By Alex Usher. One obvious way to try to keep things co-ordinated was to limit the number of universities to one if at all possible.  The western provinces all took this line for a number of decades, until the political pressure for each province’s second city to have its own independent school became unbearable.  British Columbia managed this until 1963, Alberta until 1964, Manitoba until 1967 and Saskatchewan, heroically(?), until 1974. More...

By Alex Usher. Neoliberalism is hard to write about sensibly because there’s a lack of basic agreement about what the term means. This isn’t just about yahoos using “neoliberal” as a synonym for “The Man” or “something I happen to dislike” (though that does happen a lot); even those who want to write about the subject are faced with some real problems in defining it. More...

By Alex Usher. Yesterday I talked about how the notion of neo-liberal universities was based on four concepts: greater use of market mechanisms, increased use of competitions, the role of performance data and, more broadly, the question of institutional management.  Today I’m going to look at the first and maybe more important of those issues: are universities subject to greater market mechanisms now than they were before?  Are there universities in other parts of the world which are not subject to the same pressures. More...

By Alex Usher. One of the key accusations about universities and neoliberalism is that the system is too obsessed with competition.  On the face of it, this looks like the easiest argument to make about neoliberal universities: neoliberal thought does put a lot of emphasis on competition, and institutions do talk a lot about “competing” for students and staff and governments like the notion that institutions “compete” against one another. More...

By Alex Usher. To date, we have looked at market mechanisms and competition in universities and shown that a) they aren’t in fact all that neo-liberal and b) particularly with respect to expanding access, there are some upsides.  Today I want to look at two other facets of modern universities that often get described as neo-liberal: performance data and management. More...

By Alex Usher. To sum up the week’s arguments:

1. Neoliberalism is about markets.  There are actually very few genuine markets in higher education and where there are they can be quite beneficial especially with respect to access.
2. Neoliberalism is about competition.  There is competition in higher education, especially status competition but it mostly predates actual neoliberalism.
3. Some people claim neoliberalism is about managerialism and performance metrics but this is a genuinely terrible and ahistorical argument.

However, I think there are two additional arguments around competition and markets which I may have skated over a little too easily and which I should address before ending this series. More...

By Alex Usher. Do Teaching Assistants have Academic Freedom?  No.  Academic Freedom is a protection of faculty rights based (at least in theory) on disciplinary competence.  TAs have rights of free speech of course, but those don’t protect your job if you annoy  your employer. More...