Collegiality: can it survive the corporate university?
Weinberg, Alan M.; Graham-Smith, Greg
This paper raises pressing issues regarding the present and future of the
university. It is strongly critical of worldwide corporatisation and the response
of academics to what the authors consider to be a crisis or impasse. As a mark
of capitalist ascendancy, the university as corporate has, it would seem, lost its
soul and its autonomy. The focus on collegiality invokes the communitarian and
independent spirit which has for centuries been the foundation of university
ideals, but which is presently undermined by managerialism and its profit-driven
motives. A crass utilitarianism appropriates and ‘brands’ academic values to
retain pseudo-prestige, while impoverishing the sense of vocation without which
collegiality is rendered an anachronism. In their last section, the authors propose
a way forward, indicating that a revival of collegial governance is both possible
and imperative.
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