), but rather should be the initiatives of the academic
community, as emphasized by Jan Szczepański, the classical Polish
sociologist, who stated: “External pressures [on universities] frequently
K. Leja (*)
Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdansk University of Technology,
Gdańsk, Poland
e-mail: kleja@zie.pg.gda.pl
A.M. Kola
Faculty of Education, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_7
124 K. LEJA AND A.M. KOLA
cause the pretence of change” (1993: 9). It is a kind of third way,

which goes beyond the liberal discourse of the capitalist, who want to
turn universities into companies, but it is not only the realization of the
vision of the university officials.
Taking into account our research and educational experience (including
fellowships at the world’s top universities, and participation in numerous
international research projects focused on problems of higher education,
and their social/symbolic capital), we would like to introduce a wider per-
spective on the role of the contemporary university – regarding the core-
periphery position of universities in a global world (Wallerstein 2004; Kwiek
2010; 2015). In addition, our aim is to show how strategies of resistance can
be built, which will result in effective and sustainable conversion of thinking
about the university as an institution in shaping and creating an elite
(Hejwosz 2010; Kola 2011), as well as developing mechanisms of pro-
quality, taking into account social factors. To reveal this way of thinking
and show possibilities of taking action, we describe the main Polish initiatives
that can change the university world in every field. These social academic
initiatives may take different forms – associations and foundations, bodies,
opinion leaders, scientific councils – but also can be new social movements
(Clark, Grayson, and Grayson 1975; Collins 2008; Gorlach and Mooney
2008; Krzeminski 2013; McCarthy and Zald 1977; Sztompka 2010; Żuk
2001; Touraine 2010, 2011, 2013; Staniszkis 1984, 2010; Sennet 1992,
2012, Smelser 1963).
An example of such a social movement is Obywatele Nauki (ON)
(www.obywatelenauki.pl). Its members are young (usually postdocto-
rates), as well as more experienced scholars, who, despite the fact of
achieving scientific and academic success, are working for the common
good and the good of the university, which is seen as an important social
institution (Kola 2015a; 2015b). The university ought to be an institution
responsible for the process of social and cultural development.
Hence, the goal of the ON movement is to defy the process of
“de-universitification” of universities (Alvesson 2013). Members of this group
are against the idea and practice of the neo-liberal university (Potulicka
and Rutkowiak 2010), which is led by the idea of a for-profit university
(Nussbaum 2010; Filippakou and Williams 2015), measured by the effective-
ness of commercialization of achievements (Berman 2012; Leslie and
Slaughter 1998). The Citizens of Academia highlight the problem of the
technocratic perspective of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education,
as well as the domination of bureaucracy (including academic bureaucracy).
7 THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY? SOCIAL ACTIVISM AMONG YOUNG . . . 125
The Citizens of Academia propose and encourage other scholars to seek

constructive and parallel solutions, that, on the one hand, will respect the
cultural, social and economic roots of the identity of the university, and,
on the other hand, will have the ability to use the vitality of its autopoiesis
(Lenartowicz 2015).
We agree that research on the role and activity of the movement is
important to understand the direction of changes of the (post)modern
university and society. The goal of such ethnographically inspired research
is diagnosis of a specific engaged academic community. The aim of the
pilot study, carried out as part of the wider project Academic Social
Movements in Poland among representatives of this social movement, is
diagnosis of academic initiatives involved in the affairs of the university and
its development, including determining what solution should be taken to
change this institution, using the enthusiasm of youth, creativity and
sometimes even anger of the Citizens of Academia. The article will present
conclusions of the pilot study, conducted among the founders and initia-
tors of the ON movement. The preliminary research was designed primar-
ily to indicate the main problems for further research, but also to
demonstrate the chosen research perspective.
Additional important objectives of the paper are to provide practical
recommendations for policymakers, academic communities, research insti-
tutions and university administration, as well as answers to the question
about possibilities of using the intellectual potential of young, talented,
rebel and open scholars, to became a catalyst for desired change of the
university, as well as development of personal careers of Polish academi-
cians (Waltoś and Rozmus 2012).
ACADEMIC INITIATIVES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN POLAND

University reforms in Poland after the political system’s transformation in
1989, which were grounded mainly in external pressure from the govern-
ment, did not bring the expected results (Czerepaniak-Walczak 2013;
Kościelniak and Makowski 2012; Sławek 2002). We believe that it is
necessary to restart the process of change. Reforms should come from
the members of Academia who treat the university as a public
good (Nixon 2012; Filippakou). There is a lack of studies and writings
devoted to this issue in Poland. Therefore, we are inclined to believe that
bottom-up initiatives can strengthen the initiative of top-down ones, and
vice versa.
In recent years, in the Polish academic world there have arisen several
social initiatives aimed at introducing changes in universities. These
changes are defined in different ways, which may result not only from the
experience, knowledge and commitment of members of the movement,
but also from the definition of social movements as such. There are many
different definitions, but they have a common element, which is rebellion
and dissatisfaction with the existing situation (Nowosielski 2012: 10-12).
Academic definitions are usually similar to those created by social activists
engaged in social movements or those who are becoming more and more
influential in contemporary societies – bloggers and citizen journalists. One
of them is Paul Mason, English broadcaster, author of the book Why It’s Still
Kicking off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions (2013). Mason explains
why now in Western countries people are increasingly organizing themselves
to express their opposition and different points of views to the political,
business and mass media mainstream. He offered 20 reasons explaining why
people need to rebel against authority and cooperate with other people to
create a new quality of community. Mason points out that the most impor-
tant reasons is the fact that “At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the
graduate with no future” (Mason 2013). It is a paradox, because in a world
that has achieved an unprecedented cultural, economic and civilizational
standard of living, there are people without any perspective of living and
working, despite their high education, excellent skills and flexibility. Work
(especially work in the “academic sector”) becomes a rare good (and right),
which is unreachable for those whose economic and social capital is lower
than the successful others (Poławski 2012; Standing and Jandrić 2015).
The same idea/social problem is described in another important book
for the 30+ generation, written by Guy Standing (2011). The author calls
the 30-year-old social group the “precariat” because of difficult and
unstable social and professional conditions, the inability to obtain profes-
sional advancement, and – worst of all – no guaranteed pension in the future.
Social initiatives and movements in contemporary Poland are not always
caused by social difficulties in living or at work, which will be described in
the ensuing pages. Many of them are opposed to the institutional, top-down
approach changes that the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and
other control institutions are trying to implement into the daily practice of
the university. Solutions and reforms are almost entirely bureaucratic and
are not related to a real change in the direction of innovation to support the
economic and social development of the country. Hence, there are critical
voices calling for these types of changes. They can takes different forms
such as boycotts and strikes, but the activists want to promote new
solutions and visions of the modern university.
Academic social movements are more or less local and based on formal
or non-formal education. They work in the public sphere (also in virtual
reality, e.g. Facebook), but often their work ends after the establishment
of the committee or spreading a kind of manifesto focused only on one
professional group (professors, adjuncts, students or PhD candidates).
They can either be a one-off action or be based on regular work of its
members. Rarely their activities and opinions reach a wider audience.
Let us make a short overview of academic social movements in con-
temporary Poland.
(1) One of the oldest movements and social activities within the uni-
versity in Poland is the Independent and Self-governing Trade
Union Solidarity (NSZZ Solidarność). This is the largest trade
union in Poland. It brings together employees of different indus-
tries, occupations and qualifications. The primary purpose of
Solidarity was, and still is, to fight for better working conditions.
They are “Employees who can organize together to negotiate
better collective agreements, fairer treatment and higher wages”
(www.solidarnosc.org.pl, 15.04.2016).
Solidarność was established in 1980 (registration took place in
Warsaw on 10 November 1980), mainly in order to defend work-
ers’ rights, but quickly became a major force of democratic opposi-
tion against the communist regime. Initially, Solidarity created
numerous strike committees, including at universities (e.g. at the
most important Polish universities – the University of Warsaw and
Jagiellonian University committees operated from the beginning of
Solidarity in 1980). The committees deal with non-compliance of
workers’ rights at universities, but they also engage in strictly
political activities related to current events in the country (orga-
nized marches in defence of free media, political picketing as an
expression of support for certain political groups, etc.). In addition,
one of the activities is counselling for its members (mainly advice
on labour law). This part of the Solidarity trade union activity is still
very important and visible within Polish academia.
(2) Another academic initiative is the nationwide, although founded in
Warsaw, Polish Crisis Committee of Humanities (Komitet Kryzysowy
Humanistyki Polskiej, KKHP), established in 2013 (a year later it was
transformed into an association). The committee was founded to

overcome the crisis of higher education and Polish scholarship, and
in particular its activity was focused on the recovery of the Polish
humanities. The first spectacular KKHP action was a protest against
termination of the course of philosophy at the University of Bialystok.
KKHP appears often in public debates to discuss the issue of
stratification and internal ranking of Polish universities. It depre-
cates these acts as very harmful, because they popularize neoliberal
assumptions of growth and change at Polish universities. The result
of numerous debates of the Committee in various groups was the
Congress of KKHP, organized in February 2015, where members
of the Committee discussed the demands of anti-crisis solutions,
and – a media event – the Black Procession of Polish Academia in
June 2015 in Warsaw. The procession resembled a funeral proces-
sion, and its pretext was the metaphorical death of Polish scholar-
ship, mainly the humanities and social sciences. Those academics
who could not join the march, both individuals and institutions, as
a sign of solidarity with the “mourners” hung out black flags on the
buildings of departments or institutes.
(3) The social movement Citizens of Academia (ON) was established
in Warsaw at the beginning of 2012. It brings together people who
want to be involved in work for a comprehensive change of the
Polish system of academic training, hiring, promotion of profes-
sional evaluation of universities, research and science funding. The
roots of the movement are correlated with another social initiative.
The inspiration and impetus for the ON was the movement Citizens
of Culture, based on the claim that “culture is the sphere of human
and social life that requires special civil care” (Manifesto 2012).
The ON aimed to initiate a public and fact-based debate on the
shape of Polish scholarship and education. In their view, it has to
avoid ideology and politics and instead focus on action and pro-
quality goals that would not merely serve the development of
research as a goal in itself, but also foster the advancement of
Polish academics. The citizens, weary of the wailing and pessimistic
tone of the current debate, approached the topic from a broad
perspective and for this reason decided to use not only the media,
but also the non-governmental sector. The private sector is also
given its say, especially the companies that have to take part in
creating new technologies – and (co)finance the related research
work – so that they may be truly innovative and compete success-

fully on the global market. The goal of the debate promoted by the
ON is to seek answers to such questions as the purposes of scholarly
work and scholars themselves as well as the desired approaches to
education and research that would influence the social develop-
ment in a potentially all-encompassing manner.
The movement is bound not only to promote specific solu-
tions, but also provoke a systemic approach which would include
scholars themselves. The success is not only supposed to be
gauged by the introduced changes and the reform of universities,
but it also has to bring about the increase of the sense of com-
munity into academia, the restoration of the value-based ethos,
the call for solidarity, responsibility and involvement. The infor-
mal nature of the movement, as well as the absence of any inner
structure, is its undeniable asset.
The first action of the ON was the publication of the Manifesto,
concerning the whole range of education practices (from pre-
school to university education). Its principles are widely conceived
so that everyone can support them and make them his or her own.
The Manifesto includes the main thesis that education is a complex of
interrelated elements related to the economy, business and the non-
governmental sector. Schools and universities should prepare their
alumni for life in today’s highly unpredictable and unstable world
(Baumann 2006). In such a world permanent self-education and
critical, emancipatory thinking is very important (Nussbaum 2004).
By 15 March 2016 the Manifesto had been signed by 1,948 people
(www.obywatelenauki, 15.04.2016) The Manifesto was signed
by prominent Polish professors and people known for their public
intellectual engagement, e.g. the former rector of the University of
Warsaw, President of the Board of the Foundation for Polish Science,
the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. This strong support
for the ON demonstrates the need for such an initiative.
(4) Another academic initiative is created by the University of Warsaw’s
students. Their aim is to change the ethos and mission of the
University. The movement was called the Involved University
(Uniwersytet Zaangażowany – UZ) and was formed by students
who do not want to allow this culture-producing institution to be
transformed into a company that treats students as customers and
does not let them participate in its work. The UZ accused the
ministerial and institutional authorities of a lack of transparency in

the functioning of the University and also imposing statutory
changes without consulting them with the student government.
The UZ works for the restoration and renewal of the student
movement and the student culture treated widely – as creating
knowledge, but also as reconstruction of the ethos of the student.
(5) Equally important is another informal group founded in Warsaw in
2011 named the New Opening of the University (Nowe Otwarcie
Uniwersytetu – NOU). The NOU was established by students,
graduate students and young scholars to monitor the reforms in
higher education and science introduced by the Minister of Science
and Higher Education – Barbara Kudrycka in 2011. These reforms
aimed to commercialize both research and education at university
level. Activists focused on research activities rather than protest.
The result of its activity is a report on working conditions at
universities There is no Time for Research and Writing. Working
Conditions of Young Scholars Employed at Polish Universities.
(6) The Open Space Committee Release Education should also be men-
tioned among the minor movements, formed as an initiative of
doctoral students at the University of Gdansk in order to protest
against the closing of the university as well as the neoliberal min-
isterial reforms.
(7) The next academic initiative is the University of Solidarity (US)
created to reduce the doctoral salaries within grants in the National
Science Centre.
(8) The social action Lublin 9 Alternative of Thinking and Acting is the
initiative “for alternative thinking and action, established in protest
against the commercialization of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska
University in Lublin, especially against dismissing four hundred mem-
bers of the cleaning staff – mostly women” (Szadkowski 2015: 317).
CITIZENS OF ACADEMIA – THE RESEARCH PROJECT

The main idea of social movements is action. Therefore, the presented
initiatives are defined as a process rather than as an organization. It allows
permanent learning and inclusion activity among its new members. The ON
address their activities at local groups associated with universities. They look
for university local leaders who may attract others. The group of initiators
co-ordinate the work of the leaders and members. Their role, however, is
organizational in nature – they abstain from managing the movement
directly (they are not formed into a structure such as the board of the
ON). They also act as spokespersons of the ON: they attend important
consultation sessions organized by the Ministry of Science and Higher
Education, the Polish Academy of Sciences and the National Science
Centre, take part in conferences concerning the role of research (e.g. the
Academic Culture Congress in Kraków in 2014) and gain wide acclaim in
the public sphere, mainly on account of their ever more frequent interviews
for newspapers and radio stations, as well as social media and the Internet.
This article is devoted to the presentation of the results of a pilot study
for the project Ethnography of Academic Social Movements in Poland.1 The
research is inspired by ethnographic and anthropological methodologies
(Kostera 2005), but also takes into account pedagogical action research
(Červinková and Gołębniak 2010, 2013) and studies on higher education
(Leja 2013). Therefore, methods used in this study are: in-depth inter-
views (IDI) with four leaders and members of the movement, participant
observation, as well as discourse analysis (DA). An important aspect of
the research in the context of conclusions and possible applications, but
also for the conceptualization and operationalization of the research, is
engagement of both authors in the activities of the movement.
The main advantage of this type of research is the ability to take into
account the social context, but also specific cases, which exemplify this
context (Flick 2007a: 14). The authors used the ethnographic method
because it enables multivariate analysis based on long-term commitment
of the researcher and data collected by different methods and techniques
(Angrosino 2007: 45–46). Such an approach also requires care of the
quality of research, and therefore the most commonly used method here,
triangulation data sources (Flick 2007b). This in turn helps provide the
fullest and in-depth answers to the problems and research questions. Thanks
to the method employed, we could gain more information about the
motivation of Citizens of Academia to work, act and research. The authors
of the project are interested in the issue of synergies between the initiatives
of the academic community and the expectations of the ministry and
university authorities regarding the direction of change. What is important
for academic social initiatives? Do they have a chance to make changes
to the Academy? What/who is responsible for the success of these move-
ments? What helps in implementation of the movement’s demands? How
important are interpersonal relationships, community experiences, related
biographies and “interpretive community” (Fish 1980: 171) to shift from

neoliberal politics to the politics of community?
THE CITIZENS OF ACADEMIA – THE PILOT STUDY2

The ethnographic studies among the Citizens of Academia allowed for the
formulation of the initial conclusions regarding the creation of this group,
its motivation to work, as well as the character of the group’s activity and
the goals they set for themselves. The most frequent word that appears in
the statements provided by the founders of the ON social movement is
“frustration”, which seems to be the main motivation initiating the crea-
tion of the movement. The social or even friendly element is an additional
aspect here, as one interviewed person said:
I have known M. since forever. He was my best man at my wedding, and

I was his. (R2)
The psychological as well as the informal motivation of the activities of the

Community should be pointed out. One of the founders mentioned that:
the movement’s participants came from friendships and private relation-

ships. ( . . . ) M.( . . . ) is very outgoing, broad-minded and even has an
obsession, I would say, with dialogues. (R4)
The social capital possessed by the community participants who live in

Warsaw, the capital city of the country, where the best Polish university –
the University of Warsaw – is located, plays an important role here, too. It is a
lot easier to create any structures, even an informal organization, if it is possible
to rely on the support and the kindness of co-workers, family or colleagues.
The last person to be studied was an interesting one who, as she put it
herself, is an example of “the second wave” (R3) of the movement, because
she joined it in April 2012. Before that, she participated in a variety of
administrative work at the university and this is how she knew about the
system which was causing “a great loss of energy” (R3). After observing the
work of the different institutions inside the university, she came to the
conclusion that “the community should be able to decide on its own fate”
(B3). Although she did not possess any experience in voluntary work, she
had the knowledge about the university structures and the methods of
operation, and so she joined the movement in order to be able to change

the solutions dictated from above.
The ON participant recalled that the conversation she had with one of
the movement members, Beata Chmiel, the founder of a movement
similar in its objectives, the Citizens of Culture, was crucial for the foun-
dation of the Citizens of Academia movement. She asked him a question:
Why would the academics not want to do anything for themselves?. (R2)
It was the beginning of 2012, when this “frustration” was boiling over
together with the feeling of hope that it was possible to actually change the
existing reality. The need for change was observed by everybody.
The motivation to create the movement was, inter alia, the need to stop
complaining and convert the bad energy into an involved discussion
inspired by the experiences of the founders gained abroad by observing
the ways people communicated there. The interviewed participant added
that the movement had a motto:
Let’s gather up and start a mass mobilization, not as a form of a strike and
negation, though, and not against the authorities, but rather as reviewers of
the changes taking place. Perhaps it was about agency, subjectivity, and the
fact that the implemented reforms were not consulted with us. (R1)
Thus, the first demand was very important:
“To seek people interested in change” who will make a strong declaration to
support the activities and the proposals of the members of the movement.
It was consistent with the objectives of the founders, but also it was generally
understood that the formulation of the most universal Manifesto was necessary.
The document had to be open but not populist in character. Despite the lack
of any experience, the members developed solutions the main principle of
which was “( . . . ) to act independently of the establishment” (R2).
In the beginning, the support of third parties was needed. The interviewed
person recalled, inter alia, the setting up of the direction by the befriended
PR people, who suggested:
to go forward and not backwards; to move on, because setting up the ground
rules is good for many reasons, but it is crucial to move to the next phase,
because of this and that . . . And I think that for most of the activities of the
other organizations before us this was the key point – having a group of
people who can observe this from the outside and also who have the practical
knowledge to observe us and our environment. (R1)
Moreover, the watershed moment can actually be indicated. In

September, 2012, during the Warsaw Science Festival, a public collection
of signatures for the support of the Citizens of Academia took place the
permission of which was provided by the previous director of the Festival,
Maciej Geller. Thanks to that the ON members could enter every event
and lecture.
The response to the demands of the Citizens of Academia were not
always positive, though:
You would have to see the collision we had with the representatives of Solidarity.
They told us straight up that the situation of academia is catastrophic and in
order to change it, more funding for scholarship is needed; otherwise, nothing
will help. We, on the other hand, said that this is not the way to do it, because if
we add money without any reforms, we will only be keeping up with the system
and nothing will change. We need to connect all the elements which are linked
to two factors: the change in the mentality of the ruling parties as well as the
change in the structures existing in our environment. (R1)
The attitude adopted in the conducted dialogue is very important, as are

the conversations with each professional group – the professors, the young
academics, the undergraduate or PhD students, as well as the ministerial
authorities.
“I think that what really makes us different is that we talk to everybody, and
we don’t make any enemies” (R1), says one of the participants. “When
I created the movement, I made a wrong hypothesis”, because:
“surely, the scientists are educated people; therefore, if they are educated, it
means that statistically the awareness of the society should be higher, and if
it is higher, then the percentage of people joining the social movement in
order to act in their own interest should be higher, too” (R1)
– and that was a big mistake (R1).
The respondent commented on the scientific work in the following words:
Currently, the path of academia is more risky and difficult in comparison

with the paths of the so-called regular labour market. It used to be a cushy
job, and now it is more difficult. The principles are not clear, and they keep
being changed. It is difficult to know now what can be considered to be the
criterion of excellence; therefore, instead of true scientific excellence, and
instead of asking the proper questions, we score points. (R4)
There are also weak spots of the movement’s activity which can be eval-
uated based on the experience of other professional groups or community
work:
I personally coordinated a public debate which was a rather bitter experience.

We had a very low attendance even for the well-received subjects or when the
media attended and famous media personalities, such as Sylwia Chutnik [pop-
ular young Polish writer, journalist and activist – A.M.K., K.L.], were acting as
panellists. Even then we had a low attendance during the debates. (R4)
The spirit of Solidarity is often present in the stories of the community

members. When asked about the experiences with community work, one
of the respondents answered:
“Besides abolishing socialism – there were none” (R2). He participated in

the oppositional activity in 1989 as well as during the first free elections in
Poland on June 4, 1989, which he concluded in the following way: “as
citizens, we changed the reality then” (R2).
Currently, the social activation to undertake joint actions to defend our

own interests “is our failure rather than a success” (R2). The respondent
predicted that this is related to the far-reaching atomization of citizens as
well as the workers of science, and thinking in terms of competition rather
than cooperation. The other reason for the poor commitment is the
general feeling of discouragement in a situation where the arguments
about the mission and the ethos of the university simply do not work.
It should be noted that there is a total lack of faith in change, because the
“system is superior” (R2). The most active people in the movement are
the young academics, but also the oldest ones who are close to retirement,
who believe in the need for change.
The saddest thing is that the apathy and lack of any social activity
among the scientists is happening in a situation of a particular cultural
change and a political transformation where democratic institutions allow
for a dialogue with the authorities.
What connects the founders of the Citizens of Academia, but not neces-
sarily the members of the movement, are the relatively common views on
life and the social system, and the value of scholarship. One member said:
I have the impression that the ideals about building our own capital will only
clog the ears of the students, and only the information such as . . . invest in
yourself, open up to the whole wide world, scholarship is the key that
unlocks the world would actually hit the spot. (R1)
Scholarship has an autotelic value for all the interviewed persons, but it is
also a passion which is turned into a tormenting experience by bureau-
cracy. One of them says:
“We are not taught, we as the Polish people, as academics, we got mixed up
with scoring points, rarely raising our heads to grant ourselves the right to
think about how this system should be, how we would like to be treated,
what our career paths and our jobs should be like, and what role scholarship
should play for society” (R1).
The citizens believe in the possibility of changing academia in Poland,
which is not an elitist island. We should take care of academia as a whole – as
a set of social, civilization, culture-making functions. It is a distant goal, but
“in a variety of details, we can make an impact on reality” (R2). Thus, what
are the functions of the University? One of the respondents stated that it is
“1) conducting research at the highest level, 2) training of the elite partici-
pants of public debate, and 3) educating teachers” (R2).
Is Academia and community work the highest value in life for them?
Perhaps it is not, but they remain high next to the other values related
to the life outside the personal sphere. For one respondent, it is “coopera-
tion, doing something together with the people I really appreciate” (R4),
and for another – “I think that getting along with others is the basic value
inside and outside” (R1).
Does this activity have important people or masters? The respondent
answered that in the following words: “I have many masters, and I have
none. I try not to treat them as masters. I like to live with smart
people, and if someone is stupid in a certain area and smart in another,
then let’s take advantage of that wise part” (R1). Again, we can see a
personal, individual kind of approach but with a clear community
perspective.
CONCLUSIONS
We have noted certain concerning aspects in relation to the creation and
the maintenance of the activities with the characteristics of resistance
which result from the pilot study implemented in 2015. The most impor-
tant conclusions are presented here:
1. Lack of leaders of the movements and the academic initia-

tives. It is necessary to support the leaders and people imple-
menting specific activities of the initiatives. Usually, the leaders
take on tasks that gradually start to exceed their knowledge and
time availability. This leads to the situation in which they lose the
energy that could be directed towards the integration and man-
agement activities.
2. Phases in introducing changes. The vision of change in the aca-
demic world, as proposed by the Citizens of Academia, is introduced
partially, step by step, in stages – so that it is accepted by most of the
academics in a positive way; however, the evolution of changes
causes even the radical changes to be unnoticed, unclear.
3. Socialization and the inactivity and lack of critical thinking
ability. This does not apply to the activists who, because of psycho-
social predispositions, are a minority in the world of academia, but
to the passive majority of the employees of the system of academia
and higher education. In schools, the Polish people are taught to
follow the orders of a teacher who has a strong authority within
society. The students are not taught to become the leaders of social
change, but to know how to be subordinate and adapt to the
existing reality. This also results from the strong traditional family
model and the upbringing in a family in which the positions of the
members are strongly hierarchical. The situation is similar at uni-
versities, because the relationships are highly formalized, rigid and
subjected to the status system of universities.
4. The “tribes” of the privileged dominating the “outlaws” of the
system. This is related to point 3, but it is important to indicate the
internal and distinct character of the privileged groups which enjoy
the benefits not always resulting from substantive causes but being
the effect of the possessed and multiplied social capital. Those who
speak their own voice are doomed to be, in a sense, university
outlaws, as they will never be part of the university bodies, their
projects will never be supported financially, and they will not be

helped in professional and scientific advancements.
5. “Bad reputation” of resistance and revolution. In Poland, despite
the strong opposition tradition of solidarity, the majority of citizens
still adopt the conformist attitude, especially when the socio-eco-
nomic conditions force them to focus on caring for their livelihood
and employment. Today, the social hero is not an activist or a rebel
but a conformist who can blend into the system in order to use it to
carry out his or her own (mainly financial) particular interests. It is
also linked to increasingly more popular among the social activists
popular theories of Karl Marx about introducing social change
through revolutions (sometimes bloody). In a post-socialist country
like Poland, this tradition is not popular among the majority of
citizens, fearing a sudden and radical change.
6. Unfavourable economic situation in the country. Poland is not an
economic powerhouse, and its geopolitical location makes this situa-
tion more difficult. Throughout the last several dozen years, the
economy of this country could not develop in the same way as other
European countries could. The centralized economy invested neither
in academia nor in higher education. The situation of such a poor level
of financing academia does not result in an increase in the level of
Polish academia today, when compared to the universities of the West.
7. The postcolonial mentality. The researchers of universities indicate
that there are universities which have a significant and basic influ-
ence on scholarship. Mostly, though, the position of a university is
measured by the placement in the world ranking. Poland is usually
not included in those rankings or it is placed very low, which is
considered by the researchers as well as the neoliberal ruling party to
indicate bad conditions of scholarship in Poland. Not often, how-
ever, is it understood how important it is to build a model for it
based on the specific social, political and historical conditions.
The category of resistance appears in research and publications of the current

critical pedagogy which uses the “language of criticism and capabilities”.
“The critical pedagogy being the driving force has the task of changing the
lifelong conviction, maintained by many students and teachers (the aca-
demics? – A.M.K., K. L.), that they are too insignificant and too weak to
cause any transformations in the social order” (Bilińska-Suchanek 2003: 47).
Zbigniew Kwieciński says that “we must tear apart the universality of
the beliefs about opportunism, the resignation of one’s self and values as the
sole source of social advancement” and “postulate of social creativity” and
“self-realization through changes outside own self” (Kwieciński 1992: 30).
One can and should act differently for the common good, but also to
improve one’s position in the academic world. Without this type of thinking
there is moral emptiness, and the values of emancipation disappear. For this
reason, “Pedagogy of resistance suggests a departure from deterministic
thinking, because strengthening and validating the pessimistic and fatalistic
thinking serves “as an alibi for passivity and pedagogical impotence”
(Melosik 1994: 54). It criticizes and in fact rejects the understanding of
the goal of education to serve as economic efficiency. Schools are more
than “the warehouses of enterprises” (Bilińska-Suchanek 2003: 48). Lech
Witkowski, on the other hand, argues that school (and, in our context,
college) can be such a public place in “which dialogue and criticism cultivate
the feelings and habits of democracy” (Witkowski 1993: 219). He sees here
three planes of school functioning which are guided by the ideology of
resistance:
1. “Realizing the fight in all of those places which are not entirely
dominated by the influence and the control of the state.
2. Developing the activity towards the culturally opposing public
spheres (outside of school) in order to create new ‘forms of collec-
tive ruling authority’ and ‘the practice of self-governance’.
3. Developing ‘alcoves of cultural resistance’ directed, thanks to the
creation of new forms of social relations and practices, to fight
objectification, exclusion, and the suffering of particular groups
and environments” (Witkowski 1993: 220).
In academia, resistance appears in several contexts: social, psychological,

moral and cognitive. It is defined by Thomas Kuhn as one of the main
mechanisms in the development of knowledge (Kuhn 1962). There is active
and passive resistance, and Ewa Bilińska-Suchanek has clarified this simple
classification (based on her own research). She has distinguished four types
of resistance: (1) transformative (resistant activities in order to introduce
change), (2) accommodative (situated between conformism and resistant
behaviour), (3) passive (usually these are very subtle activities), (4) aggres-
sive (which are destructive in nature) (Bilińska-Suchanek 2003: 85–94).
Are the young, talented and open-minded people the future of the
university? The argumentation presented in this work, supported by
the selected elements of the ethnographic research studies, conducted

among the main representatives of the Citizens of Academia social move-
ment, indicate that the answer to this question may be positive. The
initiatives of the movement are often ahead of their time and are the
source of inspiration for the politicians who make their decisions regarding
the direction of changes at the level of the higher education system, which
eventually will transfer to the institutional level. The members of the
Citizens of Academia are not affiliated with any political party, yet they
have been invited to offer their opinions regarding the projects of changes
of legal regulations regarding the higher education system, as well as
having been invited to participate in the works of the Polish University
Accreditation Commission and the consultative teams appointed by the
Ministry of Science and Higher Education. The creative resistance repre-
sented by the members of the Citizens of Academia is starting to bring
results in which the movement’s success can be recognized.
NOTES
1. The pilot study was conducted by the ethnographic method based on in-depth
interviews aimed at understanding the meaning of the central and the most
important topics (Kvale 2007: 42). The pilot study (interviews) was conducted
in February and March 2015 in Warsaw, but the authors have also been
participants of the ON movement for 1.5 years (2014–2015). The interviews
lasted about 2 hours each and were organized by the authors in Warsaw.
The authors are co-authors of the report with diagnoses of and proposals
for changes of Polish science and higher education. This document titled Pact
for Science includes a number of solutions and reforms for universities and
ministry. The authors of the present article have written numerous texts –
academic as well as popular – describing the ON activity (Kola 2015a; Kola
2015b).
2. The citations in this part of the text are derived from the in-depth interviews.
In order to maintain the anonymity of the interviewed people, their names
have not been indicated.
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http://www.solidarnosc.org.pl/o-nszz-solidarnosc/o-nszz-solidarnosc/kim-
jestesmy
http://www.sbp.pl/repository/dokumenty/kongres_obywateli_kultury/mani
fest_ok.pdf
http://obywatelenauki.pl/popieraja-nas/
Krzysztof Leja associate professor and vice-dean for research at the Faculty of
Management and Economics, Gdansk University of Technology, Poland. His fields
of interest include research on HEIs and policy studies. He is an expert of Polish
Rectors Foundation and Ministry of Science and Higher Education. He led and
participated in few projects regarding higher education management and develop-
ment, and at present he is a national expert in “European Tertiary Education
Register” (ETER II). He is the author of two books and many papers (mainly in
Polish) regarding management concept and dilemmas of contemporary HEIs.
Anna Maria Kola PhD, assistant professor, Faculty of Education, Nicolaus

Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland. She has done research in critical social
work and sociology of education conducted at some of the world’s best universities
(University of Oxford, Peking University, Harvard University and others) and
engaged in NGOs and social movements (as a researcher and activist). She was a
team leader in the Obywatele Nauki (Citizens of Academia) movement and author
of popular texts about cultural and educational changes in Asia and the USA
(gender, university, social problems).
CHAPTER 8
University as a Terminal: Socio-Material

Infrastructure for Post-Neoliberal Society
Krzysztof Nawratek
Something interesting starts to appear in Katowice1 – just recently,

local protests against some unwanted development and some stronger
opposition to the Katowice city council’ policy appeared; one can see
more vocal local intellectual elite (in local civic associations and in the
university) capable of expressing their opinions of crucial problems of
the city. Katowice (or Upper Silesia region in general) is not the centre
of Polish urban studies or urban activism (although Professor Marek
Szczepanski from the University of Silesia is a well-respected
researcher, expert of new town Tychy, located nearby Katowice), how-
ever, it does not mean that there is no in-depth reflection on urban
issue in the city. There are two places where this reflective thought
could be found – the university (where Professor Tomasz Nawrocki
leads a new centre for urban studies) and (more or less formal) local
groups of activists.
In 2014, on the invitation from the University of Silesia, along with
students of the final year of Master Programme at the University of
Plymouth, I visited Katowice. We were invited to work on a project of
K. Nawratek (*)
School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
e-mail: k.nawratek@sheffield.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_8
146 K. NAWRATEK
spatial development of university campus (“academic quarter”). Behind

the invitation and project we have been working on, lies the dream of a
friendly university, open to residents of Katowice, expressed by Deputy
Vice-Chancellor Professor Ryszard Koziołek (Koziołek 2014), who per-
sonally invited us to Katowice. His dream, as we could guess, was not
shared by all policy-makers in the city council and at the university. There
is a fear of students, as a group of loud young people who drink too much
and behave in a funny way. It is obviously not only Polish fear or prejudice;
it is similar in Plymouth, Sheffield, Belfast and many other British uni-
versity towns. In Poland, universities are (at least partly) autonomous and
independent from direct political pressure; therefore there is always a
possibility of a political tension between the university and a city council.
However, in Katowice the real reason for the lack of enthusiasm towards
the idea of open and friendly university lies probably more in a modernist
view of the city than in any political or cultural tensions.
The idea of strict zoning – the notion of the city with precisely
spatially defined functions, is still pretty strong in Katowice. This is a
modernist attitude, leading to sorting functions, to dividing the city
into specialized areas. Urban planning based on fragmentation is some-
how related to the identity politics focused on strongly defined unique
subjects. However, there is an alternative to this kind of urban devel-
opment and politics. The city, especially the contemporary “mongrel”
city (Sandercock 2003), is a concoction of different functions and
different residents. What makes city unique as a political entity is its
spatiality, allowing diverse logics to operate simultaneously, side by
side, potentially without any interaction. So, the city has an ability to
unify and integrate but in the same moment it could protect weaker
actors, could allow a creation of autonomous spheres (they are not
necessary spatial zones) and local experimentations.
The city is created not only out of buildings and spaces but also out of
regulations, laws, conventions and culture. This means that architecture
should not only focus solely on buildings but also on buildings and spaces
in the context of socio-political, cultural and economic conditions (Awan
et al. 2011). Therefore, the Katowice project was not only a question of
the “best” (urban or architectural) solution but also above all the ques-
tions of alliances. Before discussing the architecture and urban planning as
particular spatial practices, we need to ask questions in the field of ethics
and social sciences, and finally, political questions, questions about prio-
rities and hierarchies.
8 UNIVERSITY AS A TERMINAL: SOCIO-MATERIAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR… 147
Cities (also in Poland) still have land, buildings, infrastructure; the city
has money from the budget and the possibility to impose local taxes. The
city is equipped with an army of officers and employers at cultural institu-
tions. It is relatively easy to imagine a development policy focused on its
residents, both permanent and temporary (such as students). The univer-
sity is in an even better position: it has certain level of autonomy to afford
socio–spatial experiments.
One of the key concepts I would like to consider here is the notion of
sphere |territory as the general conditions necessary for the formation and
development of subjectivity. Sphere |territory is a notion not necessarily
based on ownership, as it will become evident when looking at the
example of the discussion of “Rojava revolution” (Nawratek 2015), but
it cannot be ignored that the land /territory could provide an essential
support (becoming an essential, “natural” infrastructure) to create the
social and political subject. As the Declaration of YAJK (Free Women’s
Union of Kurdistan) (Nurhak 2016) states:
Before everything, women’s ideology cannot exist without land. The art of
harvest and the art of production are connected to women’s artistry. This
means that the first principle of the women’s ideology is a woman’s con-
nection to the land she is born on; in other words, patriotism.
YAJK’s patriotism has nothing to do with xenophobia, and, furthermore,

it is patriotism that is not built on the politics of identity, patriotism, which
does not demand their own state. Such patriotism is full of respect and
concern for continuous negotiation of various land users: land is seen by
YAJK as an inclusive infrastructure. The way how land is defined by YAJK
is one of the most perfect materialization of the notion of sphere |territory
(Nawratek 2015):
The base space becomes then a common space, a shared “plane”, which is
used – cultivated by the members of the community. Again – the emphasis
on the community as an entity composed of diverse elements, is only
conceivable if the possessive relationship with the land is rejected, and the
land is accepted as a multifaceted entity that allows various groups to use it
in various ways; the entity existing outside of now, submerged in the past
and at the same time reaching into the future.
Let’s now return to the Katowice project and to the question of the
specifics of urbanity. Warren Magnusson (2014) shows that the city is
148 K. NAWRATEK
rooted in a particular political ontology that makes urban political entity

drastically different from the political body of the national state. The city is
much more corporal; its residents are much more physically interacting
with its materiality comparing to interaction with a national state, which is
strongly grounded in the symbolic sphere of ideas and ideologies.
Paradoxically, the dominance of praxis over symbolism, corporeal-material
practical interactions over identity politics makes the city more open to
accepting post-political, technocratic governance. This openness makes a
city potentially vulnerable and its governing body not really interested in
any social experimentations. Obviously, the symbolic sphere does exist in
the city, therefore, it cannot be ignored while talking about urban phe-
nomena. For example, while city politicians in Katowice use the phrase
“academic quarter”, they underline its separation from the city, its
uniqueness and autonomy. By doing this, they ignore that in the current
“academic quarter” of the city, several non-academic functions are
located, and there are also several residential tower blocks and few run-
down social houses. Therefore, to avoid segregation as an urban practice,
we should start with a new, more inclusive language, focused on interac-
tions, knowledge production and openness. By adopting such a language,
we will be able to talk more freely about the university campus as a part of
the city centre while retaining autonomous (which means allowing for
greater freedom in experimenting) the management of this area. With
such a perspective, the University of Silesia could be seen as a potentially
strong space of democratic producing of socially useful knowledge, the
space where this knowledge is tested and applied.
Therefore, one of the projects (Heracleous et al. 2014) created by my
students asks the question about a post-coal Silesia, of Silesia, where the
energy production is still an essential part of the regional economy, but it
is a new, more “green” production. The University of Silesia is not a
technical university; nobody should expect historians engaged in research
on geothermal sources, although the departments of physics, chemistry
and biotechnology could be involved in research on new energy sources.
Even if humanities and social sciences are not directly related to research in
the technicality of post-coal Silesia, there is still a question of social
structures and cultures of this new society: this is a space where
University of Silesia could be engaged. This engagement could go beyond
theory: it could become a program of social and cultural experimentations.
The idea that university could be seen as a laboratory for social change
is also essential for another project (Duffill et al. 2014) whose starting
point, influenced strongly by Guy Standing’s (2014) work on precarity, is

the fact of endemic employment of young people on temporal (“zero
hours”) contracts. This type of contract puts young people in a highly
precarious position, making any long-term life plans almost impossible.
Social insecurity, precarious life is something against which, according to
the authors of the project, the university should work in a much more
proactive way. The authors of the project (being students themselves)
believe that university as a strong, wealthy and influential social institution
should help its graduates to avoid a fate of social and economic instability.
The project put a university in a position of an active actor supporting
creating students’ cooperatives – becoming an incubator of alternative
(post-capitalist?) economic activities. Interestingly, authors of this project
do not shy away from the involvement of private capital, for example, by
allowing the construction of dormitories by private developers. However,
this “deal with the devil” is required to get the funds required to help
students in the creation of new, sustainable and more innovative jobs. It is
not “anti-capitalist” vision, but rather a kind of transition way or the
hybrid model of growing new ideas out of existing economic regime.2
It implies a deliberate release of part of available resources (land, build-
ings) in order to strengthen the autonomy, including financial, of remain-
ing part of the public university. Spatially, such a solution would create a
structure of “patchwork”, fragments of privatized land mingled with
fragments owned and managed by the university. This solution needs
university to become a very smart player, able to secure key spaces and
buildings, allowing control of the private fragments (Hillier 1996).
The question of a relationship between the university and other actors
is important in all projects. One of them focuses directly on an idea of
university-NGOs hybrid (Bush et al. 2014). On the one hand, the project
attempts to create an “open-source” university, on the other it wants to
put students beyond academia, but not into any for-profit organization.
The project creates another spatial patchwork, academia-NGOs concoc-
tion, hoping to build conditions for new, hybrid post-academic identity.
The project is interesting because of two reasons: – it focuses on creating
the set of conditions, without defining precisely an end-product (it is still a
unique approach in architecture projects), and; it attempts to imagine an
academic education beyond academia. Yet, it does not happen, as it is
nowadays often expected, in a purely commercial environment.
The authors of another interesting project decided to respond radically
to the declaration of Professor Koziołek with regard to building a friendly
150 K. NAWRATEK
university, open for all citizens of Katowice. In their proposal, University

of Silesia become a “shelter autonomous zone”, offering space and infra-
structure to marginalized groups: homeless people, addicts, poor,
neglected children. The radical character of their proposal is especially
visible in their architectural proposal (Oxley 2015): they want a Social
Work department building to become a night shelter for the homeless –
being open for them also during the day. It this proposal the building
belongs more to homeless people than to students and staff members. This
project has a pretty strong pedagogical justification, as it allows students to
interact (from day one of their academic career) with the group of people
they will be working with when they graduate.
All of these projects see the university as a special place – not only as the
place of knowledge production but as a place to practice virtue and social
responsibility. It is, therefore, a model of the socially engaged university,
going far beyond a reductionist vision of neoliberal academia serving the
needs of “the market” and evaluating all human activities from financial
perspective. It should be relatively easy to imagine another “special place”
analysing a position of Royal Castle of Wawel, the heritage center in
Kraków, which is one of the cornerstones of Polish national identity.
Wawel is a vital tourist destination, but the tourist function is just a
derivative of logic unrelated to a contemporary capitalist system.
There is an ongoing discussion on a position of architecture and
architects in the field of a struggle for social justice – very interesting is
the voice of Reiner de Graaf, a partner in OMA, one of the most influential
architectural companies in the world. De Graaf (2015) writes:
If you study the history of architecture, and particularly that of the last
century, a striking confluence emerges between what Piketty identifies as
the period of the great social mobility and the emergence of the Modern
Movement in architecture, with its utopian visions for the city. From Le
Corbusier to Ludwig Hilberseimer, from the Smithsons to Jaap Bakema:
after reading Piketty, it becomes difficult to view the ideologies of Modern
architecture as anything other than (the dream of) social mobility captured
in concrete
So if we are serious about any (progressive) changes in our cities, two

conditions must be fulfilled. Firstly, we must dream, and our dream must
be founded on a particular system of ethics (De Graaf says that hard work
is the value, not inherited wealth). Secondly, we need to create an
infrastructure which will allow this dream to become reality. Neoliberal

anthropology sees humans as competing individuals, as an outcome, we
get inequality and social hierarchies are seen as natural and unchangeable.
All projects presented in this chapter are coming from very different
anthropological perspective. They regard people as cooperating persons.
In this perspective, social hierarchies are questioned, and individual wealth
is, at least, suspicious: only what serves a common good can be justified.
Let’s also consider the second condition I have mentioned above: the
construction of infrastructure of progressive change. Katowice is an inter-
esting example of a city that is expanding, something what could be called
“infrastructure of conservative reproduction”. On the one hand, the city
issued hundreds of millions euro on the so-called culture quarter, with
several new buildings, such as new museum, concert hall and a conference
centre (another example of zoning in Katowice’s urban planning), on the
other hand, many buildings in the city are empty. Few months ago a group
of local anarchists have attempted to squat one of these buildings but was
stopped by police. The “Culture Quarter” is an example of creation, an
infrastructure for a conservative local elite, serving their aspirations to be
seen as “cultured Europeans” but also allowing this elite to reproduce
itself (conference center building as a part of “culture quarter” is a good
hint what the zone is all about: networking, meetings, cultural consump-
tion, reproduction of hierarchies).
An infrastructure for progressive changes would be something very
different from infrastructure for conservative reproduction. First of all, it
would be built out of existing urban resources, but it would also focus on
the city’s inhabitants. The notion of “radical inclusivity” (Nawratek 2015)
means that any waste and exclusion is wrong, therefore existing spaces,
buildings and other elements of built environment must be used for a
common good, but this perspective also rejects any social exclusion. The
“Never Happened” Squat in Katowice would be a good example of such a
progressive infrastructure. The idea was to use the unused building for a
benefit of Katowice’s inhabitants, also from marginalized groups: home-
less, immigrants, unemployed. Modern turbo-capitalism is a highly ineffi-
cient system: it leaves a lot of buildings and spaces as unused waste, it also
produces people that nobody needs. Contemporary turbo-capitalism is
stuck in a vicious circle of financial speculation; it produces less and less
things that are universally (socially) useful. Contemporary cities could
choose to follow the mainstream neoliberal logic or oppose it. They
have means to do it, cities are owners of buildings and land, and under
152 K. NAWRATEK
their governance they have schools, cultural and social centres and (some-
times) universities. There are also religious centres and sports centres,
parks and roads. There is (unfortunately) an army of unemployed people
and a crowd of pensioners who very often would love to become more
socially engaged.
The “alternative” urban development strategy is not the universal one,
it must be site-specific because it is based on local, existing conditions and
resources. But it is not impossible to create (and there are several cities
where it was successfully done: Barcelona, Bologna, Curitiba and Bogota,
just to name few). The seeds of such post-neoliberal thinking are present
in the contemporary world (Gibson-Graham 2005), even if there are not
too many examples of holistic post-capitalist urban development strate-
gies. The fundamental condition is not technological, but strategic and
intellectual: it requires the adoption of the non-individualistic perspective
of agency achieved out of cooperating persons, not competing individuals.
One of the several interesting strategies to analyse and to learn from
one could be found in Cleveland (Kruth 2016). Health-Tech Corridor is
the largest economic project in the city, founded on cooperation between
three of the major players of the city: city council, university and hospitals.
Then, there is a company which was created by these key actors to
“mediate” between their diverse economic interests and the society – the
Evergreen Cooperative. This solution was so innovative and so successful
that was coined the Cleveland Model. The Cleveland Model is a strategy
of hacking the system: local players have agreed to work towards keeping
land value low to prevent land speculation. If the land speculation is
unprofitable, then more productive usage of the land is possible. Still, of
course, we are dealing with capitalism, but it is not a neo-liberal model
where scale and territory do not matter (Staniszkis 2012). This model is
very much spatial: different parts of the land are governed by various
regulations. Neoliberalism accepts external spaces where capital can escape
state regulations, in the form of tax havens, and in general, in the form of
outsourcing. The Cleveland Model creates internality: the particular type
of territory, where the relationships between economy and society are
adamant. This is a model that has inspired the projects of University of
Silesia campus development. Considering as a starting point, a classic text
by Ronald Coase, The Nature of the Firm (1937), an edge can be defined
where market relationships become less efficient than other kinds of
management (in time he developed a theory on transactional cost, which
gave him a Nobel Prize in 1991):
a firm will tend to expand until the costs of organizing an extra transaction
within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transac-
tion by means of an exchange on the open market or of organizing in
another firm. (p. 395)
Coase analysed businesses, but his text can also be a starting point to analyse
the contemporary neoliberal city. It makes a useful distinction between
“natural”, competitive environment of the market, where all actions are
based on price mechanism, and more “sophisticated” structure of the firm,
where actions are based on plan and strategy. This distinction looks very
similar to a position of an ancient Greek Polis – as an entity built on
deliberated political will. There is an internal sphere “inside” the city
where the survival and development of the community (of city’s residents
and users) is the most important objective; and there is an “external sphere”,
where logic of competition and profit operates. Cities are not able to change
what is outside, but still may, to a much greater extent than they govern-
ments would like to admit, shape the rules of the game on its own territory.
Architecture as such also has the potential of becoming the infrastruc-
ture for social change. Every building, from the simplest shed to the
technologically sophisticated high-rise, can be seen in a context of matter
and energy flows. Every building, even the most environment unfriendly,
is an actor in local ecological systems: building consumes energy, produces
waste and channels rainwater. It is used by plants and animals as shelter or
a place to grow on. Every building exists in two dimensions: internally,
being a kind of “black box” and externally, by interacting with the
environment. Architects tend to focus really on internality of buildings,
the only external dimension they take into consideration is the building’s
look. It is a mistake because this approach reduces buildings to separate
silos. In reality, buildings are rather nodes in the network of diverse socio-
political, economic and cultural processes. Seeing architecture as a spatial
manipulation of energy and matter in a context of a wider ecological field
would change drastically the way how buildings would be designed.
Master students from the University of Plymouth while working in
Katowice have tried to use this holistic approach to their projects for
University of Silesia’ campus.
The phenomenon of inclusiveness on a scale of a building or city
depends on an ability to support unconditionally any user. This lack of
any preconditioning is crucial in order to discuss political or social systems:
inclusivity is often challenged by a notion of unity. Socio-political systems
154 K. NAWRATEK
have a tendency to totalize fragments into the unified whole. The city could
be seen as “un-unified”. “City” exists always in a plural form: its fragments
could be alien or even hostile to each other, but, if designed properly, this
hostility is not challenge the city as a whole. While discussing tensions and
antagonisms in society, and by putting it in a context of the city, we can
endeavour to find a solution. Simple manipulation of space and time could
make any antagonism irrelevant. The multi-storey building is not only an
attempt to multiple capitalizations of a value of the land where the building
is located but it is (can be) also a successful attempt to circumvent the
tension of several actors attempts to use the same piece of land.
So, talking about the building (or a campus) as a terminal, I mean the
possibility of using of the building in diverse ways by different users
(human and non-human actors). The building becomes much more
than just a postmodern game with various meanings; the building is
much more than just a container for functions and technologies (Pawley
1998). It becomes a terminal, a part of the inclusive infrastructure, allow-
ing the technological, social and political experiments. It becomes a “uni-
versal socket” (it could easily be pre-fabricated and mass-produced) allows
to plug-in new experimental structures (built and unbuilt).
When the public square is occupied by any political group, this group
could force users of the square to behave in a certain way, attempting to
form a political subject. Whatever they do, they are not able to completely
erase an inclusive potential of the square, which “essence” allows anybody
to walk, jump, sit or lay on the ground. What restricts such actions is
(often) not a square as a physical space (material infrastructure) but con-
ventions, social pressure, norms or regulations. Each space (material infra-
structure) has this residual element of openness, some kind of “free
radical”, having the potential of diverse interpretations and usage. Space,
objects and buildings unify and connect its users on a functional level:
users of a bus are connected by the fate of the machine, students of the
University of Silesia are united by space and activities (mostly pedagogical)
organized by the institution.
In conclusion, what I believe that is needed is an external framework
that will allow us to create a sphere for experimentations – the sphere/
territory I have mentioned at the beginning of this text. This external
framework marks a gap, distance from the mainstream neoliberal context,
and it is defined by time and/or space and/or regulations.
Projects done by students of Master of Architecture programme at the
Plymouth University for the University of Silesia campus show how the
university can take advantage of available resources (land, buildings, stu-

dents, researchers, general public) to create the infrastructure for social
experimentations, to extend extremely narrow, business-focused objec-
tives of the neoliberal university. These projects are realistic – they could
be executed without any bigger problem. There are no actual technical or
financial constraints preventing a university to do it. The only obstacle is
the lack of a political will and imagination.
NOTES
1. Katowice is the capital of the Silesia Voivodeship. The region is one of the
main industrial centres of Poland, traditionally strongly connected to coal
mining. Katowice has unsuccessfully applied to become a European Capital
of Culture in 2016, but in the process several new cultural institutions were
created and a new generation of young urban activists emerged. Katowice is
still a relatively rich city; unemployment (3.8 % in December 2015) is much
lower than in the Silesia Voivodeship (10 %) and the country (10.3 %).
2. This perspective is inspired by work of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/.
REFERENCES
Awan, N., Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2011). Spatial agency: Other ways of doing
architecture. London: Routledge.
Bush, N., Koumi, A., & Taranowska, M. (2014) Otwarty Uniwersytet Ślaski:
Urban strategy document for the open university of silesia in Katowice
(Poland). http://issuu.com/nathanbush90/docs/otwarty_universytet_
slaski_urban_st. Accessed 10 April 2016.
Coase, R. H. (1937). The nature of the firm. Economica, 4(16): 386–405.
De Graaf, R. (2015). Architecture is now a tool of capital, complicit in a purpose
antithetical to its social mission\. The Architectural Review. 24 April 2015.
http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/architecture-is-now-a-tool-of-
capital-complicit-in-a-purpose-antithetical-to-its-social-mission/8681564.arti
cle. Accessed 10 April 2016.
Duffill, A., Hills, A., & Horton-Howe, A. (2014). Ko-oprekariat, urban strategy
and masterplan for Katowice, Poland. http://issuu.com/andyhills88/docs/
kooprekariatbookletsmall?e=1. Accessed 10 April 2016.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2005). The end of capitalism (as we knew it): A feminist
critique of political economy. Minnesota: Minnesota University Press.
Heracleous, E., Parkinson, E., Twells, B., & Tyburska, A. K. (2014) Katowice 14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJbpfWKsOFo. Accessed 10 April 2016.
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Hillier, B. (1996). Space is the machine: A configurational theory of architecture.

London: Space Syntax.
Koziołek, R. (2014). Uniwersytet jako dobry wspólne. Gazeta Wyborcza, 242,
17.10. 2014, Gazeta Katowice, p. 2 (in Polish)
Kruth, J. (2016). The political agency of geography and the shrinking city. In
K. Nawratek (Ed.), Re-industrialisation and progressive urbanism. New York:
Punctum Books.
Magnusson, W. (2014). The symbiosis of the urban and the political.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(5): 1561–1575.
Nawratek, K. (2015). Post-capitalism, post nation-state, democratic confederalism
and Rojava. http://kurdishquestion.com/index.php/kurdistan/post-capital
ism-post-nation-state-and-rojava/790-post-capitalism-post-nation-state-and-
rojava.html. Accessed 10 April 2016.
Nurhak, A. D. (2016). The kurdistan woman’s liberation movement. http://www.
pkkonline.com/en/index.php?sys=article&artID=180. Accessed 10 April 2016.
Oxley, M. (2015). Final boards. http://matthew-oxley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/
05/final-boards.html. Accessed 10 April 2016.
Pawley, M. (1998). Terminal architecture. London: Reaktion Books.
Sandercock, L. (2003). Cosmopolis II: Mongrel cities of the 21st century. New York:
Bloomsbury.
Standing, G. (2014). A precariat charter: From denizens to citizens. London/
New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Staniszkis, J. (2012). Zawładnąć: Zarys procesualnej teorii władzy. Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.
Krzysztof Nawratek is a Senior Lecturer in Humanities and Architectural Design

at the University of Sheffield. Before joining SSoA he was an associate professor in
Architecture, M.Arch. and MA in Architecture programme leader at the School of
Architecture, Design and Environment, Plymouth University, United Kingdom.
He was Member of Board of Experts European Prize for Urban Public Space 2012,
2014 and 2016 and member of selection panel for the Polish contribution to the
International Architecture Biennial in Venice in 2012 and in 2014. He is an urban
theorist, author of books such as City as a Political Idea (Plymouth, University of
Plymouth Press, 2011), Holes in the Whole. Introduction to the Urban Revolutions
(Winchester Zero Books, 2012), Radical Inclusivity: Architecture and Urbanism
(ed. DPR-Barcelona, 2015), as well as several papers and chapters in edited books.
His main research interest lies in urban theory in the context of post-secular
philosophy; he is interested in evolution of (post)socialist cities, crisis of the con-
temporary neoliberal city model and urban re-industrialization.
PART III
Teaching and Research

CHAPTER 9
McLearning and the So-Called Knowledge

Society: An Essay
Roy Jacques
INTRODUCTION
This essay concerns “McLearning,” a neologism I am coining to refer
to education delivered in a manner more and more analogous to the
principles governing the delivery of American fast food. As the most
technologically advanced factories have become post-Fordist in the past
few decades, tertiary education has, perversely, become more and more
recognizably modeled on the River Rouge mass production operation that
inspired that term. This essay does not condemn McLearning, but argues
for reflection regarding the context(s) in which it is appropriate and
regarding the means by which it might be best delivered, lest the value
of advanced learning tout court be cheapened and damaged.
Interwoven with the phenomena of McLearning are three related
notions. The first is that of the so-called knowledge society, a concept
which merits reflection since enough time has passed to permit us to see
that the utopian vision with which this term was associated in the 1990s
was far from the reality that is emerging. The second is the relatively
apparent, but generally overlooked fact that while discussing knowledge,
R. Jacques (*)
Independent Practitioner, Tauranga, New Zealand
e-mail: heresroy@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_9
160 R. JACQUES
the central terms “data,” “information,” “knowledge,” and “learning” are

used promiscuously, interchangeably, and without consistency, resulting
in a discussion in which the central phenomena are undefined. Finally,
I note the irony that, as the professorate is being deskilled in a metaphorical
Fordist instruction factory, the theorists of deskilling and proletarianization
have been, inexplicably, relatively silent regarding the applicability of their
expertise to their own work lives. If that body of work teaches us one
central lesson, it is that waiting for those who govern to give those who
labor what they deserve is no more than waiting for Godot.
DU TEMPS PERDU
Remember the bubbly optimism in the 1990s about the coming “knowledge
society,” the “jobless future,” the immanent Elysian society where the
unproductive dichotomy of employment/unemployment would be replaced
by “self-deployment,” where “knowledge-intensive firms” would require
“knowledge workers” and not mere laborers? The worldwide web was new
and the Soviet Union was last year’s news. It was time to fire up the search
engine, throw away the map and cruise down the endless road of the “infor-
mation superhighway” into a more egalitarian future. Even some Lefties like
Marxist Stanley Aronowitz (Aronowitz and De Fazio, 1994) were excited
about the emancipatory possibilities of the “post-industrial future.”
What happened?
In the USA, which has been the primary exponent and exporter of this
vision, we find that a quarter century later, the future is not what it used to
be. A growing proletariat and subproletariat work for survival wages or less
in the new factories of the fast food industry, ship packages for Amazon, or
stock shelves for Walmart – when they can find work at all (For some, this
future has turned out to be “jobless” in a cruelly ironic way). A small
technocratic elite enjoy temporary prosperity as their jobs are progressively
deskilled, given to an equally qualified person working in Bengaluru for a
fraction of the salary (who, correspondingly worries that his or her job will
be exported to Shandong or Zhong Guan Cun), or replaced by a recent
tech graduate who has more recent skills and lower salary expectations.
Why make the social contract social when you can buy the skills and then
dispose of the skill-bearer? Today one is sent off to Soylent Green at thirty-
five or forty, not seventy. At the top, as incomes and wealth polarize, the
post-industrial billionaires are made from massive initial stock offerings
in Internet companies that give away the product to sell advertising – a
9 MCLEARNING AND THE SO-CALLED KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY: AN ESSAY 161
model that can clearly not work for the economy in general if, indeed,
it can be said to work at all. Labor law, labor protections, union rights and
environmental law are under fierce attack (apparently in the virtual world a
physical reality will not be a necessity). And what of knowledge and
education? Surely in a “knowledge society” these are strongly supported?
Um, no.
At the primary and secondary levels, the “charter school” movement is
privatizing education because “the market” is more efficient than public
responsibility – more efficient, that is, in channeling funds that could go to
public education into the pockets of the shareholders of formerly public
institutions. But not to worry; when the products of private education find
themselves without job skills and turn to other means of obtaining their
wherewithal, there is a growing network of private prisons in which to ware-
house them in a country where incarceration per capita is half-again that of
any other country in the world and growing – so once again, the shareholders
are smiling. A coalition known as American Legislative Exchange Council
(ALEC), funded by mega-rich patrons such as the infamous Koch brothers,
seeks to reduce the curriculum to only what the ruling class wishes an
ignorant peasantry to know. The government, based on a 2001 act informally
called No Child Left Behind, replaced education with standardized testing
and measurement. Criticism of that act resulted in the national government
passing control of education to individual states which, among other things,
unleashed Fundamentalist religion into the system; in 2016, for example,
Kentucky passed a state law permitting introduction of “Bible literacy” –
essentially fundamentalist Christian proselytizing – into school curricula.
At the tertiary level, elite schools continue to produce elite graduates
to reproduce the elite parents who sent the kids there in the first place,
while public institutions and those lacking a prestigious pedigree falter.
Among the latter, those with a healthy balance sheet exemplify the Yeats
couplet from “The Second Coming,” The best lack all conviction while the
worst/Are full of passionate intensity. Tertiary standards progressively fall
to permit admission of enough students to utilize the surplus capacity built
during the education boom of earlier years. Given the failings of primary
and secondary education, a large part of tertiary education is now reme-
dial. This problem has been compounded by lax admission standards
resulting in students from other cultures who have not been properly
vetted for appropriate cultural and educational prerequisites to permit
successful study in the programs they have been charged a premium
price to enter. Administrative and marketing costs have risen with the
162 R. JACQUES
marketization of education as an individual privilege, not a social good, as

have the net proceeds of so-called online learning. These organizations
might be most mercifully described as having untested benefits; many are
outright frauds. Students are leaving their undergraduate programs
with debt that approaches the size of a mortgage without having the
home a mortgage secures. The bankers are raking it in; the institutions
are benefiting; the students and society are – well, two out of three is not
bad. To paraphrase Michel Foucault:
Is it surprising that for-profit prisons resemble fast-food factories, charter

schools and for-profit hospitals – which all resemble prisons?
So where is “the university” in all of this? In this essay I wish to reflect on

my less than satisfactory engagement with the “knowledge” society since
I wrote my doctoral dissertation about nurses as knowledge workers a
quarter century ago (Jacques 1992). This engagement has left me with
certain questions about the future of the university and the professorate
that I do not believe have been adequately considered, especially by the
professorate. I am especially interested that the proletarianization of the
professorate has run parallel to the proletarianization of the university –
with something approaching complete lack of analysis or organizing from
the professorate until quite recently.
Please note: In this chapter I will speak primarily of the situation in the USA
(and sometimes New Zealand), and of education in the Business School for
two reasons. First, that is my experience and I wish to avoid falsely globalizing
my limited perspective. Secondly, and importantly, as “America”, the USA
exports a global, vocational vision of education exemplified by the Business
School and backed by economic might that is of questionable value at best
and, at worst, is toxic. Additionally, to avoid inordinate self-citation, I have
minimized references to my own prior work. Any historical claims made in this
essay may be documented in Jacques (1996). The remainder is based on
personal experience. One of the benefits of growing older is that what is
history to the young is merely memory to oneself.
THE PROTEAN UNIVERSITY: THE FIRST THOUSAND YEARS

The observations in this section are hardly novel, but in my experience of
academic discussions about “the” university, they have most often been
ignored. The vast majority of comments I have heard made about the
university by academics, regardless of the speaker’s position, have reflected

the implicit assumption that there is some central and essential meaning to
and purpose for “the” university when that signifier has historically been
mobile, contested and multiply-laden.
First of all, just what is a university; how is the niche of this social
species defined? It has been accurately observed that before Europeans
had worked out whether mud is a condiment there were advanced
centers of learning in the Chinese, Indian, Arabic, and perhaps other
social worlds. Acknowledging this is an important antidote to certain
outdated and naïve world histories that move progressively from Egypt
to Greece to Rome to a “dark” age and thence to modernity, but one
might ask if there is any connection between these institutions and
what is presently discussed as the university. One may respect the whare
wananga of the New Zealand Maori without believing it spawned
Te Wananga o Aotearoa, a contemporary Polytech founded primarily
to support the tangata whenua, the Maori people of today who live
in a Europeanized contemporary reality. While Te Wananga may be
distinctively sensitive to Maori history, culture and present-day social
needs, its basic form is still a European import. One could tabulate a
long list of other examples. Through most of the world, there is a
disjuncture between traditional institutions of learning and currently
imported forms indebted directly to American cultural export and
indirectly to a European provenance.
I believe it is appropriate to start the story of the university with Oxford,
Bologna, Heidelberg – institutions that developed from the monastic
educational tradition of old Europe, not because of Eurocentrism but
because we must understand all social institutions as having a contingent
and contestable history if we are to effectively discuss their role in chan-
ging times. What is that story? In thumbnail:
• The university developed from the monastery and was for some time
a warehouse for the children of the gentry, primarily so the sons
of the gentry could be tutored in being gentry by trustworthy
babysitters. Thus, the monks could proselytize while supplementing
their coffers and the gentry could receive the imprimatur of God,
knowledge, and the Pope.
• The secularization of the university in early modernity changed
little except that God moved to the rear except as a supporter of
“god and country” and the coffers were now those of a free-standing
164 R. JACQUES
institution. When Adam Smith attended Balliol College, Oxford in

the mid-eighteenth century he was horrified to find that lectureships
were largely political sinecures and “study” was largely an attendance
prize. A century later, Henry David Thoreau had a similar experience
at Harvard University. As recently as the 1890s, the head of the
medical school at Harvard wrote that he objected to the institution
of written exams because, “Half of these men can barely read.
Of course they can’t sit for written exams” (Jacques 1996:142).
• The Germanization of education in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century is a notable inflection point. In The German
Ideology (1846/1932), Marx writes of Germans as backwards,
dirt-floor swineherders. In 1900, two generations later, Germany
was the second-largest industrial power in the world. Marx may
have had a personal axe to grind in this, but much of this
transformation can be attributed to a successful coupling of aca-
demic knowledge and capital interests, most notably as the legacy
of Helmholtz, to produce economic value. This is symbolized in
the transfer of academic status from Heidelberg to Berlin and
exemplified by the USA, which, in the last decades of the nine-
teenth century, jettisoned English educational norms wholesale in
favour of building a Germanized “educational-industrial com-
plex,” so to speak, for capitalizing knowledge.
• Considering the USA as an example (a largely cautionary one), it is
possible to follow a trend over a century and a half within “the”
university of the once-dominant humanities and divinity (associated
with the genteel and the noblesse de la robe) begrudgingly making
way for the scientific (the commercial in partnership with industry);
of this commercial partnership being adopted as a signifier of
legitimation in the social “sciences” and the social sciences being
co-opted by the Business School – an untested and unconvincing
“science” whose role as a provider for technical skills for the finance
capital superstructure and ideological legitimator for same has been
amply demonstrated, but whose scientificity has not. Even the most
passionate defenders of management as a science only dare to claim
it as an incipient science, in other words, as a wish, a hope, and a
fantasy in the present.
This is not, and is not meant to be, a comprehensive history. It is a

caricature, but like any good caricature, it is drawn to highlight some
salient features. First, one can see that there is no single purpose trans-
cending the entire history of the institution – unless it is the survival of the
institution. Hamlet’s return from Heidelberg, at least in Shakespeare’s
version, is unlikely to have been the fulfillment of what the monks or his
father wished him to learn. “The” purpose of the university was not
monolithic from the beginning and, since industrialization, these relation-
ships have been becoming more complex. Second, the dominant direction
of the university has been mobile over time. Bologna in the fifteenth
century does not have power relationships or strategic purposes analogous
to those of the London Business School today. Third, the institution,
whatever it’s form, has always been beholden to its sources of funding.
There is no single, timeless and essential purpose. Given that this institu-
tion is an artifact of late-Medieval Europe, we are free to ask what interests
it serves, whether it should change, how it should change and if it should
continue to exist.
This is not to say that there have not been significant departures
from the monastic tradition in a millennium. There have been significant
changes regarding, for example, secularization, formalization, and specia-
lization of disciplines and the role of research. The most significant inflec-
tion point in this regard is a nineteenth century industrialization
and Germanification of the university, which is the immediate enabling
condition of the business school. This is discussed further below. The
central point of this section is to suggest that “the university” is neither an
institution with fixed, timeless meanings nor is it a free-floating signifier. It
has a heritage distinctly tied to a time and place which is different from
that of the learning institutions of other cultures, but it also has no single,
essential meaning.
MCLEARNING: AND THE ILLUSION THAT HAS ENABLED IT

“To get a good job, get a good education”
As an American child in c. 1960, I can remember this television campaign

which was often quoted by my father, a successful, self-employed work-
ingman who wanted his son to earn a living free of seventy-hour weeks and
dirty coveralls. As with tens of millions in my generation, I was destined to
become part of the biggest enrollment boom, up until then, in the history
of tertiary education. In a source I can no longer locate that I read several
decades ago, the writer accurately commented that the working class got it
166 R. JACQUES
backward. The children of the gentry did not get good positions in society
because they went to university; they could go to university because their
parents had good positions in society.
This uncritical demand enabled university administrators to ethically
respond to the demand for services without having to address the discon-
tinuity between provider and consumer. These first-generation university
students predominantly saw the university as a vocational school while
instructors and administrators were frequently seeking to provide some-
thing other than that, something conditioned for centuries by the needs of
the gentry for education to “finish” the student and prepare him or her for
a certain social position. I do not mean to make this sound crudely classist.
I am quite sure the liberal arts instructors I experienced at a well-regarded,
Jesuit school were trying to engage and develop the highest and best
potential of their students regardless of the student’s background. The
fact remains, however, that the freedom to worry about the trials of
Jason and the Argonauts instead of preparing oneself for employment is
integrally class-related.
As something of an industrial reserve army of university graduates
formed, in one after another occupation, employers began to choose
graduates over others regardless of whether their education had
provided skills directly relevant to the work. Did this necessarily mean
the employer was choosing a better employee because of the education?
Not at all. The degree (no pun intended) to which this may have been true
has received little research and the relationship between employee fit and
task performance in the employment process is notoriously loose. What
the employer could know, however, was that the student who had pre-
pared years for an entry-level job in that occupation would be likely to be
highly motivated and ideologically acceptable. Additionally, once the best
and the brightest were headed to university to compete for those jobs,
seeking the university grad meant dipping into the richer end of the
worker pool.
Thus, in occupation after occupation, it became “common sense”
that one needed a university degree whether that contributed substan-
tively to work performance or not. Consider the case of journalism. Is
writing in that field notably better than it was a century ago when one
most generally learned one’s trade by practicing it? I see no strong
support for that thesis. In the process, apprenticeship, guildship, voca-
tional education, and craft control of work atrophied. Like it or not,
vocational options narrowed to learning one’s skills in the military or
going to some form of tertiary school that either was a university or

was modeled after one.
Of course one need not study in order to become occupationally
qualified. One may study for the love of knowledge; for self-improvement;
to train oneself in considering and dealing with complex issues where the
available information is incomplete, ambiguous, and perhaps not entirely
valid. Historically, that has been the role of the humanities, which once
dominated university study outside of the seminary. Such study has stea-
dily become more and more marginal in the university for a century or
more. It remains, in large part, a luxury affordable to those whose future is
untroubled by vocational concerns – those whose social position permits
study at elite institutions. While a valid argument could be made that such
study goals should be highly valued in the complex social world we occupy,
it is more often the case that where significant training is required for the
majority of occupations, vocational education is chosen both by students
and by employers. That, in turn means the mass delivery of education is
necessary. Welcome to McLearning.
DELIVERING MCLEARNING
One theme that has endured through a millennium is that education is
bloody expensive. Today, in the most affluent countries, an elite under-
graduate education costs more per year than the average family’s
income. In poorer countries, of course, that ratio is relatively higher.
Whether that bill is paid by the student, the family or the state, some-
body is going to pay it. Resources are never free. So, what can we learn
from history? We learn that the history of dealing with this issue is
recent and discussion has been unsatisfying. In my limited knowledge, it
begins with the English “red brick” universities which arose in the late
1800s to meet the need of an industrializing economy for “Sergeant
Majors” – not literally, of course, but those who were the civilian
analog – those technically capable and necessary, but who had virtually
no hope of joining the officer corps. In the USA, there were varied
responses to the same situation, none of which are completely analo-
gous, but all of which run in a similar direction. There was the massive
financial legacy of Andrew Carnegie, much of which went into libraries
and other ways for a “workingman” to advance “him”self. There was
the Chautaqua movement, more middle-class, which was more about
the desire of the populace to “better themselves” through lectures
168 R. JACQUES
unconnected to certification. There was a massive correspondence

school explosion of occupational and avocational certification (drafts-
man for example, or piano player) that remained vital well into the
twentieth century. Comparison of these two pixels in a greater picture
shows both that there were new referents and signifies grasping at old
signifiers as the technocratic gap between rulers and the ruled became
more complex, with no single, predetermined way to respond to this
change.
A largely undiscussed topic since this time is how to deliver “uni-
versity” learning (which comes with rarely-discussed assumptions about
its norms, forms and content) to the masses. To cite personal experi-
ence, I was born in 1951. My experience as a child of two working
class people whose lives were marked by the depression of the thirties
and the devastation of the forties, who in postwar USA prosperity
unimaginable in their childhood – a car, land and a house, a second
car, and, of course, education for the kids to help them move to a
better place in the world – parallels in broad strokes my experience
teaching Chinese students from newly affluent families. Like many of
the Chinese students I have taught, I was, at eighteen years of age,
completely unaware of my “world historical” culture, history, and
context. To me, tertiary education was vocational school. Along with
tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions I participated in a radical transfor-
mation of university relationships in the twentieth century. While elite
education survived, thrived, and remained the pinnacle and role model
for university education as a whole, it became a relatively small part,
certainly less than ten percent, of university education.
Whether the vocational assumptions the populace have had about
this level of tertiary education are to some extent now moot, voca-
tional McLearning is being offered by providers, purchased by atten-
dees or those who subsidize them, and demanded by employers. It will
be delivered, so how can this best be done for the benefit of those who
purchase it and for the greater good of society? To date, decisions
regarding this question have been driven more by assumptions than
investigation. Delivery of McLearning has been governed more by
tradition than by analysis of the task to be accomplished. This leaves
the institutions asking how to deliver a Mercedes for the price of a
Wartburg. Needless to say, corners have been cut, sometimes more
than corners. Unfortunately, the imprimatur “university” has been and
continues to be a black-hole signifier whose status attracts every
post-secondary intention so powerfully that light cannot escape. Need

this be? Should this be?
MCLEARNING TO DATE: NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

These issues need not concern the elite university except to the degree that
making every form of tertiary training “university” does cheapen the
meaning of that signifier, but this is not a major problem. We all know
who the power players are. Neither need this trouble the laborer, who is
unconcerned about credentials. The issue centers on the lower-middling
person who is being given (sold) what is billed as a university program of
education, but basically for vocational certification, something consistent
with a trade’s tradition. The difference has had everything to do with
social relationships of power and little to do with the objective needs
of educating.
The greatest social advantage of the university is that it has massive
inertia. It changes slowly with the times. This protects it from being
beholden to this year’s fads and fashions, but also makes it rather slow to
adapt. This abets reflective education based on fundamental ideas. It is
quite inappropriate to vocational education. There are two critical inflec-
tion points of the last four generations which exemplify this. One is the
mass entrance into tertiary education of formerly working-class students
after World War II (as I write this, I cannot help but think of Sadiq Khan,
the recently-elected Mayor of London, who with millions of others repre-
sents this). The second is the profusion of enabling technologies since
about 1990, give or take a few years. How has it adapted? Barely at all and
to do so would, in most cases, substantially undermine the legitimacy of
the present day university’s reason for being. I will try to make this
sequence roughly chronological, but that is not completely possible, as
they overlap:
DISTANCE “LEARNING”
More or less, as soon as the Ethernet became the Internet and the
general public had access, universities began programs in distance con-
veyance of data that were always optimistically described as distance
“learning,” but to what extent was it? On the positive end, I know of
an English educator in Canada who in the 1990s worked at a distance
to teach business subjects to Canadians too distant to attend university.
170 R. JACQUES
To the extent that this helped marginalized demographics obtain cre-

dentials helping them get more of the good stuff society offers, it is to
be praised. The extent that this differed from what was gained at the
brick-and-mortar version of the same program has been largely passed
by. Correspondence schools have a long and useful history, but to equate
completion of that sort of program with years spent being socialized
in a multidimensional, total university social environment would be
like . . . well imagine this:
The chain of Fred Astaire dance schools long ago popularized charts
showing where and in what sequence one is to put one’s foot in order to
waltz, cha cha, etc. Is there any way a good dancer would agree that one
who had diligently studied these charts remotely, but not danced with a
partner could be a good dancer? Perhaps they have useful preparation, but
can’t we all agree something is missing?
Perhaps part of the problem is that we cannot all agree. If one looks
at the recent history of business school “international” certification
(meaning, de facto receiving the imprimatur of the USA, occasionally
British, organization imposing a specific set of norms emergent from
their context – most notably, the Association to Advance Collegiate
Schools of Business) there has been a notable trend in business education
to teach the concretely assessable. In a discourse legitimated by contem-
porary science, “the data” rules, even if generating reliable and valid
data means asking questions which are assessable rather than questions
which are important. Learning through practice is a craft process, not
highly valued in the university tradition, especially in the scientifized
university and by many administrators, whose legacy rests on “the
data”—such as it is.
What is “knowledge”? What is “learning”? Even in the world of so-
called knowledge management, where I have done some work, there is no
consistent distinction made between data, information, knowledge, and
learning. To take these terms from the relatively packaged world of data
transmission into discussion about social institutions which assume a
responsibility for learning raises an additional level of unanswered ques-
tions. To what extent should the graduating student’s ability to answer
objective questions be sufficient? How would this student make com-
plex decisions in a world of ethical ambiguity and incomplete data
(in other words, adult life)? Has this student learned social skills
interacting with others in the program of study which adequately
prepare him or her for later social interactions? Has the student been
taught to be reflective, philosophical and questioning? To what extent

should he or she be? There has been a deafening silence of public
debate about these issues.
ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES: DATA? INFORMATION?

KNOWLEDGE? LEARNING?
The Internet certainly enabled the transformation of correspondence
schools into distance “learning” in the 1990s, but in that decade it was
just one of a host of changes that have made the transformations of
the past three decades more discontinuous than those of the past three
centuries. For instance . . .
PowerPoint: I will only mention the phrase “death by PowerPoint”
in passing because I assume that to elaborate its toxicity to a reader
would be redundant. Are we educating our students when we spend
endless hours reading the bullet points we have prepared? Here’s
the thing, though: An instructor cannot simply decide to do some-
thing more appropriate to the spirit of learning. In an environment
where the student’s vocational goals are (not inappropriately) focused
on grades and graduation, learning the answers to the test questions
may reasonably seem the only important goal (although, yes, it has
made me crazy). To department heads and higher administrators
focused on student satisfaction, graduation rates, income, ROI, and
personal legacy [Sorry, I want to pretend I do not mean this – but
I am not deleting it], student dissatisfaction is the problem, not lack
of learning, so the instructor who wishes to survive . . . I do not need
to finish this thought, do I? It has to do with performing to
student evaluation forms, a bit like asking a child if they want spinach
or lollies.
Online “Blackboards”: This is genuinely an innovation with immense
potential to leverage the ability of the teacher. I emphasize “potential.”
For me, it raises two largely unanswered questions: (1) has it been
implemented effectively and (2) does it substitute face-to-face experience.
Well, no . . . and no.
Adding an online blackboard to a course/paper based on lecture
hall protocols is a bit like adding kim chee to one’s gelato. Neither is
wrong in itself, but . . . at the other extreme, I have briefly had the
distinct displeasure of working for examination mills that pretend to
172 R. JACQUES
the title of “online university” and have used blackboards to conduct

nominally tertiary and even postgraduate work in an environment
where class “discussion” times were a sideshow because everyone was
studying the standardized answers to the standardized test that came
almost daily determining the standardized graduation from something
that was nominally tertiary education but that differed not a whit from
the standardized test I took to get a license to drive a car or to sell
real estate in Illinois. Certainly such performance involves some sort
of learning and competency, but to what extent is that congruent
with “education” and to what extent does that require or belong in
“the university”?
Could we, for a moment, imagine the possibilities? What can be more
or less effectively conveyed through this technology? Introductory sta-
tistics, for instance, might be an improvement over the classroom, where
the strained interaction between students and instructors is legendary.
In this domain, there actually is a “right” answer. If I can access
standardized exercises, repeat attempts at getting the answer as much
as I find necessary, answer problems and get feedback about what I did,
share the issues other students are having through online discussion and
texting, and get personal instructor feedback when I need it, this might
be a significant improvement above classroom instruction (Of course
this raises the question of the relevance of the classroom itself, but more
on that below). On the other hand, if my topic is Business Strategy or
Organizational Behavior, does the lack of interaction with people in
groups not hinder my ability to understand people in groups? Then
there is the rigorously unasked question: If I don’t meet other students,
won’t I fail to meet the people who can help me get ahead in my career?
Doesn’t it seem a little coincidental that everyone in the news seems to
know lots of the other people in the news? I don’t personally know
anyone in the news after four degrees and thirty years as a teacher. Ten
years ago, the people running New Zealand were the people who, forty
years ago, were out on Waiheke Island getting stoned together on
holiday from Auckland Uni – this should not go undiscussed as a role
of the university.
And what should a credential based on blackboard-enabled “learning”
be called? Is answering the same standardized questions as students who
attend brick-and-mortar institutions something that merits the same
credential? Some people like apples, some like Cadbury’s eggs, but few
would say an apple is the same thing as a Cadbury’s egg and I favor
labeling them differently. To repeat, this is a tool of immense potential,

but its potential has been very poorly realized to date. To simply add it to
older university norms merely increases “busy work” for students and
teachers unless the study process is streamlined in other ways. To create
degrees based exclusively on blackboard-type remote interaction is to
elevate a tool into an institutional form that – regardless of its possible
value – is not recognizably university education and should be certified
but as something different.
MEASUREMENT METASTATIC: ANSWERING THE ANSWERABLE.

MEASURING THE MEASURABLE
There is a well-known joke about a police officer who, in the early hours
of the morning finds a drunk crawling around under a street light look-
ing for his keys. After helping for a while, the constable asks, “Are you
sure you dropped them here?” “No”, the drunk replies, “I dropped them
over there in the alley.” “So why are you looking for them here?”
“Because the light’s better.” Dumb joke, but a profound observation
on human interaction. For my entire academic career I have seen admin-
istrators and policymakers measuring the measurable, solving the solvable
and answering the answerable. I am quite sure Swift had a chapter about
this in Gulliver’s Travels. Not only has this been thoroughly conflated with
dealing with what is important, it has become career suicide to suggest
otherwise (since I am writing posthumously, I can write this with
impunity).
Within the business school, it is increasingly unviable, if one wants to
participate in an internationalized world, to not have the imprimatur of
the AACSB. Originally, the American Association of Collegiate Schools
of Business, the organization has metastasized as it has developed visions
of world conquest and coined the Orwellian acronym, Association to
Advance Collegiate Schools of Business; thus the entire world outside
the USA can be tucked into its mandate with no external change to the
acronym. In existence for a century, the organization became something
more than a localized boys’ club in the wake of two late-1950s reports on
American business schools criticizing them for not integrating the tech-
nical curriculum into a comprehensive vision of managing (Incidentally,
one can also see in this criticism that at this point the curriculum was
presumed to be training future top management, but there has been little
174 R. JACQUES
or no change as the curriculum has expanded to the training of shift

supervisors). This provided the wedge the AACSB needed to become the
kingmakers of American business program which did or did not make the
grade while the business school itself was metastasizing. Within a short
time, the organization colonized credentialism in the US market then,
cloaking itself in a mantle of objectivist “total quality control,” they
proceeded to colonize the rest of the world, nominally as value-free
advocates for standards and quality.
The mantra of the AACSB is measurement. The question to contest,
of course, is how much of socially useful outcomes are measurable.
The most mindless defense of the AACSB that I have heard, but that
is worth heeding since I heard it while my department was being
browbeaten into supporting accreditation was, “The AACSB is about
constant quality improvement and if you don’t support it you’re against
quality.” Something that has been resolutely driven from this objectivist
discourse is acceptance that any system of standards is, per se, a system
of values.
If the goal of tertiary business education is to prepare people for
positions of authority, I know from experience that the usual condition
of that situation is to be in a situation where information is incomplete; the
decision has significant consequences; the ethics of the situation are
ambiguous; whoever is helped, some will be hurt; information is incom-
plete; part of the information is inaccurate and you do not know which
part . . . so would you answer A, B, C, or D? Unless you can specify which,
the AACSB cannot help you.
Really? This is the domain of primary education. Speaking of which . . .
“PEDAGOGY”
My last many interviews with plebeian US institutions in the USA in
recent years have had nothing at all to do with my teaching experience,
my research or my knowledge – or even my experience as a business
owner. They have been focused on my “pedagogy.” I believe this repre-
sents a growing trend meaningfully related to measuring what is measur-
able. To become personal again, my belief in my value as a teacher is
grounded in having spent six decades of life, five decades in the work force
and three decades as a teacher and theorist. If I send a twelve-page
curriculum vitae in small type to a potential employer, I expect their
interest or lack of it to be based on the fit or lack thereof between what
I know and what they are looking for. If they do not want that, fine.
Academic mismatches are far more common than academic matches, but
what is reminiscent of Kafka are exchanges such as:
What pedagogy do you favor?

I teach and they learn.
What are your favorite group exercises?
I make them up to suit the situation; it isn’t hard.
How will you utilize blackboard learning systems?
To help the students learn.
How do you keep students interested?
With my proprietary knowledge and if they choose not to be inter-
ested and to get the attendant low grade, is that not their prerogative?
I once had an interview for a relatively senior position in an Arizona

business school that was so School-of-Ed methodological and so little
about anything that I know or do that five minutes into it I had run out
of ways to fake it (something in which I have forty years of experience) and
suggested we might want to terminate early. I can understand any school
thinking I am not the candidate they would want, but I cannot compre-
hend a world in which I am unable to conduct an interview for a job I have
been doing since the 1980s, sometimes with positive recognition. This is
not “In the Penal Colony” because the officious one does not throw
him or herself on the machine. Many fail to recognize the fundamental
optimism of Kafka. . . .
Administration: This is difficult and I have deleted several nastier para-
graphs than those in this section. I consider the characterization below as
generous. I do not want to tar all administrators with the same brush, but
I want to respect Hannah Arendt’s observation about the banality of
evil, the damage that is done through administrative procedure. I have
so regularly seen administrative action aggrandize enrollment, revenues
and administrators, when the needs of the institution and of the society it
serves seems to me to be thoroughly at odds with those decisions.
There are two things that have been environmental strategic factors for
at least three, maybe four, decades. One is the dropping demand for
existing services. The other has been the need to visualize new methods
and institutional forms for effectively delivering these services. I am sure
176 R. JACQUES
there are visionary and admirable academic administrators out there

beyond my horizon, but what I have seen is:
• Adapting to decreasing enrollment demand by lowering admissions

standards and publicly calling it rigor.
• Adapting to decreasing enrollment demand by selling a product
no longer viable domestically in other markets, much the same
way American tobacco companies went to China when they had
worn out their profitability potential killing their domestic market.
• Adapting to decreasing enrollment demand by offering the old
product through new channels (e.g., “online learning”) without
adapting the product.
• Adapting to changing markets by charging learners more, paying
teachers less and paying marketers and administrators more.
• Then by marketing a vision of the institution that only a marketer
could believe.
Were this the end of it, I would say that is pretty much normal obtuseness
and to be expected, but to justify this, administrators need “objective”
evidence, which triangulates with the other trends toward measuring what
is measurable regardless of whether it is important. Administrative responses
to the past couple of decades in no way reflect changing times, changing
student needs, changing learning possibilities, but only changing opportu-
nities to create a legacy validated through enrollment and tuition figures.
IN SUPPORT OF MCLEARNING
This section may be unexpected, given my critical tone thus far. The
problem is not that the mass production of learning is bad per se, but
that to date it has seldom been done well, largely because the needs it
has addressed have primarily been the needs of credentialism, institutional
revenue generation and administrative aggrandizement. Classroom-
related changes such as PowerPoint, online blackboard systems and
email have been grafted onto older ways of conducting teaching without
a needed redesign of the entire process. Where these developments have
left the classroom entirely behind and have become “distance learning,”
there has been much excitement about the revenue possibilities this opens
up (virtual classrooms are cheap), but little authentic or self-critical dis-
cussion of the quality of learning provided. The instructor in these systems
typically functions largely as a grading machine, scoring endless standar-

dized tests in an environment of runaway grade inflation. To assume that
this constitutes “learning” is by no means justified.
Old Norms: The Classroom for Instance

Is there, today, a reason for continuing the norm of centering the uni-
versity experience on the lecture hall – other than the fact that it must be
utilized because it represents considerable real estate expense? The small
classroom is not feasible for McLearning because it is too expensive a
delivery mode. I am referring to the large lecture hall. I do agree that if the
instructor is both a content expert and an interesting speaker a lecture may
be a way of sharing this knowledge with many people simultaneously.
What is the normal case today, though? The instructor, whether a sig-
nificant contributor to the discipline or not, is constrained to deliver a
course of instruction tightly constrained around a textbook. Anything
other than “death by PowerPoint” is resisted by student’s intent on
getting the “right” answers in order to obtain career capital for which
they are paying dearly. Interaction is minimal, limited to the occasional
question and answer. The degree to which this practice survives is based
far more on it having been normalized through centuries than in any
demonstrable learning efficacy.
The Purpose(s) of McLearning

In The Principles of Scientific Management, Taylor (1911) freely admits
to having been preferred by the owners of Carnegie’s steel mill because
he was a “college man” and thus more likely to be sympathetic to the
interests of management. A century later, it is difficult to engender a
discussion about the degree to which business education teaches voca-
tionally useful skills and the degree to which it merely helps to repro-
duce an elite class of worker whose role is to blindly accept that the
sole purpose of the organization is that it be run for the benefit of
shareholder value. There is little doubt that the first American business
schools were created to breed senior executives – one of the earliest
articles in the Harvard Business Review addresses the topic of mana-
ging one’s household staff which, of course, presumes one has servants
(Jacques 1996).
178 R. JACQUES
Now that shift managers at Burger King have MBAs, it may be time
to ask what portion of that education is of functional value and what
portion represents emulation of the “leisure class” described by Veblen
(1899/1973). Elite education cannot, by definition, be the possession of
all. One might question the purpose of doing a strategic case study of
Toyota in a McLearning class when the students who are fantasizing about
managing 300,000 workers are more likely to receive their degree then
become supervisors of five, implementing tactical instructions and trying
to decode the alchemy of getting a work group to actually function as a
group instead of formulating strategy.
What portion of McLearning is socialization; what portion is ideologi-
cal and what portion is vocationally useful? If we can cast a cold eye on this
question and resist incorporating old norms and forms merely from habit,
perhaps we can leverage the possibility of McLearning. But, will this be
“university” education?
Perhaps it should not be.
University is but one of several existing forms of postsecondary educa-
tion. Others have existed or can be invented. There is for instance, the
possibility of vocational school, for-profit technical training or apprentice-
ship. Even the German, English, and New Zealand operationalizations
of the “polytechnic” differ greatly from each other. There has been an
unfortunate recent trend to upgrade every postsecondary avenue of learn-
ing to nominal university status regardless of its form. The Auckland
Technical School is now AUT University. Worcester State Teachers’
College is now the University of Massachusetts, Worcester. The largest
purveyor of distance certification in the USA is the “University” of
Phoenix, whose campus is mostly virtual.
When everything is a university, other possibilities are precluded and
using the term coherently is nearly impossible. I would strongly advocate
resisting the blind assumption that university conveys status. In New
Zealand, for example, I have long argued that Polytech education (which
blends vocational school and university aspects of study) serves the needs of
the economy more centrally than does the university system, yet state
funding for the Polytechs is difficult to fight for. As the Polytechs fight for
support, the universities compete to sell themselves as training the “leaders
of tomorrow”. If we grant them the questionable claim that they do, it
remains to be accounted for that the Polytechs train the footsoldiers – and
for every leader there is a need for many followers. Institutional status and
administrator ego is not a sufficient reason for training an all-leader army.
THE PROFESSORATE
Amid these discontinuous changes, one of my greatest surprises has
been the relative silence of the professorate. Like any worker, I have
heard complaints and opposition to this or that specific change, but
even my many friends who are Marxist or specifically scholars of the
labor process seem not to have applied their scholarship to themselves.
I cannot date the case of every country precisely, but in the USA the
proletarianization began in my area specifically in 1991 when, for the
first time in business-school history, there were more management
grads than there were jobs. What we have seen since has been a
proliferation in second-class jobs such as adjuncts, people forced into
online teaching (I recently knew somebody with a PhD teaching fifteen
online “courses” for US$30k a year).
In hallway conversations and departmental debates touching on this
situation, I have often heard reference to “the” role of “the” university. As
noted above. Such a monolithic standard is unavailable, since the roles
played by the university have been multiple, contestable and subject to
change regionally and over time. One also hears frequent reference to the
principle of “academic freedom” as if it were essential to the university. Let
me cite two examples one should consider.
In Europe, we can trace the origin of teaching faculty back to late-
Medieval monastic orders in a time when academic “freedom” was largely
limited to the rather restricted freedom to choose to elaborate the word of
God as understood by one’s superiors or to choose torture and death.
If early modern secular universities maintained some degree of freedom
to enunciate, it was a freedom secured by class (the position being a
patronage position) and powerlessness – it matters little what one says if
nobody is listening. If we look at the example of the University of Berlin in
the late nineteenth century, we find a now-familiar situation in which the
nominal freedom of inquiry has been structured by the development of the
research laboratory, a hierarchy of postgraduate students and junior tea-
chers working under the leadership of a senior professor indebted to the
sources of funding which make this very expensive enterprise possible and
which want financially useful knowledge in return.
Turning to the example of the USA, prior to the late-nineteenth
century Germanization of educational norms and forms, tertiary education
was largely conducted in small colleges controlled by a church and existing
primarily to produce ministers. The dissident instructor could be summarily
180 R. JACQUES
dismissed by the church board governing the university, with no process for
appeal. Change in this situation did not “evolve”; it came from collective
action, most notably through John Dewey and the American Association of
University Professors. An increase in freedom to choose one’s research
direction, in faculty self-governance and formal procedures for protecting
job tenure came as a labor action. They were not gifts, not products of
merely growing enlightenment on the part of administration.
As picaresque as these examples are, they illustrate that the concept of
academic freedom has been highly variable and has been supported –
where it has been supported at all – by varied forces including class, wealth
and collective action. To expect this principle to be an essential element of
tertiary education is a naïve belief refuted by history. If today there is
erosion to the perquisites of professorship, our colleagues who specialize
in labor process theory potentially have a great deal to offer to help us
frame the situation because deskilling and proletarianization in academe
are different only in detail, not in kind, from the history of these forces
throughout capitalist industry. This point is well made in an old and
obscure article by Barrett and Meaghan (1998). In retrospect, their com-
ments seem prophetic because the forces they criticize have gained
strength and accelerated. Where, one might ask, is the mainstream discus-
sion that is so long overdue?
These forces are both symptom and cause of a paradigmatic shift in the
role of the professorate that is seldom explicitly articulated and, I believe,
most often not noticed at all. For a millennium, the professor’s role has
been anchored by personal expertise. One has been expected to be able to
enhance the learning of one’s students by being a participant in the
production of knowledge in one’s field, with the ability to stimulate
complex thought about complex subject matter. In contrast, the recent
ascendancy of curriculum standardization; of teaching to “learning goals”;
of tests-and-measures “quality” accrediting bodies like the AACSB is
steadily reducing the professor to the proletarianized position of being a
passive conduit between a standard body of knowledge and students
whose “learning” is determined by standardized testing.
Should the university be a vocational school? What learning is best
facilitated by a university and what is better suited to a polytechnic, to
apprenticeship or to other forms of instruction? To what extent does
learning differ from training? What does the student who attends univer-
sity actually learn, theoretically, socially, and vocationally? How appropri-
ate or useful is this learning? I will not attempt to answer these questions.
I will only note that they are complex and are not amenable to simplistic
answers. At one extreme, the university continues to change and holding
blindly to the past is untenable. At the other extreme, there are forces
attempting to shape the university which, in the words of Jacques Brel, “If
you let them, they will paint the world the colour of goose shit.” The first
step in solving any problem is to identify the problem; that is the challenge
currently facing us. The professorate, to invoke that minor Ricardian, must
learn to exist world-historically.
To what extent will the professorate have a voice in helping to shape the
future of “the” university? Hopefully, the sketch made in this essay helps
to demonstrate that the university is not “evolving” to or from any point
of perfection. It is and has been a complex resultant of many social
relations of power. Among these, benevolence, good will, and concern
for the just the good and the true have been marginal forces. If such have
often motivated individual scholars or students, they have done little to
shape the institution except as legitimators. A corollary of this observation
is the conclusion that the professorate will not have a voice in constructing
the future simply because it deserves one. It will have a voice to the extent
that it organizes and that organization leads to action. Perhaps this is
finally beginning to occur (e.g. Baccini and De Nicolau 2016), but if it
occurs within a discourse of organizing for change, the possibility of
having an impact will be much greater than if it occurs randomly.
SO, WHERE TO FROM HERE?

I would like to leave the reader with these thoughts for reflection:
• The university is a complex and historically malleable signifier. It has

a multiply-determined past and no guarantee of a future. It seems
likely it is of some value, perhaps multiple values – but what are they
if we look at the institution without sentiment or preconception?
Who will fight for them and how? What social values does it offer
today and in the foreseeable future?
• McLearning is a social fact, not something to judge good or bad
per se. How will mass education be delivered and what purposes will
it serve?
• Can we afford to leave war to the generals? With administrators
working to criteria those who deliver education may not share as
crucial and Neoliberal politicians engaged in an all-out war on
182 R. JACQUES
reflective learning or learning as a social good, can we afford to drift?

Do we not need greater dialogue about a vision?
In the USA, there was once a popular bumper sticker that read, “If you
think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Has that option not been
tried sufficiently for us to understand the need for better solutions? This
chapter has raised questions whose answers are far too complex for
summary in a monograph. They are intended as points for reflection.
Because I presume the normative reader of this book will be a working
academic, this chapter concludes with thoughts about the professorate
and its weak role to date in acting to help shape these changes. The issues
discussed above will most certainly be addressed in some fashion, but by
what constituencies, for what purposes and to what effect? The central
question I would like to leave those who deliver the “product” with is
this: what will be the role of the professorate in shaping the form of
“teaching and learning” (as it has recently and ironically become fashion-
able to claim as a new strategic goal of the university) and what role will
we have in determining the role of our very work lives and their con-
sequences. The professorate will have virtually no influence unless it
understands the need for solidarity that leads to action. Les jeux sont
faits, mes amis.
Acknowledgment: I would like to express gratitude to Dr Michal Izak of the

University of Lincoln for careful readings and thoughtful feedback on drafts of
this chapter which have led to a substantially improved work. Thank you, Sir.
REFERENCES
Aronowitz, S., & De Fazio, W. (1994). The jobless future. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Baccini, A., & De Nicolau, G. (2016) Academics in Italy have boycotted assess-
ment. What has it achieved?, Times Higher Education. Online, April 21.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/academics-in-taly-have-
boycotted-assessment-what-has-it-achieved-alberto-baccini-university-of-
siena-giuseppe-de-nicolao-university-of-pavia.
Barrett, R., & Meaghan, D. (1998). Proletarianization, professional autonomy
and professional discourse: Restructuring educational work in Ontario col-
leges. College Quarterly, 5(3) Seneca College. http://www.senecacollege.ca/
quarterly/1998-vol05-num03-spring/barrett_meaghan.html.
Jacques, R. (1992). Re-presenting the knowledge worker: A poststructuralist analysis

of the new employed professional, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Amherst:
University of Massachusetts.
Jacques, R. (1996). Manufacturing the employee: Management knowledge from the
19th to 21st centuries. London: Sage.
Marx, K. (1846/1932). The German ideology. Moscow: Marx-Engels Institute.
Taylor, F. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York: Norton.
Veblen, T. (1899/1973). The theory of the leisure class: An economic study of
institutions. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Roy (Stager) Jacques MBA, PhD received his postgraduate training at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has worked at several tertiary institu-
tions in the USA and New Zealand as well as consulted to educators and “knowl-
edge managers” in New Zealand biotech. He is presently semi-retired and living in
Tauranga, New Zealand, where he continues to write and consult in areas related
to the contents of his chapter.
CHAPTER 10
Neoliberalism’s War against Higher

Education and the Role
of Public Intellectuals
Henry A. Giroux
INTRODUCTION
Across the globe, a new historical conjuncture is emerging in which
the attacks on higher education as a democratic institution and on dis-
sident public voices in general – whether journalists, whistleblowers, or
academics – are intensifying with sobering consequences. The attempts
to punish prominent academics such as Ward Churchill, Steven Salaita,
and others are matched by an equally vicious assault on whistleblowers
such as Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond, and Edward Snowden and
journalists such as James Risen.1 Under the aegis of what Risen calls the
“homeland security-industrial complex,” (Risen 2014, p. 1) it becomes
difficult to separate the war on whistleblowers and journalists from the war
on higher education – the institutions responsible for safeguarding and
sustaining critical theory and engaged citizenship.
H.A. Giroux (*)

Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University,
Hamilton, Canada
e-mail: henry.giroux@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_10
186 H.A. GIROUX
Writing from the United Kingdom, Marina Warner has rightly called these
assaults on higher education, “the new brutalism in academia” (Warner 2014).
It may be worse than she suggests. In fact, the right-wing defense of the
neoliberal dismantling of the university as a site of critical inquiry in many
countries is more brazen and arrogant than anything we have seen in the past
and its presence is now felt in a diverse number of repressive regimes. For
instance, the authoritarian nature of neoliberalism and its threat to higher
education as a democratic public sphere was on full display recently when the
multi-millionaire and Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-
ying, told pro-democracy protesters that “allowing his successors to be chosen
in open elections based on who won the greatest number of votes was
unacceptable in part because it risked giving poorer residents a dominant
voice in politics.” (Bradsher and Buckley 2014). Offering an unyielding
defense for China’s authoritarian political system, he argued that any candidate
that might succeed him “must be screened by a ‘broadly representative’
nominating committee, which would insulate Hong Kong’s next chief execu-
tive from popular pressure to create social provisions and allow the government
to implement more business-friendly policies to address economic” issues
(Bradsher and Buckley 2014). This is not just an attack on political liberty
but also an attack on dissent, critical education, and public institutions that
might exercise a democratizing influence on the nation. In this case, the
autonomy of institutions such as higher education is threatened not only by
the repressive practices of the state but also by neoliberal economic policies.
The hidden notion of politics that fuels this market-driven ideology also
informs a more Western-style form of neoliberalism in which the auton-
omy of democratizing institutions are under assault not only by the state
but also by the rich, bankers, hedge fund managers, and the corporate
elite. In this case, corporate sovereignty has replaced traditional state
modes of governance and now it is powerful corporate elites who despise
the common good. As the South African Nobel Prize winner in literature
JM Coetzee (2013), points out, the new power elite “reconceive of
themselves as managers of national economies” who want to turn uni-
versities into training schools equipping young people with the skills
required by a modern economy” (Coetzee 2013). Viewed as a private
investment rather than a public good, universities are now construed as
spaces where students are valued as human capital, courses are determined
by consumer demand, and governance is based on the Walmart model of
labor relations. For Coetzee, this attack on higher education, which is not
only ideological but also increasingly relies on the repressive, militaristic
10 NEOLIBERALISM’S WAR AGAINST HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE ROLE… 187
arm of the punishing state, is a response to the democratization of the

university that reached a highpoint in the 1960s all across the globe. In the
past forty years, the assault on the university as a center of critique and
democratization has intensified, just as the reach of this assault has
expanded to include intellectuals, campus protesters, an expanding num-
ber of minority students, and the critical formative cultures that provide
the foundation for a substantive democracy (Coetzee 2013).
Coetzee’s defense of education provides an important referent for
those of us who believe that the university is nothing if it is not a public
trust and social good; that is, a critical institution infused with the promise
of cultivating intellectual insight, the civic imagination, inquisitiveness,
risk-taking, social responsibility, and the struggle for justice. Rather than
defining the mission of the university in terms that mimic market-based
ideologies, modes of governance, and neoliberal policies, the questions
that should be asked at this crucial time in American history concern how
the mission of the university might be better understood with respect to
both developing and safeguarding the interests of young people at a time
of violence and war, the rise of a rampant anti-intellectualism, the emer-
ging specter of authoritarianism, and the threat of nuclear and ecological
devastation. What might it mean to define the university as a public good
and democratic public sphere rather than as an institution that has aligned
itself with market values and is more attentive to market fluctuations
and investor interests than educating students to be critically engaged
citizens? Or, as Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis write: “how
will we form the next generation of [ . . . ] intellectuals and politicians if
young people will never have an opportunity to experience what a non-
vulgar, non-pragmatic, non-instrumentalized university is like?” (Bauman
and Donskis 2013, p. 139). It is in the spirit of such considerations that
I first want to address those larger economic, social, and cultural interests
that threaten this notion of education, especially higher education.
With the advance of a savage form of casino capitalism and its dream
worlds of consumption, privatization, and deregulation, not only are
democratic values and social protections at risk but also the civic and
formative cultures that make such values and protections intelligible and
consequential to a sustainable democratic society. As public spheres, once
enlivened by broad engagements with common concerns, are being trans-
formed into “spectacular spaces of consumption” (Miles 2001, p. 116)
and financial looting, the flight from mutual obligations and social respon-
sibilities intensifies and has resulted in not only a devaluing of public
188 H.A. GIROUX
life and the common good but also a crisis in the radical imagination,
especially in terms of the meaning and value of politics itself (Kurlantzick
2013). One index of such a crisis, as Mike Davis points out, is that “we live
in an era in which there is a super saturation of corruption, cruelty, and
violence” that fails any longer to outrage or even interest” (cited in: Fisher
2009, p. 11). This seems particularly true in those countries such as
England and the USA where casino capitalism appears ruthless in its
ongoing modeling of higher education after an audit culture or culture
of business (Collini 2014). With the election of Donald Trump, the
culture of business and bigotry have combined and will intensify the
right-wing assault on higher educaiton.
Thomas Frank goes a bit further insisting that “Over the course of the
past few decades, the power of concentrated money has subverted profes-
sions, destroyed small investors, wrecked the regulatory state, corrupted
legislators en masse and repeatedly put the economy through the wringer.
Now it has come for our democracy itself” (Frank 2012). And, yet, the
only questions being asked about knowledge production, the purpose of
education, the nature of politics, and our understanding of the future are
determined largely by market forces. In this discourse, education is
reduced to training, public values are transformed into crude instrumental
values, and public and higher education are reduced to operating systems,
posing problems that can only be solved through quantification, effective
programming, numerical data and, most of all, austerity measures. This is a
form of neoliberal or corporatized education wedded to market-driven
values and the culture of positivism, one that lacks any democratic vision.
This is the vision of accountants who have no interest in the public good.
READING NEOLIBERALISM
The primary mantras of neoliberalism are now generally well known:
government is the problem; society is a fiction; governance should be
market-driven; deregulation and commodification are vehicles for free-
dom, social needs must be subordinated to self-interests, finance culture
should govern all of social life, and higher education should serve corpo-
rate interests rather than the public good. In addition, the yardstick of
profit has become the only viable measure of the good life while civic
engagement and public spheres devoted to the common good are viewed
by many politicians and their publics as either a hindrance to the goals of a
market-driven society or alibis for government inefficiency and waste.
In a market-driven system in which economic and political decisions

are removed from social costs, the flight of critical thought and social
responsibility is further accentuated by what Zygmunt Bauman calls “ethi-
cal tranquillization” (McCarthy 2007). One result is a form of depolitici-
zation that works its way through the social order, removing social
relations from the configurations of power that shape them, substituting
what Wendy Brown calls “emotional and personal vocabularies for poli-
tical ones in formulating solutions to political problems” (Brown 2006,
p. 16). Consequently, it becomes difficult for young people too often
bereft of a critical education to translate private troubles into public
concerns. As private interests trump the public good, public spaces are
corroded and short-term personal advantage replaces any larger notion of
civic engagement and social responsibility. Under the restricted rationality
of the market, public spheres and educational realms necessary for students
to imagine alternative futures and horizons of possibility begin to disap-
pear or if not disappearing they are heavily politicized and infused with
anti-democratic tendencies. That is the growing disappearance of public
spheres is primarily true in the Northern Hemisphere, but is not the case in
other countries such as Poland and Israel.
The question of what kind of education is needed for students to be
informed and active citizens in a world that increasingly ignores their
needs, if not their future, is rarely asked (Aronowitz 2008, p. xii). In the
absence of a democratic vision of schooling, it is not surprising that some
colleges and universities are increasingly opening their classrooms to
corporate interests, welcoming money from billionaire donors such as
the conservative Koch brothers, standardizing the curriculum, instituting
top-down governing structures, and generating courses that promote
entrepreneurial values unfettered by social concerns or ethical conse-
quences. Throughout North America and in different parts of Europe,
higher education is viewed “as primarily valuable to human capital devel-
opment, where human capital is what the individual, the business world,
and the state seek to enhance in order to maximize competitiveness”
(Brown 2015, p. 175).
Central to this neoliberal view of higher education in the USA and
in other countries is a market-driven paradigm that seeks to eliminate
tenure, dismantle unions, turn the humanities into a job preparation
service, and transform most faculty into an army of temporary subaltern
labor. For instance, in the USA out of 1.5 million faculty members,
1 million are “adjuncts who are earning, on average, $20 K a year
190 H.A. GIROUX
gross, with no benefits or healthcare, and no unemployment insurance

when they are out of work” (The Blog of Junct Rebellion 2012). Many
adjuncts are earning less than entry level fast food workers and many
“are on food stamps and . . . go to food donation centers” (Saccaro
2014). The indentured service status of such faculty is put on full
display as some colleges have resorted to using “temporary service
agencies to do their formal hiring” (Jaschik 2010). In Europe and
South America, managerialism across the board functions to disempower
faculty, an audit culture turns knowledge into a ratings game, and in
all those countries operating under different registers of neoliberalism,
“broadly accessible and affordable higher education [has become] one of
the great casualties of neoliberalism’s ascendance in the Euro-Atlantic
world” (Brown 2015, pp. 175–176).
There is little talk in this view of higher education about the history and
value of shared governance between faculty and administrators, nor of
educating students as critical citizens rather than potential employees of
Walmart. There are few attempts to affirm faculty as scholars and public
intellectuals who have both a measure of autonomy and power. Instead,
faculty members are increasingly defined less as intellectuals than as tech-
nicians and grant writers or they are punished for raising their voices
against various injustices. Students fare no better in this debased form of
education and are treated as either clients, consumers, or as restless chil-
dren in need of high-energy entertainment as was made clear in the 2012
Penn State scandal and the ever increasing football scandals at major
universities, where testosterone fuelled entertainment is given a higher
priority than substantive teaching and learning—to say nothing of student
safety and protection. Precious resources are now wasted by college’s
intent on building football stadiums, student dorms that mimic resort
hotels, and other amenities that signal the Disneyification of higher edu-
cation for students and the Walmart model of labor relations for faculty.
For instance, High Point University seeks to attract students with its “first-
run movie theater, ice cream trucks, a steakhouse, outdoor hot tubs, and
dorms with plasma-screen TVs” (Matlack 2012). Such modes of educa-
tion do not foster a sense of organized responsibility fundamental to
a democracy. Instead, they encourage what might be called a sense
of organized irresponsibility – a practice that underlies the economic
Darwinism and civic corruption at the heart of a debased politics of
consumption, finance, and privatization. When one combines the univer-
sity as a Disneyfied entertainment center with labor practices that degrade
and exploit faculty the result is what Terry Eagleton recently calls the
“death of universities as centers of critique” (Eagleton 2010).
HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY

In the USA and increasingly in Canada, many of the problems in higher
education can be linked to diminished funding, the domination of uni-
versities by market mechanisms, the rise of for-profit colleges, the intru-
sion of the national security state, and the weakened role of faculty in
governing the university, all of which both contradicts the culture and
democratic value of higher education and makes a mockery of the very
meaning and mission of the university as a democratic public sphere.
Decreased financial support for higher education stands in sharp contrast
to increased support for tax benefits for the rich, big banks, the military,
and mega corporations. Rather than enlarge the moral imagination and
critical capacities of students, too many universities are now encouraged
to produce would-be hedge fund managers, depoliticized students,
and modes of education that promote a “technically trained docility”
(Nussbaum 2010, p. 142). This reductionist notion of education works
well with a funding crisis that is now used by conservatives as an ideolo-
gical weapon to defund certain disciplines such as history, English, sociol-
ogy, anthropology, minority studies, gender studies, and language
programs as well as attack tenure, unions, and raise student tuition. One
egregious example of this neoliberal approach to higher education is on
full display in Florida where Governor Rick Scott’s task force on education
attempted to implement a policy that would lower tuition for degrees
friendly to corporate interests in order to “steer students toward majors
that are in demand in the job market” (Alvarez 2012). Scott’s utterly
instrumental and anti-intellectual message is clear: the university wants
people who can be trained for the workforce, not individuals who have the
capacity to think critically and act in order to deepen and strengthen the
fabric of a democratic society. Such practices suggest that the attack on
higher education is not merely the consequence of an economic downturn
but also the result of “a conservative-led campaign to end higher educa-
tion’s democratizing influence on the nation” (Nichol 2008). What has
become clear is that universities are losing their sense of public mission,
just as leadership in higher education is being stripped of any viable
democratic vision. In the USA, college presidents are now called CEOs
and move without apology between interlocking corporate and academic
192 H.A. GIROUX
boards. With few exceptions, they are praised as fund raisers but rarely
acknowledged for the quality of their ideas. Trustees have not only
assumed more power in higher education but also are largely drawn
from the ranks of business, and yet as in the Salaita’s case are making
judgments about faculty that they are unqualified to make. Steven Salaita
was offered a tenured position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign in the American Indian Studies Program. Soon afterwards, it
was discovered that he had posted a series of tweets harshly critical of the
Israeli invasion of Gaza and the offer was withdrawn. It was later deter-
mined that large donors and the Alumni office had put pressure on the
Chancellor Phyllis Wise not to hire him (for a summary of the case, see:
Goodman 2014). It gets worse.
In this new Gilded Age of money and profit, academic subjects gain
stature almost exclusively through their exchange value on the market. For
example, BB&T Corporation, a financial holdings company, gave a $1
million gift to Marshall University’s business school on the condition that
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Congressman Paul Ryan’s favorite book) be
taught in a course. What happens to education when it is treated like a
corporation? What are we to make of the integrity of a university when it
accepts a monetary gift from powerful corporate interests or rich patrons
demanding as part of the agreement the power to specify what is to be
taught in a course or how a curriculum should be shaped? Some corpora-
tions and universities now believe that what is taught in a course is not an
academic decision but a market consideration. In addition, many disci-
plines are now valued almost exclusively with how closely they align with
what might be euphemistically called a business culture.
Not only does neoliberalism undermine both civic education and public
values and confuse education with training, it also wages a war on what
might be called the radical imagination. For instance, thousands of stu-
dents in both the USA and Canada are now saddled with skyrocketing
debts that will profoundly impact their lives and their future, likely forcing
them away from public service jobs because the pay is too low to pay off
their educational loans. Students find themselves in a world in which
heightened expectations have been replaced by dashed hopes and a
world of onerous debt (Fraser 2013; on the history of debt, see: Graeber
2012). Struggling to merely survive, the debt crisis represents a massive
assault on the imagination by leaving little or no room to think otherwise
in order to act otherwise. Not only does student debt kill the radical
imagination in students by redirecting their talents to find ways to mostly
survive, it also functions as Noam Chomsky points out as a device of

indoctrination, entwined in a culture of fear and conformity. Precarity
makes one vulnerable to fear, shuts down dissent, and breeds a form of
participatory oppression. This is a particularly important insight in a
society where the free circulation of ideas is not only being replaced by
mass mediated ideas but where critical ideas are increasingly dismissed as
either being too liberal, radical, or even seditious. As a result, we now live
in a world in which the politics of disimagination dominates. For instance,
public discourses that bear witness to a critical and alternative sense of the
world are often dismissed because they do not advance narrow economic
interests and increase the bottom line. This is clear in the USA in the firing
or denying tenure of professors who take critical views as can be seen in the
cases of Salaita, David Graeber, and Norman Finklestein, among others.
It is also evident in the refusal of the mainstream press to air the views of
critics such as Noam Chomsky, and others.
THE CENTRALITY OF EDUCATION TO POLITICS

In a dystopian society, utopian thought becomes sterile and thinking
appears to be senseless, to have no value. Anti-public intellectuals now
define the larger cultural landscape, all too willing to flaunt co-option and
reap the rewards of venting insults at their assigned opponents while being
reduced to the status of paid servants of powerful economic interests. But
the problem is not simply with the rise of a right-wing cultural apparatus
dedicated to preserving the power and wealth of the rich and corporate
elite. As Stuart Hall remarked, the state of progressive thought is also in
jeopardy in that, as he puts it, “The left is in trouble. It’s not got any ideas,
it’s not got any independent analysis of its own, and therefore it’s got no
vision. It just takes the temperature . . . It has no sense of politics being
educative, of politics changing the way people see things” (Williams
2012). Of course, Hall is not suggesting the left has no ideas to speak
of. He is suggesting that such ideas are often removed from the larger issue
of what it means to address education and the production and reception of
meaningful ways of thinking as a pedagogical practice that is central to
politics itself. He is also saying that the left and progressives are often short
of ideas that can move people. In other words, there is no sense of how to
make ideas meaningful in order to make them critical and transformative.
The issue of politics being educative, of recognizing that matters of
pedagogy, subjectivity, and consciousness are at the heart of political and
194 H.A. GIROUX
moral concerns should not be lost on academics and students. As the late
Pierre Bourdieu argued, it is important for all of us to recognize that the
most important forms of domination are not only economic but also
intellectual and pedagogical, and lie on the side of belief and persuasion.
This suggests that it is crucial to recognize that academics and other
cultural workers bear an enormous responsibility for challenging this
form of domination. Nor should the relevance of education being at the
heart of politics be lost on those of us concerned about inviting the public
back into higher education and rethinking the purpose and meaning of
higher education itself. Higher education must be defended as a public
good, one that is indispensable to creating the formative culture necessary
for students to learn how to govern rather than be governed. Only
through such a formative and critical educational culture can students
learn how to become individual and social agents, rather than disengaged
spectators or uncritical consumers. At the very least, they should learn how
to think otherwise and to act upon civic commitments that “necessitate a
reordering of basic power arrangements” fundamental to promoting the
common good and producing a strong democracy.
DREAMING THE IMPOSSIBLE

Reclaiming higher education as a democratic public sphere begins with the
crucial recognition that education is not solely about job training and the
production of ethically challenged entrepreneurial subjects, but also about
matters of civic engagement, critical thinking, civic literacy, and the capa-
city for democratic agency, action, and change. It is also inextricably
connected to the related issues of power, inclusion, and social responsi-
bility (on this issue, see the brilliant essay: S. Giroux 2012). If young
people are to develop a deep respect for others, a keen sense of social
responsibility, as well as an informed notion of civic engagement, educa-
tion must be viewed as the cultural, political, and moral force that provides
the knowledge, values, and social relations to make such democratic
practices possible and connect human agency to an engaged notion of
the civic imagination, social justice, and the politics of possibility.
Increasingly, public and higher education are characterized by pedago-
gies that disdain social responsibility, if not critical thinking itself. In an
age that embraces trigger warnings, it is becoming official policy to both
infantilize students and convince faculty that they should stay away from
the disturbing and urgent problems that confront the larger society.
Hiding behind appeals to balance and objectivity, it becomes difficult for

educators to recognize that being committed to something does not
cancel out what C. Wright Mills once called hard thinking. Teaching
needs to be rigorous, self-reflective, and committed not to the dead
zone of instrumental rationality but to the practice of freedom, to a critical
sensibility capable of advancing the parameters of knowledge, addressing
crucial social issues, and connecting private troubles and public issues.
Some academics claim that faculty should not address important social
issues in either their research or teaching. To do so is to run the risk of not
only becoming incapable of defending higher education as a vital public
sphere, but also of having no influence over the conditions of their own
intellectual labor. Without their intervention as public intellectuals, the
university defaults on its role as a democratic public sphere willing to
produce an informed public, enact and sustain a culture of questioning,
and enable a critical formative culture that advances not only the power
of the imagination but also what Kristen Case calls moments of classroom
grace. Pedagogies of classroom grace allow to students to reflect critically
on common sense understandings of the world, and to begin to ques-
tion, however troubling, their sense of agency, relationship to others, and
their relationship to the larger world. This is a pedagogy that asks why we
have wars, massive inequality, a surveillance state, the commodification of
everything, and the collapse of the public into the private. This is not
merely a methodical consideration but also a moral and political practice
because it presupposes the creation of critically engaged students who
can imagine a future in which justice, equality, freedom, and democracy
matter.
Before his untimely death, Edward Said, himself an exemplary public
intellectual, urged his colleagues in the academy to confront directly those
social hardships that disfigure contemporary society and pose a serious
threat to the promise of democracy.2 He urged them to assume the role of
public intellectuals, wakeful and mindful of their responsibilities to bear
testimony to human suffering and the pedagogical possibilities at work in
educating students to be autonomous, self-reflective, and socially respon-
sible. Said rejected the notion of a market-driven pedagogy that lacking a
democratic project was steeped in the discourse of instrumental rationality
and fixated on measurement. He insisted that when pedagogy is taken up
as a mechanistic undertaking, it loses any understanding of what it means
for students to “be thoughtful, layered, complex, critical thinker[s]” (cited
in Matthew Cunningham-Cook interviews: William 2013). For Said, such
196 H.A. GIROUX
methodological reification was antithetical to a pedagogy rooted in the

practice of freedom and attentive to the need to construct critical agents,
democratic values, and modes of critical inquiry. On the contrary, he
viewed it as a mode of training more suitable to creating cheerful robots
and legitimating organized recklessness and legalized illegalities.
The famed economist, William Black goes so far as to argue that such
stripped down pedagogies are responsible for creating what he calls
criminogenic cultures, especially in business schools and economics
departments at a number of Ivy League universities. This theme has
been more recently taken up in the book, Excellent Sheep, by William
Deresiewicz, which offers a stinging critique of the shark-like and survi-
val-of the-fittest pedagogical environments at work in the elite universities.
An indication of this crowning pedagogical disgrace can be found in Oscar
winning documentary, Inside Job, which showed how Wall Street bought
off high-profile economists from Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Columbia
University. For instance, Glenn Hubbard, Dean of Columbia Business
School and Martin Feldstein of Harvard got huge payoffs from a number
of financial firms and wrote academic papers or opinion pieces favoring
deregulation, while refusing to declare that they were on the payroll of
Met Life, Goldman Sachs, or Merrill Lynch (this issue is analyzed in great
detail in: Ferguson 2012).
In opposition to such a debased view of educational engagement, Said
argued for what he called a pedagogy of wakefulness. In defining and
expanding on Said’s pedagogy of wakefulness, and how it shaped his
important consideration of academics as public intellectuals, I begin with
a passage that I think offers tremendous insight on the ethical and political
force of much of his writing. This selection is taken from his memoir, Out
of Place, which describes the last few months of his mother’s life in a New
York hospital and the difficult time she had falling asleep because of the
cancer that was ravaging her body. Recalling this traumatic and pivotal life
experience, Said’s meditation moves between the existential and the insur-
gent, between private pain and worldly commitment, between the seduc-
tions of a “solid self” and the reality of a contradictory, questioning,
restless, and at times, uneasy sense of identity. He writes:
“Help me to sleep, Edward,” she once said to me with a piteous trembling

in her voice that I can still hear as I write. But then the disease spread
into her brain—and for the last six weeks she slept all the time—my own
inability to sleep may be her last legacy to me, a counter to her struggle for
sleep. [ . . . ]. Sleeplessness for me is a cherished state to be desired at almost

any cost [ . . . ]. I occasionally experience myself as a cluster of flowing
currents. I prefer this to the idea of a solid self, the identity to which so
many attach so much significance. These currents like the themes of one’s
life, flow along during the waking hours, and at their best, they require no
reconciling, no harmonizing. They are “off” and may be out of place, but at
least they are always in motion, in time, in place, in the form of all kinds of
strange combinations moving about, not necessarily forward, sometimes
against each other, contrapuntally yet without one central theme. A form
of freedom, I like to think, even if I am far from being totally convinced that
it is. That skepticism too is one of the themes I particularly want to hold on
to. With so many dissonances in my life I have learned actually to prefer
being not quite right and out of place (Said 2000, pp. 294–299).
Said posits here an antidote to the seductions of conformity and the lure of
corporate money that insures, as Irving Howe once pointed out causti-
cally, “an honored place for the intellectuals”. For Said, it is a sense of
being awake, displaced, caught in a combination of contradictory circum-
stances that suggests a pedagogy that is cosmopolitan and imaginative – a
public affirming pedagogy that demands a critical and engaged interaction
with the world we live in mediated by a responsibility for challenging
structures of domination and for alleviating human suffering. This is a
pedagogy that addresses the needs of multiple publics. As an ethical and
political practice, a public pedagogy of wakefulness rejects modes of
education removed from political or social concerns, divorced from history
and matters of injury and injustice. Said’s notion of a pedagogy of wake-
fulness includes “lifting complex ideas into the public space,” recognizing
human injury inside and outside of the academy, and using theory as a
form of criticism to change things. This is a pedagogy in which academics
are neither afraid of controversy nor the willingness to make connections
between private issues and broader elements of society’s problems that are
otherwise hidden.
Being awake meant refusing the now popular sport of academic bashing
or embracing a crude call for action at the expense of rigorous intellectual
and theoretical work. On the contrary, it meant combining rigor and
clarity, on the one hand, and civic courage and political commitment, on
the other. A pedagogy of wakefulness meant using theoretical archives as
resources, recognizing the worldly space of criticism as the democratic
underpinning of publicness, defining critical literacy not merely as a com-
petency, but as an act of interpretation linked to the possibility of
198 H.A. GIROUX
intervention in the world. It pointed to a kind of border literacy in the

plural in which people learned to read and write from multiple positions of
agency; it also was indebted to the recognition forcibly stated by Hannah
Arendt that “Without a politically guaranteed public realm, freedom lacks
the worldly space to make its appearance” (Arendt 1977, p. 149).
I believe that Said was right in insisting that intellectuals have a respon-
sibility to unsettle power, trouble consensus, and challenge common
sense. The very notion of being an engaged public intellectual is neither
foreign to nor a violation of what it means to be an academic scholar, but
central to its very definition. According to Said, academics have a duty to
enter into the public sphere unafraid to take positions and generate
controversy, functioning as moral witnesses, raising political awareness,
making connections to those elements of power and politics often
hidden from public view, and reminding “the audience of the moral
questions that may be hidden in the clamor and din of the public debate”
(Said 2001, p. 504).
The view of higher education as a democratic public sphere committed
to producing young people capable and willing to expand and deepen
their sense of themselves, to think the “world” critically, “to imagine
something other than their own well-being,” to serve the public good,
take risks, and struggle for a substantive democracy has been in a state of
acute crisis for the past thirty years (see especially: Newfield 2008). When
faculty assume, in this context, their civic responsibility to educate stu-
dents to think critically, act with conviction, and connect what they learn
in classrooms to important social issues in the larger society, they are often
hounded by those who demand “measurable student outcomes,” as if
deep learning breaks down into such discrete and quantifiable units.
What do the liberal arts and humanities amount to if they do not function
as centers of critique, repositories for cultivating the radical imagination,
and teach the practice of freedom? Gayatri Spivak provides a context for
this question with her comment: “Can one insist on the importance of
training [in higher education] in [a] time of legitimized violence?” (Spivak
2010, p. 8).
C.Wright Mills was right in contending that higher education should
be considered a “public intelligence apparatus, concerned with public
issues and private troubles and with the structural trends of our time
underlying them” (Mills 2000, p. 181). He insists that academics in
their roles as public intellectuals ought to transform personal troubles
and concerns into social issues and problems open to critique, debate,
and reason. Matters of translation, connecting private troubles with larger

systemic considerations are crucial in helping “the individual become a
self-educating [person], who only then would be reasonable and free”
(Ibid, p. 186). Yet, Mills also believed, rightly, that criticism is not the
only responsibility of public intellectuals. As Archon Fung points out, they
can “also join with other citizens and young people to address social
problems, aid popular movements and organizations in their efforts to
advance justice, and sometimes work with governments “to construct a
world that is more just and democratic” (Fung 2011).
CONCLUSION
For those of us who believe that education is more than an extension of
the business world, it is crucial to address a number of issues that connect
the university to the larger society while stressing the educative nature of
politics as part of a broader effort to create a formative culture that
supports the connection between critique and action and redefines agency
in the service of the practice of freedom and justice. Let me mention
just a few.
First, educators can address the relationship between the attack on the
social state and the transformation of higher education into an adjunct
corporate power. The attack on higher education is difficult to fully
comprehend outside of the attack on the welfare state, social provisions,
public servants, and democratic public spheres. Nor can it be understood
outside of the production of the neoliberal subject, one who is atomized,
unable to connect private issues to larger public considerations, and is
taught to believe in a form of radical individualism that enables a fast
withdrawal from the public sphere and the claims of economic and social
justice. As Stefan Collini has argued, under the regime of neoliberalism,
the “social self” has been transformed into the “disembedded individual,”
just as the notion of the university as a public good is now repudiated by
the privatizing and atomistic values at the heart of a hypermarket driven
society (these two terms are taken from: Collini 2014).
Clearly, in any democratic society, education should be viewed as a
right, not an entitlement. This suggests a reordering of state and federal
priorities to make that happen. Much needed revenue can be raised by
putting into play even a limited number of reform policies in which, for
instance, the rich and corporations would be forced to pay a fair share of
their taxes, a tax would be placed on trade transactions, and tax loopholes
200 H.A. GIROUX
for the wealthy would be eliminated. It is well known that the low tax rate
given to corporations is a major scandal. For instance, the Bank of America
paid no taxes in 2010 and “got $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS, even
though it made $4.4 billion in profits” (Snyder 2013).
In addition, academics can join with students, public school teachers,
unions, and others to bring attention to wasteful military spending that if
eliminated could provide the funds for a free public higher education for
every qualified young person in the country. While there is a growing
public concern over rising tuition rates along with the crushing debt
students are incurring, there is little public outrage from academics over
the billions of dollars wasted on a massive and wasteful military budget and
arms industry. One example of military waste is evident in a military
project such as the F-35 Stealth Fighter jet, which over the lifetime of
the project is expected to cost $1.5 trillion. Democracy needs a Marshall
Plan in which funding is sufficient to make all levels of education free,
while also providing enough social support to eliminate poverty, hunger,
inadequate health care, and the destruction of the environment. There is
nothing utopian about the demand to redirect money away from the
military, powerful corporations, and the upper 1 %.
Second, addressing these tasks demands a sustained critique of the
transformation of a market economy into a market society along with a
clear analysis of the damage it has caused both at home and abroad.
Power, particularly the power of the largest corporations, has become
more unaccountable and “the subtlety of illegitimate power makes it
hard to identify” (George 2014). The greatest threat posed by authoritar-
ian politics is that it makes power invisible and hence defines itself in
universal and commonsense terms, as if it is beyond critique and dissent.
Moreover, disposability has become the new measure of a savage form of
casino capitalism in which the only value that matters is exchange value.
Compassion, social responsibility, and justice are relegated to the dustbin
of an older modernity that is now viewed as either quaint or a grim
reminder of a socialist past. This suggests, as Angela Davis, Michelle
Alexander, and others have argued that there is a need for academics and
young people to become part of a broader social movement aimed at
dismantling the repressive institutions that make up the punishing state.
The most egregious example of which is the prison-industrial complex,
which drains billions of dollars in funds to put people in jail when such
resources could be used to fund public and higher education. As Ferguson
makes painfully clear, the police have become militarized, armed with
weapons from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. The US prison

system locks up more people than any other country in the world, and the
vast majority of them are people of color. Moreover, public schools are
increasingly modeled after prisons and are implementing policies in which
children are arrested for throwing peanuts at a school bus or violating a
dress code. The punishing state is a dire threat to both public and higher
education and democracy itself. The American public does not need more
prisons; it needs more schools, accessible, low-cost health services, and a
living wage for all workers. This type of analysis suggests that progressives
and others need a more comprehensive understanding of how politics and
power are interrelated, of how different registers of oppression mutually
inform each other and can be better understood in terms of their connec-
tions and deeply historical and social relations.
Third, academics, artists, journalists, and other young people need to
connect the rise of subaltern, part-time labor – or what we might call the
Walmart model of wealth and labor relations – in both the university and
the larger society to the massive inequality in wealth and income that now
corrupts every aspect of American politics and society. No democracy can
survive the kind of inequality in which “the 400 richest people [ . . . ] have
as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50 % of the
entire country [while] the top economic 1 % of the U.S. population now
has a record 40 % of all wealth and more wealth than 90 % of the
population combined” (DeGraw 2011). The Koch brothers made 3 mil-
lion an hour on their dividends in 2012. Moreover, they “made enough
money in one second to feed one homeless woman on food stamps for an
entire year” (Buchheit 2013). Of course, there is more at stake here than
making visible the vast inequities in educational and economic opportu-
nities and the corruption of the political process, there is also the corrosion
of democracy itself. Democracy in the USA is on life support because, as a
recent Princeton University study noted, it has been hijacked by a free-
floating class of ultra-rich and corporate powerbrokers and transformed
into an oligarchy “where power is effectively wielded by a small number of
individuals” (McKay 2014).
Fourth, academics need to fight for the rights of students to get a free
education, be given a formidable and critical education not dominated by
corporate values, and to have a say in the shaping of their education and
what it means to expand and deepen the practice of freedom and democ-
racy. In many countries such as Germany, France, Denmark, Cuba, and
Brazil, post-secondary education is free because these countries view
202 H.A. GIROUX
education not as a private right but as a public good. Yet, in some of the
most advanced countries in the world such as the USA and Canada, young
people, especially from low income groups have been excluded from
getting a higher education and, in part, this is because they are left out
of the social contract and the discourse of democracy. They are the new
disposables who lack jobs, a decent education, hope, and any semblance of
a life better than that of their parents. They are a reminder of how finance
capital has abandoned any viable vision of a better future for young people.
Youth have become a liability in the world of high finance, a world that
refuses to view them as important social investments. And the conse-
quences are terrifying. As Jennifer M. Silva points out in her book,
Coming Up Short, coming of age for young people “is not just being
delayed but fundamentally dismantled by drastic economic restructuring,
profound cultural transformations, and deepening social inequality” (Silva
2013, p. 10). The futures of young people are being refigured or reima-
gined in ways that both punish and depoliticize them. Silva writes that
many young people are turning away from politics, focusing instead on
the purely personal and emotional vocabularies of self-help and emotional
self-management.
Fifth, there is a need to oppose the ongoing shift in power relations
between faculty and the managerial class. Too many faculty are now
removed from the governing structure of higher education and as a result
have been abandoned to the misery of impoverished wages, an excessive
number of classes to teach, no health care, and few, if any, social benefits.
As Benjamin Ginsburg points out, administrators and their staffs now
outnumber full time faculty accounting for two-thirds of the increase in
higher education costs in the past 20 years. This is shameful and is not
merely an education issue but a deeply political matter, one that must
address how neoliberal ideology and policy has imposed on higher
education an anti-democratic governing structure.
Sixth, the fight to transform higher education cannot be waged strictly
inside the walls of such institutions by faculty and students alone. As
radical social movements more recently in Spain and Portugal have made
clear there is a need to create new social and political formations among
faculty, unions, young people, cultural workers, and most importantly
social movements, all of which need to be organized in part for the defense
of public goods and what might be called the promise and ideals of a
radical democracy. Any struggle against the anti-democratic forces that are
mobilizing once again in the USA, Europe, and South America must
recognize that power is not global and politics is local. A financial elite
operates now in the flow and international spaces of capital have no
allegiances to nation states and can impose their financial will on these
states as we have seen recently in Greece. Resistance must address this new
power formation and think and organize across national boundaries.
Resistance on a global level is no longer an option it is a necessity.
We may live in the shadow of the authoritarian corporate state, but the
future is still open. The time has come to develop a political language in
which civic values and social responsibility – and the institutions, tactics,
and long-term commitments that support them – become central to
invigorating and fortifying a new era of civic engagement, a renewed
sense of social agency, and an impassioned international social movement
with the vision, organization, and set of strategies capable of challenging
the neoliberal nightmare that now haunts the globe and empties out the
meaning of politics and democracy.
These may be dark times, as Hannah Arendt once warned, but they do
not have to be, and that raises serious questions about what educators are
going to do within the current historical climate to make sure that they do
not succumb to the authoritarian forces circling the university, waiting for
the resistance to stop and for the lights to go out. Resistance is no longer
an option, it is a necessity.
NOTES
1. For the war on academics, see: Giroux 2007, 2014. For an analysis of
the war on journalists, see: Radack 2012. For the war on whistleblowers,
see: Greenwald 2014.
2. I have used this example in other pieces, and I use it again because of its
relevance.
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Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship
in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department. His most
recent books are Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism
(Routledge 2015) and coauthored with Brad Evans, Disposable Futures: The
Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle (City Lights, 2015), and America at
War with Itself (City Lights 2016), His Web site www.henryagiroux.com.
CHAPTER 11
Re-Imagining Business
Schools of the Future as Places
of Theorizing
Hugo Gaggiotti, Peter Simpson and Svetlana Cicmil
INTRODUCTION
In a dialogue with his master William, Adso, intrigued by the nature and
purpose of learning, asks: “Then why do you want to know?” The master
responded: “Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must
or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should
not do.” (Eco 2014 [1980], p. 107). Indeed, “knowing what we must or
we can do” has been part of the Business School tradition of teaching
“best practice” through which students learn to apply the lessons derived
from exemplars of successful business models, practices and theories. This
approach has been further reinforced by the contemporary obsession
with “employability”, “production of able and ready graduates” and
H. Gaggiotti (*) S. Cicmil

Faculty of Business and Law, University of West of England, Coldharbour Lane,
Bristol, BS161QY, UK
e-mail: Hugo.Gaggiotti@uwe.ac.uk
P. Simpson
Faculty of Business and Law, University of West of England, Coldharbour Lane,
Frenchay, BS161QY, UK

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_11
208 H. GAGGIOTTI ET AL.
Business Schools’ adoption of similar performance indicators. Most, if not

all, institutions would claim that by the end of a programme of study their
students will know what they should do. However, most institutions would
be less confident in claiming that their alumni, in the pressure cooker of
challenging business situations, are able to respond to the second part of
the master’s response and resist the temptation to do what “we could
do and perhaps should not do” (Eco 2014 [1980], p. 107).
In this chapter, we argue that one of the reasons for this is the emphasis
on the application of theories to the exclusion of theorizing. Czarniawska
argues that works of theory are rare in organization and management
studies, surrounded by a confusion around what theorizing might mean,
including “a tendency to call literature reviews theoretical papers” (2013,
p. 113). Macfarlane (1998) suggested that this confusion could be the
result of the “tribal” academic and intellectual roots of management
scholars, traditionally very diverse and usually not from organizational or
management studies. The implication is that theory is not developed by
theorizing in Business Schools but is something that is sourced from
elsewhere and then “used”, consisting of models or concepts imported
from other disciplines that students, academics and researchers are
encouraged to “apply”. We argue that Business Schools should engage
in and contribute to the intellectual practice of academic theorizing and
not merely to be places of reproduction, application and enumeration
of theories.
We wish to address the pertinent theme of reimagining the univer-
sity of the next century (e.g. Boni and Walker 2013) by focusing on
Business Schools as a particular case of academic institutions that could
be at the centre of scientific reflection on the socioeconomic chal-
lenges, like unemployment and corruption, that our societies will face
in the future. We consider possible ways of reimagining the future of
these organizations as if the practice of theorizing mattered in teaching
and learning.
We use the example of business ethics to illustrate the risks emanating
from further marginalization of theorizing. Business ethics exemplifies
how an area of prolific philosophical production of theories and models
has not led to any significant impact on the way business is practiced. We
suggest that such failure is, in part, rooted in the way the subject of ethics
is understood in Business Schools (namely, the ethical is separated from
the theoretical). Another reason, we argue, is related to the common
teaching method which invites students to rhetorically demonstrate their
11 RE-IMAGINING BUSINESS SCHOOLS OF THE FUTURE AS PLACES… 209
capacity to apply ethical theories instead of embarking upon, and experi-

menting with, a contemplative exercise of theorizing the ethical and the
unethical.
We have chosen to examine the process of theorizing as a pedagogic
approach using business ethics as an example of what happens when it
is considered solely as an auxiliary component in a Business Schools’
curricula, as set of (best practice) prescriptions. Offered to students as
theory-free (and, for that matter, value-free) thus revenant to the real
world, they exclude critical reflection, practical philosophical considera-
tions and historical and contextual deliberations. Our aim is to highlight
the importance for academics and students to be co-responsible for theo-
rizing and to suggest that this offers the potential to co-create Business
Schools as new and distinctive academic spaces of the dialogical knowledge
creation (Freire 2010 [1968]).
We envisage an exciting opportunity here. Business Schools of the future
could be transformed into places increasingly open to the introduction of
critical pedagogies, in which the dominant yet failing epistemologies in
management education are questioned more deeply. This critical and
immensely practical approach to learning, informed by moral philosophy,
will inevitably include increased attention to issues currently neglected in
the curriculum, such as cultural sensitivity, language, embodiment,
values, vulnerabilities, ideological struggle, (in)equality and collaborative
meaning making in the context of the contemporary socioeconomic
world order.
We do not underestimate the challenge of achieving such a transfor-
mation. The economic and political context is resistant. An obsessive
attention to career pathways and employability increasingly define the
Business School curriculum in ways that mitigate against the freedom
required to theorize (see Clegg and Ross-Smith 2003; Cicmil and
Hodgson 2007; among others).
The chapter unfolds as follows. First we address the risk of emphasizing
“the applied” by using business ethics as an example of what happens
when it is considered solely as an auxiliary component in a Business
Schools’ curriculum. We illustrate our point with anonymized examples
of three Business Schools’ alumni accused of unethical practice. We then
imagine a hypothetical classroom in a Business School that seeks to
“theorize” rather than to “apply” knowledge. This is followed by a brief
explanation of how we are using the concept of theorizing and its impor-
tance for academic practice and the construction of our being in the world.
We continue by critically discussing how Business Schools have moved

away from theorizing by centring the academic life, in particular teach-
ing, around the applicability of theories rather than their creation, illu-
strated by a typical approach to the design of assessments. We finish the
chapter by imagining Business Schools of the future as spaces of theoriz-
ing and how this represents an opportunity for Business Schools to
transform themselves in unique and distinctive places of good learning
practices.
REAL-WORLD BUSINESS ETHICS – THE NATURE

OF RELEVANT KNOWLEDGE
Traditional approaches to business ethics in Business Schools have typi-

cally considered ethics as an addition to business practices and not as a
constitutive element of scientific research and theoretical reflection. In
this way it has become merely a “component” that should be taken into
account when reflecting or teaching business almost always based on the
application of models and theories of ethics (see, e.g. Crane and Matten
2010; Bowie 1999; Jones et al. 2005). Considering ethics solely as an
auxiliary component of business practice in this way is challenged
by approaches in other social sciences. For example, the “ethic of field-
working” is intrinsically embedded in the anthropological practice.
There is no way of keeping separate the ethnographic practice from its
ethical dimension. When defining the relation between research and
ethics, values and ethics are “not simply supplemental to the practice of
science but are an integral part of it . . . values are integral to the nature
of knowing and being” (Barad 2007, 37, quoted in; Ezzamel and
Willmott 2014).
Our call for greater attention to the practice of theorizing in
Business Schools is reflected in Liedman’s (2013) argument that the
ethical should be a constitutive part of our practices of theorizing and
researching in business and management. Liedman suggests that the
Nichomachean Ethics is not an abstract discussion on ethics but on
“praxis”. Without developing a capacity for theorizing it is not possible
to practice genuine reflection on business situations that might constitute
unethical practice, where the awareness and validation of values, morality
and public versus private ethics deliberations are critical (Flyvbjerg 2001;
Curry 2011).
WHAT THE BAD BUSINESS GUYS DO: CRIMINALS

IN THE CLASSROOM
The following short case illustrations we have fictionalized are based on

true stories:
Tom X, MBA from a prestigious Business School, became famous for his
role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds (also called junk
bonds) during the 1970s and 1980s, and pleaded guilty to multiple federal
charges of violation US securities laws. At the same time he was a co-founder
of the Tom X Foundation, chairman of the Tom’s Institute, and founder of
medical philanthropies funding research into melanoma, cancer and other
life-threatening diseases.
John Y, MBA from top ranked ABC School of Business, chairman and CEO
during the scandalous bankruptcy of one of the most important investment
banks of Wall Street (2008), set up the John and Julian Family Foundation.
Pedro Y, MBA from one of the top ranked European Business School, is
under investigation for fraud in connection with a major corruption scandal
that involves him in the management of several charities, including one for
disabled children, allegedly used to channel funds from public contracts to
private offshore bank accounts belonging to him.
For our purposes, one of the most important features of these case
illustrations is that not one of the three alumni has been invited by their
Business Schools to return to explain what happened to them. It is
possible that they would not accept the invitation, but it says something
about the approach to teaching that only those who are considered
successful tend to be included as exemplars. Are Business School places
where the unethical behaviour of their alumni could not be discussed?
What are the implications for this in the learning process?
Indeed, Business Schools are increasingly seen as places which have
difficulty in initiating discussions of ethics from theoretical and critical
perspectives (Page and Gaggiotti 2012). These difficulties might be
related to the rapid expansion of Business Schools (Hopfl 2005). Their
popularity in attracting large numbers of students, paying high fees, has
led to them becoming an important source of income for universities
(Jones and O’Doherty 2005). Business Schools are also able to expand
rapidly into profitable emerging markets through franchising, in particular
with postgraduate and MBA programmes (Sturdy and Gabriel 2000).

Mass-production of graduates globally requires some standardisation to
enable delivery of a contextualized knowledge across borders and by a
variety of staff in the most efficient manner (thus reducing the time
required for contemplation and reflection and focusing on the normative
and the instrumental). Even if such expansionist and financial temptations
are not the source of the problem, there is a need for institutions to reflect
on a range of complex causes related to attitudes and personal philoso-
phies of life (Neubaum et al. 2009) and not merely to depend upon a
simple pedagogy of applying model and theories. We suggest that leaders
are more likely to be unethical if they are merely been taught to apply a
necessarily limited number of theories and not to be required to engage in
the process of theorizing for themselves and with others.
The 2008 financial crisis is an interesting case in point, with its multi-
plicity of debates around ethics in business. For example, considerable
attention has been given to the ethical responsibilities of executives who
received substantial bonuses despite their involvement in the mismanage-
ment of their organizations. More broadly, however, a lack of ethical
responsibility in major institutions has made headline news in a number
of respects, such as the debate concerning the unfair distribution of wealth
and the strategy of multinationals to legally avoid paying taxes.
In response to these issues alternative ways of trying to theorize busi-
ness ethics have emerged. For example, a recent Economic and Social
Research Council funded seminar series included an event asking, “Can
ethical business leadership be encouraged through the ‘disruptive innova-
tion’ of meditation?” Indeed, it could be argued that recent crises have
opened up a debate around the relation between business education, self-
critical reflection and ethics, all related to the need of creating a particular
space and time for reflection. However, it seems that it has also empha-
sized the opposite: the teaching of “no time”, “velocity”, “speedy
(‘timely’) decision-making” as synonymous with “success”, “good leader-
ship skills” and all associated with time- and money-saving. Reference to
the importance of the so-called elevator pitch, where a student should be
able to convince a hypothetical investor to be interested in her/his project
in the time a lift goes from one floor to the other and to make a memor-
able impression. It is difficult to imagine in such a conversation the
possibility of a profound discussion with the investor on how ethical
the investment should be.
In contrast, we argue for Business Schools of the future to be trans-

formed into what Badaracco (2002) calls places of doing the “right
things”, places with the time to be aware of those moments when “prin-
ciples are at stake” (p. 147), “where people with strong values don’t wheel
and deal on matters of principle and deep conviction” (p. 147), “where
people do the right thing, not half of it” (p. 148).
Badaracco wonders how it might be possible to reflect appropriately
on what the right thing is without the pace, tempo and time to meditate on
the wrong and right and, consequently, to theorize:
Crafting responsible, workable compromises is not just something that quiet

leaders do. It defines who they are . . . seeing things realistically, buying time,
bending the rules, drilling down, looking for the best returns on political
capital, nudging and testing all critical steps toward the final goal of devel-
oping workable, responsible ways to resolve everyday ethical problems. And
crafting? A compromise is often the best way to do this (pp. 148–149).
Breaking the rules is an easy way out, as is following them robotically.

In contrast, bending the rules is hard work. It involves exercising creativity
within the boundaries set by the law, the rules, and prevailing ethical
customs. It demands discipline and restraint, along with flexibility and
imagination (p. 125).
All of these practices characteristic of the practice of theorizing are margin-

alized as a consequence of the manner in which spaces of learning are
established in Business Schools of the present.
Is it right for Business Schools just to teach future leaders that they only
need to “know about” business ethics and “apply” theories instead of
theorizing on the ethical-unethical? Ezzamel and Wilmott define this
practice as “an equation that inhibits philosophical reflection upon the
taken-for-granted parameters of knowledge production and so, by design
or by default, exerts a deeply conservative effect on theory development”
(2014, 1016).
Indeed, an essential distinction exists in an increasing openness toward
alterity that develops in the process of ethical theorizing in contrast to the
closed and totalitarian aspects of a practice of applying models (Manga
2013). However, how can an academic space be co-created in such a way
as to be more open to alterity? What would it take to experience differently
the three (un-)ethical case illustrations above so that they can contribute
to the theorizing of students and academics?
In the following discussion we contrast two learning scenarios: the first,
a typical lecture setting; the second, a hypothetical classroom situation
designed to encourage theorizing. Both are inspired by the film Wall
Street II: Money Never Sleeps (Stone, 2010) and feature Gordon Gekko,
a fictional business man played by Michael Douglas.
Scenario 1: Gekko is lecturing in a traditional Business School lecture
theatre. Dogmatically, he explains:
Someone reminded me I once said “Greed is good”. Now it seems it’s

legal . . . I was a pretty smart guy when it came to finance and maybe I was
in prison too long, but sometimes it’s the only place to stay sane and look out
through those bars and say, ‘Hey! Is everybody out there nuts?’ It’s clear as a
bell to those who pay attention. The mother of all evil is speculation.
Leveraged debt. Bottom line is borrowing to the hilt, and I hate to tell you
this, but it’s a bankrupt business model. Won’t work. (Stone et al. 2010)
The students and the audience pay attention to Gekko’s ideas and con-
cepts, their applicability, his convincing rhetoric. Even if the lecturer was
an experienced criminal, who is exposing how relative and socially con-
structed business ethics is, the scenario – with him addressing the issues,
exposing the problems, lecturing the audience of students and academics –
defines him as the one who knows the models, the theories. The applied,
practical and relevant concepts used by Gekko to explain the financial crisis
are exposed diligently, pragmatically, with concrete applicability. Gekko
the criminal is constructed as Gekko the lecturer, the one who knows the
theories and models to apply.
Scenario 2: In our hypothetical classroom we imagine establishing a
different context for Gekko, requiring different teaching and learning
behaviours from him and from us, the students and academics. This
context will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Gekko to address us
with a univocal and instrumental lecture based on recipes and putative
theories, justifying why they should be applied. Gekko would not be
granted the rights of the traditional lecturer to be in a pulpit addres-
sing a seated and immobilized audience. Both Gekko and the audience
would have the same rights to ask questions, to answer, to give ideas,
to propose dilemmas. Gekko would be surrounded by us, the students
and academics, discussing and questioning his and our experiences of
the unethical, learning the fundamentals of how to say “no” to what

“we could do and perhaps should not do” (Eco 2014 [1980], p. 107).
This would be achieved together by actively engaging with our ques-
tions, deconstructing how the world of Gekko works; developing,
perhaps, the capacity to reconstruct Gekko-the-criminal from Gekko-
the-co-learner.
Scenario 1 does not recognize any philosophical deliberations as relevant
to ethical practice but Scenario 2 opens up the possibilities of learning from
theorizing by contemplating Gekko-the-criminal and imagining what we
could do and perhaps should not do. Indeed, theorizing is for us “con-
templation of reality”, an experiential process of learning and the pursuit
of truth through an active engagement in the world (French et al. 2015).
THEORIZING AS CONTEMPLATING OUR ASSUMPTIONS

AND VALUES, OUR BEING IN THE WORLD
It has been argued that Business Schools have focused on teaching an

awareness of theory, literature, key figures, key knowledge and the crucial
role that these play in the construction of the relation we establish with the
world (see, e.g. French et al. 2014, 2015). However, we believe that the
practice of theorizing, in the sense of seeing the territory (contemplating,
observing) has been noticeably absent in the practices that Business
Schools expect from their academics and students.
The consequence of this dominant a-historical/a-temporal understand-
ing of “applied theoretical knowledge” has been to compromise the
quality and nature of a university education in this field. Further, the
recognition of Business Schools as places where theorizing is absent
could be precisely a way to start (re-)imagining Business Schools of the
future as distinctive and original spaces of learning.
The potential consequences of this practice for the life and experience of
Business School academics and students through the exclusion of students
from dialogical knowledge have already been discussed (see, among others,
French et al. 2015; Page and Gaggiotti 2012). Relevant discussions have
pointed out the crucial role of dialogical knowledge. Bakhtin considered
dialogism as essential in our never ending construction of meaning:
There is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to the dialogic
context (it extends into the boundless past and boundless future). Even
past meanings, that is those born in the dialogue of past centuries, can
never be stable (finalized, ended once and for all) – they will always change
(be renewed) in the process of subsequent, future development of the
dialogue. At any moment in the development of the dialogue there are
immense, boundless masses of forgotten contextual meanings, but at
certain moments of the dialogue’s subsequent development along the
way they are recalled and invigorated in renewed form (in a new context)
(Bakhtin 1986, p. 170).
Indeed, dialogical knowledge means not just presenting and extracting

information, but co-creating knowledge by those who establish a dialo-
gue. When a dialogue takes place, members of a group are encouraged to
teach each other through a process of “intellectual emancipation”. This
intellectual emancipation is, in fact, a need and a right we have as humans
(Rancière 1991).
Freire stated that human nature is indeed dialogic and communication
has a leading role in our life. He referred also to the dangers of exclusion
when he called for a true “dialogical knowledge” in academia (Freire 2010
[1968]). We are continuously in dialogue with others and it is in that process
that we create and recreate ourselves and our understanding of the world.
According to Freire, dialogue is a claim in favour of the democratic choice of
educators. To promote free and critical learning, educators should create the
conditions for dialogue that encourages the epistemological curiosity of
the learner. The goal of the dialogic action is always to reveal the truth by
interacting with others and the world. In his dialogic action theory Freire
distinguishes between dialogical actions, which promote understanding,
cultural creation, and liberation; and non-dialogic actions, which deny
dialogue, distort communication and reproduce power.
But while to say the true word—which is work, which is praxis—is to

transform the world, saying that word is not the privilege of some few
persons, but the right of everyone. Consequently, no one can say a true
word alone—nor can she say it for another, in a prescriptive act which robs
others of their words (Freire 2010 [1968], p. 88).
Indeed, following Freire, the lack of dialogue, the imposition of a parti-

cular theory, the demand merely to learn to apply it and not to discuss or
propose an original theory, is in fact a route to the untruth. Places where
the truth is systematically obscured become not only socially unethical but
also profoundly unoriginal, unimaginative and uncritical. In such places it
becomes extremely difficult for questions and responses to new dilemmas

to emerge as a consequence of an imposed and repetitive way of reasoning.
Is there any reason to suspect that Business Schools, with their emphasis
on the “application” of theories, have become such places?
AN OBSESSION WITH THE “APPLIED” IN BUSINESS SCHOOLS

In our discussion so far we have addressed the risk of emphasizing “the
applied” and the importance of theorizing for academic practice. In the
following, we discuss how Business Schools have come to a conception
of the academic life that is based upon a particular approach to the
application of theory that leads to the exclusion of theorizing.
Business Schools are rooted in particular origins: the art of commerce
and the industrial relation between management and work. Narratives of
the origins of the early Business Schools underlined the need for increased
knowledge and problem-solving capabilities in the practice of commerce
or in the relations between workers and managers (Cruikshank 1987;
O’Connor 1999; Khurana 2007; Ross 1991). In the history of the Ecole
Supérieure de Commerce Paris (ESCP) the oldest Business School of the
world (founded in 1891), it is stated precisely that the need for solving
common “codes” of commerce was a seminal motive for the creation of
the concept of business education:
ESCP Europe was founded by a group of economic scholars and busi-

nessmen including the well-known economist Jean-Baptiste Say and the
celebrated trader Vital Roux. Jean-Baptiste Say was an advocate of
economic liberalism and is often credited with having coined the concept
of entrepreneurship as early as 1800. Vital Roux is particularly known for
having largely contributed to the elaboration of the Commercial Code in
1807 . . . One can therefore say that the creation of ESCP Europe represents
the invention of the “Business School” concept.
Although the ESCP Europe brand evolved over its almost 200 years of
history, it always remained loyal to its first three letters [Ecole Supérieure
de Commerce], (our emphasis). Starting in 1819 under the name Ecole
Spéciale de Commerce et d’Industrie was soon after renamed Ecole
Supérieure de Commerce . . . (ESCP 2016)
O’Connor suggests that in the origins of Business Schools is embedded

the ethos of solving managerial problems, not of theorizing. Describing
the early years of Harvard Business School, she explained that many of the
early large donors were CEOs seeking to find a way to resolve industrial
conflict without jeopardizing their status as the central locus of organiza-
tional authority (O’Connor 1999, p. 120).
Indeed, the vast majority of modules taught in Business Schools advo-
cate the application of theories and is not a requirement to learn to
theorize or develop original thinking. In research practice, it is a common
assumption among Business School scholars that theories should be
looked for elsewhere, usually in other more theoretical disciplines, such
as economics, philosophy, sociology or anthropology. Some Business
School programmes explicitly refer to this in their pamphlets and market-
ing material (in the interest of anonymity the bibliographical data has been
altered and is not revealed).
The module contributes to the aims and objectives of the [program’s title]
by building on concepts, theories and techniques introduced in first year
[program’s title] and Social Science courses and applying them to the evalua-
tion and management of international business both in the short and long
term (Mod. Spec. 1 2016, 1)
Indeed, in Business Schools researchers are inclined to find ways

of “using” theories rather than to develop original theories or ways of
thinking. This is reflected, for example, in programme and module objec-
tives, learning outcomes and assessment. We want to illustrate our point
here by quoting from programme and module specifications we found in a
range of highly ranked British Business Schools. For instance, programme
objectives are usually explained to potential applicants precisely as “ways”
of theoretical application, excluding any kind of invitation to develop
theoretical thinking (emphasis added):
Your experience at ABC Business School (name fictitious) will help to develop
your managerial style and transform you into a strategic thinker, helping to
prepare you for the uncertain global environment, which we now face in
business. When you leave ABC Business School you will feel confident in
applying and using theory in a practical way, after trialing your concepts on
the MBA during the Consultancy Project (Prog. Spec. 1 2016, 1)
The XYZ MBA is designed to help you transform into a world-class business
leader. By choosing to study an MBA at XYZ you will have the opportunity
to develop your strategic, analytical and critical thinking by applying
theoretical concepts to global business situations, as well as enhance your

capabilities for leading and managing people (Prog. Spec. 2 2016, 2)
Module objectives are also defined as an opportunity for students to engage

in the practical application of theories, not to theorize (emphasis added):
This module aims to introduce you to the theoretical background for the
application of portfolio selection and asset pricing and accustom them
with applying modern portfolio theory for the practice of investment manage-
ment (Mod. Spec. 2 2016, 1)
To introduce key theories of globalization, ethics, international trade, foreign

direct investment, regional economic integration, international finance, and
to apply these theories to analyse international business cases (Mod. Spec. 3
2016, 1)
Learning outcomes are also defined in terms of applicability. Successful

learning will indeed happen if students demonstrate their capacity to apply
theories. Original thinking, abstract reflection, creative modeling or
imaginative solutions are not considered learning outcomes (emphasis
added):
Apply the theories to analyse situations and cases in international business and
forward arguments to justify or critique aspects of global business activity
and regulation (Mod. Spec. 3 2016, 2)
To enable students to apply economic theory in a variety of business situations

(Prog. Spec. 3 2016, 3)
Possess the ability to apply and transfer theoretical underpinning & contem-
porary management techniques within complex global organisational con-
text (Prog. Spec. 4 2016, 1)
Be capable of applying practical skills and techniques of undertaking manage-

ment research and applying theoretical knowledge to strategic issues in a real
business context (Prog. Spec. 4 2016, 1)
Apply theories and concepts of organisation analysis, leadership and change

that reflects a sensitivity to issues relating to ethics, CSR, sustainability and
governance [A and B] (Mod. Spec. 4 2016, 2)
Assessment is also explicitly designed to focus student attention upon

application. Students are rewarded when they demonstrate the capacity
to “apply” theories, to make links between “theory” and “practice” or to
“use” theories, as if concepts or theories were “tools” with concrete
functions (emphasis added):
You would need to demonstrate your ability to analyze and apply financial
theory (Mod. Spec. 6 2016, 2)
Apply ideas from the class (lectures, readings) to analyze the case situation.
You should make use of concepts and theories from previous sessions. For
example, Case Two in Session 5 can focus on relevant material presented in
Sessions 1, 2, 3, and/or 4. (20 %) (Mod. Spec. 6 2016, 1)
Demonstrating that you have understood and are able to apply theory to
current change situations is essential for successful completion of the module
assessment. It is also a valuable preparation for the workplace (Mod. Spec. 4
2016, 1)
Apply theories and concepts in devising appropriate marketing strategies and

policies within a changing context to meet the needs of stakeholders
(Components A and B) (Mod. Spec. 5 2016, 2)
As a consequence, the approach to theoretical thinking in Business

Schools is different. The dominant premise is that theories should be
reviewed, scrutinized and explored to evaluate their applicability.
BUSINESS SCHOOLS AS UNIQUE PLACES OF LEARNING

The following question remains: into what kind of spaces should Business
Schools of the future be transformed to facilitate theorizing?
Drawing on pedagogic practices in teaching business ethics at
Business Schools, we have questioned the lack of theorizing as well as
its marginalization in the contemporary Business School educational
space. By contrast, we are advocating the development of an environ-
ment that is conducive to a more rigorous engagement with the experi-
ence of theorizing. It is in this sense that we imagine university
Business Schools of the future as arenas of dialogue, discussion and
debate encouraging and requiring students to engage in co-enquiry,
critical thinking and theorizing. Such an academic space will require a
rigorous engagement with experience as the pursuit of truth (Freire

2010 [1968]).
We claim that theorizing could help academics and students to cope
with the anxiety and sometimes helplessness inherent in the contemporary
educational experience by giving the conditions for a kind of existential
hermeneutic reflection on what business and management knowing and
learning might be about. It might even provide an environment conducive
to a caring and careful contemplation of their own “being in the world”
(Tomkins and Simpson 2015).
We also claim that this is an opportunity for Business Schools to
redefine themselves as places offering the opportunity to engage in deep
theorizing. We imagine that such programmes would become distinctive,
building reputations for creativity and innovation. For example, the new
curriculum for a programme could be established by working at a high
level of complexity with only one socioeconomic, organizational or busi-
ness critical event from a multitude of perspectives. This would contrast
strongly with the current multiplicity of disciplines, each of them with
dispersed learning agendas, methods of assessment and modules fragmen-
ted into simple, “bite-sized” elements. In such a context, a critical event
(a concrete business ethical dilemma, for example) could be defined
maieutically by students and academics working together.
The programme would be designed to allow for the time needed to
contemplate, reflect, theorize and propose solutions. The purpose of
assessment would be not merely to evaluate the rhetorical arguments of
students demonstrating theoretical applicability but to unleash the capa-
city of both students and academics for the creation of multiple original
concepts to explain the event and to learn from the enthusiasm, frustration
and anxieties they experience on the programme. A place like this would
be distinctive, producing resilient thinkers with the capacity to work
together, intensively scrutinizing the details of a business dilemma and
suggesting new ways of knowing through contemplation and reflection.
Physically, the spaces would be different. For example, the architecture
of static classrooms will be reconceived to acknowledge the reality that
walking influences our thinking, opens up the free flow of ideas, and
improves divergent creativity (Oppezzo and Schwartz 2014). Currently,
it is the right of tutors and teachers to circulate around the classes and the
obligation of students to remain seated. Business Schools of the future as
places of theorizing will allow both to move in and out of the buildings;
the movement equally permitting immersion in own individual thinking as
well as engaging all the participants in the learning process in dialoguing

with a polyphony of voices. In this sense, perhaps we can imagine Business
Schools transiting “back to the future” and becoming similar to Plato’s
Academy.
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Hugo Gaggiotti PhD, lectures at the Department of Organisation Studies,

University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. He received his PhD in
Anthropology from the University of Barcelona and his PhD in Management
Studies from ESADE Business School. The focus of Hugo’s writing is on the
intersections between rhetoric, rituals, nomadic management and the symbolic
constructions of space and time in organizations. He conducted his fieldwork for
many years in the industrial regions of Pindamonhangaba (Brazil), Campana
(Argentina), Veracruz (Mexico) and Almaty (Kazakhstan) and is currently con-
ducting work in the USA-Mexican borderlands (British Academy Advance Grant).
His work has appeared in a range of interdisciplinary journals including Culture
and Organization, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of
Organizational Change Management, Journal of Qualitative Research in
Organizations and Management and Scripta Nova.
Svetlana Cicmil (PhD, MBA, BSc Civ Eng) is Director of Doctoral Research in
Business and Law and Associate Professor with the Bristol Leadership Centre,
UWE, Bristol, UK. Svetlana’s professorship is in the studies of project-based
work and management, informed by critical phenomenological approaches,
phronesis and complexity thinking. A co-founder of a research movement
known as “Making Projects Critical”, her scholarly portfolio also includes devel-
opments of pedagogy for responsible management education, the pursuit of
advanced understandings of the global sustainability agenda, and engagements
with practitioners and global communities. A civil engineer by training, Svetlana
had worked in the construction industry before joining international academic
environment as a researcher and executive management educator. Svetlana is
actively involved with the UN Global Compact PRME for responsible leadership
and management education and with the Global Network for Human Rights
and the Environment (GNHRE).
Peter Simpson Dr, is Associate Professor in Organisation Studies at Bristol

Business School. Throughout his career he has held a range of leadership roles
and consulted to senior managers on strategic change. He studies leadership
through the theoretical lenses of spirituality, philosophy, complexity and psycho-
dynamics and has published widely in this field. He is currently part of the
organizing team for the ESRC Seminar Series “Ethical Leadership: The
Contribution of Philosophy and Spirituality”.
CHAPTER 12
Re-Integrating the Professional Learner:

The Complementarity of Teaching
and Research in Academic Life
David Sims
INTRODUCTION
This chapter argues that teaching and research are complementary activities,
each of which wilts in the absence of the other. Any good future for uni-
versities will depend on them getting back together as a happy couple. The
separation of the two areas has been discussed at least since Boyer (1990)
pointed out the effects the reward system was having on the balancing of
activities for academics in the USA. In this chapter I accept Boyer’s argument
about rewards, but also propose that the separation and separate valuing of the
two activities is harmful to the pursuit of excellence in the academy.
The heart and the lungs are separate organs in the body. It is not,
however, meaningful to ask someone which they would rather be without,
or which they should focus on. The ability of the heart and the lungs to
function is intimately bound up with each other. This chapter argues that
the same is true for teaching and research for academics. Part of the loss of
meaning and integrity in the interregnum has been the attempt to divide
D. Sims (*)
Cass Business School, City, University of London, London, UK
e-mail: d.sims@city.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_12
228 D. SIMS
these two activities. This chapter considers what motivates this division
and compare it with atomistic modes of thinking from the recent past. It
then considers how both teaching and research can tilt into narcissism, and
may be saved from this by keeping company with each other. They are
linked by the way in which they both relate to the love of learning, and we
shall discuss the persistence of learning as its own reward, despite all
attempts to commoditise it. We will suggest that it is helpful to think of
learning as the development of personal constructs, and that the signifi-
cance is in the development, rather than whose constructs they may be. By
now we are ready to bring together the activities of teaching and research,
and the way in which they enhance each other. We will argue that the role
of the academic is to model learning for students, including modelling
how to learn from those same students. This will lead to a call for the
restoration of universities as learning communities, without which they are
a waste of time and space.
I write as a Professor of Organizational Behaviour. The approach that
I discuss has worked well for me in my discipline. I see no reason why it
should be more appropriate for my discipline than for others, and nor do
I think that this approach is more widespread in my own discipline than
others. I have heard colleagues from different disciplines talk in ways
which imply they relate to this approach. However, I make no claim that
it is universally applicable, only that it is worth trying.
TAYLORISATION OF ACADEMIC LIFE

Over the past 30 years the activities of teaching and research have become
more and more separate from each other. We can go back in time and find
excellent academic writing such as Mangham (1988) or Gabriel and Lang
(1995), which defy easy categorisation as either research or teaching.
Mangham’s book looks closely at the everyday texture of everyday orga-
nisational powerplays, and offers a dramaturgical model to help under-
stand it. Gabriel and Lang’s book is about consumerism as it is practised in
ordinary life, with the complexity of real human beings responding to the
pressures placed on them to consume. Both of these books were the fruit
of careful study, observation, listening and analysis on the part of their
authors. Both took care of their readers, in that the writing was done with
style and with the intention of encouraging people to keep reading. Both
took care not to say things which they could not support from evidence
and argumentation. Both came from authors who were acknowledged
12 RE-INTEGRATING THE PROFESSIONAL LEARNER… 229
experts in their fields, and had earned the right to be heard on their topics.
Both books were read by researchers, postgraduate students, undergrad-
uate students, practitioners and interested bystanders.
So was the writing of these books an activity of teaching or research?
The dichotomy was not as fiercely guarded in the past as it is now, and it
has become increasingly difficult for academics to produce such books,
even though they were arguably one of the most effective outcomes of
university activity. They were always counter-cultural, as output was
increasingly primarily geared either to teaching or research. The case of
Gabriel and Lang shows that such books can succeed in the current
environment, as the third edition was published in 2015, and there are
other examples of more recent books which refuse to be categorised.
However, the pressure on young researchers to pitch their book as either
a research monograph or a textbook is intense.
Since the mid-1990s, the pressure to measure the effectiveness of
academics on teaching and research has increased, and with it the pressure
to separate the measurement of the two activities. The question which
would now be asked of books such as the above would be, “Are these to be
counted with your teaching or your research?” To have that question
hanging over the author would make it less likely that such a book
would be written in the first place. In most UK universities there are
now work load models in which the contribution of each academic to
teaching, research and leadership is assessed separately. I have introduced
such models myself in departments that I have led. They are a valuable way
of promoting fairness and equality of expectation among colleagues, and
of rescuing people from the misery of the arbitrary distribution of tasks
which used to be a feature of academic life. But in their intention to
measure fairly and objectively, they erect and enforce barriers between
activities each of which may be done best by the person who refuses
recognise the barriers. Even if the academic and her manager are both
aware of this problem, measurement systems are always prone to encoura-
ging particular forms of behaviour, and are usually intended to do so.
This separation can also lead to encouraging two stereotypes of
academic excellence. One of these is the “good teacher who does not do
research”. There are still quite a few people around in universities who are
labelled like this. What does it mean? At its best, it can mean the person
who has absorbed the writings of others in a scholarly fashion, has devel-
oped their own understanding of the subject, and who has the energy
to find ways to engage with their students about this that convey the
230 D. SIMS
teacher’s own excitement and invite the students to share it. It can also
mean the teacher who excels at entertaining the classroom, whose students
eat out of their hand, but who has actually lost all interest in the subject. At
one time it also meant the person with the yellow notes, the teacher whose
notes were years old but who had done nothing to refresh their take on the
topic. This is now thankfully less common because of the near universal
use of student feedback forms to monitor lazy teaching.
The second stereotype of academic excellence arising from the separa-
tion of teaching and research is “the researcher who cannot teach”. The
picture painted is of the person who is so deep into their subject that they
cannot communicate at all with those not in their research community.
I have often heard tell of such people, but I am not sure that I have ever
met one. I have met people who are not capable of talking in an engaging
way about their research, but that is as much of a problem in their research
papers as it is in teaching. Different students respond to different peoples’
way of expressing themselves. Not all academics find their students ready
to join in vigorous intellectual debate. Indeed in some cases students show
no sign of knowing what vigorous intellectual debate might look like or
why they should want to engage in it. The passion for learning has been
replaced by a passion for passing examinations and achieving good grades
even in some highly reputed institutions. This is part of the cultural back-
ground to which this book responds. While I cannot claim to have
researched this systematically, my own experience is that even students
who I have been told are only motivated by grades and qualifications, and
who have not absorbed much breadth of culture and literature earlier in
their career, can be seduced into joining their academics in learning. The
good researcher exudes an enthusiasm for, and fascination with, what they
are learning from their research which infects students as readily as it
infects the audiences for their conference papers.
In many years as the head of a large management faculty I was often
told by MBA students that the teachers they really liked were the ones who
“had business experience”. Interestingly, these students actually had no
idea which of their teachers had significant experience. What they actually
meant was that they liked people who could talk in a lively and interested
way about their topics, and show an interest in the implications of what
they were saying for action. No doubt other colleagues who were less
good at drawing out implications for action could have improved their
research as well as their teaching by taking the feedback from such
students to heart.
NARCISSISM IN TEACHING AND RESEARCH

Both teaching and research are activities which can descend into narcis-
sism. When you think back to a teaching session which went really well,
what does your mind go back to? Is it the time when you thought your
students were impressed with the cleverness of your arguments, or the
erudition of your knowledge? Is it the time when you told a joke with such
skill that you felt the whole room was admiring your wit and skill, or was at
least giving you the warm feeling of being accepted which goes with
people laughing at your joke? Is it the answer you gave to a question
which put the over-confident and over-talkative student in their place?
Is it the time when your next PowerPoint slide was perfectly matched
to the question the students were asking? Is it the time when the
students were tired and listless, but you managed to excite them into
being energetic and enthusiastic for your subject? All of these are ways
in which we can use our teaching to boost a positive feedback loop in
which we become more and more confident of our own rightness.
They are all part of presenting as a professional, well defended expert.
They all encourage us to enjoy listening to ourselves, and to admire
what we hear.
Or alternatively, is it the time when you were asked an excellent
question which required you to go away and do more work on your
own understanding to be able to respond to it? Or even the time when,
as you listened to yourself talking, you thought “No, there is something
not quite right about that; I don’t completely agree with myself, I need
to work on this further”. Slightly more ambiguously, there are the times
when you find yourself struggling to explain a concept, and realise for
the first time that there are some gaps in your own understanding of it.
You do not have to fill these gaps for yourself; good students will not
only draw from you a quality of teaching so good that you notice these
gaps, but they will also often give you ideas, or help crystalise your
thoughts, and help you develop your understanding. These are some of
the most valuable moments in the development of an academic. These
are the times when the academic is drawn away from the narcissism of
teaching, from the feeling of power that comes from students listening
carefully to our every word, and becomes drawn instead into learning.
It has happened to me on several occasions that my research agenda
has been shaped by discoveries that I made, in public, while teaching.
For example, I was lecturing students about a narrative view of life and
232 D. SIMS
organisations when I started thinking about what such a way of seeing

the world might obscure. This led to the work that was published as
Sims (2015).
Narcissism also applies to the way that research can be subverted. This is
more like a mutual admiration society, where researchers write for others
within their own community who they think will be impressed with their
latest work. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Such a community of
research practice can be highly productive, and can lead to much progress.
Nonetheless, I suggest that the desire to teach about the research can
bring the research into a more outward looking stance, as the researcher
thinks about how to communicate the value of the work to the uncon-
verted. Such a change of stance can refresh the whole approach taken in
the research. I had experience of this with the paper that became Sims
(2005). I had been working on the issues which led to people in organisa-
tions sustaining anger with others over a prolonged period of time. I had
collected a number of cases, analysed them, developed some findings that
I thought were of interest. I wanted to be able to teach about it without
waiting for publication of the findings, partly because I thought it would
be interesting for the students, partly because I find the activity of prepar-
ing and delivering teaching on a topic a very good way of clearing the
mind and making sure that I have thought through alternative perspec-
tives; the voices either of the students in the room or of my own critical
faculties are more easily engaged when teaching.
The result was that I developed a more striking, less hidebound way of
talking about the topic which intrigued the students, and which meant
that the academic paper, when it was published (Sims 2005) made an
impact well outside the usual readers of the academic journals, leading to
an IgNobel prize for literature and to many television, radio and press
interviews. The approach of the interviewers was often surprisingly similar
to those of my students, getting me to explain exactly how the research
worked and what I had found out, and I continued to learn more about
the research area from such interviews. My research was undoubtedly
enhanced by my desire to teach it.
THE LOVE OF LEARNING

Many people love learning for its own sake, not only for its instrumental
value. In the UK, retired people flock to U3A (the University of the Third
Age), in which those who have expertise in any one of a huge range
of areas volunteer to teach classes to their fellow retirees who are inter-
ested in learning about these areas. The learners are there for the fun of
learning, as well as the social pleasure of learning with others. Massive
Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are very popular, offered by many
universities either free or very cheaply, and taken up by large numbers
of eager learners, again learning for the sake of it. I took up the church
organ and had lessons in it for many years. One of my colleagues pointed
out that, for what I was spending on lessons and the time I was giving to
practice, I could have afforded to pay a top professional to play the
pieces for me. The same would apply to my more recent singing lessons,
and to the activity of singing in chamber choirs, where the incentive for
all the singers is as much that they are learning something new as it is
about being part of the collective choral sound. The same would apply
to all the “community choirs” that have been burgeoning in the UK in
recent years. The learning is for the fun of learning. For the last two
years I have been developing my skills in baking sourdough bread. There
is a perfectly good artisan bakery not far from my home, but I really
enjoy learning, experimenting and thinking about how to develop my
baking skills further.
People love learning, and it can be its own reward. If you want to stop
people enjoying it, give them extraneous rewards. Test the learning in a
way that trivialises it. Multiple choice tests are good for this purpose, as is
any marking regime which restricts what people are allowed to learn. In
the kinds of learning that are enjoyable, learning is an art, where you piece
together for yourself your new understanding of a topic or a situation. If
your learning is rewarded only when you replicate the understanding of
your teacher, or of those who provide the model answers to questions, this
becomes alienating because you are being treated as less than human.
However, if you want to make the process of assessment as efficient and
predictable as possible, this is exactly what you will do. This is the world of
“learning outcomes”. I would not wish to decry this completely. In many
fields of learning there are foundations which need to be in place in order
for further learning to mean anything. The first few years of science
education include many ideas which are needed if any further learning is
to mean anything, and to spare people from wasting large amounts of
time. It is better to be aware of the wheel than to spend your creative
energies trying to reinvent it. Equally, we may prefer to have brain sur-
geons and airline pilots whose understanding of the brain and the physics
of flight are not too eccentric. However, most of the learning that should
234 D. SIMS
be taking place at universities is of a more advanced and individual char-

acter; the constructs are more personal.
The assumption that learning has to be instrumental, and that no-one
will wish to engage in it unless they are paid extra as a result of doing so,
has become increasingly prevalent but there seems to be plenty of evidence
to the contrary. For example, an oil company that I worked for employed
ten computer programmers for a project that they were undertaking, and
could not understand why the programmers kept leaving. The project was
not advanced enough for the writing of the programmes, the program-
mers became bored, but above all they became concerned that if they were
not continually learning they would lose effectiveness and not be able to
get another job. The programmers all had secure jobs, they were not being
told by their employer to keep learning, but they themselves demanded
that they should have the opportunity to do so. When Morita (1988) talks
about the option for Sony to supply radios to a large American department
store soon after the second world war, he says they turned it down,
although it would have been very profitable and would have secured the
future of the company, because they would not have learned anything
more from doing it. Many people in the knowledge economy are con-
cerned above all to keep learning. They do not seem to ask or know
whether this is for instrumental purposes; they remain employed, or con-
tracted, and successful and they have the characteristic of loving to learn,
but which of these causes the other is not a question that seems to interest
them much.
LEARNING AND PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS

Kelly (1955) developed a theory of learning which is still very helpful for
understanding the way in which people build up their understanding of
their world. His interest was in how people build up theories about other
people, but his ideas are more widely applicable. He suggested that
individual learning is best modelled as being like the learning of a scientist,
where people observe events and try to understand them using their own
stock of personal constructs, the ways that they have available to them for
understanding the world. Sometimes the person finds their stock of con-
structs inadequate to their needs; they have a construct that people may be
hostile or friendly, but they realise that they need more constructs to
understand both the people who avoid them because of being hostile
and the people who wish to fight them because of being hostile, so they
develop for themselves another construct on the lines of “hostile avoiding

versus hostile aggressive”. In this way they build up their theories about all
aspects of our world over time, with a set of concepts and their opposites
which are as personal, Kelly suggested, as fingerprints. The opposites are
psychological, not necessarily logical, or to put it differently, the logic of
the opposite is personal to the person who is building up their theory
of the world around them. People use their personal constructs both to
understand and to anticipate the world around them.
This view of learning is also consistent with the notion that we learn in
snippets, not in paragraphs (Sims et al. 2009). Teaching and research are
bedevilled by the same myth that people can learn in grand paragraphs,
despite all evidence to the contrary.
If this is how adult people learn, it is going to be very difficult to devise
standard multiple choice tests to examine it, or even to give good model
answers for what people can be expected to have learned. The learning will
be individual, and the best learning outcomes may be when one person has
learned quite different things from the person who was sitting next to
them, engaging in the same discussion. They have differing sets of perso-
nal constructs and different learning objectives. This is not meant to be an
argument for a relativistic view that any learning is as good as any other
learning. There are plenty of examples of people failing to learn from their
own experience, or learning lessons which are destructive or unhelpful to
them. Learning how to learn, whether from books, tutorials or other
experience, is a particularly important form of learning in its own right,
and I shall return to this when we discuss modelling learning below.
LEARNING AS TEACHING AND RESEARCH

If you and I have a dialogue and you learn more than I do, I call that
teaching. If we have a dialogue and I learn more than you do, that is
research. Either way, learning is the core, and this is what universities exist
to enable. If there is to be a good future for universities, this must be it.
Not only are the two activities closely related but they may both be
distorted by the absence of the other. If I am teaching without learning
I have become a trainer, I am in a condescending power relationship with
those whom I am teaching, I regard myself as having arrived intellectually,
and I should be treated with great suspicion. It is as if I am saying that my
personal constructs should be good enough for you. Why should my
students become excited by the process of learning if they can see that
236 D. SIMS
I think we have already done enough learning, and am not anxious to

engage in the hard work of doing any more?
If I am doing research and only I am learning, what right have I to use
the time and the resources of other human beings to enable my research?
Am I deluding myself in thinking that I am learning, or that I am learning
more than others, because I am only interested in my own learning? The
publication process demands that we share the learning from our research,
but it is hampered by the lack of interest that many academics display in
their readers. When three of us wrote the first collaborative book I was
involved in we proudly gave a copy to our Head of Department. Two
weeks later he said to me, “It doesn’t have to be turgid, you know”. While
I was offended at the time, in retrospect I think his point was right and
helpful. We had lost sight of our need to communicate, to teach, in our
research output.
People learn to learn by an apprenticeship model. They work alongside
others who are experienced and expert learners, and learn how to learn
better from them. In a university, people learn how to check that they are
really learning what they think they are learning, and that they really have
grounds for trusting the quality of the learning that they have gained. The
academic tradition for this is peer review, which means that a person opens
up their thinking to others who can check the claims that are being made
to knowledge. Academics recognise this as how they go about their
research papers, and equally it is one of the best gifts they have to offer
to the students they teach.
Academics also learn how to develop a narrative that excites their
students and enables the academic to take the students with them in the
development of understanding. The academic who forgets the essential
charisma of teaching in their research writings inflicts needless suffering on
their fellow academics. They may struggle through journal articles without
admitting how many times they fell asleep or at least lost concentration
over them, but they will not have been energised by the excitement of
learning from the research as they might if the writer had taken the trouble
to tell the story well.
There is another, perhaps more direct, link between teaching and
learning which I suspect may vary with extraversion, but which has been
important for me. As I mentioned above, there are times while lecturing
when I become uncomfortable with what I am saying. I lose conviction in
the value and probity of the ideas that I am putting over. While this can be
a matter of having a bad day, or feeling generally dissatisfied with myself,
there are also times when I have discovered a need to learn, and as I said,
the students may be able to help with this. How do I know what I do not
know until I hear what I say? I could usually carry this off without
disturbing the students, or I believe I can, but this would be to deny
them the opportunity to join me in the excitement of uncontrolled learn-
ing. Sometimes this awareness that I have reached the edge of my knowl-
edge and need to know more in order to give a satisfactory account has
influenced my research agenda. The social act of communicating through
teaching has made me face up to a research topic. This also happens the
other way, where I have been keen to offer my students the latest thinking
that I am aware of on a topic of interest to me, which means that I have
taught them from my research while doing it, or at least between write-up
and publication. Teaching and research are thus complementary, and feed
off each other.
MODELLING LEARNING
The work of the academic is learning. When this learning is about areas
adjacent to their own area of interest, and they are catching up with
others’ research in those areas, it is called scholarship. When the learning
is about their own special area of research interest, and the learning comes
partly from reading the work of others with similar interests and partly
from their own investigations, it is called research. When they are modelling
good learning for their students, it is called teaching.
In the most obvious case, a good research supervisor models how to
conduct research for their students. They act like a teacher of apprentices
to their students, showing the student how they conduct themselves
throughout the process of gaining knowledge. They will give their stu-
dents access to how they develop research questions, how they search for
the giants on whose shoulders to stand while developing their new knowl-
edge, how they find ways of exploring the questions they have developed,
how they check that they have actually produced good quality answers to
those questions, and how they disseminate the findings. They will under-
stand that, even if they think they are pretty good at what they have been
doing, the best development of their students may well require those
students to do those activities differently from how their supervisors
would do them.
Less obviously, I suggest that the process of teaching for students other
than research students should not be very different, and that regaining a
238 D. SIMS
respectful and adult form of interaction in teaching will be essential to the

redevelopment of university education after the interregnum. It is per-
fectly possible to include elements of students finding their own way
through a topic, and guiding their own learning in ways similar to how a
researcher might do it, even with quite large groups, if the students have
been convinced of the value of doing so, and so long as they are not also
being told that their own contribution to their learning should be passive.
The love of learning is already there in the students, as in all people. The
academic has experience in how to harness their own love of learning to
make an effective impact on a topic, and their role in teaching is to infect
students with their enthusiasm for high-quality learning and then to show
them some of the ways in which that enthusiasm can be rigorously brought
to bear on topics. The academic is then also available for consultation to the
students, and gives them feedback on all aspects of that learning process.
But this is not done without also hearing and taking full account of the
students’ views on the learning processes of the academic, as displayed to
them through publications and discussion of current research activities.
THE FUTURE OF UNIVERSITIES AS LEARNING COMMUNITIES

This future for university education may initially sound like a romanticised
view of the past, in which a community of scholars gathers together to
enjoy the pursuit of learning. Put like that, it sounds as if they should all be
wearing gowns, and arguing about the number of angels that can balance
on a pin head. Perhaps it sounds idealistic because it is clearly not a
continuation of the present. While this chapter does not aim to predict
the shape of the learning community for the future of the universities,
there are some pointers that we can offer, which are explained below:
1. People will be looking for places to learn, and others to learn from,
and this is likely to be lifelong.
2. This will not be a continuation of the department store approach.
3. This will not be dominated by efficiency.
4. There will be no dichotomy between teaching and research.
5. There will still be an important element of quality control, but with-
out standardisation.
The first of these points, that people are looking for places to learn and
people to learn from, seems clear. There is no reason to suppose that
learning is about to lose the popularity that it has maintained for so long,
and indeed there is a strong argument that it simply becomes more
important and more highly valued as time goes by; as people experience
change continuing around them so that they need fresh learning continu-
ously to stay in the flow of events.
The second bullet point likens current university provision to a depart-
ment store. Universities offer themselves as large shops with departments
offering different kinds of learning, but all of it off the peg and allegedly
ready for delivery. Department stores are not usually places for individual
craftspeople to make something bespoke and personally fitted to the
consumer. Even less are they places where the learner could go and
apprentice themselves to a craftsperson of their choice. The business
model behind the modern university looks very dated, and does not look
as if it could ever have delivered the kind of learning we have been
discussing in this chapter.
However, department stores are good at one thing, which leads us to
our third bullet point. They are efficient ways of offering a range of
structured goods to a wide range of people. Efficiency has been a watch-
word of the modern university, with its commitment to offering its
services to large numbers of students at an internationally competitive
cost. This is reminiscent of Ibarra’s argument about the competency trap
(2015, p. 29), that people and institutions will find something that they
do well, and then continue to do it in a more and more efficient way,
without noticing that it has less and less relevance to what they are trying
to achieve. Department stores have been losing popularity as other forms
of retailing have come to offer an experience which the user can tailor for
themselves; the structure, which enables the efficiency, is in the end the
thing that kills department stores. This will be true also for universities
where, as this chapter has emphasised throughout, the learner needs to
structure their learning for themselves.
Above all, the university of the future must be based on the unified
concept of learning, and this must cease to differentiate between teaching
and research. In all cases, learners need to know how to seek knowledge,
how to develop new knowledge when needed, and how to ask critical
questions of what they believe to be knowledge to establish what degree of
care they should continue to exercise about the reliability and portability
of what they are thinking of as knowledge. These criteria apply to the
novice and to the seasoned professor. The processes are the same. The
novice needs to be able to see the professor taking care and continuing to
240 D. SIMS
challenge themselves as to whether they really know what they claim to

know. The professor needs to be refreshed by the energy and purpose of
the novice, to have to explain themselves to the novice, as well as occa-
sionally being challenged by the novice as to whether there might be a
simpler and more direct way of saying what they are talking about.
However, there is an important feature of the present which will need
to continue and which I have not mentioned, which is quality control.
There are many people to whom I would not wish to be apprenticed
for my learning. When we talk to experienced learners about how they
became highly effective and fulfilled people, they almost always talk about
their good fortune in the people they learned from. The current hierarchy
of universities is misleading in so many ways, and yet it will be important in
any learning structure for the future that the learner is helped to distin-
guish the clear sighted, critical, alert, engaged learner, well worthy of
following as an apprentice, from those whose main characteristic is self-
confidence and a capacity for overselling themselves. I am not sure how
this can be achieved, just as I am not sure how the business model for this
community of learning will work. Perhaps someone needs to do a study of
mediaeval monasteries to see how well the process of finding a suitable
monastery to attach oneself to worked at that time. This is also something
which may become possible in completely different ways with the devel-
opment of social media; tweets and blogs from both learners and teachers
will enable a new approach to finding the place of learning which fits the
student’s needs and circumstances.
REFERENCES
Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Gabriel, Y., & Lang, T. (1995). The unmanageable consumer: Contemporary
consumption and its fragmentations. London: Sage.
Ibarra, H. (2015). Act like a leader, think like a leader. Boston, Mass: Harvard
Business School Press.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs: A theory of personality.
New York: Norton.
Mangham, I. L. (1988). Power and performance in organizations: An explanation
of executive process. Chichester: Wiley.
Morita, A. (1988). Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony. London: Fontana.
Sims, D. (2005). You bastard: A narrative exploration of the experience of indig-
nation within organizations. Organization Studies, 26: 1625–1640.
Sims, D., Huxham, C., & Beech, N. (2009). On telling stories but hearing
snippets: Sense-taking from presentations of practice. Organization, 16(3):
371–388.
Sims, D. (2015). Stories as the meaning, and the evasion, of life: Reflections on
when stories might be better left untold. In M. Izak, L. Hitchin, & D. Anderson
(Eds.), Untold stories in organizations (pp. 13–23). Oxford: Routledge.
David Sims is Emeritus Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cass Business

School, City, University of London, and formerly Associate Dean and Head of the
Faculty of Management there. His interests are in the relationship between leader-
ship, identity, the narrative processes of life, and the way in which people create
narratives to justify their actions and actions to justify their narratives. He has
applied these interests through topics as diverse as why people get angry in
organisations, the motivation of middle managers, how people love their organisa-
tions into life, agenda shaping, problem construction, consulting skills and mer-
gers. Now retired, he aspires to do nothing, but actually has a portfolio of writing
about things and with people that interest him, teaching, cycling, walking, being a
trustee, governing, chairing, cooking, examining, singing, mentoring and trans-
porting the elderly. He is finding that his interest in his academic field has grown
now that he is no longer compelled to pursue it within the conventions of the most
powerful journals.
PART IV
Into the Future

CHAPTER 13
Escape from the Neo-Liberal Higher

Education Prison: A Proposal for a New
Digital Communist University
Roger Hallam
INTRODUCTION
Analysis only gets you so far to paraphrase Marx.1 The questions increas-
ingly heard from audiences after a public lecture by socially engaged
academics are the following: “So what needs to happen? What are we to
do?” More often than not the academics’ responses retreat into platitudes
and generalisations. If they are feeling honest, they will confess they do
not know. This is because, as progressives throughout history have found
out with varying degrees of horror, working out how to change things is a
very different field to criticising what exists (see Barber 2015 for contem-
porary examples of progressives in government). There is a tendency to see
social and political change as something which is created by an almost
mystical vitalism whereby somehow the system breaks down and out of the
ashes a new society is borne which, for reasons that are little explained, is
so much better than before. This history of radicalism since the French
Revolution has rightly led to a healthy scepticism towards such sleights of
R. Hallam (*)
Kings College London, London, UK
e-mail: organics2go@googlemail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_13
246 R. HALLAM
the hand. However this scepticism has too easily slipped into a conserva-
tive post-modern cynicism (Fisher 2009).
With this general conundrum in mind I will endeavour in this chapter
to outline one particular model of change. This model is the creation of a
radical and co-operative higher education institution – what I will refer to
as a “digital communist” university. This proposal aims to break out of the
closed, path-dependent thinking which exists around how intellectual
labour can be socially constructed and situated in our present social and
political context. It is a vision of a “radical imagination” (Haiven and
Khasnabish 2014) and should be seen as a catalyst to provoke debate
about how concrete alternatives to the neo-liberal regime in higher educa-
tion can be achieved. As such my proposal should not be viewed in some
vulgar determinist fashion, as “the” correct way, implicitly or explicitly
excluding any other way. This approach has been the unfortunate ten-
dency traditionally adopted by the left. Indeed in seeking to present a
concrete radical alternative to the current system a number of deep struc-
tural challenges to the task of social design will need to come into clear
focus – such as how to deal with financing, remuneration, and collective
decision-making. There are no easy answers here but any credible attempt
to go beyond the rhetoric of neo-liberal critique needs to grapple with
these perennial issues. I therefore present my proposal as “probably a
goer”, something to “bet on” in recognition that the future is a chaotic
complex system (Miller and Scott 2007) where rational analysis while
essential is always confined within the realm of probability. Like the
weather, in social affairs uncertainty increases exponentially as we move
further into the future (Knight 1921). The model should not be seen as
the property of a dogmatic ego – not as “Roger’s idea” – but as “an idea
that Roger has put forward”. It is something I, along with others, can
collaboratively investigate, modify, test out and either adopt or discard
through a process of praxis (Freire 2007) – combining reasoning with
action in the world.
I therefore wish to avoid the traditional frame of presenting this “future
model” as being in some simplified binary opposition to the “present” – as
in the cliqued juxtaposition of “before” and “after” the revolution. I hope
to elucidate a process of creation which is necessarily dialectical and always
radically “unfinished” (Cohen 1988, p. 111). What I propose begins life
within the current system, in the context of Western liberal democracy,
and therefore is initially parasitical on that system and therefore necessarily
compromised by it. The argument is that what will be produced is
13 ESCAPE FROM THE NEO-LIBERAL HIGHER EDUCATION PRISON… 247
“better” than the present (Wallerstein 2015), and maybe very much
better, but necessarily still constrained by deeply embedded cultural
norms and biological and physical constraints. It is possible to delineate
a start-up period and a subsequent period of institutional maturity and
sustainability. However how matters could develop beyond this I will
only speculate. Following the approach of the early Mondragon founders
in 1950s Spain I believe we should “build the road as we travel”
(Morrision 1991).
It is important therefore to consider the question of viability (Wright
2010, p. 21). Another unhelpful binary exists between what is possible and
what is not, as exemplified by the dominant “capitalist realist” (Fisher
2009) frame of TINA – “there is no alternative”. This assertion is deeply
contradictory as any realist orientation has to accept the reality of human
choice (Unger 2014), without which it is impossible to conceive of what it
is to be human. Progress initially is always seen as hyperstitional, “a kind of
fiction which aims to transform itself into a truth” (Srnick and Williams
2015, p. 75).
Inseparable from our consciousness is an awareness of unavoidability of
the need to make decisions. We are always choosing to do one thing or
another based upon an analysis about an intrinsically uncertain future. Of
course more often than not, we use heuristics (Kahneman 2012) or rules
of thumb. But it is also the case that we can and do deliberate on options
in depth and make informed choices. It is such a process I hope to engage
in through the exploration of the model of change which I investigate in
this chapter.
Fung and Wright’s (2003) work on “real utopias” transforms the
dichotomy of possible versus impossible into a continuum of increasing
or decreasing possibilities. For example some limited proposal might be to
set up a working group to investigate alternative educational structures.
Such a move would not threaten existing political power structures or
their social norms or values. Moving along the continuum, the setting up
an alternative university arguably would threaten these structures and
therefore, even if it was “internally viable”, might be undermined by
groups which opposed it. Moving further along we might identify models
which would be unlikely to be viable even if social and political opposition
was overcome because they violate instinctual and biological constraints.
For example many experimental utopian communities have overcome
societal opposition but failed because of the enforcement of shared sexual
partners and child raising collectives. A biological norm means that
248 R. HALLAM
generally people like to have one partner and raise their own children.2
The model I am proposing, I argue, has an internal viability. It does not
violate deep human norms while at the same time I accept that it will come
up against covert and possibly explicit economic and political opposition.
However central to my argument is that, in the new conditions of digital
society, these social constraints are rapidly weakening, raising the possibility
that they can be overcome.
With these initial comments in mind I will now provide a brief overview
of my project and then provide a general definition as to what I mean by
“digital” and “communist”.
I propose the setting up of an alternative university that is controlled
neither by the state nor the market, which is neither “public” nor “pri-
vate”. This university would be co-operative, and as such culturally and
economically connected to the long tradition of social institutions which
have existed outside capitalist and state socialist models. Examples include
independent trade unions, worker co-ops, housing co-ops, mutual
societies, and of particular relevance here, independent co-operative edu-
cational institutions. This “guild” tradition (Cole 1920) grew into a
powerful international movement before the First World War in the
industrialising world of Europe and the Americas, where socialism was
largely non-Marxist, anti-statist, and syndicalist in nature (Anderson
2006). For this tradition the state was seen as the enemy of the workers
and the people. Society, it was argued, should be run democratically
through various forms of participatory and direct democracy. This world
view was largely destroyed by the various violent statist forces of the
extreme left and right in the mid-twentieth century and only re-emerged
with the development of the New Left in the 1960s. This changed political
mood has resulted in what today David Harvey (2015) calls a “cultural
non-ideological anarchism” but unlike during the previous surges of anti-
authoritarian radicalism, there has been little institutionalisation of this
political turn over the last forty years. In the face of the globalisation of
neo-liberal economic and political forces there remain few substantive
oppositional social forms. In education, for instance, we experience the
almost totalitarian dominance of the neo-liberal paradigm in universities
where the ideology of TINA seems to be carrying all before it. Prospects
for real plurality seem dark indeed.
In response I propose a new wave of educational institutions whose
viability is grounded in the affordances of the new digital political econ-
omy which, counter-intuitively, I argue provide a new functional viability
for communism as a form of social organisation. In making this argument

it is necessary to create precise definitions for these concepts. This involves
breaking down powerful distorting political frames which at present blind
us to the possibility of the new political spaces and opportunities being
opening up by our fast changing technological environment. I will look at
“digital” and “communist” in turn.
DIGITAL
Digital technology is rapidly changing society in a myriad of ways (Floridi
2011) but I want to hone in on what is arguably its most transformational
impact on social relations. This is rapidly reducing the cost of reproduc-
tion (Rifkin 2014; Romer 1990). We can see this most apparently in the
so-called non-material realm of knowledge and cultural production –
books, music, film, media (Jordon 2015). It is here that digital technol-
ogy is reducing the cost of reproduction effectively to zero. Goods
become “non-rival” (Cornes and Sandler 1986) – the act of downloading
a film does not affect the cost to anyone else of downloading the same
film. This is still often not widely apparent because of the distorting
political context through which this technological affordance is mediated.
The monopoly control of digital production by large corporations and
their capture of state legislative processes legitimises the charging of
exploitative rents for goods which cost effectively nothing to produce
(Mason 2015). For example, while the actual physical cost of digital
reproduction and a fair compensation for intellectual property rights (if
applicable) of a book or music album is less than a few pence, the political
regime declares it illegal to engage in the free sharing of these products
and instead tries to force citizens to buy them at a high price which can
bear no relation to the true value. For classical economic theory, free
market capitalism is fundamentally dependent upon scarcity in order to
operate (Walrus 1900/2003, p. 399). The digital creation of free infor-
mation therefore presents a structural challenge to the viability of the
market system (Arrow 1962). This profound mismatch is creating a
growing political conflict between citizens to whom “information wants
to be free” (Brand 1987, p. 202) and the increasing power and wealth of a
global elite which benefits from the enforcement of monopoly rents for
access to this information. However, the fact is that it is now technologi-
cally possible to access information for a fraction of the cost of what was
required in the analogue age of only twenty years ago. This then provides a
250 R. HALLAM
new structural opportunity (Tarrow 1998) to resolve this contradiction

though the creation a radically different social model for the production
and consumption of knowledge, based upon free communist rather than
monopoly control principles.
COMMUNIST
Society, including most academics, are still unaware of, or in blind denial,
about the obvious political economy implications of digitalisation – that
the creation of zero cost economic goods undermine the price mechanism
(Mason 2015; Srnicek and Williams 2015; Bunz 2013). This is a polite
and rather technical way of saying that the distribution of goods takes on a
communist rather than a market form (or what has been called “dot
communist”, a form of communism for the digital age, in the words of
John Perry Barlow (quoted in Konrad 2002)). So we might ask to what is
referred to by communism as an ideal type economic system? Under such
an arrangement goods and services are distributed freely, in Marx’s defini-
tion, to each according to need. It is very difficult to dissociate this general
and ahistorical definition of communism from the specific historical epi-
sode of supposed “communism” associated with the Soviet Union
between 1917 and 1991. It can of course be debated whether this parti-
cular historical example really exemplified a communist system. However,
even if we accept that it did, there are other varieties of communist systems
in the historical and anthropological record which display very different
social and political characteristics. There is not the space here to discuss
this matter in depth, but briefly it is worth flagging up four ideal types:
“Primitive” communism: Here we would include hunter gather socie-
ties where economic goods were widely dispersed and quickly perishable
(i.e. live animals) and therefore it was necessary and rational to share them
on the basis of need amongst the small mobile bands. These relatively non-
hierarchical communistic societies can be contrasted with those that went
on to develop agriculture and grain based “civilisations”. In these new
contexts extreme inequalities of power and wealth were made possible as
grains are non-perishable and, in the case of wheat and rice, are harvestable
at the same time. A small elite then could capture and horde the harvest
and therefore acquire effective total political control over the rest of the
population (Scott 2009; Bookchin 1982/2015).3
“Industrial” communism: This is the well-known modern form of
communism where an equitable distribution of scarce economic goods
and services is forced upon a population through the ruthless application

of a state’s monopoly of violence. In the twentieth century, for example,
the Soviet Union was controlled by a small revolutionary elite which used
top down bureaucratic dictates to centrally control production, distribu-
tion and consumption. Market based indicators of supply and demand
were replaced by a centrally planned economy.
“Utopian/ethical” communism: Here small groups, committed to the
normative appeal of total equality, agree to share their economic goods
and services on the basis of need. Such voluntary intentional communities
have often been religious or inspired by the values of the radical
Enlightenment. Examples of the latter include nineteenth century utopian
socialist experiments, early twentieth century anarchist revolutionary col-
lectives, through to the hippy communes of the 1960s and 1970s and
present-day intentional communities.
“Digital” communism: Here then I contend what is emerging is a form
of communism which bizarrely has more similarities with primitive com-
munism than either the forced communism of the Soviet Union or the
ethical communism of the small scale experiments, as seen over the past
two hundred years. The character of economic production increasingly
reassembles that of the hunter gatherer societies – economic goods are
widely dispersed and not easily open to elite capture. As such a profound
social shift takes place in which individual satisfaction and status is longer
acquired through monetary “compensation” for alienating labour but
rather provided through the intrinsic pleasure of creation as an act in
and for itself.
Another way to overcome the conventional restricted view of com-
munism it to challenge our deeply ingrained modernist frame which
makes invisible much economic activity because it exists outside the
market economy. Vast swathes of vital human activity, such as the crea-
tion of domestic goods (e.g. the making of a family dinner) and
“services” (child care and giving of love) are essential for human life.
Here the motivation is intrinsic to the activity not requiring material
compensation by any external social authority. These activities are also,
as anarchist anthropologist David Graeber (2014, p. 134) points out,
“communist” – each person receiving according to need and giving
according to ability (also see Ward (1973/2001)). As Graeber amusingly
comments, when your mate at work asks you to pass him your hammer
you do not say “what is it worth?” Behavioural economists have
“discovered”, the only people who follow the behaviour of economic
252 R. HALLAM
“self-interested” agents – the “econs” (Thaler 2015, p. 4) of modern

economic mathematical models, are rather selfish six year olds. There has
always been what might be called a vast “communist sector” within the
full range of human interaction, just as in “communist” Soviet Union
there was always a vast “market sector” – the black market. We therefore
need to change our frame of societies, from insisting on a simple binary
of “market” versus “communist” economies, to an inevitable a combina-
tion for the two. The balance of this combination depends upon the
political regime and more profoundly on the “means of production” – the
structural nature of the key economic products and services in a society.
Therefore digital communism should emphatically not be mistaken as some
regressive state enforcement of a communist totality but as a newly expanded,
but still limited, communist realm of co-operative human activity and
interaction.
Maybe the best way to understand the profound shift being brought
about by digitalisation is to think about the economic nature of air. This
issue is much ignored, indeed invisible, because of course air is free to
consume. But why is this the case? It should be a key target of capitalist
capture. It is vital for life and so, if owned and sold, could produce a
substantial rental income for the owners. The reason why is not because of
any ethical or political restraint on the part of capitalists, but because, by
nature, it is uncapturable. It is a commons that we do not have the
technology to split up and privatise. In the same way digital products
and services are becoming freely available not because of the sharing values
of hippy entrepreneurs but because the real4 costs of capture increasingly
exceeds the income attainable from that capture. On a continuum of
“capturability”, information is moving to side of the spectrum where air
resides. Of course there is a massive effort to maintain control by capitalist
formations but the underlying structural implications have profound
longer term implications for all social activity and in particular for the
future of higher education.
THE PROPOSAL
In what follows, I will, due to shortage of space, deal only with the key
features and implications of my proposal for a new university. There are
many valid and important debates to be had around the ideal purpose
of higher education, the nature of intellectual knowledge, and how
answers to these questions affect the structure of social power. Needless
to say such debates would continue after a digital communist revolution.

My intention is to focus on the specificities of the here and now in a
Western industrial context as it is within this space that our new institu-
tion would be created. In doing so, I will draw upon my thirty years of
experience in setting up radical housing co-ops and workers co-ops, and
other social enterprises which have primary aims other than the cash
nexus. It is important that any grounded transformatory plan focuses on
the recent historical experience of this third sector of non-state, non-
market, co-operative social formations in the UK and similar Western
countries. First I will start the story of my thinking about these issues.
About four months into my PhD research at leading British univer-
sity, against my best intentions, I found myself subject to an unwelcome
epiphany. The thought that entered my head was “so what actually am
I paying for here?” This thought is part of a social category of realisations
which might be called the “emperor without clothes” syndrome. As
readers may be familiar, in this story the socially enforced norm is that
the emperor is wearing clothes when in fact he is not. However, the force
of sanctions and a generalised group think (Janis 1971) leads people to
believe what is plainly not true.5 It takes a small boy to call time on the
obvious deception “ . . . but Mummy he is wearing no clothes”. No
doubt millions of people have experienced the same moment of truth
in relation to our modern equivalent of the “emperor with no clothes” –
namely neo-liberalism. In its higher education manifestation of the
thought process goes something like this: “I am paying around £5000
a year – or £16,000 a year (in the case of the “market conditions” for
international students) – but I do not actually seem to be getting any-
thing substantive for it”. In my case I get around twelve hours a year
with a supervisor, a not insignificant part of which is taken up with
discussions about grant applications, gradings, and related bureaucratic
procedures. While this may be an outlier case many PhDs at my
university experience a profound feeling of isolation. There is no tradi-
tional “community of scholars” to speak of. A general impression is that,
students and lecturers alike, are madly busy either competing with each
other or stressed out doing “stupid” (Graeber 2015) bureaucratic tasks in
which they neither believe in nor understand why are necessary. In this
volume there are other more detailed and well-argued texts on the hollow-
ing out of the traditional pedagogic functions of the modern university,
under the assault of neo-liberalism, so I will not elaborate further on the
many aspects of this sad tale here.
254 R. HALLAM
My thought at this time was something like this: all I need for my PhD
research, and more generally in terms of my vocation for intellectual study
is access to the knowledge of peers, the time to speak to others about my
and their thoughts, and lastly a way to communicate my research to
others. This then is the basic essence of the academic vocation.6 I have
spent much of my life setting up radical networks, co-ops and social
enterprises. However I was determined to “grow up”, toe the line for
once in my life, and enter a proper conventional elite university.
Unfortunately my mind got the better of me. I started to daydream for
the second time in my life about setting up an alternative university. I was
involved in the setting up of the “New University” in the 1980s, having
left LSE after one year of an undergraduate degree in economics, full of
impetuous youthful enthusiasm. As with many such projects it did not
come to fruition (but rather mutated into a federation of radical housing
and worker co-ops called Radical Routes). But this time round however
I believe the prospects are different.
My day dream took the following form. Around ten academics decide for
a variety of reasons they have had enough of the neo-liberal routine. They
only live once and they want to do is what they want they really want to do –
namely to study, have conversations with a community of like-minded
scholars, and teach people who are interested in what they wish to commu-
nicate. This is the perennial calling of the intellectual who goes to bed
thinking about ideas and wakes up thinking about them. For such people
unless and until they can fulfil this “calling” they will never be truly happy
and fulfilled. The tragedy and cruelty of the neo-liberal takeover of the
modern university is the coercive attempt to reduce the intrinsic plurality
of humanity into the straitjacket of the self-interested utility maximiser
dreamed up by the Chicago University economics department (Thaler
2015). Even if we accept many people follow the latter model it is clear
that a significant minority do not. We might envisage than that our pioneers
will be drawn from outliers within this minority. Firstly we may draw interest
from older academics, which have seen through the neo-liberal presence and
can still remember a time before the intrusion of its regime of testing,
grading, and gaming responses. A second body of recruits would come
from “early career” academics who realise they are on the lower level of a
massive pyramid scheme and have a rapidly diminishing probability of attain-
ing economic security. It is a game they are destined to lose. In contrast the
vast majority of middle level academics will have bought into the system
(even if they deny it) and are unable to envisage fundamental change of
trajectory. It is from these young and older academics that we will draw our
recruits. As with all pioneers, these individuals will be very much outliers in a
distribution dominated by an inert and disempowered mass of university
staff. It is always on these edges – on the “tails” – where genuine innovators
are to be found who wish to live out very different values to the mainstream.
It is also worth acknowledging that there is nothing new about radical
institutional innovation in education. Through often forgotten in the
hallowed halls of today’s elite universities, many of these institutions
started off as oppositional and often dangerous initiatives by communities
of scholars desperate to create space where free thinking could flourish
outside the sphere of the corrupting market or dictating state. This
“socratic” vision inspired the splitting off of Cambridge from Oxford
and no less the founding of the London School of Economics as a new
and modern institution dedicated to social progress (Cox 2015). In
modern industrial society the start-up costs of such institutional initiatives
have often been prohibitively high. Small scale initiatives were economic-
ally unviable. However, as discussed, the underlying political economy of
higher education is now shifting. Digitalisation has opened up new possi-
bilities for educational innovation. This has happened in three domains:
1. Access to information. Via the internet (at least in non-authoritarian

countries) it is possible to freely access reliable information on most
matters in seconds. Information which is behind pay walls is readily
available via semi-legal means and there is a good prospect such
access will become easier and the enforcement of such “legalities”
will become more difficult in the future.
2. The cost of communication over space is now effectively zero. Via
Skype and similar platforms, academics can communicate with any-
one almost anywhere in the world in real time. The quality of the
image and sound may not yet be perfect but this technology is
rapidly improving. There is a much reduced necessity for bricks
and mortar buildings. The new virtual global office can be on all
the time. Physical space has collapsed and we always speak to our
work colleagues in other locations.
3. The cost of publishing is now also effectively free. A book can be
published online in seconds at very little cost and accessed by mil-
lions. Alternatively material copies can be manufactured in small
numbers by online printers and sent cheaply via global platforms to
anyone who wants a copy.
256 R. HALLAM
This time round then the whole landscape is different to the heavy
lifting challenges of such a start-up venture like the New University
Project with which I was involved with in the 1980s.
Here then is my initial scenario. Our group of ten scholars give up their
jobs and meet every week in a free space in a big city in the UK or similar
country. They communicate between times online. They work individually or
collaborate on research projects. They link in with other independent scho-
lars, or those still in the system, on specific projects. They crowd-source data
online for research which would benefit from mass participation. They access
whatever information they want from the internet or via friends in universities
who will access it for them if it is behind a pay wall (or use other “creative”
methods). They produce courses which are put on line for general access to
anyone in the world. These can be freely accessible, with a Wikipedia, open
source structure as an alternative to the growth of corporate for profit models.
In addition they run off line courses, creating communities of scholars and
students, regularly meeting in free co-operatively owned spaces within the
city in which they live. The integration of on and offline collaborative
education would be a project of ongoing experiment and evolution.
This then is just the start-up phase. At this stage it is necessarily a
peripheral model, in the sense of still relying upon the mainstream ecology
of knowledge production and possible involvement in conventional
funded projects and employment. Without such initial compromise any
new project remains at the ideas stage. However the ever greater difficulty
of maintaining pay walls around digitalised information and the new
opportunities opening up outside the traditional gatekeepers of academic
knowledge, gives our initiative the space and resources to survive and
grow. Once a proto-type model is established we can envisage a scaling
up, involving dozens of academics and hundreds of students within a city
setting, providing for greater sustainability. Like other digital information –
a successful model can be rapidly iterated, replicated and adapted with no
significant transaction costs to other similar global locations. However this
growth will require grappling with a number of key challenges which face
all new co-operative social forms in our present context.
FUNDING
This is always a supply and demand issue. As discussed above, in the
industrial analogue era, the start-up costs (buildings and legalities) and
ongoing costs (communication, admin) were prohibitively high and could
only be overcome by reliance upon and sponsorship by the state or mono-

poly capital foundations, neither of which had any interest in fostering
“utopian experiments”. The high demand side for money and the restricted
supply side meant options were highly restricted. However in the digital
context both the demand and supply environments are being transformed.
Firstly there is less demand for money. A company and basic website can be
set up in a day at the cost of a few hundred pounds. Digital communication
does not require permanent ownership of bricks and mortar. The costs of
teaching and publishing are massively reduced. On the supply side the
options for funding, while still precarious, have greatly opened up, again
due to the affordances of digital communication. The on line crowd-sour-
cing revolution enables projects with little mainstream credibility to reach a
sympathetic audience.7 Peer-to-peer lending enables borrowers to bypass
conservative banks and state funders and to access millions of small inves-
tors. These new funding options could help with start-up costs which still
exist. In addition the digital economy has thrown up a new class of young
progressive entrepreneurs with substantial funds, looking to support inno-
vative and radical projects. To guard against undue influence, large dona-
tions could be given via a blind trust – a third party which guards the
identity of the donor from our new institution. These new digitalised
funding opportunities now exist alongside the long standing trusts and
charities which continue to fund social innovations.
The traditional dilemma of third sector social formations, to fall under
the bureaucratic control of the state or to sell its “soul” to the market, is
therefore weakened. A viable scenario is created in which students would
not have to pay for their courses – or could be trusted to give a donation
which reflected their ability to pay – following the ethical communist
principle. The dilemma can be further weakened by dealing in a deeply
radical way with administrative costs.
BUREAUCRACY AND POWER

Here I propose our institution makes a revolutionary break away from not
only the present neo-liberal institutional form (Graeber 2015) but from
the whole frame of assessment and monetary reward. I propose that all the
academics in the institution are paid according to need rather than “posi-
tion”. In the absence of any guaranteed state support (see more on this
below) academics would need basic wages provided for by the institution.
We might envisage that these can be low and broadly flat. Our pioneering
258 R. HALLAM
academics would be substantially interested in knowledge production

rather than cash rewards. The basic orientation would be that they
would just need enough to live on and provide for their families. As
Fuchs (2014) argues academics have a structural tendency to be natural
communists. Many of course are socialised into the neo-liberal model of
recognition through position in a hierarchy and differentiated monetary
reward. However the structural nature of “intellectual production” lends
itself to a sharing communistic ethic – the seeking of recognition through
a widespread reading and uptake of one’s ideas. This contrasts with the
nature of a material product where the motivation is more likely to be to
create scarcity so as to raise the price. Certainly the former motivation will
be foremost in the minds of our outlier pioneers who have become highly
alienated from the neo-liberal system. They are not interested in gaining
status from hoarding their product in order to maximise monetary gain.
Instead they would aim to maximise consumption of their work – their
ideas and thoughts. In this sense they fit more easily into a gift economy
(Mauss 1970) than a market dominated society. This basic bias can be
built upon in our new institution.
The key policy here then is that money is raised and distributed on the
communist principle of from each according to ability and to each accord-
ing to need. Individuals would receive money according their needs –
short-term needs such as one off costs, or longer term demands such as
housing costs and family requirements. While this has the obvious ethical
benefits from an idealistic point of view, it is assumed by those with a
TINA market fundamentalist mindset, to be unworkable. Human material
need cannot only ever be successfully organised via market mechanisms.
However, when enacted on a small human scale, the “already existing”
communist “sector” of interpersonal relationships can easily expand into
small scale co-operative economic contexts. The empirical record of the
“ethical” communist tradition shows that many small communities, both
religious and secular, have been run for decades on the principle of mutual
aid, reinforced by interpersonal connection – the values of friendship and
trust. The fundamental dynamic is that in small groups non-market values
can easily take precedence over cold “self-interested” instrumental calcu-
lation.8 I have had a personal experience of such an income sharing group
in Leicester which ran for over twenty years. Members would meet at most
once a month and amicably agree on who should get what. A similar
arrangement could easily work for a small community of scholars. As such
a community grew it could split into a network of human scale income
sharing groups. Each group would receive a proportion of the institution’s

income and be autonomous in distributing it according the current finan-
cial needs of its members. Instead of an endemic conflict over “resources”
in such a context, empirical evidence provides a very different picture
(Trivers 1971). In small groups with repeated “game plays” over who
gets what, altruism trumps short term resource maximisation (Axelrod and
Hamilton 1981). Seeking a reputation for fairness – the ability to give and
take, takes precedence. This of course does not guarantee an absence of
conflict and much variability depends upon the effectiveness of socialisa-
tion into co-operative social norms of the institution (for instance through
training and mentoring processes). However in terms of designing an
equitable and unbureaucratic resource distribution system, the creation
of ongoing small groups seems like the best bet. Like families and inter-
personal friendships, they have a structural bias towards mutual aid com-
pared with larger or more transient groups.
This self-managed small scale communism had the big advantage of
doing away with the vast overhead of bureaucracy necessary for the
imposition and maintenance of neo-liberal hierarchy and marketisation.
In our human scale communist system there need be no power battles over
control of the centre. Power is distributed to the base on the basis of general
guidelines agreed by the whole community. What the neo-liberalism
mindset fails to understand here is that mutual trust is highly efficient
and ironically, when this trust is destroyed through marketisation, vast
bureaucratic systems are required to fill the functional gap.
Of course our institution would require a clear structure for collective
decision-making with norms of procedure and enforcement. Standard
models for this have now been successfully designed for worker co-opera-
tives and mutual aid societies. Contemporary smart co-operative govern-
ance designs involve high levels of training in co-operative behaviour,
combined with the use of small delegated teams rather than large assem-
blies for the various majority of institutional decision-making (Smith
2009). To avoid the evolution of power elites positions can be regularly
rotated and assigned by sortition (by lot) rather than elections. A classic
example is the Twin Oaks community (Kinkade 1994), a fifty-year-old
American secular intentional community, which has evolved a complex
ecology of interconnected small groups of delegated planners. Such
designs would ensure that engaging in matters of institutional organisa-
tion and decision-making would be secondary to the work of knowledge
production rather than central to academic’s concerns.
260 R. HALLAM
CREATIVITY AND GRADING

Here again I will stick my neck out and argue for the viability of a deep
structural shift. Just as we can see a fundamental binary between the
market and the communist principles – between price mechanisms and
planned distributions so we can identify a stark break between any process
of assessment and grading and the alternative of having no such system.
The benefits of doing away with all assessments are that scholars and
students alike can concentrate on teaching and study rather than the
reductionist distortions of linear assessment systems. As with the model
of small group communist remuneration, this arrangement benefits from
doing away with another vast swathe of costly bureaucracy which is
required to maintain hierarchy and inequality – exams, marking, appeals,
counselling(!) – as well as all the associated stress, boredom and corrupting
gaming strategies. From a utopian perspective we can see the obvious
benefits of a free community of scholars and students, focusing on the
joys of collaborative intellectual endeavour.9
As with the economic communism, is this “communism of assessment” is
also seen as unsustainable and impractical in a competitive market driven
world. However it is increasingly questionable whether this is, in fact, any
longer the case. We can see the beginnings of a massive structural change in
the nature of work and of what is demanded in the developing digital
economy. The key “commodity” which this new economy demands is
creativity, enhanced collective intelligence through collaborative team
work, as supported by psychological research (Florida 2002). This work
finds that even if one individual has more expertise or talent than any
member a small group – the latter will trump the individual by working
effectively as a team. It is highly ironic that just as the mainstream education
system becomes ever more obsessed with reductionist testing and grading,
cutting edge companies and upcoming economic sectors are moving ever
more away from industrial analogue norms of standardised recruitment and
assessment. As Laszlo Bock (2016), head of human resources at Google has
argued (backed by numerous randomised controlled trials), the key attri-
butes of an ideal employee are the values of co-operation and the ability to
work in a team – the formal knowledge required for the position being seen
as a bonus. The right person can learn this on the job. The company
therefore no longer considers formal CVs. The old obsession with qualifica-
tions and grades is being taken over by psychological testing for
good relational and team skills. Evidence from homeschooling show that
individuals encouraged to be creative outside the mainstream grading

regime are more sociable, creative and less stressed (Holt 1995). Indeed
mainstream education, as currently practiced, kills creativity (Robinson and
Aronica 2015). Research has also shown that those with a wider “liberal”
education, based upon the humanities, develop the skills most required in
the modern digitalising workplace (Zakaria 2015). Far from our “utopian”
institution not preparing students for the “real” world, we may be surprised
to find it provides exactly the education this new world requires – self-
confidence, creativity, sociability, and co-operative team play. Of course
the primary motivation for promoting these values would be for the more
radical reason of their intrinsic rather than instrumental value. Any curricu-
lum would evolve through a process of interaction between a student and
staff member where the student interests are respected and encouraged
even if seen as flawed. Through this autonomy the student can make
the necessary mistakes and errors which are vital to build an intellectual
self-confidence and independent minded orientation (Freire 1970).
DISCUSSION
This then is my proposal. As discussed above it is not meant to be a “take it
or leave it” dogmatic assertion of a pre-designed utopia but rather an
ideal-type – a template to be adapted to local conditions. A more cautious
reader may wish to question whether such a project can adequately deal
with the desire for recognition through power and economic inequality,
or whether academics would wish to give up their “intellectual property”
in favour of a communistic arrangement. They therefore may wish to
push structures back into a reformist rather than revolutionary form – to
introduce some formal inequality of pay to “reward” top teachers and
researchers, to set fees for students, and have some form of formal testing
and qualifications. These are all possible and maybe necessary. However
my central argument is that, aside from the traditional idealistic reasons,
there are now solid pragmatic and economic arguments, in our new digital
social context, for pushing through to a paradigmically different “anar-
chist-communist” model of organisation. Only such a move will remove
the need for the otherwise functionally necessary bureaucratic controls and
costs, required by any conventional model.
Indeed, as the digital transformation of our societies continues apace, it
is very likely that similar revolutionary transformations will become
increasingly attractive for other realms of social activity. The present
262 R. HALLAM
self-defeating trajectory of ever greater “marketisation”, resulting in ever

more bureaucratic hierarchical control and economic inequality, will come
up against the rational functional requirement and affordability of a uni-
versal basic income – a non-market (i.e. communist) form of income dis-
tribution. This, as increasing numbers of commentators are coming to
realise (Mason 2015; Srnicek and Williams 2015), is the revolutionary
tipping point which will make mutually compatible the contradictory
underlying dynamics of our digitalising economy and society. What is
increasingly clear is the need to break the connection between income
and work. Conventionally defined work in the market economy, and thus
job based financial remuneration, are progressively reduced due by automa-
tion (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014). At the same time economic demand
management requires the population to maintain their income levels so as
to be able to buy the products of this automated economy. This structural
contradiction in the opposing needs of the present economic system can
only be resolved by the provision of some form of non-work based income.
Such a revolutionary break would transform the prospects for our new
higher education institutional form. In many ways the model I have out-
lined is messy. It is partially rooted in the traditional analogue utopian
communist tradition while at the same time grappling with the expanding
potentialities of the digital transformation. In this former tradition world
such social formations have to be small scale. They require a high level of
moral and political commitment not found in the general population.
They are deemed worthy but rightly believed to be difficult to “roll out”
into the mainstream, relying on outlier individuals with high levels of
collectivist commitment. A universal basic income, however, would
make our “utopian” institution an attractive option for the educational
mainstream. Indeed it is possible to see universal income as a game
changer for this sector providing a firm and secure financial basis for
independent co-operative alternatives. A critical mass of new independent
educational institutions modelled on the lines described above could reach
a tipping point where they become more attractive, even to the average
academic and student, than the old degrading neo-liberal model. We can
already see three key trends which are pushing towards this tipping point.
• Firstly there is the spread of online education (e.g. the Khan

Academy), the quiet, as yet under the radar, growth of home school-
ing across the Western world, and the jumping ship of top academics
creating their own online courses, accessed by hundreds of
thousands of international students. And then, as I argue here –

we can see the coming creation of digital communities of aca-
demics, creating their own “universities” –the first refugees from
the stress and stupidities of the neo-liberal mainstream. In this new
emerging world our model may even turn out to be too conserva-
tive. A concentrated institutional form may turn out to be too
caught up in an analogue age design. Digitalisation brings with it
a dizzying fluidity of complexity, of peer to peer connectivity across
space and time (Barabasi 2002) – collaborating academics coming
together for projects and then dispersing – research crowd sourced
by thousands of connected “students”. A digitalised knowledge
production system brings with it a breakdown of the old divisions
of student and teacher, academic expert and non-specialist. While
distant learning is presently often a site of capitalist profit-making
(for example MOOCs10), it can be restructured through the
innovative adoption open source, collaborative and co-operative
models.
• Second, as discussed, is the rise of jobs which need no formal
educational qualifications but require personal attributes which
can be accessed on the spot through psychological testing and
multiple interviewing – sociability, ability to work in teams, the
capacity to think creatively outside the box rather than to score
well in standardised exams. These jobs no longer require the para-
phernalia of formal CVs. They are suited to educational environ-
ments created by our free non-assessed communistic model. Of
course many employers still feel they require the “objectivity” of
an official diploma but there is a clear trend away from such
simplistic “fordist” recruitment practices in Western countries
(Bock 2016).
• Third is the self-destructive endogenous feedback loops of the neo-
liberal higher education regime itself. The ever greater imposition of
testing and grading leads to the growth of gaming and corruption
which always develops in systems which destroy trust and autonomy.
This then leads to the ever greater capture of resources by the
bureaucracies required for the administration and enforcement of
this regime. Gross inequalities of income and power evolve into pre-
revolutionary power law distributions of major economic and poli-
tical indicators. In short there is an implosion of the regime through
its own processes.
264 R. HALLAM
In the light of these developing trends it is not fantastical to suppose

that, in the not too distant future, higher education will reach a crisis – an
“emperor without clothes” moment. A trigger event which brings on a
mass exodus of academics – a defection from the regime to the freedom
afforded by the digital future where their labour and production is no
longer controlled by distant administrators and captured by exploitative
corporate publishers. They can now work without external interference
and teach what they want. They can freely publish and reach a far wider
audience and, this will be the real revelation, they will become much more
relevant to the new digital society and the new economy emerging within
it. Respect and reward would be derived, not from hierarchical position
or differentiated monetary reward, but from the intrinsic satisfaction of
following one’s own intellectual pursuits in free collaboration with others.
Not so fast you may respond. For sure the power of the analogue social
and economic paradigm might be in steep decline, but it is far from clear
that what happens next is the utopia which the digital optimists predict.
Instead of a free digital communism we may be instead heading for a
digital neo-feudalism – a global elite drawing massive economic rents from
control of the key bottle necks of the internet – search, social networking,
and consumer good distribution to name but three. We might also point
to the prospect of an invigorated neo-liberal university system drawing in
vast fees (read rents) from the new globalised market for students, forced
through the gate keeper brands of the world’s elite universities. Certainly
at the moment this trend is clear and in full thrust. The supply of fifty
million Chinese students has many a Western vice chancellor licking his
lips with greed.
However, counter intuitive as it might seem, it is often the very processes
and dynamics which create the growth of a system which also bring about its
hubris. Indeed it is possible to argue that this is the norm (see for example
Minsky (2008) on financial crisis and Skocpol (1979) on state regimes). An
interesting parallel to consider is the growth of technological affordances in
the eighteenth century Europe and their social and political ramifications.
The improvements in education, communications, and material production –
roads, the printing press, global trade routes – vastly increased the power and
control of the incumbent regimes of the continent. It was seen as obvious
that “enlightened” autocracy was the established political model for the
future while democracy was viewed as little more than a historical curiosity,
only viable in the small scale city states of ancient Greece. Then out of the
blue the French Revolution happened and the course of history dramatically
changed direction. The sanctity of autocracy was challenged and democracy

became a popular and increasingly viable demand over the following century.
So while we await the coming dramas of this present century I humbly
present my pre-figurative proposal and encourage much leeway for varia-
tions and adaptations. It may be wholly ignored – deemed an irrelevant or
amusing day dream, lost in the noise of the neo-liberal gorging on the new
global student market. It may develop into some social manifestation but
remain caught within the confines of the old utopian tradition – remaining
small scale and of limited interest. Or it may well be the canary in the cage,
warning of or celebrating (depending on your economic interests) the
coming digital communist storm. The future is by definition uncertain so
I will not rule out any of these three scenarios. My argument, however, is
that the third scenario is no idealist illusion but a real structurally deter-
mined affordability. Not for the first time the future may be a lot more
shocking than the dominant confirmation biases lead us to believe.
NOTES
1. “The Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The
point, however, is to change it” Marx (1932/2007).
2. It is no longer a matter of idle speculation whether such “constants” could
be overcome by the various possibilities of “human enhancement” that
scientists tell us are coming down the line (Savulescu and Bostom 2011).
3. A similar structural dynamic that has been found in the political transforma-
tion of societies before and after the discovery of oil in contemporary times
(Ross 2013). Here we see a clear structural determination of the political
power which lends general support to the argument that other structural
technologies, such as digitalisation, have profound implications for the
distribution of political and economic power.
4. These are largely hidden because of the capture of the state by these the new
digitalised corporate monopolies which, as discussed, lobby for legislation to
impose artificial costs upon customers. This action is of course the antithesis
of the free-market ideology in which these businesses claim to believe.
5. There is an extensive literature in psychology which shows this phenomenon
is far from just an entertaining children’s story. “Normal” human beings will
gladly believe what is clearly untrue if everyone else around then declares it
to be true (see Cialdini (1978, chapter 4) on “social proof” for a review of
the literature).
6. Of course I am referring here primarily to a vocation in the social sciences
and humanities. If I was a natural scientist I may require access to expensive
kit, in which case, my argument falls down. However in time there is no
266 R. HALLAM
reason why an alternative university complex could not acquire the money
for this equipment or the price of it could come down, again due to the
collapsing cost of material production as various hybrid developments take
place between robotic and digital technology.
7. Many websites have replicated the success of Kickstarter (www.Kickstarter.
com) which has raised millions of dollars for innovative projects.
8. There is growing evidence that human brains are best orientated towards
small group interaction and this places functional limits of group size
(Dunbar 1992).
9. I envisage this collaboration happening primarily in offline contexts and the
integration of on line elements would be something which would evolve and
involve ongoing experimentation.
10. MOOCs (massive online open courses) have taken off in recently years
following a variety of models (Taylor 2011).
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Roger Hallam is a PhD candidate at Kings College London. He is currently

engaged in researching mechanisms and procedures which maxmise the ability of
radical campaign groups to achieve their objectives. He is co-director of Radical
Think Tank, a network of radical academics and activists researching ways to create
bottom up political change. As part of this organisation Roger has advised numer-
ous grassroots campaign groups and bottom up trade unions, as well as new social
movements such as Momentum and Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM).
He has thirty years of experience as a trainer and organiser in various political
movements and social enterprises, having worked for many years helping to set up
housing co-ops and workers co-ops. He lives on an organic vegetable farm in
Carmarthenshire, Wales.
CHAPTER 14
A Curious and Collaborative Future
Todd Hannula
I am an entrepreneur originally from the USA and now living in the UK.
After working in science, retail, service, and technology sectors at compa-
nies ranging from small to global, I struck out on my own in 2005. I have
started six businesses with an aim to blend social purpose and corporate
profit. I was selected among the top 1 % performers in a company employ-
ing over 400,000 persons, I made mistakes in my own businesses
that forced me to make 20 people redundant, and I have experienced
significant success building businesses in sectors where I had no prior
knowledge. These experiences have shaped my perspective, which is
summarised in part by Alec Ross (2016) as follows:
I have come to believe that the distribution of ability or aptitude is equal

around the world; it’s the distribution of opportunity that is not equal. This
is the core issue around inequality. More than race, more than education,
more than economic circumstance. Our connected world is changing this
reality.
Diamonds, diamonds everywhere
The world is full of diamonds (Steedman 2012).
T. Hannula (*)
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
e-mail: Todd@Shine50.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_14
272 T. HANNULA
In fact, there are so many diamonds that diamond miners considered

dumping several ship loads into the deepest part of the ocean (Wile
2009). It does not seem possible, surely, this is a fable of sorts. We know
only of the precious and expensive nature of this rare jewel.
The diamond engagement ring, so popular in the USA and similar
cultures, is actually a fable fabricated by the diamond industry. This
fable comes with specific details, to ensure the believer understands
the appropriate value of an engagement ring – two month’s salary
(Lee 2010).
This is what can be done in an industry with finite resources and total
control in the hands of just one or two companies. In the diamond world,
it was deBeers. DeBeers controlled over 80 % of the diamond market for
most of the twentieth century. It now controls less than 40 % of the market
(Zimnisky 2013).
Universities have enjoyed a similar position for over four centuries, as
the gatekeepers to economic prosperity, myth-makers of prestige, and the
cultural touchstone of a rite of passage.
We believed. We really did.
And higher education delivered. Universities around the world have led
with ground-breaking discoveries, research, and teaching. Students were
virtually guaranteed a modicum of success by attending. But, the university
of today is out of step with society.
Higher education has been regarded, for ages, as a noble pursuit.
Nobility is on the decline. However, this is more than a class problem
for the university, it is a signal of the fundamental structural problems
faced by universities inability to adapt to a changing world.
While the university is busy dumping its diamonds in the ocean, the
world is busy building new diamond mines.
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE CLASSROOM

Pedagogy: a derivative from the Greek (paidagogia), “I lead” and “child”
to form the literal meaning of “to lead a child” (Wheeler 2013).
Pedagogical approach to learning, practised at universities, was exactly
what was needed when civilisation was just figuring out how to harness
the power of knowledge.
Nowhere in the university is the pedagogical approach more evident
than in a lecture hall. The professor stands in front of her pupils, explain-
ing a theory or simply sharing information.
14 A CURIOUS AND COLLABORATIVE FUTURE 273
Why is it still like this?

The professor standing at the front of a group is a relic of the earliest
university settings. The professor stood at the front, talking at the students
because he was the only one in possession of the book containing the
information sought by the students. In many cases, the professor was
literally reading from the text (Hanford 2016).
Knowledge is no longer confined to a single or few copies of a book.
The professor is no longer trapped in a single location speaking to a
few hundred students. Massive online open courses (MOOCs) allow
the professor to reach a global audience. At present, MOOCs are
regarded by many universities as little more than a marketing platform
for developing nations’ students (Morris 2015). This is in large part due
to MOOC completion rates that are consistently below 13 % on average
(Shut 2015). If MOOCs were viewed as traditional courses, they would
be considered abject failures for their inability to produce compliant
students.
Pedagogy prefers compliance. Listen to the lecture, learn the material,
and pass the test. However, students are not failing to complete the
MOOCs out of some dereliction of duty or non-compliance. The modern
student does not want or need to comply. Passing the test is diminishing in
importance as students select the information they need from a MOOC
and move on to combine that information with other information to build
their knowledge base. A student’s application of this knowledge is far
more important to an employer than their ability to comply by passing a
test to earn a certificate.
GATEKEEPING IN AN INFORMATION WORLD

Knowledge is now ubiquitous.
Wikipedia attracts in excess of 374,000,000 unique visitors per month
(Wikipedia 2015).
For centuries, the degree from a university has symbolised a certifica-
tion of competence and more subtly, compliance. Mostly our culture has
agreed with this construct. However, that is changing rapidly.
Ernst & Young (EY), one of the largest and dynamic knowledge-based
companies in the world, have decided that a degree does not correlate to
competence. After conducting some internal research, it turns out that
there is no measurable difference in performance between employees with
degrees and those without degrees (Spoors 2015). As a result, EY have
274 T. HANNULA
cancelled their graduate programme and no longer require job candidates

to have a degree.
A large part of the university as gatekeeper role was wrapped
around the idea that a degree was a filter for opportunity – it helped
companies sift potential candidates. Or did it? 80 % of all jobs are
found through networking, not direct application processes (McIntosh
2012).
With opportunities being opened without the need for the university
degree, the anointing process becomes less relevant. Perhaps this is con-
tributing to lower student numbers for advanced degrees as former Dean,
Roger Martin, of University of Toronto’s Rotman School of
Management, insists that too many universities are vying for not enough
students and not focussing on the needs of their customers. This mistake,
ignoring the customer, is akin to the disasters at General Motors and
Chrysler, where too much attention and money was paid to staff, while
innovation was non-existent (Byrne 2015).
We [the world] create as much information in 2 days now as we did from the
dawn of man through 2003 (Siegler 2010).
Meanwhile, a small band of disrupters are creating an alternate certificate

process. This process begins at the student and stays with the student.
Badges, an idea being promoted by the Mozilla Foundation, have the
potential to dramatically change the certification process by allowing
micro certifications for discrete skills across a variety of areas inside and
out of the traditional certification realm (Mozilla 2016).
Currently, innovative universities are adopting badges as a digital
diploma. In the USA, it is a long list including Georgia State University,
Penn State, and University of Michigan to name a few (Mozilla 2016).
This is not particularly innovative. Like the MOOCs, this use of badges
only seeks to maintain the status quo – universities as the certifying
institutions.
Badges will become much more than digital diplomas as their adoption
increases. Badges will become portfolios for people. With workforces in
constant change, both in geography and skill, workers of the future will
need to demonstrate adaptability and a diverse knowledge set. A degree
handed out by a university does not do this. A set of badges containing the
work of a student does.
Imagine employers of the future relying on the actual datasets of a

person’s aptitude. An applicant will carry 10–30 digital badges containing
a myriad of videos, text, audio recording, pictures, and any other relevant
information that demonstrates their ability. This portfolio approach would
work just like the current process for art applicants.
Companies, hiring for adaptability and perspective, will be able to
gauge the applicant, not relying on a 3rd party certification. Digital
badges, although still in version 1.0, will disrupt university prestige in
ways we find impossible to imagine today.
This is especially true if you spent most of your youth as I did, watching
films, reading books, and hearing stories about the prestige of university.
I spent a considerable amount of time worrying about getting into the
most elite university possible.
Companies who agreed with the idea of university as gatekeeper and
cultural touchstone controlled the channels that delivered the university
message during my youth. This meant the stories I heard were deeply
entrenched in the mythology of university as a rite of passage.
Oxford is very pretty, but I don’t like to be dead. –T.S. Eliot (Seymour-
Jones 2002)
I was told that only by attending lectures inside the red brick buildings
of the university and listening closely to the teachings of my esteemed
professors could I hope to gain an experience that would shape my
future.
Companies in my childhood reflected the experience of the university.
Listen, apply, and conform. Sure, the university has always been a place of
some disruptive thinking. But, the disruptive thinking has been increas-
ingly compartmentalised to conform to the external company pressures to
create compliant workers.
However, the companies and the economies of the world have since
moved in a different direction. No longer is compliance the most valued
trait of new employees. Adaptability and agility are key criteria for new
hires (Spoors 2015). Company workforces look less like the institutional
military complex and more like packs of wolves.
This fundamental change in workforce design will force a change,
maybe even end, to the certification process, as we know it today. The
university of the future will be agile and dynamic with a greater number of
discrete learning programmes on offer.
276 T. HANNULA
COLLABORATION, INNOVATION AND CULTURE CHANGE

Collaborative, inquisitive companies are future proofed. Apple and
Google are the biggest and most admired companies in the world. Both
companies rose to the top of a number of rankings (revenue, admiration,
innovation) by asking questions of both their employees and suppliers
(Korn Ferry Hay Group 2016).
These questions sparked collaborations inside and outside the compa-
nies that helped them to move faster and grow sustainably. Instead of
increasingly unwieldy hierarchies, these companies continue to thrive on
collaborative cultures intent on breaking the status quo.
The recent break up of Google is one of the biggest public examples of
acknowledging the importance of collaboration (Kaushik 2016). In one
instance we are reminded of both the sheer scale of Google’s operations,
which includes an Alphabet soup of diverse divisions. However, unlike the
silo diversity of its predecessors like IBM and General Electric, Google
divisions build things together. Divisions are not so much as competing,
but collaborating to succeed.
We are witnessing this transformation in primary and secondary. They
are moving towards models of education that mirror the collaborative
nature of economies and society. Flip education, a progressive teaching
method originating between a few professors in 1997, looks closely at the
education paradigm and it asks the question: (Mazur 1997)
WHAT IS THE BEST USE OF STUDENT’S TIME

IN THE CLASSROOM?
By asking a simple question about the use of time, Flip education uncovers
the myriad of problems with current educational constructs. Pedagogical
models work for a society that demands achievement based certification
(tests) and armies of compliant workers. In contrast, Flip education
reverses the process of traditional education to open a number of possi-
bilities for progressing students through the process of learning.
In the flip model, students acquire the knowledge around a subject
outside the classroom. The teacher facilitates discussion and exercises
with the students, applying the knowledge in the classroom (Abeysekera
and Dawson 2015). The teacher or professor of the future is the not
the distributor of knowledge. More likely, they are the facilitator of the
application of knowledge.
Critics of this kind of approach, defenders of the status quo, will alert us
to the dangers in the specialised sciences, business, and even some art
studies. They will warn of the need to be exact in our adoption of knowl-
edge. They will wave the flag for the power of singular knowledge transfer
and the dangers of individual interpretation.
However, the defenders of the status quo will be reminded of the
biggest breakthroughs in science, business, and the arts. The Human
Genome Project, the rise of Google, and the impact of modern art on
society are all the result of collaboration.
Universities became a partner with industry over a century ago – not
just the recipient of endowments for buildings. This remains a critical
component of university sustainability. In fact, this partnership is increas-
ing all the time as countries limit the amount of government funding for
the university. (Science/Business Innova on Board AISBL 2012)
But, as Professor Dame Ann Dowling and non-executive at BP Inc.
points out, “We need a change of culture in our universities to support and
encourage collaboration with industry” (Barber 2015). The small
amounts of partnerships occurring are primarily focussed in the research
areas of the university.
A useful university -industry collaboration that begins in the research
department often finds its way to incorporation as a separate company.
However, this model may be overcomplicating the situation. Companies
often seek smaller companies to help them continue to innovate.
University partnership spin-outs are such companies. Imagine what indus-
try could do with all the spare time it would if it did not need to integrate
separate entities into its organisation. Small teams, looking very similar to
the innovative spin out companies of today, will be the prize of tomor-
row’s firms and universities are well placed to host a variety of these
innovative small teams.
We can look to IBM for an example of how large organisations like a
university may harness the collective power of several small teams. IBM’s
Watson project has opened its API to allow many small groups to work
together, with IBM, to solve extremely large and complex problems. This
collaborative approach on intellectual property is yielding impressive results
with the development of heuristic learning engines that can decipher person-
ality by using 300 words from a person. These can be as basic as tweets
(IBM Watson Developer Cloud 2016).
IBM, one of the largest companies on the planet, is leveraging the
speed and innovation of thousands of smaller companies by inverting
278 T. HANNULA
their research department. This inside out approach allows IBM to con-
nect with opportunities that would not normally be available because they
are entering partnerships with a positive bias and object generosity. In
other words, building a framework based on the idea it will work and
providing more than enough resources to see that it does.
In a way, IBM is redefining what it means to acquire smaller companies
and intellectual property. A small team, loosely organised, is a much easier
partner or acquisition than a company with a myriad of investors and
employees running redundant departments.
A university with the resources, flexibility, and collaborative setting will
be poised to take advantage of the changing landscape of global econo-
mies, transforming itself into the host for collaborative teams of learners
who break things.
The impact of a collaborative economy will disrupt the entire idea of
student certification. Degrees, comprising learning under a single subject
will be meaningless to an increasingly portfolio driven labour market
where most employees of the future will be generalists who connect the
specific nature of a task to the human interaction of purchasing or engage-
ment with a product.
In other words, robots, algorithms, and software will replace profes-
sional expertise. This is already happening today in Legal, Accounting, and
Journalism. Specialisms are experiencing a transformation that will likely
result in the loss of a significant portion of current jobs.
Students, to prepare for work in the future, will need one skill in parti-
cular. They will need to know how to collaborate to learn. Acquisition of a
degree, which can never keep pace with industry, will become secondary.
Along with the degree, the rite of passage associated with attending
university is disappearing. Many young people now view the cost, uncer-
tain economy, and graduate employment as reasons to skip university
(Recruiter 2012). With more employers not requiring degrees, many
will choose to enter work, instead of university.
However, the university that specialises in creating an experience that
leads to micro certifications, constantly adapts to changing trends in
workforce requirements, and is focussed on the need for students to try
many things and fail at many things will find an audience.
I always tell my students – fail quickly. The quicker you fail the more chances
you have to fail at something else before you eventually maybe find the thing
that you don’t fail at . . . as Steven Levitt put it (Levitt 2014)
Successive generations will have at least 10 different employers in their

lifetime (Meister 2012). They will need adaptive skills. They will need to
be able to retrain when moving across jobs. The university of the future,
with its flexibility certification programmes and attention to workforce
trends is well placed to provide an experience that prepares the student for
this inevitability.
PRINCIPLES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE

Disruption is already occurring at universities. As such, the prediction of
the exact form or function of the university becomes less relevant than the
guiding principles. If the university adapts badges, flips its classrooms, and
restructures its assets to become more nimble and dynamic is of little
consequence if the underlying principles of the university are not aligned
with long-term sustainability. A university that adapts the following prin-
ciples will be an organisation that thrives on change both inside its
organisation and within its primary production regardless the mechanisms.
If I look closely at the organisations around the globe that thrive, not
just survive the peaks and troughs of the economy and technological
changes, I see many share the following traits that lead to long-term
positive impacts.
Positivity + Generosity + Empathy + Curiosity = Positive Impact
Positivity
Positivity is a positive bias to action, exploration, and outcomes. It is not
simply being optimistic. The future university conducts all its affairs with
less litigation and more openness to connect with external partners.
Positivity is the opposite of gatekeeping. This principle breaks down the
boundaries of an organisation so that ideas and effort flow more freely
across its domain.
Positivity comes with an added benefit, attraction. Vetting or screening
candidates perpetuates systematic inequality and filters out diversity.
Positive bias organisations attract people with skills and ideas. In the
USA, this is referred to as a “can-do” attitude. Across the world, it is
more often related to a perception of risk, acknowledging that a positive
bias to action is almost always less risky than stasis.
280 T. HANNULA
Open source initiatives, especially in coding, are the superior examples

of harnessing the power of positive bias across a group lacking a filter for
vetting participants.
Linux, Apache, Firefox, and Wordpress are incredible examples of open
source projects creating dominant products in their categories. Linux is
the dominant operating system for servers. Apache is the dominant web
server software since the beginning of the graphical World Wide Web.
Firefox remains staunchly open source and touts more security and faster
speeds than the well-funded competing Internet browsers of Apple and
Google. WordPress, as of 2015, is used by 27 % of the top 100 blogs on
the Internet (Pingdom 2009).
In the age of information, those who collaborate to gather, sort,
decipher, and apply knowledge will outpace traditional institutions.
As a result, the successful university of the future will attract talent,
ideas, and customers by acting with a positive bias and collaborative spirit
that is summarised in Don Miguel’s, the Toltec spirit leader and former
Harvard University medical doctor, book The Four Agreements (1997):
1. Don’t assume. [You can interpret as seek to understand, even your

competition.]
2. Don’t take it personally. [In the business of education, it’s not about
you, it’s about the customer.]
3. Integrity of your word. [Even in bureaucracies like universities, it’s
important to keep your promises to your customers.]
4. Do your best. [While this may vary from day to day, universities
must always innovate, never stagnate.]
These are the four agreements with [my emphasis].

These are simple ideals that cover a surprisingly large array of the issues
facing institutions in transition.
Generosity
Generosity is probably the most difficult principle to build into any large
organisation. It can feel as if the organisation is simply giving too much.
However, generosity is not about giving away your core product, it is
about an attitude around your assets.
In the absence of a generosity, a culture of hoarding grows inside a
company, creating inflexibility, division, and stifling growth.
The difficulty for large organisations, such as universities, is the inability

to see most of their assets as just that, assets. The desks, rooms, buildings,
and even ideas of the university are not its core product. Nor are they
merely sums on a balance sheet. The generous organisation views these
assets as an opportunity to connect with future customers and collabora-
tors. In the case of fixed assets, prevalent at universities, the opportunity
can often take the form of sharing or loaning of them to partners. It almost
always includes the sharing of ideas and connections.
This flies directly in the face of decades of management science that
demands a direct Return on Investment (ROI), Internal Rate of Return
(IRR), or similar formulaic assessment of the use of assets. Generosity
simply does not work this way. The university of the future will see beyond
the myopic formulas to create a dynamic student environment.
Empathy and Impact

Empathy encourages understanding. Understanding leads to discovery.
Discovery leads to innovation. And so it goes.
There is a direct link between empathy and commercial success.
Businesses are more profitable and productive when they act ethically,
treat their staff well, and communicate better with their customers,
according to the latest Lady Geek Global Empathy Index, as presented
in Harvard Business Review (Parmer 2015).
Being clear about how the business of the university weaves impact into
its DNA is a critical part of displaying empathy. At present, most univer-
sities make extraordinary efforts to make a positive societal impact in a
variety of traditional ways. This is good news for those universities, as it is
proven that companies exhibiting impact through a purpose driven culture
usually deliver returns far greater than those run simply by the numbers
(Moss Kanter 2011).
An example of how the university of the future might reimagine their
application of empathy to create impact is illustrated by a place I founded
in 2007, Shine Space. Shine Space, a conference and office space in Leeds,
England uses its space to help refugees, artists, and children. Shine allows
local organisations to book free meeting rooms with all the perks of a
paying client. This is especially helpful to local charitable organisations
meeting with refugees who want to avoid the stigma of refugee centre.
The offer of a free meeting room generates food and drinks sales and
builds goodwill with both the community our Shine’s clients.
282 T. HANNULA
Shine is also one of the largest art galleries in Leeds. The building, with
significant white wall space, provides artists with a space to display and sell
their art at no charge. Changing artwork dramatically improves the envir-
onment. In a world where being an artist is increasingly difficult to make a
living, Shine is playing a role in reversing that trend while improving their
business offer.
These are just two examples of how the university of the future can
reimagine its assets to build an empathetic and impactful organisational
culture.
Curiosity
At the heart of the university of the future is curiosity. Organisations that
amplify curiosity often experience more innovation and employ happier
people. As a result, curious institutions are constantly trying to evolve their
products and services. The result, of which, is a dynamic and adaptable
university environment.
Curiosity will not just affect the organisational culture, it will change
the way universities educate. Learning in the future will be increasingly
user led and learning organisations that foster curiosity in both their
customer facing environments and within their own internal structure
will be most attractive to students.
Although currently the domain of primary schools, with a few secondary
school examples, the Montessori method provides ample evidence of the
benefits of a learning organisation adopting curiosity as a principle.
. . . the Montessori approach has spawned a creative elite, including Google’s

founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, video game
pioneer Will Wright, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, cook Julia Child
and rapper Sean “P.Diddy” Combs (Denning 2011).
SPECIFIC THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES

TO THE UNIVERSITY
It is helpful, when predicting the future, to evaluate the competitive

threats that may force an organisation to innovate towards a predicted
future. The university of today faces the following threats; transaction
costs, network effect, and innovation factor (Kawalek and Roberts 2016).
Transaction costs are near zero for the dissemination of knowledge.

Network proliferation and sustainability means the network effect is grow-
ing faster than the incumbent can react. And at present, The university of
today is being outpaced on innovation, resulting in a bevy of competitors
developing alternatives to higher education.
Peter Kawalek and David Roberts go into expertly crafted detail about
these threats to the university, including identifying them and providing
examples of how the university may adopt the threats under an incumbent
strategy.
If we look at transaction costs as an opportunity, not a threat, we
arrive at some interesting possibilities. With transaction costs approaching
zero for the dissemination and obtaining of information, we can see the
university of the future is not a hoarder of information. An opportunity
exists for the university, to dominate these new information channels
by sharing its knowledge for free. Thousands will use this information
without paying, but users will see the university as a linchpin and feel
compelled to connect others to the university.
From the thousands of users enjoying free content, a smaller number
will matriculate to the core business of the university of the future—
facilitation of learning and the application of free knowledge.
The idea of free knowledge is the first step to unlocking a myriad of
opportunities for the university of the future, as Nicholas Lovell explains in
his ground-breaking book, The Curve (2013). The Curve suggests the
modern organisation cannot share enough. Lovell suggests companies will
seek attention from a large audience with free content and or product. The
quality of this sharing will entice super fans to engage with the organisation
at paid levels. Unlike freemium or standard subscription models, The Curve
illustrates that super fans, your best customers, should not be limited by
what they can spend. This results in deeper engagements with your
customers and a constant pool of new customers waiting in the free zone.
The network effect, a threat to current universities, will make hoarders
the losers and sharing curators the winners in the future. The more
information the university of the future shares, the more people will
engage with the university. Subsequently, super fan ranks will grow, and
revenue will follow.
To see the ideas about free and network effects catalogued by The
Curve, we can look to a learning and development as play software,
Minecraft. Microsoft bought Minecraft for US$2,500,000,000 in 2015
(Miller 2014). Minecraft is a free game. Wait, what?
284 T. HANNULA
The makers of Minecraft realised what many other game makers are
realising, a quality, free game attracts a lot of users. From this pool of
users, come many super fans. These super fans, which were referred to in
the twentieth century as customers, are presented with options to enhance
their experience within the game. These enhancements are products the
customer can purchase, inside the free game. Apply this to the product
structure of the university of the future and you begin to see how free
knowledge provided inside a dynamic and collaborative environment can
lead to a sustainable economic model for higher education.
Lovell, in The Curve, suggests organisations do not cap the amount of
money a customer can spend, as is often the case with subscriptions.
Instead, the modern company is constantly imagining new ways to
engage with its core product or service. This creates deep relationships
with its users.
The innovation factor, a significant threat, will be the most difficult
for universities to adopt and invert as a strategy. In this case, the music
industry provides a helpful case study for industries facing the threat of
innovation. The music industry almost died fighting technological
advances and consumer desires. Luckily, but several declining years later,
the record labels realised that you cannot hoard music. Like knowledge,
music is impossible to control when the cost of distribution becomes
zero and there are few or weak barriers to producing high quality music
(Lovell 2013).
Imagine how different the music industry would look today if the labels
had embraced the changing relationship with their customers. We are in
the early days of seeing what is possible. Spotify, Apple Music, and other
streaming services are making music more accessible and in many cases,
more enjoyable.
But, record sales are down. Record sales have been consistently going
down. However, it is myopic to suggest the music industry is in decline, it
is simply changing. Older music is currently outselling new music, which is
something thought impossible only a decade ago. More people are attend-
ing live shows. More people are discovering more artists (Pugsley 2016).
The industry is changing and so must the measurements.
The music industry is no longer the gatekeeper, certifier, or manager of
our experience with music. The parallels to institutions of higher educa-
tion are numerous. The university of the future can see this and like the
successful music industry stalwarts they will create new models for the
monetisation of their core product.
Current higher education organisations share much with the music

industry of the past. Centralised power, control of distribution, and the
ability to make or break its primary producers of its product (faculty). In
fact, faculty tenure is akin to a great record deal. However, when the
professors do not need tenure to reach their audience, they can become
rock stars on their own. Taking a cue from the book of business, professors
of the future will imagine ways to attract students to them. The resources
they need to communicate, research, and learn with their students are
readily available outside the confines of the university of today. And the
key to working with this construct in the future is understanding how
technology and subsequently culture are affecting the university today.
WHO DOES THE UNIVERSITY SERVE?

We have analysed the structure and core business of the university of
the future, but we have not addressed in detail whom this new organisa-
tion is serving. For many, it appears that the university serves the student.
This is only partly true. While the university needs to attract students with
outstanding services, it is the long-term objective of the student and her
master that the university must serve. Getting a job or providing the tools
to engage in meaningful work is the strategic aspiration of today’s univer-
sity student. Companies and economies are her master and subsequently
masters of the university.
As an employer, I am dumbfounded how the experience on offer at too
many universities around the world is still focussed solely on the acquisi-
tion of academic knowledge. As such, students enter the workplace unpre-
pared for the uncertainty, workplace dynamics, and responsibility. Most
companies need workers who are self-reliant, able to apply knowledge with
little guidance, and adaptable to change. In a word, flexible (HR Grapevine
2014). The university of the future will create environments that amplify
the development of these traits in its students. One aspect of this environ-
ment, campus life, will mean several different things to students as the
university manages a dynamic environment of resources, place, and people.
With this in mind, it becomes easy to imagine the successful university as a
place that exists mostly in the mind of the student.
Let us examine how a large organisation, like the university with its
numerous physical assets, could exist in the mind of the student. We can
do this by reviewing how some of the world’s biggest companies such as
Amazon, Apple and even stalwarts like General Electric do not exist in a
286 T. HANNULA
geography or space for their workers and customers. They are ideas in
their customers’ minds.
Importantly, these businesses no longer own the production facilities
that produce their profits. In fact, very few homes, businesses, or govern-
ments still own or directly control most of the processes to produce their
product or service. The home, since the industrial age, is filled with
products that serve to sustain a home life that are not made by or main-
tained by the homeowner. The business, since the rise of the communica-
tion age, delivers its core product/service via a loosely held group of
suppliers and distributors. And governments are increasingly using private
companies to deliver many of the services (health, education, and social
services) for which taxpayers require.
When comparing, the university is an anomaly in this regard. Many
universities manage and control all aspects of the student experience –
from housing, to food, to laboratories, to buildings, to professors. When
we review the diversity and breadth of all that is under control of
the typical university, it is not difficult to see how the university of the
future could re-organise itself to produce a product which exists mostly in
the mind of its customers.
THE BIGGER PICTURE

While I have examined how and why the university exists to explore
and understand how it might be designed in the future, it is important
to understand why it exists at all. Technology, principles, and even
approaches to change which are customer focussed will fall flat if they do
not consider the reason for an organisation’s very existence.
I believe the university exists to lift the human spirit and mind as a
centre for the contemplation and exploration of ideas. In addition, the
university plays a vital role in cultural change and has done so throughout
history. From the early days of training men to be better business people
and members of society by teaching them the classics to hosting and
growing student led social justice in the twentieth century to bringing
scientific breakthroughs to bear for the betterment of the human race
throughout its existence, the university is and should always be a place for
progress.
Critically thinking about the future of the university is an essential part
of ensuring disruptive, transactional, and technological changes do not
diminish the key role the university as a place for progress. It is easy to be
mesmerised by cultural and technological changes that predict the end

of the establishment. While this may be relevant to predicting business
success, it must be tempered by the important role an organisation plays in
society, whether it is a hospital or a university. My proclamations here are
meant to suggest a practical operational future for the university as part of
a critical thought experiment to maintain the role of university in a world
of constant change. In fact, all of the changes I predict are part of an
evolution of the university.
The university of the future may be many tangible things, but I believe
it will always exist to be a keeper of a societal flame that shows us how we
constantly move from darkness to enlightenment through the contempla-
tion and exploration of ideas, regardless the environment.
PREDICTING THE FUTURE

As I have mentioned, it is easy to dream up scenarios for the uni-
versity of the future. We can predict, with some accuracy, what
technologies will play a big role in the design of the university. We
can examine and subsequently suggest the future core product of the
university. We can even look into the future to guess how a student’s,
a company’s, and even society’s relationship will change in the next
decade or two.
However, it is not the technological widgets and processes that need to
be put in place to ensure success, rather the principles as part of a the
bigger idea of universities themselves. I have discussed how the role of
gatekeeper, holder of prestige, and manager of a rite of passage will evolve
into facilitator, collaborator, and flexible provider of opportunities. This
discussion illustrated how the university changes will be directed by the
changes in how, not why the university exists. The university will go from
a place of learning, a depository of knowledge – existing to safely hold
onto and advance knowledge towards an organisation which helps stu-
dents understand how to learn, access information, and imagine a variety
of futures for a variety of employers.
These are simple constructs to imagine. Yet, the implementation is
complicated by the myriad of choices the university will have to make at
each step along the way. I suggest the university will make better choices
at each of the decision points if they remember the important role they
play in society and how the adherence to the principles outlined herein can
amplify this role: positivity, generosity, empathy, impact, and curiosity.
288 T. HANNULA
Yet, even with all of this in place, the adoption of technology,

the innovative inversion of strategic threats, and the adherence to some
key principles, successfully transitioning to the future will rely on commu-
nication of all of these.
A century of holding information and prestige has created a culture
of one directional communication. In contrast, a child attending a top
grammar school in the UK illustrates how much bi-directional commu-
nication changes the relationship and success of a student’s engagement.
From day one, the communications are plentiful and diverse via the
website, email, and software on the student’s iPad. The sphere of
this plentiful and clear communication comprises teachers, students,
administrators, and parents. Complete transparency and its inherent
bi-directionality are now the norm in modern Grammar School commu-
nications. (Sheriff 2015)
I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has pro-
found effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how
they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in, said Bill
Gates, the founder of Microsoft (Gates 2000).
No longer are students viewed as fixed objects in time either achieving or

not, but rather as evolving, growing people. Grades are dominated by a
variety of feedback, while attitude and effort are prized above almost all
else (Sheriff 2015).
We aren’t particularly obsessed with your son or daughter getting the high-
est grades. We are interested in the process of learning, discovery and
aptitude to learning. These are the qualities that are most prized by the
future (Sheriff 2015).
When organisations communicate effectively, which includes having an

ability to hold conversations, the organisations learn and grow dynami-
cally. Customers are drawn to these kinds of organisations and readily
share their pleasure with transparent companies.
The cultural, business, and technological changes we are experiencing
today are writing the script for the next decade. It is not a matter of
whether we think the university will change or evolve. It is not even a
matter of when. The university that will exist in the future is the organisa-
tion that pauses today to reflect on their purpose and principles,
determines how to convert threats into opportunities for innovation, and

views bi-directional communication as essential to operations.
The university of the future is inquisitive, and right now it is asking the
following questions:
Why do we exist?
How can we exhibit the principles of the modern organisation?
How do we communicate?
If we look deep into the value of our organisation, what are the core set of
products and services only we can deliver? What can we deliver via
partners?
Do we understand fully, that modern prestige is something that our
customers bestow upon us, not the other way around?
How can we move quicker, collaborate more, and share often?
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Todd Hannula is a social entrepreneur, originally from the USA. He has worked
in science, technology, service, and the retail sectors. Todd built six businesses and
raised over £35m for ventures since landing in England in 2005; including the
award-winning £5m Shine Space. His current venture, daCunha, is a curiosity-
driven platform publishing short fiction, curated conversations, and personal
narrative non-fiction. daCunha publishes a handful of tangentially connected
works across writing, audio, video, music, and visual arts. With daCunha, Todd
maintains his long-term commitment to building ventures with positive social,
economic, and environmental impacts woven into their business DNA.
CHAPTER 15
Speculations on University Futures in 2025:

Corporate Cloning, Intellectual
Underground, and a New
Critical Awareness
George Cairns
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I present alternative speculations on the state of the
university in the year 2025. I do so in order to prompt critical thinking
in the present on what are the key “driving forces” – political, economic,
social, technological, ecological, and legal (PESTEL) factors – that have
brought universities to where they are now and that will determine the
form they will take in the future. My hope is that, in recognising the
potential for both irreparable damage to and regeneration of the university
as a place of intellectual inquiry and learning, today’s academic leaders will
be stimulated to act to seek to promote that latter and to avoid the former.
The approach I adopt is based upon the application of “scenario thinking”
(Wright and Cairns 2011), in particular the use of “extreme scenarios”.
Extreme scenarios present narratives of possible futures that are intended
to be explored and tested in terms of their “backward logic” – can the
G. Cairns (*)
QUT Business School, Brisbane, Australia
e-mail: georgemcairns@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_15
294 G. CAIRNS
foundations of such futures be identified in the present and recent past?

If they stand up to tests of plausibility and possibility, then they must be
considered in terms of their probability and of the actions that they require
as response in the present and near future.
1 JANUARY 2025 – INITIAL REFLECTIONS ON HOPES

FOR THE MILLENNIUM
Looking back quarter of a century to the birth of the new Millennium, the
world appeared to many then to be at the dawn of a new era of coopera-
tion and collaboration. Optimism reigned, particularly when the feared
“Millennium Bug” turned out to be of little or no consequence. Other
negative factors appeared to be turning round. All member states of the
United Nations had signed up to the Millennium Development Goals
(The World Bank 2016), aimed at halving global poverty, curbing the
spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015.
Many countries had committed to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reversing
climate change (United Nations 2014), and there were hopes that major
players like the USA that initially refused would follow suit. In order
to meet these challenges, universities were seen as key institutions for
producing enlightened, critical-thinking graduates and promoting research
that would enable these ambitious targets to be met.
However, events of the first decade of the century did not fall into line
with this optimism. Soon, came the terrorist attacks in New York,
London, and Madrid, then the global financial crisis (GFC) hit in 2008 –
with ripples lasting well into the second half of the next decade – and the
world saw USA-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The so-called Arab
Spring that was received with great enthusiasm and optimism (cf. Berman
2013) faded rapidly to a “winter” of conflict and fragmentation. Without
the necessary collaboration and commitment, it came as no great surprise
when the majority of the stretch targets of the new age were not met
(UN 2015). Worse, by 2015 the gap between rich and poor had widened
across the globe, both within (Fitz 2015) and across nations (Piketty
2014). At the same time, accelerating climate change led some scientists
to warn of the potential global collapse of key ecological indicators
(Milman 2015). Meanwhile, access to education – particularly for young
women (UNICEF 2015) – became impossible in many areas, HIV/AIDS
remained a major health issue (WHO 2015), and the world experienced
new epidemics that threatened global pandemic; first Ebola then the Zika
15 SPECULATIONS ON UNIVERSITY FUTURES IN 2025: CORPORATE CLONING… 295
virus (cf. WHO 2016). Such were the changes and challenges that some
commentators posited the emergence of a new “Dark Age” (cf. Moeller
2015) while others (e.g. Sardar 2010, p.435) spoke of how “(a)ll that was
normal has now evaporated (and) we have entered postnormal times”.
Universities were not immune to change in this period of flux. Even
at the turn of the century, there had been critical commentary from
some on the emerging culture of performance measurement and manage-
ment of the individual academic (cf. Elton 2000). Under the terms of
“New Managerialism”, academics were subjected to regimes of account-
ability for their teaching performance, their research outputs and income
generation, using short-term, easily measured metrics that could be
subjected to external audit (cf. Deem 2004). Academics were held accoun-
table for their teaching performance as assessed by the students themselves
(cf. Moore and Kuol 2005), and research outputs were assessed using new
journal ranking lists (cf. Harzing 2015). While the individual academic
became a unit of measurement and accountability within the university,
the new millennium saw universities themselves in so-called developed
economies have their public funding reduced dramatically. This removal
of funding led to savage cuts to academic and postgraduate research posts,
particularly in “non-performing” arts and humanities faculties (cf. Blank
2015; McKenna 2015; Young 2015).
As dreams faded and nightmares emerged, the second decade was one
of upheaval for the university sector.
THE 2010S – AN ERA OF FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE

2010–2015 – From Public Good to Economic Profit: What
Is the Core Purpose of University Learning?
The first half of the 2010s saw dramatic change to the nature of univer-
sities, as the fallout of the GFC continued to affect economies across
the world, funding was cut further, yet student numbers continued to
rise (cf. Oliff et al. 2013). In Australia, reporting on a speculative analysis
of the university sector, Ernst and Young (2012) posited that the
“traditional” model of university – offering a broad portfolio of pro-
grams/courses from a teaching and research base with the necessary
“back shop” functions to service it – would prove unviable for all but a
few over the coming decades. The report saw universities competing
globally for mobile students who had open access to massive amounts of
296 G. CAIRNS
“knowledge” online, needing to build close ties with industry, yet facing a
contestable market for tighter government budgets. As some universities
struggled to balance their budget in the new marketised sector, curriculum
changes were forced in and some tenured academics were forced out
(cf. Flaherty 2014). In less developed economies, whole universities
were closed down (cf. Mogollon and Kraul 2015). Across the OECD
countries, there was a call for universities to move from “research and
teaching as if they are isolated from the society and region around them”
(Sharma 2012) to better serve their regional economies and societies.
In the UK, university-business collaboration was seen as crucial, where
“(u)niversities are an integral part of the supply chain to business” (Wilson
2012, p. 1).
In Australia, following the example of the USA, then Prime Minister
Tony Abbott proposed that the nation might adopt the “P-TECH”
(Pathways in technology early career high) school model, where the
boundaries of school, university, and business are blurred, and where
high school students can “graduate” with a degree after several extra
years of study (Kelly 2014). This degree would be focussed on skills for
employability in the new economy. Meanwhile, in a further challenge
to notions of a broad-based, socially oriented university curriculum,
and in order to meet their individual and specific educational – or
training – needs, a number of large organisations had set up their own
“corporate universities” to deliver bespoke programs (cf. Allen 2002;
Jarvis 2012).
While the dominant discourse of the “establishment triumvirate”
of government, business and university leaders was of the need for
change in response to a new “challenging, market-oriented landscape”
(UniversitiesUK 2012, p. 23), some commentators (e.g. Hemsley-Brown
2011) raised concerns about the push for universities to adopt the free
market business model as the educational response to problems caused by
it, such as the GFC and the failure of institutional banking frameworks
across the globe. At the same time, in response to free market pressures of
tuition fees and the cost of living, students across the world were resorting
to novel approaches to finance their university studies, both legal
(cf. Mirror.co.uk 2015; Yahoo7 News 2016) and illegal (cf. Schneiders
and Millar 2015; Tham 2015), with perhaps questionable moral founda-
tions if education is considered a “right” for all. However, the questions
of legality and morality were easily blurred in a world of cross-cultural
interpretations (cf. Li 2015).
At the end of the first fifteen years of the new millennium, there was
much to question about where university systems and structures might be
heading, who would benefit from any new models, and at what cost to
others. Academe itself seemed to be divided, with some responding to the
uncertainties of public sector funding and more demanding and globalised
students through a call for “wider engagement with corporate, industry
and business partners as well as the professions” (Dowton 2013, p. 5).
Others, however (e.g. Macfarlane 2012), questioned the challenge
that was presented in this society to the notion of the university as
“a transmitter, preserver and creator of knowledge” (p. 9), pointing
out that Google was “arguably now a more powerful transmitter of
knowledge” (p. 9). As the rhetoric of the “knowledge society” became
all pervasive, some questioned whether knowledge had become conflated
with mere information (cf. Stiegler 2014).
Over several decades, a growing number of academics had seen the possi-
bilities of challenge and change to the growing power and dominance of
“managerialism” and market-led higher education through the emergent
field of Critical Management Studies (CMS) (cf. Alvesson & Willmott
1992; Grey and Willmott 2005). However, as Fournier and Smith (2012)
were to point out, these CMS scholars were by and large located within and
reliant upon academic schools and departments that were driven by manage-
rialism and market needs. While these writers referred to Willmott’s (2011)
critique of “list fetishism” in universities, and his view that, “(most) university
managers who ‘promote fetishism’ are also aware of its ‘perverse and farcical’
nature” (Fournier and Smith 2012, p. 471), they saw the “more pertinent
questions (as) the tepid response of individuals subject to its regime” (p. 471).
However, they later pointed out that, “(w)e all have to make a living and
sometimes this is what is most important. Doing or not doing things is not the
only question, what is important is that we recognise the reasons” (p. 472).
Sadly, while this article started by asserting that, “CMS (had) tended to spell
out its critiques mainly amongst itself and (had) failed to engage with a
broader public” (p. 463), this critique itself was published in an outlet that
set itself “at the borders of organisation studies” (Ephemera, undated) rather
than as a resource for such a broader public.
What became certain after the first fifteen years of the millennium was
that powerful forces for change had taken a grip of university systems
across the world. Just how these forces would impact over the next decade
was a subject worthy of contemplation and debate, but this appeared to be
sadly lacking. Many academics appeared either resigned to or accepting of
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the new performative, marketised regime. The critical voices seemed only
to speak to themselves, with some vain hope that, either their message
would permeate the mainstream by osmosis or, things would return to
“normal” by some natural swing back to an equilibrium state of knowl-
edge being valued for itself rather than for its economic transaction value.
The hope of message transfer by osmosis seemed mere wishful thinking,
while the notion that the human world tends toward some natural
equilibrium had been challenged in critique of the forces of unchecked
momentum toward extreme financial gain and greed that had precipitated
the GFC (Roeder 2010).
2015–2020 – Reinforcing the Corporate Agenda: The Corporate

University and the Quasi-Public Institution
During the period from 2015 to 2020, many of the world’s “leading”
universities – as proclaimed by global rankings supported by commercial
enterprises for their own purposes – adopted corporate names in front of
their traditional names, many from the new multinational powerhouse
firms of China, Russia, India, and Brazil. The corporate logos of
these sponsors dominated the physical and virtual presences of the
institutions, headlining web pages and dominating rooflines of the
campus. Most of these universities were by now dominated by faculties
of business; producing corporatised graduates for the company man-
agement structure; and engineering and science, undertaking research
to meet the corporate R&D agenda. In the absence of reasonable, if
any, public funding, those universities that had not obtained corporate
sponsorship at the same level were largely reliant on student income
from tuition fees, through providing large-scale teaching by academics
who were pressured to meet both “student satisfaction” and “research
excellence” criteria. These institutions also put pressure on the individual
academics to bring in funding for this research through ever-more-
competitive grant applications, or through bringing in personal industry
sponsorship.
By the end of the 2010s, what was noticeable across both groups of
universities was that faculties of arts, social science and similar “unsustain-
able” fields were by and large marginalised and underfunded, or absent.
Where academic study in these fields continued it was generally only in
one of two ways. Within the corporatised universities, a small number
of highly specialised faculties were supported by government departments
of culture and heritage and by sponsoring business. The sole purpose of

these was to train those necessary to protect tourism-related artefacts
of economic value to the nation. In the largely self-sufficient universities,
a few small faculties continued to teach small numbers of committed
students, partly supported by their fee payments but by and large depen-
dent upon the benevolence of the dominant business, engineering and
science faculty members who “tolerated” their presence, possibly as a
matter of conscience as to what the term “university” used to mean.
However, what mattered most for the future at that time was not how
these groups survived, but just the simple matter that they did survive.
NARRATIVE ONE: THE 2020S – AN ERA

OF DIVERSITY . . . BUT OF WHAT KIND?
Read from here or, alternatively, read Narrative Two first and come back to
here . . . or skip between the two . . .
At the start of this third decade of the century, I remember how we
faced stark choices as to how we wanted to see our universities move
forward, and the decisions we took as a result.
While a few members of society questioned the trend, those in positions
of power, authority and personal gain were more than happy to go with
the flow. Meanwhile, the majority of the populace remained either ignor-
ant of, or unconcerned by the turn of events. As the world faced continu-
ing situations of conflict and growing unrest within and across national
boundaries coming into the decade, governments failed to come together
to work collaboratively to address major issues of climate change, armed
conflict and resource depletion. However, they realised that the way to
keep their own populations docile was through providing a sufficient
degree of personal “comfort” and security, while maintaining a healthy
level of fear, both for the self and of the “other”. This security came at the
cost of personal freedom and confidentiality, but for most this was a small
price to pay. Societies became places of surveillance and oversight, where
individuality was encouraged, but only within the parameters of com-
munal expectation. Some commentators likened the new society to
Orwell’s 1984, but the reality has turned out more akin to Huxley’s
Brave New World.
There has been a degree of recognition of the finite nature of resources –
material and energy. However, rather than driving down consumption,
it has stimulated new forms of production, with a focus on keeping the
300 G. CAIRNS
populace as a whole satisfied. Business and government have worked hard

to enable the continuation of a consumption society, not through increas-
ing access to quality goods for all, but through increasing the availability
and desirability of low-cost products of “massification”. Intellectual activity
has been specifically directed at this, both by government policy toward,
and business demands on universities. Scientists and engineers have
focussed their attention and knowledge on how to maintain and increase
the production of “things” – largely by recycling other “things” already in
use. To drive this recycling, software designers have been focussed on a
continual cycle of “upgrades”, new “functionalities” and, in particular,
new redundancies all of which drive – enforce – continuous purchasing
by the consumer.
While some of this activity is directed at the design, delivery, and
obsolescence of “practical” goods – fridges, washing machines, dryers –
most of it has been focussed on development of ever-more engaging
and immersive forms of “infotainment”. All-pervasive devices enable
people to watch and interact with a never-ending stream of games,
“reality” shows, virtual reality worlds, and so on. Admittedly, this rapid
expansion of the infotainment industries has led to growth in some
seemingly creative fields in universities, where artists and designers of
multiple disciplines work to meet the unending demand for novel
experiences. But, this demand is fickle and at the mercy of consumer
fads that can change in the blink of an eye, driven by the marketing
hype and product placement strategies of big businesses. In addition,
the emergent influence of the “Internet of Everything” has ensured
that all ideas are available to all – unless they clearly threaten the status
quo of the powers that be. The strident voices of climate deniers,
various religious fundamentalists and assorted flat-Earthers gain equal –
and in total, much greater – air time and impact as those of climate scientists,
philosophers and seekers of reason.
In education, the focus of early schooling is now on providing mini-
mum standards of literacy and numeracy, reliant upon didactic and repe-
titive training to meet government metrics, rather than stimulation to
aspirational learning. While this seems like a desolate and soulless world,
there are remaining pockets of what would have been classified as intellec-
tual activity in a bygone era. There are numbers of individuals who would
in the past have held tenured academic posts in top universities. Now,
however, they survive in a form of intellectual underground that is
located wherever it can find a place of relative calm, and it is found by

word-of-mouth.
Having neither government nor corporate support, these entities carry
no official recognition. They consist of small groups of learners and
teachers; many living from day-to-day on whatever they can earn as casual
workers in the ubiquitous corporate sweatshops, or by begging on the
streets; but meeting together to maintain and promote critical inquiry,
creation without economic purpose, learning for its own sake, and political
debate. These groups have been largely ignored, or perhaps occasionally
derided, by the majority. However, if they dare to take their challenge to
economic purpose too far or to turn their political debate to activism, they
are very quick to feel the wrath of the powerful and to be, at best, gagged
or, at worst, closed down. This follows the pattern of suppression of media
outlets that has challenged the status quo in nations across the globe
during the century (Freedom House 2016).
As this situation prevails to the present, many working in universities
postulate how the forces of business gain and government oversight have
come to dominate their lives and purpose, through paradigms of manage-
rialism and instrumentality. However, most do so from a standpoint of
seeing it as an overall social benefit, as the outcome of some “natural
order”, whereby the apparent needs of the many – both businesses and the
populace at large – give direction to what universities do and why they do
it. For them, the populace at large seems happy and content, and peaceful
in the knowledge that they are reaping the rewards of technological
progress.
For a few, however, the present situation is one of despondency and
desperation. Pondering how processes of intellectual and artistic endeavour
for their own sake have been allowed to wither and die, they are reminded
of the words of Edmund Burke, who (apparently) said, “The only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing”. As a
result, they are stimulated to take action in response to Burke’s words. But,
of course, in the world of the “Internet of Everything”, even the origins,
authenticity, and exact wording of this phrase are contested and negotiable
(cf. Quote Investigator 2010). While many members of society in 2020
seemed quietly accepting or unaware of the insidious changes taking
place – to conflate notions of “knowledge” and “information” to meet
the needs of business and government – a growing number viewed this
with alarm and set out to bring about change.
302 G. CAIRNS
NARRATIVE TWO: THE 2020S – AN ERA

OF DIVERSITY . . . BUT OF WHAT KIND?
If you have decided to start reading from here, return to Narrative One
after, or at any time.
At the start of this third decade of the century, I remember how we
faced stark choices as to how we wanted to see our universities move
forward, and the decisions we took as a result.
As the world grew calmer and as governments were forced to
respond to their electorates’ recognition of, and demands for action
to mitigate the multiple crises of climate change, mass migration, and
resource depletion, there was a need for greater innovation and invest-
ment in new technologies and for new understandings of complexity.
But, at the same time, both governments and business recognised the
need to satisfy the basic needs and expectations of a growing populace
in order to maintain this state of calm. For many if not most of the
general populace, in the wake of the GFC and two decades of conflict
and terrorism, satisfaction would be found in having a comfortable
place to live, enough food to survive, and a plentiful supply of ways
to be entertained and to be distracted from thinking of bigger issues
and unattainable desires. Here, business found its role in meeting
basic desires while minimising impacts on the fragile socio-political and
eco-structures.
The role of universities had been redefined to address multiple issues
that this society threw up. First, governments’ commitment to dealing
with climate change and moving to less reliance on fossil fuel energy
sources led to considerable investment in research to address the complex-
ities of climate and to develop new energy technologies. This investment
came from governments in some amount, but primarily from big business
seeking to take advantage of what were obviously the new areas for
opportunity, and from philanthropic funding from some who had thrived
and amassed fortunes during the 2010s in the peak era of differentiation
between rich and poor. As well as these climate-led innovation invest-
ments, there was also investment in developing new communications and
entertainment technologies and media to meet public expectations and to
maintain social calm. While there was a broad acceptance that future
lifestyles could not match previous levels of “conspicuous consumption”,
those in power knew that the populace must be kept “satisficed” through
other means.
In the past few years, this change to new, low-energy lifestyles has led
to development of new types of consumer goods to maintain levels of
comfort and convenience to which people have become accustomed.
It has also led to new forms of media and communications technologies –
wearable, 3-dimensional without special glasses, multi-purpose, self-
programmable, and self-diagnostic. The forecast development of the
“Internet of Things” has enabled new levels of human interactivity. It
has also enabled unparalleled access to all of human knowledge and
information. While this is seen as a positive by most, some recognise
the dangers inherent in providing unhindered and unedited access. The
previous decades have seen the emergent use of the Internet by every
conceivable extreme – from the lunatic fringes to the fanatical insurgents.
Governments now willingly fund research by firms and academics to
tackle the problems created by open access and the “dark web”. This is
directed at ways that will disrupt and reveal the users they seek out, while
leaving the general population unaware. The nature of society in general
has shifted from one of widespread fear and distrust in the late 2010s to
one of apparent calm and trust, albeit overlaid on a web of vigilance and
control – control that will be asserted in the most sudden but impercep-
tible of ways when necessary. The culture of apparent openness and focus
on keeping the populace satisfied has enabled creative intellectual activity
within universities. Acknowledging that, while much of the population
might be kept engaged with entertainment that had been the norm in the
past – soap operas, so-called reality shows, and ever-more-complex models
of gamification – it is also appreciated that many seek more intellectually
stimulating activities, drawing upon examples and precedents from the
past. As such, universities have once again become the repositories and
guardians of human intellectual endeavour, and are charged with distri-
buting it across the populace. While they continue to address the needs of
business and demands of government to provide large numbers of under-
or self-funded graduates to feed the economy, they also meet the expecta-
tions of students from all generations who simply want to spend their
plentiful leisure time engaging in learning for its own sake.
Of course, since the key objective of government has become to keep
people calm and satisfied at any reasonable cost, universities are forced to
continually monitor and respond to what government sees as being a
reasonable cost – whether economic or political. If individual academics
push the boundaries of intellectual freedom too far, the institution will be
very quick to restrain or remove the offender. For many academics, with
304 G. CAIRNS
careers to protect and families to feed, this is not too much of a burden.
For the most part, they are able to foster learning in their students and
undertake research that is line with their interests. For a few, however, the
incipient dangers of this academic “freedom with controls” is recognised.
They consider how, as in Orwell’s 1984, what is acknowledged as truth
and of value one day might easily be overturned the next day, to be
replaced with some new truth and value set. Unlike the majority, these
individuals are only too well aware of the controls on access to knowledge
and ideas that are overlaid on the Internet. They also recognise the
dangers to themselves if they openly challenge the nature of this new
society in the classroom – whether physical or virtual. So, they have
developed an expertise in fostering the critical thinking skills of their
students, inspiring those that have the will and the capacity to think
beyond what is presented to them and to think on deeper questions of
why, and to what effect.
While we recognise that our academic world is not one of complete
academic freedom, we also realise that it never has been throughout
history. We realise that academic freedom is what we make of it within
the constraints that are put upon it by government and society in general.
While the vast majority of individuals accept that the impact and outcomes
of the last five years for universities have to a large extent been determined
and driven by higher-level national and global factors, some of us see that
this is not necessarily the case. Some of us ponder how despite, rather than
because of, what happened at national and international levels, things
could have been, to some extent at least, different at our individual and
institutional levels. What we have decided and acted upon – what we have
avoided deciding or acting on – has had a major impact on where we now
find ourselves.
CONCLUSIONS – THERE ARE NONE FOR NOW . . .

What conclusions are to be drawn from these speculations? Do you think
that all the futures that I have outlined are possible and plausible – in their
general nature rather than their fine detail? If you answer no, can you
provide an irrefutable argument as to why something cannot possibly
happen? If you cannot do this, you are relying on wishful thinking and
should revisit your response. If you answer yes, and putting aside any
notions of probability, then you should consider the consequences of
any and all of the negative aspects of the future.
• Who would do what, or not do what, that would enable this to

happen?
• Why does such a situation of negative action, or lethargic inaction,
persist?
• What have I done over the period that has allowed this to happen?
• What can, or must I do now or in the near future to seek to avoid, or
at least mitigate, the worst possible outcomes?
Where will the university be in 2025? It is not likely that it will fit exactly
with any model that I have postulated. But, neither will it align with
any idealised model of what the university should be. For me, the key
question is how do we prevent the university as an idea from being fully
assimilated into the dominant but flawed model of economic rationality,
falling under the force of momentum towards becoming a purely
economic resource? Perhaps the first answer is to reject any notion that
some natural force of equilibrium will pull it back to being an inclusive
institution of open intellectual curiosity, challenge, discourse and mutual
trust and respect.
As I end my speculations on the futures of the universities, I ask you
to expand your own speculations to inform your own thinking and
acting. Where the future of the university lies depends very much on
whether you, dear reader, contribute toward one or other outcome
dominating in the first place, either by your actions or by your lack of
actions . . .
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Change, and Futures.
CHAPTER 16
2021: A Campus Odyssey
Monika Kostera
EXPLORING SOCIAL IMAGINATION

Does the university have a future? How are we to know? If it does, where is
that future now? And, if it does not, who says so and on what ground? Can
I, as a social scientist, consider that question not just as an exercise in
introverted reflexivity, but as a, well, social one? What grasp can social
science have of the future? Since humanity ceased to believe in the pre-
dictive powers of philosophy or social science (see Rorty 1989, if in any
doubt), and there are probably not many among us, self-respecting social
scientists, who would sincerely think there is an objective and perfectly
true answer to the questions at the beginning of this chapter, they refer to
a reality that does not exist because it has not materialized – yet. Or, more
accurately, it does exist but not in the intersubjective world we are used to
dealing with as social scientists. It exists in people’s imagination. We can
have vision of the futures but we cannot measure or objectively describe it.
M. Kostera (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_16
310 M. KOSTERA
But there may be something other than objective description that can
come to our aid – stories.
Umberto Eco (2000) believes that there are several good reasons why
stories should be included in academic writing: to enhance discourse, to
illustrate theses, and to anchor scientific reflections in human experience.
All those reasons are applicable for organization studies. Yet there are
different stories, located in different kinds of spaces. In libraries, as well
as in teaching, we divide them into fact and fiction. The former are more
often associated with science than the latter. However, both can be
informative and thus able to tell us something pertinent about our socie-
ties and cultures (Czarniawska-Joerges and Guillet de Monthoux 1994).
They exist for us not only as collectively shared accounts but as the stuff of
dreams: spaces we move around in by force of our imagination.
While ethnography is a research methodology aimed at gaining under-
standing of human experience (Van Maanen 1995; Agar 1996), it is
usually thought to be suited to explore intersubjective reality and offer
some kind of realistic account (Czarniawska 2014; Kostera 2007; Van
Maanen 1988). Faced with the need to study imaginative realities during
an ethnographic study, I proposed a method dedicated explicitly to such
research, based on narrative traditions (Czarniawska 2004; Gabriel 2000),
which I labeled the narrative collage (Kostera 2006). Whereas the ethno-
grapher collects realist stories and then spins one of her or his own, based
on them, the editor of the narrative collage asks her or his interlocutors to
invent fictive stories, framed around some theme of inquiry. Yet it is, just
as with other narrative methods, an experiential method of gaining insight
into the social world. The imaginative experience is real to the intervie-
wees, even though it is not intersubjectively real. However, by being spun
as a story, the experience opens itself up to intersubjective reading and
reflection. The imagined becomes sharable and shared: it works in a com-
munication process between the researcher, the authors, and the readers.
Experiential learning happens between the editor and the authors as well as
between the readers and the text. It concerns several of the deeper and more
symbolic layers of the cultural context, as well as imagination.
Imagination is also a reality, even if it is not material. It has its laws and its
rules, and can be regarded as a mental space where innovative and creative
thinking can take place, and where potential for change and renewal originates
(Morgan 1993; Kostera 2014). Sociological imagination, as Charles Wright
Mills (1959) describes it, is an ability with a potential for liberation, bringing
the possibility to rise above the everyday limitations of the place in the social
16 2021: A CAMPUS ODYSSEY 311
structure and the processes that the person is part of. Sociological imagination
makes it possible to envisage the relationships between what is individual and
what is social, and to take problems onto another level, where they can be seen
as parts of greater historical and social wholes. Where humans usually are
weighed down with the inevitability of what is taken for granted, sociological
imagination problematizes and connects. It helps to cross boundaries that
otherwise would have locked us in the sphere of the individual and helps us to
transcend not just the givenness of things, but also, as Zygmunt Bauman
(2011) points out, it serves as remedy for moral disorientation and mean-
inglessness, by invoking and making visible a broader social context.
The method dedicated to studying imagination is derived from the world of
the arts. Collage is an artistic method employed in the visual arts, using
fragments of various fabrics, substances or works of other authors, such as
magazine clippings, postcards, images of artwork, pieces of textile, etc. Coller
means to glue together: a collage can remind of a cut-out pasted together,
where the artistic intervention takes an expression in how the parts are
assembled, the meaning of the whole, the composition and the synergetic
effect of the fragments. Cubists, and in particular George Braque and Pablo
Picasso, are often regarded as having invented this method in the early twen-
tieth century. The aim was to go beyond the flatness of the image, to give voice
to its different parts, and to invite the onlooker to interact with the artist and
with the work of art in the act of creation and sense making (Greenberg 1992).
The narrative collage is also an assemblage: a research method aimed at
the collection of fictive narratives from a chosen group of social actors
concerned with a certain idea or phenomenon (Kostera 2006). Fictive
stories are located in the domain of the possible, the potential, not yet
realized, not to be ever realized but still important as an idea to anchor
one’s visions of the future in. They can be more or less directly tapped into
in the process of creation of actual institutions, mechanisms and struc-
tures. Or else, they may become forgotten and obsolete. There is no direct
translating link between the “imagined performatives” and social action,
but they are where our ideas of the future spring from.
In practice, the narrative collage is a collective effort originating with a
theme or problem, plan for how to explore and frame it, and a directing
impulse. The work of the researcher collecting fictive stories is similar to that
of an editor actively looking for material for an edited book on a specific
topic. The researcher, like the editor, initiates the process of collection of
material and makes a selection, makes sense of it, formats and orders it.
Without the initiative the material would not have been produced or taken
312 M. KOSTERA
the final shape it ends up taking. But the aim is not to make something up
from beginning to end; it is, rather, to initiate a sense-making conversation.
Sense-making through conversation and storytelling plays an important role
also in everyday organizational life, where some of the stories are realist and
some, invented (Weick 1995; Gabriel 2000). It is not a method divorced
from organizational experience; rather, it is a rigorous and focused way of
sense-making of the imaginative social within the realm of organization.
The researcher asks interviewees to compose a story on a given topic or
beginning with a given phrase.1 Usually the authors decide themselves
upon genre, they introduce their own protagonists and construct a plot or
plots of their choice. They also need to invent an ending for their story.
Having collected the material, the researcher edits the stories to form
larger wholes, interprets them and perhaps concludes with a story of his
or her own. The complete process does not offer any general theories or
even local models about how reality works; instead, if it is carried out well, it
throws new light on a part of the cultural context of organizing (Hofstede
and Boddewyn 1977) located within domain of imagination. They influ-
ence the way we organize by touching upon underlying archetypical themes
(Kostera 2012) inspire invention and experimentation, or, connecting with
strong plots (Czarniawska and Rhodes 2006), ideas from popular culture
which, through popularity and persuasive power shape social practices.
The stories of the collage may be collected during a face-to-face contact or
via email or on Skype. They can then be analyzed semiotically, critically, as
archetypical stories, etc. This is yet another difference between the use of
ethnographic and fictive stories in the research of organizations: the role of
the ethnographer is usually considered to be receptive and non-interfering,
whereas the researcher using the narrative collage is an active and initiative
taking participant in the creation process. Without the ethnographer present,
organizations hopefully work just as well (or better). Without the editor of the
narrative collage, the creative reality co-constructed in the research process
would probably never have taken a material form and might not have been
reflected upon.
This chapter is based on a study carried out as a narrative collage. I have
asked different social actors with various organizational experiences: stu-
dents, researchers, management practitioners, and artists, from different
countries, to write short fictive stories beginning with the phrase:
The big banner by the entrance proclaimed: “Happy New Year 2021!” A
group of students entered campus and looked around. Adam spoke first:
“Don’t know about you, but I. . . . ”
The stories were to be between 1/2 and 3 pages A4, any genre, any plot or
plots, wherever imagination took their authors. They were welcome to
invent further characters, add context, place and detail.
In all, I collected 22 stories from different authors (one was coauthored
by 2 persons), of whom 9 were male and 8 female (6 did not wish to
specify their gender), from at least 5 different countries: the US (1), UK
(3), Poland (15), Sweden (2) and Denmark (1). Among the authors there
were social scientists (senior and junior), students at several programs
including management and literature, two activists and social entrepre-
neurs, two professional musicians, a coach, a high school pupil, and several
not wishing to reveal their occupation.2
My interpretation of the collage is inspired by the phenomenological
reading by Roman Ingarden (1960), who proposes that a text should be
read on several levels in order to reveal different layers of meaning and
symbolism. I have found three levels relevant for the reading of the
collected stories: of narration, of meaning and of underpinning metaphors.
WELCOME TO THE FUTURE: LEVEL OF NARRATION
Dystopias
3
A good number of the stories are plotted in a dystopian future, more or
less explicitly described as dark, sinister and inhuman. The university is
literally destroyed, demolished and turned into a hole in the ground,
replaced by the HyperInternet (M.Sz.), a chaotic meaningless space
extended between the Scylla and Charybdis campuses (AnUK), or a
small island of old-fashioned face-to-face communication on an ocean
of simulacra and depersonalization (RB). The students are exhausted,
misplaced, unable to use language that once belonged in a university:
“ . . . Excuse me, is this the right way to the phenomenology class?”

“Pheno-‘what’?” - asked two approached students in unison.
“Phenomenology, you know, the conceptual framework emphasizing the
realm of experience over the objectified reality. . . . ”
“You’ve got to be shitting me!”, said the taller one, and both burst into
laughter. (AnUK)
In the same story they are also lost in space, vaguely aware of that they are
losing something. They long for something that once existed (M.Sz.), or
that they were hoping for (MK). They may still have it and cherish its
314 M. KOSTERA
uniqueness, aware of the real, ugly world that exists outside of its protec-
tive walls (RB). In some stories they cannot be bothered at all, they just
take what they have for granted and, in response, act in a depersonalized
way, only engaging with their technologically provided virtual worlds –
even if there is a hint of something amiss . . .
A thought kept looming at the edges of his consciousness, somehow, that he

probably didn’t even know what it means to be “happy”. (AŚ).
The protagonists give in and decide to play along, despite their unease:
Josh replied, “As I said, find yourself a girlfriend and you won’t have time to
contemplate the present and be so miserable about it. So, are we going to
the party tonight? We need some passes but I can work things out, I know
someone in the Control Tower (the 24 hour reception) who can help. And
if not, I can get some false passes, no one will know.”
Adam agreed, “Yes, you are right, let’s go, and let’s have a great time, after
all 2021 is going to be a great year!” (MK)
In some visions they just go ahead, using whatever power they have to
improve their moods, finding an underdog to kick: humiliating the profes-
sors, suing the university for not providing them with satisfactory service by
demanding that students attend lectures (Pes). In one of the stories all the
humans have gone mad: the students look but do not see, gather but do not
pay attention, while the lecturer is performing naked in something remind-
ing of an erotic show. A cat tentatively enters the university campus and he
is driven away by the fearful smell emanating from the building. He runs out
and away. In 2021, only cats have remained sane (AnPL).
In a nightmare world where fresh air is such a rarity that people have to use
oxygen stations, a group of students cherish the transgressiveness of an
old-fashioned party which is to take place off campus, with oxygen and
wine. The university as such does not offer much of a support, what the
students dream of in this story is beyond its walls and domain:
In just half a year he’ll finish his studies and then, he’ll leave [for the
countryside]! (JP)
Privatized Stories
Some of the narratives do not elaborate on the relationship between the
students and the university. Instead, they focus on a plotline that has to do
with a private event in the life of the protagonist or protagonists. The
university is only a distant background, not part of the story at all. For
example, one of the stories narrates a tragic car crash that the main hero
has taken part in while on his way to a party with his fellow students
(AnoPL). Another story consciously focusing on private amusements
(and away from unbearably bleak classroom realities) ends with a much
less tragic conclusion: the hope of the protagonist of meeting a girlfriend
(RBl). A story presents a most confusing time warp which the protagonist
falls victim to (MS). Another shows a helpful role swap – the students talk
about how they will do things differently in the future, at the initiative of
one of them, who wishes to be less active in the future (AnonPL). In these
tales the university hardly gets a topical mention at all.
One of the stories is coming close to a borderline case between privatized
and transformative: it describes people engaged in a quest for a certain
mystical artefact that would complete the transformation of human society
by sealing the completion of moving on to another level of consciousness.
The role of the university is unclear here, it is not explicitly addressed, but,
perhaps, can be interpreted as playing some role related to the plot. I have,
however, failed to see it that way, for me, the university is just an accidental
physical area where the action is taking place (IS).
Positive Visions
There are some stories intended by the authors (as I read it) as positive
visions, where the university is in harmony with its surroundings and
has successfully re-invented itself to address the needs and expectations
of the protagonists. In one story it is a collaborative effort between very
diverse students, who are trying to solve a problem that a professor has
given them as assignment. They work together, and they work alone,
discussing, pondering and musing on the different aspects of the pro-
blem, looking for inspiration to ancient Greek philosophy, literature,
contemporary politics, and circulating the role of the leader between
them (JŚ). In this story they actively pursue and seek out knowledge,
spurred on by the professor, who will presumably react to their failure
in a sarcastic manner.
316 M. KOSTERA
Also very active are the students in another positive story, where the
university has developed to embrace and bring together diverse students,
with different needs, outlooks on life and interests. One wants to become a
practitioner, another, a researcher, and a third wants to travel. They have
many options and courses to choose from but they do not have to make all
the choices themselves, as most of the education is based on personalized
tutoring (AM).
The third story is unusual in that it seems to take a course that most of
the dystopias would portray as dark: the university is now truly “global,”
there are no lectures by real people. In each classroom there are, instead,
transmissions of talks by famous superstars. The students are, in contrast
to the dystopian stories, happy to go along with this arrangement. They
have a rich choice of seemingly unrelated lectures and they are glad to
choose. All they have to do is scan their IDs at the entrance to each
classroom in order to get the courses credited. Everything seems to be
perfect in this world, there is just a tiny shadow of doubt at the end, when
the students visit the campus restaurant, using their “Hungry Student”
app and one of them says:
“Good at least that the food is normal, not on-line”. (HS & NS)
Another story shows the students in conversation on their presentations,

of which they are rather weary, yet also curious. They talk about asking the
professors to take them further, on a learning journey involving all the
senses, something they’ve heard some others talking about, a way of
developing their “aesthetic tentacles.” They are active and interested,
but they know that they need more collaboration to get involved even
more. This story borders on the fourth subcategory in my collection, i.e.,
of transformative narratives. However, the situation described here is from
the beginning good, but the protagonists come up with a way to further
improving it (MSW).
Transformative Stories
This category of stories is especially interesting from the point of view of
my endeavor to explore the imaginative future of the university, as they
describe a shift between the two states outlined in the negative and the
positive narratives and so point towards a potential resolution. Initially the
situation is bleak (MP): the students do have great possibilities and feel
bewildered and have difficulties in finding someone who would trust

them. However, Adam, main protagonist makes a New Year resolution:
Form this year on I intend to really focus in my studies on things I really am

passionate about, and not just on the mindless filling in of tests that the
teachers hand out [ . . . ] For some time now I have lost the joy of learning. It
is not worth the effort to waste time on something that makes no sense to
me and silently concede to ideas that I do not agree with at all.
His friend, Eve, considers what he is saying and agrees with him. She had a
dream about a different mode of learning, a more active way of pursuing
knowledge. He comments that he envies her this dream, as he is mostly
having nightmares about tests and horrible classes. A friend, Wacław, who
is listening to their conversation, offers a sarcastic comment on their hopes
and wishes:
Maybe you should join a theatrical troupe if you complain of boredom?
But they will not be deterred; they have made up their minds. After all,
learning can be great, their parents had told them as much, recalling their
own experiences which were not unlike Eve’s dream. Eve concludes:
Now that we know what we want, maybe it’s a good time to try? (MP)
Another story starts with Adam exclaiming: “I cannot take this any-
more!” Lily shushes him and calmly reminds him to behave in a grown
up fashion.
“That’s true . . . ” Adam turned his gaze sharply to his left, and saw the
“Gates Extern Center.” There was a push to create one in every over-
crowded state campus, not just here, but overseas as well. An Extern
Center where their “self-learning” progress was given its golden seal, so
much like the little stars Adam’s third grade teacher so liberally pasted on
every half-baked predigested activity she gave to her wards. That was their
destination. That was where every young man and woman who did not fulfill
the ever more convoluted requirements to gain admission into the “Centers
of Excellence” of Higher Education landed. That was where appearances
were kept, where there was a moment, a fleeting moment, of face-to-face
mentoring.
318 M. KOSTERA
Lily calms him down again and points out to him that getting through the
evaluation is his only chance.
But Adam had made his mind. This was the last time he visited the Extern
Center. This was the last time he would put up with this piece of theatre,
performed so that all would swallow reality a little easier, with a little less
of the unbearable pain . . . There was another way. He had found another
way. [ . . . ] Adam would do well, when he and the few, hungry friends he
had found in his endless pilgrimage through the one-time paid chores and
tasks meted by Uber, TaskRabbit, and so many other self-styled “entre-
preneurial” lies met to, finally, learn. Adam would do well to meet an
Eve . . . Adam would do well to build a new world, from the good seeds
cast aside by this old, dying one . . . (PDP)
The third transformative story begins with a conversation between some

rather flabbergasted students. They were expecting something else and
what is greeting them when they enter the campus looks rather old
fashioned, “like something from a Ingmar Bergman movie.” An older
student explains that these artistic old-school interventions have a much
deeper meaning than they suspect and encourages them to see what is
right in front of their eyes:
“Well”, said their guide, third year student John, “haven’t you all heard
about the revolution of 2018?” [ . . . ]
“Welcome, to your first year at the Free University, where teaching based
on dialogue and decent research will form you into first class citizens in a
second class post-entertainment society”, John finished, before sending
the new students off to find their classrooms with the (dusty) teachers
waiting. (ULO)
WHAT HAVE WE BECOME? LEVEL OF INTERPRETATION

In some of the dystopian stories, and in one positive, the university of
2021 is virtual, devoid of human interaction, either entirely (M.Sz.), or
mostly (KDT, HS & NS). It is the indefinite background, extended, alien
and confusing (AnUK), Panopticon-like (MK), or irrelevant (AnPL, AŚ),
well intentioned yet obsolete in the face of the real problems of society
(RB, JP). In one story it is the adversary of the students, who are fighting it
and demanding better value for their money, as well as of the professor,
whose work has become meaningless – not only has he to prepare detailed
transcriptions of all of his classes, to write syllabi of more than 50 pages,
but he is practically prohibited from demanding anything from the stu-
dents in terms of participation and results, and even the research part of his
job is depressing:
[H]e began thinking of the evening, when he’ll be able to comfortably sit
down in his chair, in order to read another page of his article, that, after
3 years after having sent it in to the journal, and 6 years after having been
written, is to be published any day now in the Journal of Everything. (Pes.)
In one of the positive stories, the “global university” is just a physical space,
like a multiplex cinema, where students roam, attending transmissions of
lectures by some superstar lecturers located in faraway places, making
choices as they go, and using their ID cards to collect points for crediting
the courses. No academic staff is working here anymore, only security and
cleaning services are taking care of the physical space (NS & HS).
Universities are ruins (MSz, IS) or partially dilapidated spaces of urban
decay (JP), dominated by pubs and clubs (RBl, AnoPL), or gyms (AnUK).
The university may be a nostalgic little island out of touch with the harsh
reality outside (RB), or just plainly out of touch, as Adam eloquently points
out in one of the stories:
Since I’ve been working at the Billing Centre I’m not one to be fooled by
such fanciful theories and nonsense [as we are being taught]! Just a bloody
waste of time! Besides, the Firm is providing me with training anyway, and
everything I need. You won’t believe me, but from the new year we have
been allowed to stay at work for the nights! I’m telling you, it’s mega! We
have access to rooms, a swimmingpool, food, internet – everything in place.
I don’t have to move anywhere and live the life, not hang around here in this
dead place, listening to these clichés. (Pes)
In the age of post-apocalyptic ecological disaster, where there are

serious shortages of oxygen and people have to use special stations and
masks, the university’s once so central humanities departments are now
standing abandoned, their windows covered with dust and pavements
decaying. Now only departments of chemistry and biology prosper, and
320 M. KOSTERA
all the students are interested in how to produce breathable air, cibus
vitae (JP).
Trees and nature are mentioned in some of the stories. To the delight
of the main protagonists, as they move away from campus, they enter an
old dilapidated part of the city, where there are still trees:
Some municipal services, shadows of a since long nonexistent institution,

planted some trees able to survive in the new conditions, in a last desperate
attempt at bringing some air into the city. Here and there grew some
saplings able to absorb the worst pollution: silver birch, Callery pear,
rowan trees. All conifers had long since disappeared from city landscapes.
Some withered leaves were still hanging on to the branches [ . . . ]. (AP)
Also in other stories where trees or landscapes appear, they play a

decidedly positive role, liberating and helping the protagonists to gain
some important insight (MSW, JŚ), or at least help the protagonist
to shift attention to something meaningful and good, like love and
summer (AŚ).
Food is quite often mentioned as a good thing. The promise of sharing
a bottle of wine with his friends (something he has not been able to do for
long) makes Adam in the sad post-apocalyptic world smile (JP). The
students of the fully virtual global university with no living academics are
glad that at least the food is real (NS & HS). In good stories food is good,
too, it is remembered fondly (MSW), appreciated by students and other
inhabitants of the city alike:
The cafeteria [ . . . ] was supplied by local famers. The food was prepared
from seasonal products. The students were entitled to a discount. They were
eating with pleasure and thinking happily of the many possibilities the
university was giving them. (AM)
Only in one of the dystopian stories it is not the students who are eating
but, rather, they themselves, their illnesses but also emotions, knowledge,
thoughts, are consumed by omnipresent nanotechnological devices.
“Now with carcenobreathalyzers, nanobots eradicating almost all human

ailment, and the fact that the majority of us rely on the nanonutrisystem and
don’t “eat” anymore; or the fact that machines Turing could have
befriended drive us about and keep us from killing ourselves . . . one of
these will live for a very long time, one of these will remember, and one of
these will catch you”, he said, gesturing to the youthful throng, all doused in
an inheritance of pressure and its numerous breeds of provenance; “money,”
“father,” “scholarship,” “solitude,” “beauty,” “waylessness,” “ambition.”
“They’ll scoop it from your mouth like a fouling, smear it on the Cortex.
Scatologists, really. Remember when we lived in a world of reaction
videos?”, he continued, somewhere between wistful and indignant, “we
stared into the LED pit, the light abyss that kept us sleepawake, hoping
for a proxy feeling . . . Careful, Eve. Now they’ll crucify you in the long
nights here, and you’ll wake up with only the things you see before the
Grid takes back its glow, with no way to keep them.” (KDT)
The dystopian university of the future holds no communication or human

contact. Students are only engaging with their electronic devices and
media, talking at but not with each other (AŚ, Pes), not even seeing
what is in front of their eyes, however interesting or shocking it may be
(AnPL). Often when they talk, they do not mention anything related to
learning or the university, just the private sphere, and in particular dating
and partying (AnoPL, MS, JP, RBl, MK, AŚ), or semi-private, like shifting
roles to avoid too much work load during group assignments (AnonPL).
Sometimes they talk but they do not share a language, experiences or
indeed even a topic in common (AnUK). In some stories the students
realize this and talk about how they miss human contact – even if it seems
to be an unattainable utopia (MK). Indeed, even in hopeless times and
contexts talking with others face-to-face seems to help, or at least give
a sense of meaning if not necessarily hope (JP, RB). Even in the “global
university” intended as a positive description of the future, but, to me,
reading like a dehumanized dystopia, there is at least conversation
between the students, who are selecting together from menus of classes
and negotiating their choices (NS & HS). In the other positive stories
human contact and communication are present and important: higher
education has re-invented itself as individualized tutoring, based on a
mentor and pupil relationship, with moral authority and development
are at the heart (AM, JŚ, ULO). Indeed, there is already conversation
and contact around such topics as business and art but the students want
more! They feel that they have been led onto a path of seeing and under-
standing more and they have a desire to get more of it, as well as
sensibilities to experience and judge it (MSW). Finally, conversation itself
can be liberating and transforming: in all of the transformative stories at
heart of the change taking place there is intensive conversation (ULO,
322 M. KOSTERA
PDP, MP). In one there is a guide, pointing out to the others that there
has been a revolution and now the university is free, a place for learning
and dialogue (ULO). In another, talking to a conformist interlocutor,
Lily, makes Adam realize that he is longing to talk to someone very
different, an Eve (PDP). In the third, two of the interlocutors, Adam
and Eve, share a revelation and resolution (a third one, the sceptic Wacław
does not). Apart from talking, dreaming is also an emancipatory element
in this story: Eve had a dream about a university she could love, where
there would be collaboration, learning and art (MP). Art is a powerfully
helpful force in one of the positive stories something that both makes the
students grow and learn and what, in itself, is a tempting reward (MSW).
Memory also plays a role encouraging the protagonists to rethink their
situation, although it is not direct or personal, but, rather, something the
protagonists’ parents had told them (MP), or something they knew from
culture, such as Bergman’s movies (ULO).
Finally, let us consider the role of learning and teaching in these stories.
The dystopian stories portray learning and teaching mostly as a technologi-
cally driven process, where even ownership of knowledge is divorced from
the humans (KDT), and the human brains have become parts of a global
network, the HyperInternet (MSz). The students “have to talk to computers
and not to human beings during lecture” (MK). Learning is about sitting in
horrendous and utterly meaningless exams, that make students panic, and
even bring tears to some (RBl). In the post-apocalyptic story where there is
an oxygen shortage in the city, education is trying to address, at least on a
DIY level, the most dramatic problems of the times: the students learn how
to synthesize substances that help to produce oxygen (JP). Teaching is an
endless bureaucratic process, consisting of writing a horrendous amount of
meaningless pages and transcriptions, with no possibility of setting standards
or expecting cooperation from the side of the students, whereas learning is
consumption of something that has no worth and is not even enjoyable
(Pes). Teaching is a show, a performance able to attract public, either as a
classy cinema-like performance (NS & HS) or a sex show (AnPL). Or it is
an activity so indefinite and diffuse that nobody really understands what it is
about, only the janitor has a solid grasp of the physical frames within which
the process takes place (AnUK). In some of the stories, both apocalyptic
and privatized, learning and teaching play no role at all, they are not
mentioned or hinted at. The students occupy themselves with something
entirely different, such as partying, play or organizing their time (AnoPL,
MS, AnonPL, IS).
But many stories take a different view. In one, it is a conversation, a

traditional relationship between the teachers and students, which is, alas,
misplaced and outdated, as the surrounding world has replaced dialogue
by more fashionable substitutes (RB). In the positive and transformative
stories teaching and learning are always deeply personal, based on face-to-
face communication: it is re-invention of tutoring, aimed at personalizing
the diversity of learning needs (AM), group work in close cooperation
with a mentor, organized as multidisciplinary problem solving sessions,
also based on diversity and cooperation (JŚ), close group collaboration
with a mentor, where the students have an even greater need for tutor-
ing, and resolve to ask for it (MSW). After the revolution of 2018,
learning at the Free University is about dialogue and decent research,
which will “form you into a first class citizens in a second class post-
entertainment society” (ULO). It would, following a dream of Eve and a
desire of Adam, become an intensive learning experience, combining
theatre, art, dialogue and collaboration between students and teachers
(MP). Finally, it would be a real, nourishing, learning experience, in
living contact with others, away from conformist hypocrites and their
pretend-game (PDP).
2021 FLANEURS: LEVEL OF METAPHORS

The protagonists in the collected stories, a group of students, are walking
into the campus on a symbolic moment in time. Many of the stories make
them walk further in: into classrooms, public spaces, cafeterias, or out: into
the countryside, the city, somewhere else. They become flâneurs
(Benjamin 2015) in two different layers of time. Whereas linear, homo-
genous time, measured by calendars and clocks, is empty time produced
by capitalism, there is a time beyond this artificial construct that resonates
with human experience, filled, immediate: one which Benjamin (1974)
calls messianic time. In messianic time, the flâneur is walking against the
production process, looking for ways of experiencing time, even in capitalist
contexts, by retrieving messianic moment which exists (chyba ze chodzi o
“ways of experiencing?”) always, hidden in capitalist linearity, as a poten-
tial revolution, where empty time is transformed into qualitative, experi-
enced time. Time and space can be read anew in moments of revolution,
by giving them another meaning, derived from the retrieved messianic
moments, as redemption (Benjamin 1974). In On the concept of history
Benjamin proposes that the potentially revolutionary moment is present in
324 M. KOSTERA
all things, including the material, as a drive towards redemption, and that a
revolutionary historian should seize the visions as they flash by, rather than
concentrating on “how it really was,” or reality as inscribed in empty,
linear time. The same can be said of the writing of the future. Instead of
making prognoses and extrapolating linear time, it can be narrated in
imaginative time and there, sometimes, it is possible to find the hidden
messianic moments, ready to offer redemption: another use of ideas, time,
and space, apart from what is taken for granted, fashionable, the confor-
mist truth. Ideas can be redeemed by disconnecting them from what
appears as inevitable and adult. Some stories unfold the storylines defining
the setting in our times until its extreme conclusion, depicting a dystopian
future, where the university is a depersonalized function serving some
powers taking no account to the desires or needs of the students or
the professors. Some escape the gloomy scenario and privatize the plot
instead, taking the protagonists away from the university setting or turn-
ing it into an irrelevant background. A number of stories, which I have
labeled transformative, unlink their plots from the dominating narrative,
thus finding messianic moments (Benjamin 1974). These moments offer
redemption for the personalized university, by creating links between
several elements present in other stories: a longstanding, sinister and
overwhelming development towards depersonalization, technology, com-
munication, human agency (by resolution), living art, diversity, persona-
lized learning and teaching. What has been plotted as inevitable, becomes,
in these moments, just a turn of the tale, followed by another one, which
gives the former a different meaning: revolution instead of doom; reclaim-
ing memory instead of nostalgia; radical building of relationships instead
of losing oneself in the private communicative sphere.
What does it take for the imaginative flâneurs to find and redeem
messianic moments in the stories? Communication and collaboration are
necessary but not sufficient; they exist in all the positive stories (and are sadly
lacking in the dystopian and privatized ones). The encountering of tasty,
nutritious food and nature bode well and bring at least good memories –
and memory is another desirable narrative element, even if not sufficient for
a revolution. But there are some elements that are unique to the transfor-
mative stories, and therefore I read them as having a uniquely revolutionary
potential: art (MP, ULO, PDP, MSW), resolution (MP, ULO, PDP,
MSW), and dream (MP). None of these elements is mentioned in any of
the other stores. In my Benjaminian story of the collected narratives these
aspects are, then, equipped with a special redeeming potential. Perhaps it
can be said that the three taken together make up what Benjamin (1936)
calls aura: the unique atmosphere of mystery and beauty, taken in by an
awakening subject. As in the stories, the kind of art that Benjamin consid-
ered equipped with aura was not mechanically reproduced (reproduction
strips an artwork of its aura), but living and sacred art, not commoditized.
We define the aura of the later as the unique phenomenon of a distance,

however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow
with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its
shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that
branch. (Benjamin (1936))
Reclaiming the aura is a kind of grace that occurs in communication with

living art, food, nature, and dream. Redemption is a narrative that reaches
beyond the individual and transcends direct experience. But it is always
deeply personal.
For aura is tied to [a whole living person’s] presence; there can be no replica
of it (Benjamin (1936))
NOTES
1. There also exists a practitioner-oriented variation of the method, proposed
by Henrietta Nilson (2009), where the respondents are requested to con-
tribute with stories images, and music, and the aim is to, first, explore and
then, animate, the creative potential of the organization.
2. Most of the stories were written by Polish authors; however, I did not notice
any direct cultural inclination of the narratives. I have received the permis-
sion for using the stories in this publication. Most of the permissions were
received either via email or in spoken communication.
3. 10
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losophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm.
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Benjamin, W. (1974) On the concept of history. (Gesammelten Schriften I:2.

Suhrkamp Verlag. Frankfurt am Main) Retrieved 4 December 2015 http://
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Czarniawska, B. (2004). A narrative approach to organization studies. London:
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Society, 2(2): 5–27.
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Zygmunt Bauman. (2011). Collateral damage. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Kociatkiewicz (Polity), as well as and a number of articles published in journals
including Organization Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management
and British Journal of Management. She is associate editor of Management
Learning and is serving on several editorial boards. Her current research interests
include archetypes, narrative organization studies, ethnography and the humanis-
tic turn in management. Her website is at: www.kostera.pl
CHAPTER 17
Anti-Coda
Once upon a time, a long time ago, when books were acts of courage and
love, academic texts were supposed to end on a personal note, something
the author(s) would take sole responsibility for: a concluding part or a
coda without references to others’ work. A communication to the Reader.
A strong personal statement. A hopeful (or insistent) avowal.
In our book, there can be more than one. In fact there can be many.
There should be. A book like this one, presenting different points of view
and ideas, both disparate and diverse, does not have to follow through
a uniform line of argumentation or propose a solution to a problem.
In fact, academic books often do nothing of the kind. Their role is to
M. Izak (*)
University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
e-mail: mizak@lincoln.ac.uk
M. Kostera
M. Zawadzki

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5_17
330 M. IZAK ET AL.
stir up thought, to add new territories to the readership’s sociological

imagination, to disturb surfaces, rather than calm and explain. This is not a
conclusion, and it does not usurp a final voice to the volume. We are not
pretending to be speaking for all the texts and authors represented here.
It is an Anti-Coda, a further step on the way towards hybridity and
non-linearity that has been the book’s ambition from its conception.
So, what we hope that this volume has achieved is having taken the
reader for a radically imaginative journey exploring the post-capitalist
alternatives to the currently dominating models of University (as an
institution) and educational process. From definition, the collaborative
manner of addressing the issue of “future” – if it is worth its salt, that is –
entailed that we could never expect to arrive at a coherent model or the
response. However, going well beyond a sheer exercise in fantasising
or mythmaking, we feel that the collected chapters combined firm
grounding within current developments and existing theories with their
(often stringent) critique and/or outlining scenarios for change in an
internally coherent manner. Thus, what we feel we gained an access to
is an impressionist peek into futures – understood precisely as critically
informed trajectories of and proposals for change – relating to particular
facets of the university and university-level education: (Mc)learning, man-
agerialism, academic freedom and a whole variety of others. Similar to
George Seurat’s paintings, here the specks of arguments, proposals, occa-
sional rants and conjectures enable the meaning to emerge from the
canvassed frame for discussion provided by this volume.
In the Introduction, we have mapped some common themes and lines
of arguments in this discussion. However, we shall also celebrate its
hybridity, which – allow us to reiterate – we conceive of as a statement
on its own terms: in times of enforced homogeneity, which, according to
many, universities are undergoing today, diversity and creativity are a way
forward not only in terms of positive content but even in terms of enabling
to start the intellectual process of seeking alternatives. Taking into account
the current state of affairs in the, much glorified, university education
in many Western countries, as it variously has been done in this volume
(e.g. regarding teaching, research, etc.): if lack of imagination could kill
indeed, the university campuses would be strewn with corpses.
While adherence to a pre-existing frame, exploits of bureaucracy, inflex-
ibility and near lack of dialogue – all, paradoxically, perfectly compatible with
the liquid modernity – feature to differing degrees in Universities nowadays,
there are (as also indicated by the authors) glimmers of hope and there always
17 ANTI-CODA 331
have been. Many of them come from drawing on ideas and models of thinking
(e.g. in philosophy or ethics) those days – openly or not – considered obsolete
in many parts of modern universities, and thus largely neglected. Other ways
of revival may be more concerned with arts or popular culture as a source of
inspiration, as some of the chapters suggest. In all those cases embracing
heterogeneity through our thinking of, conceptualizing the, and acting
upon change in the university contexts seems indispensible. In that respect,
our volume may be considered a voice of support for diversity, hybridity and
imagination in university education and in discussing its future.
So, what more can we say in this space? We would like to return to the
question most readers have, most probably, been asking or wanting to ask,
since the moment their eyes fell on the title of the book. Maybe the readers
were hoping they would find an answer here: does the university have a future
at all? Is there something beyond the current interregnum, the betrayals and
the reforms that always signify loss? Is it about giving in, giving up, something
we, academics, have miraculously and quite unbelievably not done as a collec-
tive? For so long, it almost felt like something prohibited and not to be openly
talked about: generations changing, new people coming and, yes, impossibly
adopting an ethos that is officially long dead. . . . A good friend of ours, both
an academic and a Catholic monk, told us that this is a path not unknown in
his world: the path of religious orders, come Henry VIII or affluent twentieth
century. . . . A calling. Academia is a calling. Not a business, not just a job, not
even any organized profession. Nothing else but a calling would, we think,
explain how and why it is possible: the persistent resistance and the quiet
defiance demonstrated by people of different inclinations, interests, ages and
standings. Other than that, we academics usually do not agree about anything.
We hold different views. We believe we should defend different points of view
and are ready to fight each other over them, we often dislike each other for
having other views than what we, ourselves, consider so important. Maybe we
miss an opportunity for solidarity. Maybe we are not forceful enough. But we
have survived this far. Against odds, against rationality, against what may be
regarded as our own dissipative lameness, the often bewailed weakness and
disloyalty. Yet, young academics under the age of 30 have frequently
been coming to us to say: they are telling me not to write books, but I
must, I am. Because that is what we are: people reading and writing
books. Not writers of papers, nor people in the excellence business, not
service providers. We are still what we always have been: absent minded
professors, people reluctant of self-promotion, disdainful or careless
about money. . . . One of the reasons why many of us chose this
332 M. IZAK ET AL.
profession before the era of corporatization was that we would not have
to be made to focus on money. Oh, we do crave security, but that is a
different thing altogether, it is only contemporary times that have put
these two things together. Freedom before riches, a free day rather than
extra dollars. Save time to read instead of saving a penny. The older ones
among us, who are lucky enough to remember such values actually at
work, and young ones, for whom this is as cosmic as Latin vesper songs
must have been for young men and women dreaming of monastic life
under Queen Elizabeth. So who are we? What are we?
We are slow thinkers, in need of time and space. In a message sent in
the mid-1980s, when academics were first made accountable in terms of
use of their time by administrators and managers (shown to one of us a
by a friend), the professor explained to the administration that he has
been thinking or making space for thinking. Nowadays, the horrendous,
mind killing forms, which we dedicate most of our time to filling in,
demanding very detailed accounts of our time usage, contain all kinds of
sections, from “admin” to “research”. But there is never a section called
“thinking” in these forms. In many cases an academic should sound as
“committed to hard incessant work” as a banker or management con-
sultant. In the old days our time was not accountable and we were free
to organize our own work. In some universities this is still practised,
even though it is usually something we do almost clandestinely, in hope
the administration would not realize how unmanaged we really are. And
there are universities where a duty to be present all work days of the
week is in force and we have even heard of places trying to introduce
electronic cards controlling the absence and presence of research and
teaching staff. Many contemporary universities have surveillance cameras
in classrooms and staff corridors, many record lectures and upload them
online. While there are still areas beyond the reach of CCTV – such as
our future actions and behaviours – the enforced submission of our
electronic work calendars to administrative gaze ensures that not only
our present time but also time to come can be managed for us, rather
than by ourselves. Any thought of free time or self-organization is
considered something of an old fashioned, an unthinkable and outra-
geous privilege. And yet we who are lucky enough to ever have had
these freedoms know that they are far from useless or outdated. They
are, in fact, necessary and central for the kind of work that is at the core
of the academics profession. Time and space are the essential conditions
needed for truly imaginative and inspired intellectual work, for allowing
17 ANTI-CODA 333
thoughts to meet and for ideas to occur. They cannot be productively

forced to arrive. The medium of ideas has its own rules that manage-
rialist administration has no grasp over. It cannot, as it is an external
force, devoid of an inherent obligation to be sympathetic to the aca-
demic profession. For the past 25 to 30 years now we have been defined
externally by a business, often perceiving us as a more or less unreason-
able curiosity, and by an administration that is suspicious towards us.
Both have been busying themselves to constrain that which should not
be constrained, “make transparent” that which cannot possibly remain
other than obscure, the darkroom of emerging thought, schedule what is
beyond linear time. Creative work is a mystery. Yes, there may be
attempts to deceive and misuse academia by crooks and unserious practi-
tioners. But these can best be hindered and prevented by collegial effort
from the inside of the profession. As we can so clearly see recently, no
means of external control can deal with such incidents. They seem to be
thriving these days, infinitely much more than the serious and dedicated
academics. But do we not have ourselves to blame, for having been
unwilling and unable to effectively fight back for so long?
Maybe. But we are not team players, not for productive reasons, and
neither when orchestrated action is needed against oppressing forces.
We are loners and often introverts, sometimes bizarre, sometimes
plainly unfriendly, some of us are kind but naïve, while some are nasty
and sneering. We cannot and should not be made to attend meetings
and act as a team because that is not the way academics ‘work’. It only
produces suffering and growing dysfunctionality. However, we know
very well how to steer ourselves: collegial rule is the only reasonable
way. We also can act together, collegially – that is, as a complex,
extremely differentiated collective, where no unity is possible or,
indeed, desirable. In fact, the most effective defence against the aggres-
sive and intrusive external control that has been achieved in the recent
decades was by a strong collegial (and not necessarily organized) retreat
towards tradition. Traditions can indeed be a source of vitality and
strength in many respects but if they are practised unreflexively, they
carry with them a conservatism that usually is not healthy for a profes-
sion’s survival and renewal, either. The much-criticized dark sides of
academia, since at least the 1960s, are a price to pay: feudalism, rigidity
and misogyny. In order to be able to deal with these problems, we
would need, again, what is in such dramatically short demand: freedom
and space.
334 M. IZAK ET AL.
Despite what we said at the beginning of text, there will be one

reference to other texts in it. There is a very good reason for it. What
we (humanity, not just academics) are currently lacking the most in
order to be able to try to do something about our situation and the
world is solidarity and hope. Therefore, we would like to refer here to a
text that has been circulating among our friends, sometimes with a
comment: “it has begun”. And indeed, something is in the air.
Timothy Ingold’s (2016) Reclaiming the University of Aberdeen invokes
The Manifesto, which is still a draft of principles, under collegial con-
struction by the staff and students of the University of Aberdeen. Its
first paragraph proclaims:
We, staff and students at the University of Aberdeen, call for fundamen-
tal reform of the principles, ethos and organisation of our university, in
order (1) that it should be restored to the community to which it
belongs and (2) that it can fulfil its civic purpose in a manner appropriate
to our times, in the defence of democracy, peaceful coexistence and
human flourishing.
It goes on to say:
Under its current management, this university has committed itself to the
business route. Not only does this contravene the university’s duty, as a
charitable institution, to disseminate knowledge for the public benefit; it
also overlooks its primary responsibility for education and scholarship. To
take the civic route will require a fundamental change of course. It will mean
rebuilding the university from its very foundations. Whether we belong to
the university as students, as researchers or as teachers, we are here to
promote truth, justice, virtue and liberty. The kind of university we want
is one in which these principles are both thought and taught (§3).
Further, it proposes concrete measures and steps to take: to create an

environment for debate, to defend academic freedoms, to carry out
research as pursuit of truth, to recover professional trust and judgement,
to reinstate education as an open-ended process of intellectual growth,
and to restore the control of the university to academic community:
academic staff and students. The Manifesto reminds the readers that the
university is not a business. Its identity is academic, not corporate. It is
here to foster inquiry, not to extract profit (§7).
17 ANTI-CODA 335
Therefore, although they may still need leaders, universities do not

need managers (§29), they are well able to steer themselves by their own
means, and according to their own traditions – collegially, not manage-
rially. University is not and will never be harmonious or conflict free, but
that is a feature of collegial rule. It takes time, it develops new ideas by
friction and dissent.
Not forgetting our call towards intellectual openness and heterogeneity
of ideas, we find that the Manifesto and Timothy Ingold’s text well capture
many current sentiments around the future of university education. We
would like to end the Anti-Coda and our book with a quote, which is a
shared voice of many academics, students and sympathizers, one of hope
and solidarity:
Can we turn things around? Together, with your support, yes we can!
REFERENCE
Ingold, T. (2016) “Reclaiming the University of Aberdeen”. CDBU. http://
cdbu.org.uk/reclaiming-the-university-of-aberdeen/.
Michał Izak, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Management at University of Lincoln,

UK. His research interests include emerging organizational discourses, Critical
Management Studies, fiction as a reflection of organizational dynamics and orga-
nizational storytelling. He publishes regularly in peer-reviewed journals, is a mem-
ber of the editorial board of Organization Studies and Management Learning, as
well as a guest editor of high-ranked journals and co-organizer of many interna-
tional conferences.

Kociatkiewicz (Polity), as well as and a number of articles published in journals
including Organization Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management
and British Journal of Management. She is associate editor of Management
Learning and is serving on several editorial boards. Her current research interests
336 M. IZAK ET AL.
include archetypes, narrative organization studies, ethnography and the humanis-

tic turn in management. Her website is at: www.kostera.pl

INDEX
A “Academics for Peace”, 20–21

Abbott, Tony, 296 Academy, 2, 6, 11, 55, 108, 131, 195,
ABS (UK), 30, 35 197, 227
Academic achievements, 55, ACBD (Australia), 35
75–76, 112 Accountability, 295–298, 303,
Academic capitalism, 39, 50 331–335
Academic freedom Administration, 71, 87, 90n5, 95, 97,
in corporate university, 19–36 102–103, 116, 125, 175, 180,
inheritance, 33–36 263, 332–333
institutional framework, 3–4, 8, 11 Administrators, 116, 123, 166,
institutional freedom versus, 4 170–171, 173, 175–176, 181,
McLearning, 179–180 190, 202, 264, 288, 332
Academic knowledge, 20, 164, Amazon, 160, 282, 285
256, 285 American Association of Collegiate
Academic labor, 45, 50, 54 Schools of Business
Academic life, 117–118, 210, 217, (AACSB), 173–174, 180
228–229 American Association of University
See also Taylorisation Professors, 180
Academic oligarchy, 49–51 American Legislative Exchange
Academic publishers, 43, 54 Council (ALEC), 161
Academics Anti-Coda, 329–335
accountability, 295–298, 303, Apparent contradiction, 47–51, 56
331–335 Apple, 276, 280,
neo-liberalism and, 245, 250, 284–285
254–256, 257–258, 261–264 Application of theories, 208, 217–219
teaching and research, 227, Applied theoretical knowledge, 215
229–230, 236 Aristotle, 1–2

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46894-5
338 INDEX
Assessment culture, 86, 94 Carolingian reforms (ninth

See also Control culture century AD), 3
Association of Business Schools Career, 7, 31–32, 69, 89, 95, 101,
(UK), 28, 30 125, 136, 150, 172–173, 177,
Audibility, 64 209, 230, 254, 296, 304
Audit culture, 11, 68, 86, 94, Casino capitalism, 7, 187–188, 200
96, 188, 190 CCTV, 332
Aura, 325 CEOs, 191
Australia the Association of Business Charlemagne, 3
Dean’s Council (ABDC), 27 Chicago University, 254
AUT University, 178 Chmiel, Beata, 133
Circulation of capital, 57
Circulation of the common, 56–57
Civic engagement, 188–189, 194, 203
B
Clark University, 108
Badges, 274–275, 279
Classrooms, 114, 176, 189, 198, 221,
Brave New World (Huxley), 299
279, 318, 323, 332
Bureaucracy, 33, 71, 124, 136,
case study (hypothetical
257–259
situation), 211–213
Business academics, 27, 30
old norms, 177
Business education, 26, 113, 170,
pedagogical approach, 272–273
174, 177, 212, 217
student’s time, best use, 276–279
criticism, 117–119
Cognitive capitalism, 42–43
idea and practice, 114–117
Collaboration, 276–280, 284, 294,
mission (case study), 111–113
296, 299, 315–316,
Business ethics, 208–214, 220
322–324, 330
Business principles, 114
Collaborators, 281, 287
Business schools, 12–13, 20, 25–26,
Columbia University, 196
28, 30, 34, 112–113, 115, 117,
Commodification, 39–40, 44, 48,
173, 177, 196, 208–211, 213,
188, 195
215, 217–221
Common and the commons
capitalism and, 53–55
corrupted forms, 51–53
C future of university, 55–58
Capitalism, 40–41, 47, 52, key concepts, 41–44
56, 152, 323 Communalism, universalism,
Capitalist realism, 247 disinterestedness, organised
Capitals scepticism (CUDOS), 96
circulation, 57 Communism, 249–252,
communism of, 54 259–260
transnational association, 43, 45, Competitive individualism, 11, 19, 35
53–54, 56 Consecration centers, 51
INDEX 339
Consumption, 55, 58, 151, 187, 190, lack of, 330

250–251, 258, 299–300, learning and, 322–323
302, 322 radical imagination and, 9, 91,
Control culture 93, 100
academic quality, 96–97 teaching based, 235, 318
change process, 97–100 Digital communism, 13,
criticism, 101–104 251–252, 264
neoliberalism and, 86–96 Digital technology, 249–250,
proposals of change, 100–101 265–266n7
Cooperative production, 55–57, 149 political economy
Cornell University, 94 implications, 250–252
Corporate culturism, 69 Dignity at work, 64
Corporate style management Doctoral students/candidates, 64, 66,
academic freedom, 19–25 69, 71–79
game of excellence, 31–33 Dystopia, 193, 313–314, 316, 318,
neoliberalism, 25–28 320–322, 324
university, 19–36
Corporate university
industry sponsorship, 298–299 E
management, 28–31 Eco-social commons, 56–57
neoliberalsim, 25–28 Economic crisis, 40, 114, 118
performance pressure, 31–36 Economic goods, 250–251
Corporatization, 39, 44–45, 67, 332 Economic and Social Research
Corruption, 52, 188, 190, 201, 208, Council, 212
211, 263 Education
Creative work, 90n9, 333 banking model, 8
Critical Management Studies business school, 162–165
(CMS), 297 collaborative, 256, 276
Curriculum, 3, 115, 161, 173–174, communication in, 7
180, 189, 192, 209, 221, institutional innovation, 255
261, 296 knowledge and, 40, 57, 161
Cultural change, 6, 67, 78, 96–98, marketization, 39, 44–45, 48,
102–104, 135, 276, 286 70, 162
mainstream, 260–262
meaning, 7
D (see also Paideia)
Decision-making, 87, 90, 93, 95, polytech, 178
212, 246, 259 postsecondary, 178
Dialogue See also Higher education;
critical, 5–7, 78, 102, 220 McLearning
deliberative, 7 email, 176, 288, 312
Freire’s definition, 216 Employability, 207, 209, 296
340 INDEX
Entrepreneurial citizen, 114 Graduation, 118, 171–172

Entrepreneurship development, 98 Grants, 7, 32, 70, 104, 130
Era of fundamental changes (2010s)
2010–2015 (economic
profit), 295–298 H
2015–2020 (corporate Harvard Business Review, 177, 281
agenda), 298–299 Harvard Business School, 218
2020s, narratives on Harvard University, 164, 196, 280
diversity, 299–304 Health-Tech Corridor, 152
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 21 Hegemony, 43
Evergreen Cooperative, 152 Hierarchy, 10, 50–52, 55–57, 76, 90,
Evidence culture, 86, 94, 97, 102 179, 240, 258–260
Excellence, 24, 26–28, 31–33, 68, 70, High Point University, 190
135, 227, 229–230, 298, Higher education
317, 331 the common, concept, 41–44
Excellence for Research in Australia contemporary contradiction, 44–58
(ERA), 27–28, 30 critical analysis, 5, 7–13
as democratic public
sphere, 186–187, 191, 194–199
F eco-social commons, 56–57
Faculty, 5, 40, 70, 75, 77, 86, 94, funding bodies, 26–27
112–113, 117, 179–180, (see also Public/state funding)
189–192, 194–195, 198, 202, labor commons, 57
230, 285, 299 “networked commons”, 56–57
Fair value, 114–115 legitimacy crisis, 191–193
Feudalism, 71, 76, 264, 333 managerial revolution, 67
Flip education, 276 political issues, 193–194
Four-part curriculum, 3 research, 40–41, 44–46, 56
Free knowledge, 283–284 transnational association of
Free market capitalism, 249 capitals, 43, 45, 50, 53–54, 56
Free University, 318, 323 See also Neoliberalism
Human capital, 186, 189
Hybridization, 43–46, 48–49
G HyperInternet, 313, 322
General Electric, 276, 285–286
Georgia State University, 274
Gilded Age of money, 192 I
Global rankings, 43, 51, 298 IBM, 276–278
Global university, 319–321 Independent and Self-governing Trade
Grading, 177, 253–254, Union Solidarity (NSZZ
260–261, 263 Solidarność), 127
INDEX 341
Individual academics, 21–22, 27, Knowledge society, 159–182

31–32, 298, 303 See also McLearning
Individual researchers, 29, 34, 49, 70
Individualism, 11, 19, 26, 35, 74, 199
Industrial communism, 250–251 L
Infotainment industries, 300 Labor commons, 57
Innovation, 7, 44, 120, 126, 171, 212, Labour market, 68, 87, 90n8, 95, 134,
221, 255, 257, 274, 276–277, 278
281–284, 289, 302 Leadership, 3, 29, 94, 124, 130–131,
Institutional freedom, 4 137, 178–179, 191, 212–213,
Intellectual freedom, 303 229, 241, 293, 296, 335
intellectual property, 29, 54, 57, 249, League tables, 32
261, 277–278 Learner, 2, 4, 176, 216, 233, 236,
International ranking systems, 32 239–240, 278, 301
Internet, 131, 160, 169, 171, 256, learning versus, 4–5
264, 280, 300, 303–304 Learning
Interregnum, 9–10, 227, 238, 331 by experience, 6–7
Involved University (Uniwersytet love for, 232–234
Zaangażowany - UZ), 129 model, 237–238
objects of, 4–5
outcomes, 218–219, 233, 235
J personal constructs, 234–235
Jagiellonian University, 127 as teaching and research, 235–237
Jobs, 10, 29, 135–136, 149, 160–161, Learning communities, 13, 228,
165–166, 175, 179–180, 182, 238–240
189, 191–192, 194, 202, 234, Liquid modernity, 9–10, 330
256, 260, 262–263, 274, Lublin 9 Alternative of Thinking and
278–279, 285, 319, 331 Acting, 130
Junior academics, 11, 64, 66, 69,
71–73, 75–79
Justinian reforms (529 AD), 2–3 M
Management academics, 27
Managers, 19, 22, 27, 29–31, 33–34,
K 50, 67, 90, 93, 99, 102, 112,
Khan Academy, 262 123, 178, 186, 191, 217, 241,
Knowledge capital, 7, 29 297, 332, 335
Knowledge economy, 40, 42, 50, Manifesto, The, 129, 334–335
58, 234 Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in
Knowledge management, 170 Lublin, 130
Knowledge production, 44, 148, 150, Market capitalism, 249
188, 213, 256, 258–259 Marketization, 39, 44–45, 48, 70, 162
342 INDEX
Marxism, 11, 40, 46–47, 50, 92, 138, university reforms, 64, 66, 68–69,
160, 164, 179, 245, 248, 71, 73, 78–79
250, 265n1 See also Higher education;
Mass education, 8, 188 Post-Neoliberalism
Mass market, 8 New economy, 260, 264, 296
Master in Business Administration New Managerialism, 295
(MBA), 115, 118, 211–212, New millennium, 294–295, 297
218, 230 New Opening of the University
McLearning (Nowe Otwarcie Uniwersytetu -
class room norms, 177 NOU), 130
criticism, 181–182 New Public Management, 40, 43,
current practices, 169 66–67, 70, 85–89, 92, 94, 100
delivery, 167–169 New University Project, 254, 256
distance learning, 169–171 No Child Left Behind, 161
enabling technologies, 171–173
institutional status, 176–177
metastatic measurement, 173–174 O
pedagogy, 174–176 Online blackboard, 171, 176
professorate, 179–181 Online education, 262
purpose, 177–178 Online learning, 162, 176
McUniversity, 8 Open access, 54, 295–296, 303
Modelling learning, 235, 237–238 Organisational culture
Module objectives, 218–219 apparent change, 100
Monastic education, 3, 163 implicite functions, 98
MOOCs (massive online open principle of future
courses), 233, 263, 266n10, university, 279–282
273–274 quality system, 97
Organizational commons, 57
N
Narcissism, 13, 228, 231–232 P
Neoliberalism Paideia, 5–7
academics in, 245, 250, 254–256, Paris University, 3
257–258, 261–264 Pedagogy
competitive individualism, 34–35 business school, 209, 212, 220
control culture and, 85–93, classroom, 195, 272–273, 276
100–101 critical, 138
corporate university, 25–28 in elite universities, 195–196
institutional framework, 19–22 radical, 5
management methods, 87–91 political issues, 193–194
research under, 91–94 public affirmation, 197
role of public intellectuals, 185–203 of resistance, 138–139
INDEX 343
traditional, 253 Post-Neoliberalism, 145–155

US institution, 174–176 Power, 200, 257–259
Penn State University, 190, 274 See also Bureaucracy
Performance management system, 11, PowerPoint, 171, 176–177, 231
32, 63–80 Primitive communism, 250
Performance pressure, 25, 31, 69, 74 Princeton University, 201
PhDs, 127, 134, 179, Principles, university of future
253–254 curiosity, 282
Plato, 1–2, 116, 222 empathy, 281–282
Point scoring, 11, 30, 102 generosity, 280–281
Polish higher education, research positivity, 279–280
context Private sector, 6, 29, 40–41, 43–46,
data collection and analysis, 72–73 48–49, 53–54, 56, 69, 73–74,
methodology, 72 85–89, 92–94, 98–99, 103,
questions, 73 112–113, 128, 132, 149, 161,
Polish higher education, research 186, 189, 195–199, 202,
findings 210–211, 248, 286, 315, 321, 324
conflicts and logic of survival, 77 Privatization, 39, 44–45, 187, 190
erosion of teaching and lack of Producers, 26, 42, 46, 52, 54–56, 285
academic conversations, 74–75 Professional associations, 35, 91n10
limitation of autonomy, 75–76 Professorate, 160, 162, 179–182
misuse of power and Profit maximization, 6, 115
feudalism, 76–77 Public/state funding, 24, 26–30,
unethical behaviours, 74 43–44, 57, 70, 161, 165, 178–179,
workaholism, 73–74 191–192, 200, 212, 256–257, 277,
Polish performance management 295, 297–298, 302–303
system, 70 Public sector, 48–49, 66,
Polish scholars 87–88, 118, 297
academic initiatives, 125–130
citizens of academia
(research), 130–136 Q
pilot study conclusions, 137–138 Quality, research, 26–27, 80, 131
social activism, 123–125 Quasi-market, 22, 28, 33–34, 49
Polish University Accreditation Quasi-public institution, 298–299
Commission, 140
Political economy, 39, 54,
248–250, 255 R
Political, economic, social, Radical imagination, 9, 188, 192,
technological, ecological, and 198, 246
legal (PESTEL) factors, 293 Real contradiction, 51–55
Post-capitalism, 9–10, 12, 54–55, Really Open University (ROU), 92
149, 152, 330 Redemption, 323, 324–325
344 INDEX
Rent, 42, 54 Socioeconomic system, 40, 42, 46,

Research 208–209, 221
citizens of academia, 130–136 Solidarity, 128, 138, 182, 331, 334
control culture in neoliberal Speculations on university futures in
university, 91–94 2025
higher education business demands, 299–301
contradictions, 41–45 core purpose of learning, 295–297
Polish higher education, 70–77 corporate enterprises, 298–299
teaching and, 78, 80n1, 95, 99, freedom with control, 302–304
102, 227–240, 295 initial reflections, 294–295
See also Polish higher education, negative aspects, 304–305
research context and findings; Stewardship, 97–98
Polish scholars Stories (future vision of college)
Research Excellence Framework dystopias, 313–314
(REF), 26–28, 30 level of interpretation, 318–323
Researchers, 24, 28–29, 31, 34, 44, level of metaphors, 323–325
46, 49, 69–70, 75, 86, 89, 92–93, positive, 315–316
97, 102, 112, 116–117, 138, privatized, 315
155, 208, 218, 229, 232, 261, transformative, 316–318
312, 334 Student unions, 3, 191, 200, 202
See also Time and space Students
Rotman School of Management, 274 academics and, 5–6, 214, 221
citizens, 5
classroom, 276–279
S doctoral, 64, 66, 69, 71–79
Scholarship, 31, 55, 71–72, 128, 134, international, 20, 253, 263
136, 138, 179, 237, 334 Symbolic capital, 6–7, 78, 124
Self-knowledge, 6 Szczepanski, Professor Marek, 145
Self-organization, 24, 332
Self-reflexive inquiry, 5
Skype, 255, 312 T
Social activism. see Polish scholars Taylorisation, 228–230
Social actors, 67, 311–312 Teachers, 70, 95, 117, 136, 138, 173,
Social justice, 64, 78, 150, 194, 176, 178–179, 200, 221, 230,
199, 286 240, 261, 288, 301, 317–318,
Social media, 131, 240 323, 334
Social norms, 247, 259 Teaching
Social relations, 42, 47, 53, 56, 58, 79, academic quality, 96–97, 102
139, 169, 181, 189, 194, 201, 249 applicability of theories, 210
Social responsibility, 6, 29, 150, 187, large-scale, 298
189, 194, 200, 203 learning, 180, 182, 190, 208, 214,
Social scientists, 29, 309, 313 322–324
INDEX 345
research and, 78, 80n1, 95, 99, 102, governance, 67, 83, 100–101
227–240, 295–296 (see also Control culture;
performing academics, 68–69 Neoliberalism)
programs, 87, 95 legacy, 1–3
progressive method, 276 managers, 22, 29–31, 33, 93,
Teaching and research 123, 297
academic life, 227–240 meaning of, 20, 23, 34
business school tradition, 207–222 modern concept, 3–4
knowledge society, 159–182 pseudo-businesses, 7–10
(see also McLearning) public funding, 44, 295, 298
public intellectuals war against quasi-public institution, 298–299
neoliberalism, 185–203 state control, 40, 44
There is no alternative (TINA), 247, third mission, 101
248, 258 traditional, 8, 89, 101
Threats and opportunities University of Aberdeen, 334
network effect, 282–283, 284 University of Berlin, 179
transaction costs, 282–283 University of Bologna, 3, 23–24,
Time and space, 228, 323–324, 163, 165
332–333 University of future
Totalitarianism, 25, 32, 34–35, 69, competitive threats, 282–285
213, 248 predictions, 287–289
Trade unions, 79, 189, 248 principles, 279–282
Transaction costs, 256, 282–283 service areas, 285–286
Transnational association, 43, 45, social functions, 286–287
53–54, 56 threats and opportunities, 282–285
Twin Oaks community, 259 in 2025, 294–295
Turbo capitalism, 151 unified concept of
learning, 239–240
workforce design, 275, 279
U See also Principles, university of
UNESCO Glossary of Quality future; Speculations on university
Assurance and Accreditation, 96 futures in 2025
Unidirectional instruction, 3 University of Gdansk, 130
University University of Illinois, 192
of the common, 39–58 University of Massachusetts, 178
co-operative, 118 University of Michigan, 274
cultural mission, 5–7 University of Phoenix, 178
degrees, 4, 29, 118, 172–173, 191, University of Plymouth, 153
245, 273–274, 278, 330 University of Silesia, 145, 148, 150,
divergent interests, 55–56 152–154
dominating models, 330 University of Solidarity (US), 130
domination of capital, 53–55 University of Toronto, 274
346 INDEX
University of Warsaw, 127, W

129, 132 Women, 2, 130, 147, 332
Urbana Champaign in the American Workaholism, 73–74
Indian Studies Program, 192 Workplace dynamics, 50, 56–57,
U3A (the University of the Third 64–66, 73, 79, 220, 261, 285
Age), 232
Utopian/ethical communism, 251
Y
Yale University, 196
V Young academics, 69, 134–135, 331
Valorization, 45, 50, 53
Virtual classrooms, 176
Vocational school, 166, 168, Z
178, 180 Zero cost, 250

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Palgrave Critical University Studies

More information about this series at

Palgrave Critical University Studies

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover illustration © The National Trust Photolibrary / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Naming this book as a Critical University Studies Series gives it a very

• The nature of academic work

• Whose interests are being served?

The series intends to foster the following kind of contributions:

• Critical studies of university contexts, while they might be local in

(1) There is a conspicuous absence of studies that give existential

strains, and the consequences these market-driven distortions have

We look forward to this series advancing these important agenda and to

John Smyth, Series Editor

1 Introduction: The Future of University Education 1

Part I Dissecting the Status Quo

2 Academic Freedom in the Corporate University:

3 The University of the Common: Beyond

4 “The Last in the Food Chain”: Dignity of Polish Junior

5 The Culture of Control in the Contemporary University 85

Part II University in Context

6 Living in a World of Foam: Global Ideas, Bubbles,

7 The Future of the University? Social Activism among

8 University as a Terminal: Socio-Material

Part III Teaching and Research

9 McLearning and the So-Called Knowledge Society:

10 Neoliberalism’s War against Higher Education

11 Re-Imagining Business Schools of the Future as Places

12 Re-Integrating the Professional Learner:

Part IV Into the Future

13 Escape from the Neo-Liberal Higher Education Prison:

14 A Curious and Collaborative Future 271

15 Speculations on University Futures in 2025: Corporate

16 2021: A Campus Odyssey 309

Table 4.1 Dignity at work 66

Introduction: The Future of University

Michał Izak, Monika Kostera and Michał Zawadzki

© The Author(s) 2017 1

Indeed, both Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum (although – if

monastic communities. While due to turbulent times most Carolingian

right of conferring its own degrees – one of the major determinants

object of study for e.g. a candidate for the BA degree in Sociology.

everyone could agree with (Habermas 1985). Communication in educa-

Instead of raising awareness, academics have turned into ﬁerce rivalling

academics and from any sense of wider obligation or professional commu-

George Ritzer coined in 1993 the term “McUniversity” to refer to the

than those ofﬁcially upheld and advertised in terms of investment and

that a post-capitalist state will emerge, whereas others envision a kind of

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The book consists of 15 chapters grouped according to 4 broader

university, which might overcome negative factors connected with neolib-

propose to transform business schools into places of theorizing, able to

Michał Izak, PhD, is a senior lecturer in management at the University of

Monika Kostera is Professor Ordinaria and Chair of Management at the

Management at the Durham University, UK, and Guest Professor at Linnaeus

Michał Zawadzki, PhD, works at the Institute of Culture at the Faculty of

Dissecting the Status Quo

Academic Freedom in the Corporate

Corporate style management and its attendant culture of competitive

© The Author(s) 2017 19

put at stake, most especially, in university settings, the liberty of the