Sunday Posts

My contention that the idea of the university has changed since last time we noticed and talked about such changes (in works such as Jencks and Riesman's The Academic Revolution) and undergone what amounts to an ' Institutional Corruption ', which undermines the effectiveness of the institution in discharging its public duty and undermines the public trust in the institution in discharging its public duties; and that such changes are primarily due to 'financialisation' of the institution, which can roughly be understood as enabling finance (financial institutions, financial rules, financial prism) to determine the shape, the priorities and the objectives of the institution. Financialisation as a concept is attracting an increasing amount of scholarly interest. While the concept has popular acceptance, and there is a growing unease about the roles financial institutions play in our societies and how they shape the priorities, financialisation as a concept has w...

The conversation about universities today are defined by two extreme views: One says that the universities are failing their mission by failing to serve their students, by failing to connect them to jobs, and therefore, failing to make them successful; the other says that the universities are failing their mission as they have abandoned their traditional values, they have become 'marketised' and are engaged in a struggle to fit into badly fitting form as education can't be a market activity. Two polar opposites, united in the agreement that universities are failing their mission - they are not doing what they are supposed to do. I have admittedly oscillated between these two views as I 'blogged' (rather than systematically researched) about the universities. I did see the problem of disconnectedness, the teleological view of the universities in some quarters that the universities have a purpose of their own, rather than being an institution to serve contempora...