Neoliberals directly influenced the shape of the modern research university.
Evidence
We still know remarkably little about how neoliberals reacted to changes in their own primary places of employment—universities—and what influence, if any, they had on higher education. Understanding this history is pressing in light of present-day concerns about “the neoliberal university” and the shift from permanent faculty to adjunct labor, the restructuring of funding in pursuit of patents and other marketable research outcomes, the pervasive discourses of impact, customer (student) experience, and realignment to forms of training rewarded by high post-graduate salaries. In his chapter, Edward Nik-Khah follows one such storyline through Chicago economist George Stigler. Beginning as an advocate of trustees as guardians of academic freedom against the student-as-customer, Stigler shifted after the campus unrest of the late 1960s towards a distrust of trustees themselves. He ended by advocating that research be hived off from instruction. Instead, privately funded institutes should produce knowledge directly respondent to the demands of the broader marketplace. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 35
Categorization
- QUESTION: The claim that ‘the neoliberal university’ traces to deliberate Stigler-style moves rather than diffuse market forces is worth verifying against the chapter.
- SEED: Angle: the ‘adjunctification’ of academia as a designed outcome of Chicago-style arguments for separating research from instruction.
- XREF: connects to: Neoliberal freedom-of-inquiry rhetoric was aimed at promoting their own market views within academia — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 122
Broader Connections
- Neoliberal freedom-of-inquiry rhetoric was aimed at promoting their own market views within academia
#corroborates(0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 122