Academic Barbarism, Universities and Inequality

186 Pages·2016·1.638 MB·English

by  Michael O’Sullivan

Academic Barbarism, Universities and Inequality
Palgrave Critical University Studies
Series Editor: John Smyth, University of Huddersfield, UK
Titles include:
Joanna Williams
ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN AN AGE OF CONFORMITY
Confronting the Fear of Knowledge
James Arvanitakis and David Hornsby (editors)
UNIVERSITIES, THE CITIZEN SCHOLAR AND THE FUTURE OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
Michael O’Sullivan
ACADEMIC BARBARISM, UNIVERSITIES AND INEQUALITY
Forthcoming titles include:
Suman Gupta, Jernej Habjan and Hrvoje Tutek (editors)
ACADEMIC LABOUR, UNEMPLOYMENT AND GLOBAL HIGHER
EDUCATION
Neoliberal Policies of Funding and Management
Palgrave Critical University Studies
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Academic Barbarism,
Universities and
Inequality
Michael O’Sullivan
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
ACADEMIC BARBARISM, UNIVERSITIES AND INEQUALITY
Copyright © Michael O’Sullivan, 2016
Chapter 6 © Michael O’Sullivan and Michael Tsang, 2016
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-54760-6
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137547613
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: O'Sullivan, Michael, 1974– author.
Title: Academic barbarism, universities and inequality / Michael
O'Sullivan, Associate Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Hong Kong.
Description: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016. | Series: Palgrave critical university studies | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015037072
Subjects: LCSH: Universities and colleges—Philosophy. | Education,
Higher—Aims and objectives.
Classification: LCC LB2322.2 .O86 2016 | DDC 378.001—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037072
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vi
Series Editor’s Preface vii
Acknowledgements x
1 Introduction 1
2 Academic Barbarism: Practice and Transmission 13
3 Academic Barbarism, Universities, and Inequality 31
4 Academic Barbarism and the Literature of Concealment:
Roberto Bolaño and W. G. Sebald 68
5 Aaron Swartz, New Technologies, and the Myth
of Open Access 98
6 Academic Barbarism and the Asian University:
The Case of Hong Kong 120
7 Notes towards an Educational Transformation 143
Notes 147
Bibliography 159
Index 173
v
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
6.1 Educational attainment and monthly income
of 15–34-year-olds by district (2001) 133
6.2 Educational attainment and monthly income
of 25–44-year-olds (2011) 134
Tables
6.1 Statistics on full-time post-secondary programmes 129
6.2 Score breakdown of selected indicators in THE and
QS World University Rankings, 2011–2014 138
vi
Series Editor’s Preface
Naming this 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
unprecedented changes. What is much less clear, and there are rea-
sons 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 those perspectives and groups whose views
have hitherto been ignored, disparaged, or silenced.
The defining hallmark of the series, and what makes it markedly
different 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?
vii
viii Series Editor’s Preface
• 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 that, 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 inno-
vative 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; and
• 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,
academic freedom, and marketization in universities. One of the
shortcomings of many extant texts in the field of university stud-
ies 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
university. We need to know more about the nature of the
stresses and 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.
Series Editor’s Preface ix
3. The actions of policy elites transnationally are crucial to what is
happening in universities worldwide. But we have 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 press-
ing 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 intellec-
tual democratic institutions.
John Smyth
Professor of Education and Social Justice
University of Huddersfield &
Emeritus Professor, Federation University Australia