By Jonathan Thon. One way of recovering costs for federally funded research is by having governments proportionately included in intellectual property agreements resulting from their angel investments. While not all projects are ultimately profitable, funds allocated to university investigators for basic research should be regarded as a diversified investment portfolio from which successful ventures offset risk. As lab-bench discoveries are translated to bedside technologies, funding agencies can earn profits from their grants, encouraging further funding through re-investment. Crafting a mutually beneficial relationship of this sort would keep politicians from having to choose between funding basic research (popularly believed to be a welfare practice) and supporting economic growth; which is a false dichotomy. Read more...

MOLESWORTH, Mike; SCULLION, Richard; and NIXON, Elizabeth (eds.) 2012. The Marketization of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer. New York: Routledge, 2012. 245 p. ISBN 978-0-415-58447-0.
This publication explains how market forces emerged in British higher education shaping postsecondary education.
The book presents a controversial topic considering the roles of students as “consumers”. The expansion of Higher Education
led to competition between Higher Education institutions, with students increasingly positioned as consumers and institutions working to improve the extent to which they meet ‘consumer demands’.
Given the latest government funding cuts, the most prevalent outlook in Higher Education today is one of business, and this book treats this new trend with contributions from many of the leading names involved in Higher Education including Ron Barnett, Frank Furedi, Lewis Elton, Roger Brown and also Laurie Taylor.
For more information follow this link.

Par SOPHIE WAHNICH historienne, directrice de recherches au CNRS. Le processus de Bologne en 1999, la stratégie de Lisbonne en 2000, le classement des universités de Shanghai, en 2003, ont fabriqué une hiérarchie qui, auparavant, était inexistante. Ils ont généré les conditions d’un marché des universités. Ils ont ainsi fait du savoir un bien marchand comme un autre.
De 2007 à 2012, des mouvements d’ampleur ont secoué les universités françaises, britanniques, chiliennes et québécoises, refusant cette marchandisation articulée à un nouveau management néolibéral, une mise en concurrence généralisée des individus et des sites. La rentabilité devenant le maître mot, les  secteurs qui ne seraient pas rentables ont été supprimés, les droits d’inscription ont augmenté, l’endettement des étudiants accru. Des politiques publiques d’homogénéisation des systèmes universitaires n’ont pas produit dans des pays supposément démocratiques un meilleur accès au savoir, mais l’inverse: une plus grande difficulté à savoir ce que serait même un savoir, indexé qu’il serait à sa valeur marchande. Suite de l'article...

By Gordon Campbell, Council for the Defence of British Universities. A coalition of leading academics and peers gathered last night to launch the Council for the Defence of British Universities. Founding committee member Gordon Campbell explains what is at stake.
For many years I have worked at one of the 40 or so universities that describe themselves as a top-20 university. And when I entered the profession, universities – though largely independent of government – were part of the education sector. We are now, in the eyes of government, nationalised businesses that exist to serve the economy. The Universities Minister now reports to the Business Secretary, not his counterpart in the Department for Education.  In that time, life has changed utterly for academics and students alike. The value of teaching has been downgraded without mercy, because it attracts no differential funding. When I arrived at my university, we taught our undergraduates in groups of two; the numbers have gradually increased, and now we teach them in groups of 13. This is an efficiency gain.
But despite these larger classes, which are typical of the sector, standards have risen steadily: when I started we gave a first every other year, and now we give a substantial number of firsts every year. As at other universities, we are urged to give still more firsts in order to be competitive. We also receive weekly injunctions to apply for grants that those of us in the humanities do not need – grants that will buy us out of teaching, which can be done by an increasingly casualised workforce. Our ability to procure grants is central to our survival as academics. In other words, the value of our research is assessed by the amount of taxpayers' money it has cost. More...

Embracing failure in management, learning and teaching allows for creative approaches to problem solving, says Nick Petford.
The year is 2025 and the following is an account of how the UK higher education sector fared following the 2012 fees rise, a period now referred to euphemistically as 'the era of continuous deferral': "Many universities were confronted with disturbing symptoms, which could not be remedied by available management techniques and which had no precedent in recent experience. For some universities the market demand began to level off and could not be restimulated even by the most energetic marketing and promotion. For others the demand began to decline in the face of substitute products offered by new technologies. Still others saw their traditional markets invaded by vigorous foreign competitors."
Believable? I think so. Yet these words were actually written four decades ago to describe the situation faced by big US corporates (coal, motor, steel) in the face of unprecedented competition from overseas. All I did was substitute 'university' for 'firm', a heresy sure to lose some readers – but stay with me. The author was Igor Ansoff, ex-vice president at the RAND corporation, maths graduate and distinguished business school academic. More...

By Peter Walker. Former poet laureate says ministers take short-term view of higher education to detriment of UK's cultural life. The former poet laureate Andrew Motion has condemned the government's "mercantile" approach towards universities, which he says forces them to "earn their keep", in an attack before the launch of a new campaign against the effects of excessive market forces on higher education. Motion, now professor of creative writing at the University of London's Royal Holloway college, one of his many roles, said ministers were taking a short-term view of how universities should work, to the detriment of prosperity in the future and the wider cultural life of the nation.
Motion is among an eminent group of 65 academics, writers and broadcasters who have founded the Council for the Defence of British Universities, which is officially launched on Tuesday. They include winners of the Nobel prize and Fields medal, current and past British Academy presidents and eight Order of Merit members, among them household names such as Sir David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, Dame AS Byatt, Alan Bennett, Lord Bragg and Michael Frayn.
The group has been assembled by Sir Keith Thomas, the historian and former British Academy president, who believes government policy means the purpose of universities is "distorted by the attempt to create a market in higher education". More...

By Shiv Malik. Purpose of university is being 'grossly distorted by the attempt to create a market in higher education', says one CDBU founder. Some of Britain's most high-profile public intellectuals have formed a coalition to defend universities against the erosion of academic freedom and the marketisation of higher education.
Lord Bragg, Alan Bennett, Sir David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins are among 65 writers, broadcasters and thinkers who have jointly founded the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU), to be launched next week. The group's manifesto, also backed by former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Booker prize-winner Dame AS Byatt, playwright Michael Frayn and astronomer royal Lord Rees, claims the basis of a degree is under threat. Writing in the Times Higher Education supplement, historian and former British Academy president Sir Keith Thomas said "the very purpose of the university" was being "grossly distorted by the attempt to create a market in higher education". More...