Wake Up or Perish: Neo-Liberalism, the Social Sciences, and Salvaging the Public University
Abstract
Higher education around the world is currently undergoing a neo-liberal administrative takeover. The drive to reduce costs and increased bureaucratization do not serve any other purpose than increasing the power of the universities’ administration. The reasons for allowing this situation to happen are related to scholars’ inertia and subscribing to a belief that academia can and should be impractical. As a result, the emerging corporate university, McDonaldized model relies increasingly on contingent and deskilled faculty, effectively eliminating the traditional academic freedoms. We conclude with suggestions for possible courses of action to make a constructive counter-movement to the radical changes taking place. We propose that we can begin addressing the predicaments of higher education through re-discovering our role in the society, by re-conceptualizing the disciplinary boundaries of academic fields, by forcing the de-bunkerization of academic career and work, and by starting up multi-disciplinary learning communities at universities. We argue that collective action is needed immediately, if any positive change is possible at all before more of higher education is more deeply degraded.
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Biographies
Dariusz Jemielniak is Associate Professor of Management and heads the Center for Research on Organizations and Workplaces (CROW) at Kozminski University (Poland). He has recently published "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press), and in his research focuses on open collaboration communities, knowledge-intensive organizations, and higher education strategies.
Davydd J. Greenwood is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. He is the author of books on rural social change in the Basque Country, the Mondragón Cooperatives, evolutionary and systems theory, action research, and university reform. Over the past decade, his work has focused on threats to and the decline of public higher education in the United State and Europe.
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Article first published online: December 23, 2013
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