Alex Callinicos is professor of
European studies at King's College, London. His most recent
books include Resources of
Critique (Cambridge, 2006) and The New Mandarins of
American Power (Cambridge,
2003). He is a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Sam
Ashman, Michael Bradley, Jane Hardy, Tom Hickey, Judith Orr,
Malcolm Povey, Mark Thomas,
Alexis Wearmouth and Terry Wrigley for their help in
writing this pamphlet. I also
greatly benefited from participating in the conference
"Universities in a
Neoliberal World", held at the University of Manchester in November
2005
(www.socialsciences.man.ac.uk/socialanthropology/events/possiblefutures/unlw.html);
I am grateful to the organisers
for inviting me.
Contents
Preface by Paul Mackney 3
Introduction 5
Neoliberalism and the
"knowledge economy" 8
Harnessing knowledge to profits
12
Strip mining universities 16
Proletarianisation and
precarity 24
Resistance is not futile 34
Notes 40
Universities in a Neoliberal
World — Alex Callinicos
First published November 2006
by Bookmarks Publications, London WCiB 3 QE
(publications@bookmarks.uk.com)
© Bookmarks Publications
ISBN 1898877467
Designed by Bookmarks
Publications
Printed by Pioneer Print
Limited, London E18
Preface
As joint general secretary of
UCU (the University and College Union) and
former general secretary of
Natfhe since 1998 I have frequently spoken on
the experiences of students or
our members in higher education (HE). Alex
Callinicos has done us all a
service by theorising from our experience and our
practice in HE.
We have the obscene spectacle
of a cabinet stuffed with former student radi-
cals who never paid fees, and
who were eligible for grants, pulling up the ladder
for this generation. When Jack
Straw was president of the National Union of
Students (NUS) and leading us
in the fight to increase grants, he railed at a gov-
ernment forcing university
students to choose between a book and a meal.
Students in the 21st century
have to choose between finishing an assignment
and doing another shift at the
supermarket.
The NUS and lecturer unions
held a consistent line against top-up fees, say-
ing that tuition fees would
turn certain social groups off university. And the
introduction of top-up fees has
seen a reverse of this trend to expansion with
almost 4 percent fewer
applicants this year (2006). We warned that a market in
higher education would lead to
students choosing the cheapest courses rather
than the most suitable. We said
access to education should be based on ability
to study and not on ability to
pay
That is why UCU stood with the
NUS against raising the cap on fees. The
NUS stood with us in UCU in our
battle for decent pay. But when we look
ahead, we need to restate the
case against fees altogether. The 19th century was
about the expansion of free
elementary education. The 20th century was about
the expansion of free secondary
education and the 21st century should be about
the expansion of free further
and higher education. Further and higher educa-
tion should become a human
right, not a privilege.
The ministers keep saying the
resources for expanding FE and HE (without
student fees) aren't there,
even though students and lecturers, indeed most of
the population, can see that
this is patently untrue. It's simply a question of pri-
orities. The government could
start by raiding the budgets for war. They could
save a fortune by bringing the
troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. We
were told before New Labour's
second term that Gordon had a war chest to
spend on HE. We may have been
naive but neither we nor the minister at the
time expected him to fritter it
away on an illegal and unwinnable war.
The government, establishment
and business leaders are just as ambivalent
about further and higher
education now as they were in the 19th century. Then
they needed a more educated
workforce to handle the new machinery. They
didn't want to pay for it. Many
maintained that the workers and peasants were
too unintelligent to learn to
read, right and add up. And quite a few, quite cor-
rectly, -were worried that if
they did it might be very dangerous.
Until the 1960s technical
education was all there was for the working-class.
Universities were largely to
replenish the old professions (medicine, law, politics
and the church) and to provide
a cadre of people with the sense of superiority to
run the British Empire.
Traditionally, educational theorists used to distinguish
between narrow training and
broadening education. Ironically, 21st century
capitalism brings them together
because a broad education provides the prob-
lem-solving workers that the
so-called knowledge economy needs - but it does
it on the cheap.
It's an irony of history that
the first generation of students to suffer from top-
up fees are the very school
students who walked out over the war on Iraq, who
have engaged with social
movements such as the European Social Forum, who
have turned out at Unite
Against Fascism pickets. I remain convinced that just
as they have won the argument
for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, they
will find new ways of
organising resistance. As Alex says, their brothers and sis-
ters in France and Greece have
shown the way and his pamphlet provides the
context for the debate on how
that can be achieved.
It is my hope, at the time of
writing, that 120,000 members of the new
University and College Union
will elect a leadership to enable them to stand
with students for free
comprehensive post-school education. While making his-
tory is not simply a matter of
will, it is nevertheless the case that people
organised can change things.
Pass it on. The idea is subversive. Organise your-
selves: together we can change
things.
Paul Mackney
Natfhe general secretary
1997-2005
UCU joint general secretary
June 2005 -June 2006
November 2006
4 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
Introduction
Britain's universities have
been undergoing a dramatic period of change.
The most obvious sign of these
transformations is physical expansion. In
2004-5 there were 2,287,540
students in higher education. 1 Some 30 per-
cent of 18 and 19 year olds in
England now go to university, compared to only
about 7 percent in the early
1960s. University education has ceased to be the
privilege of a tiny minority -
although it is still much harder for people from a
manual working-class background
to get to university. 2
Some people reject university
expansion on elitist grounds, repeating the
playwright John Osborne's
slogan "More means worse." Thus right wing
columnist Peter Hitchens
denounces the last Tory prime minister, John Major,
for initiating the present
university expansion, "another grave attack on the
quality of education". 3
The New Labour government, by contrast, claims that
university expansion is a
matter of social justice: "All those who have the poten-
tial to benefit from higher
education should have the opportunity to do so. This
is a fundamental principle
which lies at the heart of building a more socially just
society, because education is
the best and most reliable route out of poverty and
disadvantage". 4
Expanding higher education is
undeniably a noble goal. The elitists are quite
wrong: so long as suitable
resources are provided, there is no reason why the
government target of 50 percent
of 18 to 30 year olds or indeed more shouldn't
have a university education and
benefit from the experience. But the reality of
higher education is very
different from official proclamations about equality of
opportunity and social justice.
British universities are in
fact being driven by priorities shaped by the needs
of big business. They are being
reconstructed to provide British and foreign cor-
porations with the academic
research and the skilled workers that they need to
stay profitable. At the same
time they are being transformed from scholarly
institutions into profit
centres earning foreign exchange for the economy of the
United Kingdom.
To this end, expansion takes
place on the cheap, as resources per student are
slashed, and universities,
departments and individual academics are encouraged
to compete with each other. The
shift away from student grants to loans and
tuition fees forces many
students to work long hours to support themselves in
preparation for a life of
wage-labour. No wonder potential students from
poorer backgrounds are being
discouraged from going to university.
This transformation is far from
unique. Universities all over the world are
being pressured to make the
same kind of changes. And this restructuring of
higher education is part of a
much broader, indeed literally global, economic
and political process known as
neoliberalism. Embraced by virtually every gov-
ernment in the world along with
the business and media elites since it was
pioneered by Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, neoliberal-
ism seeks to subject every
aspect of social life to the logic of the market, and to
make everything into a
commodity that can be privately owned and bought and
sold for a profit.
According to the radical
geographer David Harvey, "the evidence strongly
suggests that the neoliberal
turn is in some way and to some degree associated
with the restoration or
reconstruction of the power of economic elites". 5 This
"restoration of class
power" has led to a massive redistribution of wealth and
income towards these elites.
The top 1 percent of American
households received on average 16.9 percent
of total household income
between 1917 and 1 940. Their share dropped to 8 .4
percent in 1973, but, after a
generation of neoliberalism, soared to reach 19.6
percent in 2001. Meanwhile,
between the mid-1970s and 2002, the bottom 90
percent of households saw their
share of total household income fall by 12 per-
cent.' In Britain inequality in
incomes rose sharply during the Thatcher
government, and has stayed at
this historically high level under New Labour. 7
This shift in wealth and power
has involved the large-scale restructuring of
different social fields,
including higher education. The consequences have been
dire. Academics and other
university staff are increasingly denied the opportu-
nity to pursue knowledge for
its own sake and to meet students' educational
and other needs. They have also
seen their pay decline compared to that of
other professionals. Students,
despite official proclamations that they are the
sovereign "consumers"
of higher education, are also victims of the universities'
subordination to the priorities
of the market.
Fortunately, neoliberalism is
facing increasing resistance in higher education.
In the spring of 2006 students
in France and Greece succeeded, with the help of
university teachers and other
workers, in defeating pro-market government
"reforms". Britain
didn't see anything so spectacular, but university teachers in
Britain mounted a three-month
assessment boycott over pay. These struggles
have unfolded against the
horizon of the global resistance to neoliberalism that
started with the protests at
Seattle and Genoa.
But much larger social
movements will be needed if neoliberalism is to be
defeated and replaced by a
different logic. This pamphlet offers an analysis that
can help these movements by
identifying the nature of the enemy and how to
fight it. It draws, not just on
the facts and figures cited, but on my own experi-
6 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
ence of teaching in British
universities for over a quarter of a century, and
thereby witnessing the changes
examined here.
But I don't attack these
changes out of nostalgia for an idealised past. I have
no desire to return to the much
smaller and more privileged university system of
earlier years. Opposing
neoliberalism in higher education should be part of the
struggle for a society that
really does give everyone an equal chance to realise
themselves. Accordingly, my
theoretical framework is provided by Marx's
analysis of the capitalist
economic system. What neoliberalism ultimately rep-
resents is a particularly pure
form of the logic of capital. Therefore, the struggle
for better universities can't
be separated from the movement against global cap-
italism itself.
Neoliberalism and the
"knowledge economy"
The present transformation of
British universities started under the Tory
governments of 1979 to 97.
Nevertheless, New Labour has embraced the
neoliberal restructuring of
higher education in a much more whole-hearted
way. In part this reflects the
broad thrust of Tony Blair's personal agenda, now
endorsed by Gordon Brown - to
force through policies of privatisation and
commodification in parts of the
public sector where even Margaret Thatcher
dared not go. But it is also a
consequence of the central role that education
plays in New Labour ideology
and policy.
The key idea here is that of
the "knowledge economy". One of the Blair gov-
ernment's earliest policy
documents was a Department of Trade and Industry
White Paper called Our
Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge-Driven
Economy (1998), produced by
Peter Mandelson during his brief and inglorious
stay at the DTI. Charles
Leadbeater, a former Downing Street adviser, argues
that one of the main forces ruling
the world economy today:
is "knowledge
capitalism": the drive to generate new ideas and turn them into
commercial products and
services which consumers want. This process of cre-
ating, disseminating and
exploiting new knowledge is the dynamo behind
rising living standards and
economic growth. It reaches deep into our lives and
implicates all of us as
consumers and workers. If we were to turn our backs on
the global economy, we would
also leave behind the huge creative power of
the knowledge economy.'
The idea of the knowledge
economy has in fact become a bit of a cliche
among contemporary political
and business elites all over the world. Packed
into it are several different
claims:
• A shift is taking place from
the production of physical goods to that of
immaterial services.
• Partly in consequence,
production is becoming more "knowledge-intensive"
- in other words, products are
likely to sell more, thanks to both the increas-
ingly sophisticated techniques
used to make them and the ideas that they
represent and that are used to
market them, all of which relies on research by
8 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
highly qualified workers.
• The success of companies and
national economies alike is therefore increas-
ingly dependent, not on the
physical plant and equipment that they have
built up over years, decades,
or even longer, but on their "human capital" -
that is, on the skills,
knowledge and imagination of their workforces. It is
through successfully using
these skills to supply what the world market
wants that individuals, firms
and whole countries can prosper.
These ideas were especially
fashionable at the time of the so-called "dotcom
boom" at the end of the
1990s. Rapid economic growth in the United States
and soaring share prices
encouraged the euphoric belief that an IT-based "New
Economy" had emerged that
would power global capitalism into a future of
endless prosperity. But,
despite the crisis that afflicted the US at the beginning of
the present decade, faith in
the knowledge economy persists. For example, the
New York Times columnist Thomas
Friedman recently published a widely-
praised book called The World
is Flat in which he argues that the year 2000
marked "a whole new
era" of globalisation where "the dynamic force. ..is the
newfound power for individuals
to collaborate and compete globally" thanks
to "software - all sorts
of new applications - in conjunction with the creation of
a global fibre-optic network
that has made us all next-door neighbours".'
My aim in this pamphlet isn't
primarily to criticise the rosy picture of global
capitalism painted by
ideologues such as Leadbeater and Friedman: I've done
this elsewhere. 10
Nevertheless, it is worth making a few points about the idea of
a knowledge economy. First of
all, claims about a shift to services have to be
handled with great care. Some
of the biggest recent marketing stories have, after
all, been those of new physical
goods, for example, mobile phones and mp3
players.
Secondly, successful economies
tend still to be those that thrive in producing
and exporting manufactured
goods. Consider this recent report about Germany
in the Financial Times:
"No other industrial nation has so successfully har-
nessed the opportunities
offered by an inter-connected global economy. This
mid-sized economy of 80
million, often painted as angst-ridden, risk-averse,
and allergic to change, has
been the world's largest exporter of goods every year
since it overtook the US in
2003"." Germany is a successful exporter thanks to
its success in maintaining its
position in supplying global production networks,
by mainly making complex
components, just as China has carved out a role for
itself in assembling finished
products for these networks.
Export success doesn't
necessarily lead to job security or prosperity, however.
Germany suffers from chronic
unemployment, currently running at 10 percent
of the workforce. More
surprisingly, perhaps, according to the Asian
AlexCallinicos 9
Development Bank (ADB), Asia
faces a growing unemployment crisis. The
Financial Times reports,
quoting Ifzal Ali, the ADB's chief economist:
The slow pace of job creation
even in countries with relatively high growth
rates has left 500 million
unemployed or underemployed in a region with a
total labour force of 1.7
billion. Another 245 million are set to join the labour
market over the next decade...
While the newly industrialised
economies of Hong Kong, South Korea and
Singapore had succeeded in
generating many "good jobs", demanding high
skills and wages, others,
especially in south Asia, had failed. Although the
region has made progress in
reducing poverty in the past two decades, almost
1.9 billion Asians still
survive on less than $2 a day, either unable to find work
or earning too little when they
do, the bank said.
The bank said a "huge
global oversupply of labour" resulting from the
growing integration of China,
India and Russia with the world economy had
led to a "race to the
bottom" as companies pursued competitiveness with
"often ideological
zeal".
"Asia's success will
sooner or later be eclipsed by the pressures of a huge
'reserve army' of unemployed
and underemployed workers who are con-
stantly driven to seek out
employment at substandard wages in order to
survive," Mr Ali warned.
In China it is getting harder
to create jobs. In the 1980s, the ADB study cal-
culates, it took a 3 percent
growth rate in China to induce a 1 percent increase
in employment, compared to the
8 percent growth rate that was required to
achieve the same result the
following decade.
Employment growth rates have
been especially disappointing in the formal
sector, where production is
more capital-intensive and workers have defined
employment contracts that
provide for decent working conditions and greater
job security. 12
So even when economies are
successful, there isn't any necessary link
between competitiveness and
profitability - the measures of success - and the
well-being of workers and the
poor. Neoliberal capitalism does need skilled
workers, but it also rests on a
vast undergrowth of low-paid workers, many
with little or no job security,
some illegal migrants, in the rich economies of the
North as well as in the global
South.
But there are larger
uncertainties that the ideologues of the "knowledge
economy" ignore. Companies
and whole sectors may flourish or fail for reasons
that may only at best be
partially connected with what they do. Thus the New
Economy boom at the end of the
1990s encouraged huge investments in IT and
10 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
telecommunications industries,
far greater than there was any realistic expecta-
tion of making a decent return
on. For example, 39 million miles of fibre-optic
cable were laid in the US,
enough to circle the globe 1,566 times. 13
This over-investment then, as
it has so often in the history of capitalism, led
to a bust. Today many IT and
telecom firms are still struggling with the effects
of this slump while it is often
"Old Economy" firms that are currently prosper-
ing - particularly those in
industries such as oil, gas, steel and mining that have
benefited from the rising
global demand for raw materials that has been pulling
up the prices of these
commodities. These firms don't exactly fit easily into the
theories of the knowledge
economy. But a decade ago the picture was precisely
the reverse, helping to give
rise to these theories in the first place. This reflects
the fact that capitalism is
driven by competition, a blind process whose out-
comes can be neither controlled
nor (in any detail) predicted.
There is another feature of
competition that is ignored, not just by propo-
nents of the knowledge economy,
but also by vice-chancellors when they
proclaim their university to be
a "world centre of excellence" or whatever.
Competition involves both
winners and losers. Not every university can be a
"world centre of
excellence". What happens to the losers? In the case of eco-
nomic competition, they are
taken over or driven out of business altogether and
their workers may lose their
jobs. In the case of universities, failure may not
mean closure (yet), but it does
mean a smaller share of resources and therefore
poorer conditions for staff and
students.
For even if the ideology of the
knowledge economy offers a very partial and
rosy picture of reality, it
does contain one particle of truth. The present era of
global capitalism is one of
intense international competition. Individual firms
are under constant pressure to
cut costs by raising the productivity of their
workers. Since there are only
24 hours in the day, higher productivity tends to
depend on investment in more
advanced technologies. So investment in
research and development and in
training the highly skilled workers who can
design and operate new
technologies is necessary.
This same logic of competition
is felt by entire economies, which are con-
stantly comparing their
productivity and competitiveness with those of their
rivals. The spectre of India
and China, the great new low-cost economies of the
East, are held before bosses
and workers alike to keep them searching for effi-
ciency gains. Neoliberalism in
higher education means that this logic of
competition is internalised
deep into how universities work. As we shall see, this
serves to ensure that they
teach growing numbers of students and perform
increasingly vital research as
cheaply as possible.
AlexCallinicos 11
Harnessing knowledge
to profits
Hypocrisy has been a -watchword
of New Labour in office, but one has to
give the government credit
about the openness and honesty with which it
has expressed its intentions
for higher education. Thus an important policy
document from Gordon Brown's
Treasury declares:
Harnessing innovation in Britain
is key to improving the country's future
wealth-creation prospects. For
the UK economy to succeed in generating
growth through productivity and
employment in the coming decade, it must
invest more strongly than in
the past in its knowledge base, and translate this
knowledge more effectively into
business and public service innovation. The
government's ambition, shared
with its partners in the private and not-for-
profit sectors, is for the UK
to be a key knowledge hub in the global economy,
with a reputation not only for
outstanding scientific and technological discov-
ery, but also as a world leader
into turning that knowledge into new products
and services. 14
The Treasury makes a strong
economic case for investment in research based
in the public sector, but
emphasises that this research can't be the pursuit of
knowledge for its own sake.
Hence the need for "greater responsiveness of the
research base to the
economy":
Better integration of the
research base with the evolving needs of the economy
should support growth in
business R&D [research and development] and
innovation through encouraging
multinational firms to invest in the UK sup-
porting middle-sized firms in
raising their R&D intensity towards the best in
their industry, and fostering
the creation of new technology-based sectors
through the creation and rapid
growth of new enterprises."
Since universities are the most
important part of the "research base", this
means that they have to be
subordinated more tightly to "the evolving needs of
the economy". This
objective was spelled out explicitly in 2003 by the then edu-
cation secretary, Charles
Clarke, who set as one of his three main goals "better
progress in harnessing
knowledge to wealth creation". 16
12 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
As part of this effort, Brown
commissioned Richard Lambert, former editor
of the Financial Times and now
Director-General of the Confederation of
British Industry, to explore
ways of improving the relationship between univer-
sities and business. Underlying
this mission was Brown's concern to raise British
productivity, chronically lower
than that of the other advanced capitalist
economies.
Lambert highlights the fact
that British investment in R&D, a key determi-
nant of productivity
performance, has been declining compared to that in other
economies: "In 1981, the
UK's total spending on R&D was higher than that of
any other member of the Group
of Seven leading industrial countries, with the
exception of Germany. By 1999,
it was lagging behind Germany, the US, France
and Japan, and only just
keeping pace with Canada." Moreover, British R&D
investment is concentrated in a
handful of sectors, notably pharmaceuticals,
biotechnology, defence, and
aerospace, and "is lower [than the international
average] for all other major
sectors and especially so in electronics and electri-
cal, chemicals, engineering,
and software and IT services". 17
This pattern reflects more
general peculiarities of British capitalism, which
has suffered from chronic
problems of under-investment in manufacturing
industry for more than a
century. The areas where R&D is concentrated are
among the few where there are
still relatively strong British-based industrial
companies. But Lambert warns:
"All these companies are now global in char-
acter, and all have fewer
cultural and intellectual ties with the UK than they did
a decade ago." They could
therefore increasingly shift their R&D away from
Britain, since transnational
corporations are tending to site their activities close
to their key markets. 18
But Lambert points to a much
broader change in how R&D is carried on.
From the beginning of the 20th
century onwards, big companies tended to do
research in their own
laboratories: this was true, for example, of the German
chemical industry and of Bell
Laboratories in the US. But this is now changing.
Products are now so complex
that research is needed into a wider range of
technologies than any single
company can afford to undertake. Intense compe-
tition has forced even the
biggest companies to reduce costs by concentrating on
"core" activities,
cutting back on or even closing their research labs. Finally, it
has become easier for
individual researchers to move around and even set up
their own small companies with
finance from venture capitalists.
But R&D remains crucial to
improving productivity and competitiveness.
Lambert argues that it is the
job of universities and the state to pick up the slack
left by companies:
In this changing environment,
universities are potentially very attractive part-
Alex Callinicos 13
ners for business. Good
university researchers operate in international net-
works: they know where
cutting-edge work in their field is going on around
the world. Unlike corporate or
publicly owned research facilities, university
laboratories are constantly
being refreshed by the arrival of clever new
researchers in the form of students,
postgraduates and teachers."
As the American business
academic Henry Chesbrough puts it,
The wealth of innovations that
diffused out of these [corporate] laboratories
since the 1960s is not likely
to recur from those labs in the future, given the
labs' shift in orientation away
from basic research. The seed corn that will cre-
ate the innovations of 20 years
hence will have to be provided elsewhere in the
society. Governments and
universities will need to address this imbalance.
Increasingly, the university
system will be the locus of fundamental discover-
ies. And industry will need to
work with universities to transfer these
discoveries into innovative
products, commercialised through appropriate
business models. 20
Moreover, Lambert argues,
"the change is especially important for the UK,
where research output from the
universities compares well with the interna-
tional competition, but
business research does not. Properly managed, there
could be significant
opportunities for UK business to sharpen its competitive
edge through these new
partnerships". 21 According to various international per-
formance indicators, British
universities are generally number two or three in
the world (with US universities
consistently number one), way ahead of British
firms' global ranking. 22 So
the academy is to come to industry's aid.
There is something paradoxical
about all this. According to neoliberalism,
private enterprise is best.
This is the rationale for the large-scale privatisation of
the provision of heath and
education services being forced through by New
Labour. But, when it comes to
R&D, so crucial to competitiveness, private
firms are cheerfully cutting
back on the most important, long-term investment,
in the expectation that
universities and behind them the state will take on this
role.
From a Marxist perspective,
this isn't quite so surprising. The state depends
on the health of the economy
over which it presides for the resources it needs in
order to conduct its
activities. In a capitalist society, this gives those running the
state an interest in promoting
the profitability and growth of the firms that
dominate the economy. Should
they fail to do so, then these firms will punish
them by, for example, taking
their capital out of the country, thereby making it
more expensive for the state to
borrow money, and forcing down the exchange-
14 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
rate of its currency.
Under Blair and Brown New
Labour reached the conclusion that, rather
than precipitate this kind of
capital flight, governments must slavishly follow
the whims of big business. As
in the past, this can involve the state performing
activities that are in the
interests of capitalists generally but that they individu-
ally find too expensive to
undertake. This was one reason why, in the first half
of the 20th century, the state
took on the job of ensuring that the workforce and
its children were kept healthy
and well educated - and hence efficient and
acquiescent.
Under the Tories and New Labour
the state has been restructured - welfare
provision hasn't been
abolished, but has been cut back and, as far as possible,
privatised, the repressive
parts of the state - armed forces, police, prisons, secu-
rity services - have been
strengthened, and resources have been transferred to
help make private firms more
competitive. What is happening in higher educa-
tion is an example of this. The
government wants to increase total UK
investment in R&D from 1.86
percent of gross domestic product in 2002 to
around 2.5 percent in 2014. To
this end spending on public research is due to
increase, after inflation, at a
rate of 5.8 percent a year between 2004-5 and
2007-8. 23
But this money isn't being
given to universities to spend on whatever
research they believe to be
valuable. On the contrary, as we have already seen,
the government's aim is
"harnessing knowledge to wealth creation" - to the
logic of competition and
profit. Leadbeater puts it even more starkly:
"Universities should
become not just centres of teaching and research but hubs
for innovation networks in
local economies, helping to spin off companies for
universities, for example.
Universities should be the open-cast mines of the
knowledge economy". 24
This is an interesting metaphor, since strip mines are
notoriously bad for the
environment and for those who work in them. In fact,
this process of degradation is
already well advanced in British universities.
There is a historical irony in
all this. The student radicals of the 1960s
denounced universities as ivory
towers of privilege and demanded that what
they did became relevant to the
larger community. 23 Tories and New Labour
alike have adopted the language
of "relevance". They too denounce the aca-
demic ivory tower, but in the
name of very different priorities. The student
movements of the 1960s wanted
to transform the university and in the process
liberate it from capitalism.
Today government and business want to transform
the university in order to
subordinate it systematically to capitalism.
AlexCallinicos 15
Strip mining universities
The neoliberal restructuring of
higher education in Britain has been going
on for more than 20 years. It
began under Thatcher as a cost-cutting exer-
cise: spending on universities
was held down as part of the Tories' broader
attempt to reduce public
expenditure. But under Major and Blair the emphasis
shifted to expanding universities
on the cheap.
This is reflected in the fact
that what academic bureaucrats call the "unit of
resource" - the amount of
money the government allocates per student - has
fallen steadily. This means
that university workers have become more produc-
tive as they have had to teach
and provide other services to growing numbers of
students. On average, 30 years
ago lecturers each taught nine students: now
they teach 21 - a 150 percent
increase in productivity. 26 Particularly in the new
universities (former
polytechnics and other colleges that became universities in
1992) the burden can be much
higher than this average suggests, with first-year
students especially being
taught in groups of 500 to 600.
At the same time, academic pay
has fallen in relative terms. In 1981 to 2001
non-manual average earnings
rose by 57.6 percent after inflation. In the same
period the salary of academics
at the top of the Lecturer B scale in the old uni-
versities rose by 6.1 percent
above inflation, and that of academics on point 6 of
the senior lecturer scale in
the new universities by 7.6 percent after inflation. In
the decade to April 2003 real
average earnings for academic staff rose by 6.6
percent, for accountants by
12.1 percent, secondary school teachers 12.3 per-
cent, medical practitioners
26.6 percent, and managers and senior officials 31.6
percent. 27
The productivity squeeze on
academic staff has taken other forms as well.
One of the most important is the
Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), first
introduced under the Tories in
1986. This takes place at slightly irregular inter-
vals (the last was in 2001; the
next finishes in 2008), and seeks to assess the
quality of research carried out
in every university department and institution in
the country.
The rankings of departments and
institutions are then used as the basis on
which the university funding
bodies, the Higher Education Council for England
(HEFCE) and its counterparts
elsewhere in the UK, allocate what is called
"quality-related"
(QR) money to universities (higher education is full of
acronyms and absurd
bureaucratic language). This is the biggest source of
research funding for
universities and is crucial to their ability to function as
16 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
more than purely teaching
institutions (the other main source in the government
system of "dual
support" for research is provided by the state-funded Research
Councils, which provide grants
for specific projects).
The RAE very much reflects the
logic of neoliberalism. Academics are
employed to engage in research
as well as teach (two fifths of their salary is
notionally to pay them to do
research). How then to measure their productiv-
ity? Analogies with industry
require that some physical output can be found
that can be measured. The
obvious "output" of academics is publications. But
it soon became obvious that
simply counting the number of books and articles
wouldn't do, since it's quite
easy to write large amounts of rubbish. So the RAE
increasingly came to function
as a process of peer review, with panels and sub-
panels of academics in
different subjects assessing the quality of their
colleagues' work. Each academic
still has to submit four "items of research out-
put", but these are
judged, for example, by whether or not they are published in
"highly-rated"
journals (which are usually based in the United States).
The RAE has come to be an
increasingly costly and time-consuming process
that is full of
irrationalities. For example, universities have come up with vari-
ous tricks to keep
"unproductive" academics off the books so that they don't
reduce their ratings. Thus some
lecturers were forced to sign "teaching-only"
contracts so they no longer
counted for RAE purposes. The exercise in many
ways resembles the absurdities
of the old bureaucratic command economy in
the Soviet Union: since such a
big chunk of universities' money depends on their
RAE ratings, they have an
incentive to massage their submissions, just as
Stalinist enterprise managers
used to try to deceive the central planners.
In response to complaints about
the burden of the RAE (the 2008 exercise is
expected to cost £45 million),
Gordon Brown announced in March 2006 that
the government is planning to
simplify the system by eliminating the present ele-
ment of peer review and
allocating QR funding on the basis of "metrics" - ie
quantitative targets such as
institutions' success in attracting income from the
Research Councils. 28
This would reinforce the
irrationalities present in the existing system; the arts
and humanities, which don't
receive much Research Council income, would
suffer particularly badly. The
whole set up is in any case just one example of the
way in which an ideology
centred on the free market has in fact legitimised a
considerable increase in
government control of universities. Thus university
teaching is also centrally
policed by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA),
which performs a role similar
to Ofsted in schools.
The RAE has already profoundly
changed British higher education, in many
ways for the worse. Assessment
has increasingly been narrowed down to the
performance of individual
academics. In the 2008 exercise, for example, every-
one's research will be graded
according to the following criteria - "Four star:
Quality that is world
leading... Three star: Quality that is internationally excel-
lent... Two star: Quality that
is internationally recognised... One star: Quality
that is nationally
recognised... Unclassified": forget it. 29 Because the cost of
coming too low in the rankings
is very high, institutions will try to push as
many staff as possible into the
top grades, leading to absurdly inflated claims
about their international (why
not intergalactic?) standing.
The RAE has been a key
mechanism in internalising the logic of competition
within universities. Each
academic knows that her career prospects depend on
how well she does in the RAE.
This gives her a powerful incentive to concen-
trate her time, not on teaching
or collaboration with her academic colleagues,
but on her own research.
Academics try to "buy themselves out" of the heavy
burden of teaching and
administration by winning research grants. When they
are successful, their teaching
will be taken on by a temporary replacement or by
a postgraduate teaching
assistant.
This is simply one of the
pressures contributing to the increasingly hierarchi-
cal nature of universities. One
of the most well-known is the star system. To
improve their RAE rankings,
universities compete to attract top researchers
who genuinely have
international reputations. These stars are given special
terms - extra high salaries and
little or no teaching and administration. The
result is a pecking order, with
the Premier League of big academic hitters at the
top, the mass of underpaid and
overworked "ordinary" academics in the mid-
dle, and a growing number of
temporary staff, many of them research students
struggling to finish their
PhDs, on short-term contracts or paid by the hour at
the bottom.
But there is an increasing
hierarchy not among academics but between uni-
versities. Lambert pointed out
that in 2000-1 15 English universities received
between 60 and 68 percent of
each of the three main sources of research fund-
ing - QR from HEFCE, grants
from the Research Councils, and industrial
research grants and contracts:
ten of them figured in all three groups - Oxford,
Cambridge, University College
London, Imperial College, King's College
London, Manchester, Birmingham,
Leeds, Sheffield, and Southampton. 30
Universities that do not
receive significant research funding have no alterna-
tive but to concentrate on
teaching. This division of labour is inevitable in the
present system: if a relatively
small number of institutions get the lion's share of
research funding, the rest
(plus part-time staff in the "top" universities) must
carry the burden of teaching a
vastly expanded student population.
Of course, universities in
Britain have always reflected a hierarchy, with
Oxbridge at the top. But
government policy in general, and the RAE in particu-
lar are reinforcing and
restructuring this hierarchy. In the 2001 RAE
18 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
institutions were ranked from 1
to 5, with 5* at the top. After the exercise was
over the government invented a
new top ranking of 6* (departments that had
scored 5* in this and the
previous RAE) and increased in real terms the amount
of money they received. 5*
departments' allocations were left the same after
inflation, and everyone else
had their money cut in real terms! The government
had, in effect, moved the
goalposts. Margaret Hodge, then Minister of State for
Lifelong Learning and Higher
Education, explained: "We want to concentrate
funding on the world class
institutions and secondly on those that demonstrate
that they are on the upwards
escalator". 31
A study by the British
Philosophical Association brings out just how concen-
trated this research funding
has become. In 2006-7 just £10 million worth of
QR was distributed among
Philosophy Departments as follows:
5* £33,634 per research active
staff member (6 departments)
5 £26,579 (16 departments)
4 £8,520 (10 departments)
Below 4 nothing (12
departments)
The White Paper The Future of
Higher Education sets out the rationale
behind concentrating research
funding in this way:
International comparisons show
that other countries, like Germany, the
Netherlands and the USA (where
research and the award of research degrees
is confined to 200 out of 1600
"four year" institutions), concentrate their
research in relatively few
universities. Similarly, the Chinese government is
planning to concentrate
research funds through the creation of ten world-class
universities; and in India
there is a National Institute of Technology, on five
sites across the country. This
suggests we need to look again at how our
research is organised, and make
sure we have a number of institutions able to
compete with the best in the
world. 32
As usual, it is the threat of
international competition, above all from China
and India, that is used to
justify restructuring. The logic of this policy of con-
centrating research funding is
to create a university system like that in the US,
with an elite of
"world-class institutions", a relatively large number of universi-
ties where some research is
done but that concentrate on teaching, and, at the
bottom, the equivalents of
American community colleges that teach primarily
vocational courses to poor
working class students. This hierarchy of institutions
helps to reproduce the class
inequalities that are already pervasive in the school-
ing system.
AlexCallinicos 19
As a result, teaching very much
comes second to research in British universi-
ties. At both the institutional
and the individual level, success and the rewards
associated with it come from
research performance. This may seem paradoxical
given the now all-pervasive
ideology that treats students as customers exercis-
ing freedom of choice when
applying for courses, but it is an ineluctable
consequence of how higher
education has been restructured over the past 20
years. The intrusions of the
QAA, which are legitimised by this consumerist ide-
ology, provide a further
mechanism of government surveillance over
universities, but they don't
alter the fundamental character of the system.
The low priority given to teaching
has been reinforced by the widespread
modularisation of university
courses. This has had the effect of reducing courses
to uniform and interchangeable
bite-sized chunks that, ideally, students can
pick and mix to compose their
own degree. They are the main victims of these
changes, which at worst deprive
their degrees of any intellectual coherence,
especially when they are
combined with the replacement of the mediaeval three-
term system with American-style
15-week semesters, whose introduction has
tended to have the effect of
reducing the weeks of actual teaching that students
receive.
Another implication of this set
up is that the cost of failing to make it as a
"research university"
is very high. Institutions that fail to gain a decent amount
of research funding are likely
to experience a further decline in their relative
competitiveness. An initial
trend or weakness becomes self-fulfilling - falling
recruitment, absence of
research income, staff demoralisation, and a future as a
"teaching-only"
institution.
So university managers have a
strong incentive to make their institutions as
productive and competitive as
possible. A few years ago I attended a meeting of
senior academics where it was
reported that a Downing Street adviser had said
that Britain could only support
half a dozen "world-class" universities capable
of competing with the top
American universities. This sort of prediction is cal-
culated to chill the blood of
the vice-chancellors of the Russell Group of 19
"research-intensive"
universities as each struggles desperately to ensure that
their institution is one of
those that makes the grade. Anxieties of this kind
embed the logic of competition more
deeply into higher education.
This logic operates in areas
other than research. The high fees paid by over-
seas students - ie those coming
from outside the European Union - give
universities a powerful
incentive to recruit them. Overseas student fees offer
cash-strapped institutions a
vital source of income. In 2004-5 there were over
217,000 overseas students at
British universities: China (by a wide margin the
biggest source), the US, India,
Malaysia and Hong Kong supplied the most stu-
dents. 33
20 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
The London School of Economics
and the School of Oriental and African
Studies are unusual in getting
a third of their total income from overseas student
fees, but many new universities
that don't receive much research funding have
been very active in recruiting
abroad. 34 But British universities are competing for
overseas students on a world
scale with their counterparts, notably in other
English-speaking countries such
as the US, Australia and New Zealand.
They are therefore very
dependent on forces outside their control - for exam-
ple, changes in government visa
policies (a major issue since 11 September
2001), international economic
crises (for example, the one that hit East Asia in
the late 1990s), and the
development of more robust university systems in
major suppliers of overseas
students such as China. The more universities tie
themselves to the global market
for international students, the more vulnerable
they are to its fluctuations.
The logic of competition
implies centralised management. Getting rid of
uncompetitive departments and
staff and demanding higher productivity from
the rest can't easily be done
by democratic debate and decision-making. Power
needs to be concentrated in the
hands of top managers who are suitably
rewarded for enforcing the
necessary policies on the workforce. This process is
well advanced in British
universities.
University tradition in this
country is marked by a strong emphasis on colle-
giality. This may date back to
the original medieval idea of the university as a
community of scholars, though
there is no point in sentimentalising it. The idea
of academics collectively
running universities is most strongly entrenched in the
most privileged institutions,
the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, where, at
worst, it provided a licence
for parochialism, indolence and drunkenness. But in
the university system more
generally collegiality did mean that academics had a
significant degree of control
over their work.
The reality is very different
now. The neoliberal restructuring of universities
has led to a redistribution of
power within them. A distinct managerial elite has
emerged to implement the new
policies. Some are senior academics; others are
recruited from elsewhere in the
public sector or from private business. Their
PowerPoint presentations are
larded with business school gobbledegook, but
they can't be dismissed as a
joke, since they are the ones who make the deci-
sions, which they do not on the
basis of intellectual values, but of the bottom
line. This pattern is
reproduced lower down the hierarchy, as heads of academic
departments become line
managers required to implement targets laid down by
top management, HEFCE, QAA, and
the Department for Education and Skills.
This process reflects a
government policy of modelling universities on how
businesses are run. The Lambert
Review paid special attention to university
management: "Many
universities are reorganising their structures and delegat-
AlexCallinicos 21
ing authority out of committees
and into the hands of academic and adminis-
trative managers. The results
are more rapid decision-making and more
dynamic management. Other
universities should follow this lead and borrow
from best practice in the
sector." Lambert stresses the role of the vice-chancellor
in particular:
The vision and management
skills of the vice-chancellor, more than any other
individual, determine the
future shape and success of a university. The role of
the vice-chancellor is now more
akin to that of a chief executive officer in an
operation turning over hundreds
of millions of pounds each year. The chal-
lenge of developing and
implementing sustainable long-term strategies and
financial plans requires
considerable managerial and strategic - as well as aca-
demic - leadership. 35
This is, of course, a version
of the ideology of "leadership" constantly
invoked by Tony Blair and used
more broadly to make heroes of billionaires
such as Bill Gates and Warren
Buffet. The airs and graces that vice-chancellors
give themselves - and the
generous salaries they are paid - therefore aren't pri-
marily a matter of individual
vanity and greed. They reflect the broader
neoliberal logic: if the
vice-chancellor is now a CEO running his university like
a business, then he should be
treated like one, and paid like one.
That's how the university
employers and the vice-chancellors themselves
explained the fact, revealed
during the 2006 pay dispute, that the average salary
of a university boss had risen
to £158,000 a year, 25 percent more than three
years previously - 33
vice-chancellors were paid more than the prime minister,
with 18 receiving over £200,000
a year. "Vice-chancellors do a demanding job
as chief executives of complex,
multimillion pound organisations," said the
Universities and Colleges
Employers Association and Universities UK. "Their
remuneration packages reflect
what it takes to attract, retain and reward indi-
viduals of sufficient calibre,
experience and talent in a growing sector". 36
Exactly the same argument is
used to justify the positively obscene increase in
executive salaries that has,
for example, seen the pay of a top CEO in the US
rise from 47 times the average
salary in 1971 to 2,381 times in 1999 - a rise
way in excess of the growth of
profits or share prices over the same period. 37
But universities aren't just
being run like businesses - they are being pushed
to work more closely with them.
As we have seen, the Lambert Review, backed
by the New Labour government,
puts major emphasis on what it calls "knowl-
edge transfer" - universities
conducting research that is of direct benefit to and
is used by business.
Partnerships between universities and private firms are
being strongly promoted. These
can take different forms - universities receiving
22 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
research contracts from
companies, providing consultancies for them, forming
longer term collaborative
projects, or creating their own "spin-outs", compa-
nies set up commercially to
exploit discoveries made in a university.
To support these activities the
government has introduced what it calls "third
stream funding", financed
from the Higher Education Innovation Fund.
HEFCE has announced, "We
are seeking to explore the potential of some HEIs
[Higher Education Institutions]
to play a greater role in fostering productivity
and economic growth through
making third stream activity their second mis-
sion focus, after
teaching". 38 What this semi-literate statement means is that
some universities are being
pushed to working for business or setting up busi-
nesses instead of conducting
their own research.
HEFCE now produces regular
Business Reports. The latest, published in July
2006, revealed, according to
the Financial Times, that:
British universities were
becoming more business savvy.
The number of options and
licence agreements jumped 198 percent to
2,256 to 2003-4. The
combination of licensing deals, contract research, con-
sultancy income and other
activities contributed about £2 billion to the
economy in 2003-4.
Universities have become more
successful at licensing their discoveries.
Adrian Day, the policy officer
at HEFCE, said, "Five years ago technology
commercialisation was a new
word for universities and everyone was being
told to spin out companies
without really knowing what to do with them.
Now we are seeing fewer
companies but of higher quality". 39
Some spin-outs are becoming
seriously profitable businesses. Also in July 2006
Imperial Innovations, set up by
Imperial College, became the first university-
owned technology-transfer
company to be floated on the market, raising £25
million by selling a 14 percent
stake to financial institutions. 40 A specialist "in
turning high-technology ideas
into profitable companies" told the Financial
Times that "most of
Britain's top research universities will have signed long-term
deals giving companies
exclusive access to their discoveries and inventions within
the next two years". Ten
institutions had already made this agreement and "intel-
lectual property
commercialisation companies had now started scrambling to sign
up the remaining 30
high-calibre universities before anyone else". 41
AlexCallinicos 23
Proletarianisation and
precarity
The neoliberal restructuring of
universities has dramatically changed the sit-
uation of both staff and
students. These changes can be summed up in two
words -
"proletarianisation" and "precarity". These words may seem
intimidating, but then so are
the social and economic realities to which they
refer. Proletarianisation is
the process of being reduced to a wage labourer,
dependent on her ability to
sell her labour power on the market and subject to
managerial power at work.
Precarity is the condition of insecurity experienced
by increasing numbers of
workers and -would-be workers in the neoliberal era -
of being permanently on the
edge of unemployment, having to make do with
casual, temporary, perhaps
part-time work, or combining several jobs.
ees. They had the status and
relatively high pay of professionals. They also
enjoyed a large degree of
autonomy at work, being able to manage their time
and decide when to do their
teaching to a degree unusual for wage earners. This
sense of being special was
reinforced by the role academic staff often played in
running universities. These
conditions provided the material basis for the idea
of the university as a
community all of whose members had the same interests.
They were reflected in the old
universities in the way in which the Association
of University Teachers (AUT)
traditionally saw itself, not as a trade union, but
as a professional association.
This privileged situation
reflected the role that universities came to play from
the late 19th century onwards
when they developed into modern institutions
that still taught only a small
minority of mainly male young people. Oxbridge
took on the function of
integrating the old aristocracy with the upper middle
class of professionals needed
to run a world empire, and other universities
emerged to train the
researchers and specialists required for a modern industrial
capitalist economy, as well as
the workforce of the expanding education system
itself.
The elite character of this
system, which even survived Lord Robbins's 1963
report recommending the
expansion of higher education, ensured that, as the
sociologist A H Halsey puts it,
"the university had a right to autonomy, to gov-
ern itself, and to receive
funding from the society it adorned, through state
mechanisms unencumbered by
democratic parliamentary scrutiny." The
24 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
University Grants Committee
(UGC), responsible for government funding of
universities between 1919 and
1989, "acted as a bridge and buffer between the
universities and the state,
carrying this academic interest [in teaching and
research] and protecting it
against government control". 42
Halsey paints an only slightly
caricatured picture of the worldview of tradi-
tional academics as it used to
be expressed by the AUT: "Gentlemen are not
subjected to wages, hours and
conditions of work. They have no employer, no
trade union, and no machinery
of negotiation, arbitration and conciliation.
They receive remuneration, not
a rate of pay. They follow a vocation rather
than hold a job". 43
The experience of the past 25
years has rudely shattered this outlook.
Academics have seen their pay
more or less stagnate in real terms, and decline
relatively. In 1928-9 the
average academic salary was 3.7 times average earn-
ings in manufacturing industry,
in 1966-7 2.1 times, in 1988-9 1.54 times. 44 As
we have seen, the burden of
work has mushroomed as they have had to teach
more students and take on
greatly increased administrative tasks, many of them
imposed by the highly
centralised way in which the government and its agencies
now run the universities. Unlike
the UGC, which it replaced, HEFCE is a simple
instrument of state policy.
Under its guidance, research has become a rat race
with the constant pressure to
publish for the RAE. The development of mana-
gerial methods of organisation
has transferred power from the committees on
which academics sit to much
smaller groups centred on the vice-chancellors.
Of course, conditions vary
throughout the sector. They are generally better in
the elite of "research
universities" (the Russell Group plus a handful of others),
and the star professors
recruited for RAE purposes get a good deal wherever
they are based. Moreover,
within university departments the line of demarca-
tion between managers and
routine employees is still more blurred than it is in
many other workplaces: heads of
departments are "colleagues" as well as "line
managers". This can cause
much confusion since, for example, it means that
some managers are union members
as well.
On the other hand, academic
staff in the new universities enjoyed in the past
less privileged conditions than
their counterparts in the old ones; the struggle,
for example, to carve out time
for research is nothing new for them. This helps
to explain why their union, the
National Association of Teachers in Further and
Higher Education (Natfhe),
developed a much more militant tradition of trade
unionism, and has tended to be
led from the left.
Under its last general
secretary, Paul Mackney, Natfhe took a particularly
strong political position,
especially in supporting the Stop the War Coalition
and Unite Against Fascism.
These traditions were reinforced by the fact that the
union also organised lecturers
in colleges of further education, a sector that
AlexCallinicos 25
experienced in the 1990s a much
sharper and more brutal neoliberal reorgani-
sation, and consequently more
severe deterioration in conditions for staff and
students than universities have
yet suffered.
Despite these variations the
general trend is very clear - what Halsey calls
"the gradual
proletarianisation of academic professions". 45 University teachers
are being reduced to the
condition of highly qualified wage labourers. This
process is reflected in a
transformation in consciousness that is particularly vis-
ible among more senior
academics in the old universities who started their
careers in the 1970s and 1980s
when the conception of the university as a com-
munity still had some hold on
reality. 4 ' Much more widespread now is a "them
and us" consciousness
often expressed in real bitterness towards the govern-
ment and the university
management. Accompanying this change in mentalities
is the rise of genuine trade
unionism in the old universities - the majorities for
industrial action in recent
ballots held by the AUT and its merger with Natfhe
to form, on 1 June 2006, the
new University and College Union (UCU).
But the process of
proletarianisation extends deeper than the deterioration in
the condition of lecturers.
Universities are increasingly reliant on large numbers
of staff on short-term
contracts. Some are employed as researchers and lab staff;
others are taking up a growing
share of the teaching burden. There is a strong
trend towards replicating the
pattern of top American universities, where a
course given by a well-known
academic involves him or her giving the lectures
and the actual teaching in
seminars or tutorials being done by postgraduate
teaching assistants or other
hourly-paid lecturers.
Funding for students to pursue
doctoral research is extremely limited. This
means that those studying for a
PhD have to find ways of supporting them-
selves. One obvious route is to
teach, usually for the university where they are
doing their PhD. Sometimes they
have to do this teaching as a condition of
receiving a university research
scholarship, sometimes they are paid on an
hourly basis, and sometimes
they are employed full time, as a temporary
"teaching fellow" or
the like.
Postgraduate teachers are only
the tip of a much larger iceberg. Colin Bryson
estimates that they make up
only 15,000 out of a total 70,000 hourly paid lec-
turers, "something around
or just less than the number of salaried full-time and
fractional part-time staff who
teach in UK higher education". 47 Hourly-paid lec-
turers and other contract staff
are the precarious workers of the neoliberal
university. Their numbers have
grown considerably in recent decades since they
offer a low-cost way of
teaching increasing numbers of students. But the price is
high for all concerned.
According to research conducted
or summarised by Bryson, hourly-paid lec-
turers generally aren't paid
for the time they put in preparing teaching, receive
26 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
little training or support, are
marginalised in the design of the courses they
teach and indeed in the rest of
departmental decision making, and therefore find
it hard to develop much of a
commitment to the institution that takes such
advantage of them. Research
staff, though they enjoy greater work satisfaction,
suffer from job insecurity.
Increasingly scientific workers, instead of enjoying
secure, well-paid jobs in large
industrial labs, work precariously in the
universities.
The pervasive gender inequality
in higher education is reflected in the con-
centration of women among
hourly-paid and research staff, while their
numbers fall in the upper
echelons of the academic hierarchy. 48 In 2004-5
women made up 40 percent of all
academic staff, but only 15 percent of profes-
sors and heads of department
and 29 percent of senior lecturers and
researchers. 62.7 percent of
female academics worked full time compared to
76.7 percent of their male
colleagues. 49
The social character of
students has also changed tremendously in the course
of the 20th century. A hundred
years ago universities were bastions of the
largely male offspring of the
aristocracy and the upper middle class. There were
only 25,000 university students
in 1900, 61,000 in 1924, and 69,000 in 1939.
Notoriously Oxford
undergraduates scabbed on the General Strike of May
1926. This began to change
after the Second World War, with two great pulses
of university expansion in the
1960s and over the past 20 years. The proportion
of British 18 year olds in
higher education rose from less than 3 percent before
the First World War to 7.2
percent in 1962-3 and 14.2 percent in 1972-3 and
16.9 percent in 1988-9.'°
Yet, despite the huge growth in
student numbers, numerous studies have
shown that people from manual
working class backgrounds still find it very
hard to make it to university.
A major study by Nuffield College, Oxford, of
social mobility in Britain
after the Second World War, based on interviews with
men born between 1913 and 1952,
found that at every level the education sys-
tem was dominated by what it
called the "service class" of professional,
managerial, and administrative
employees:
School inequalities of opportunity
have been remarkably stable in the forty
years which our study covers.
Throughout the service class has had roughly
three times the chance of the
(manual) working class of getting some kind of
selective secondary
schooling... An extra 2 percent of working class children
found their way into the
universities compared with an extra 1 9 percent of the
service class. 5 '
The categories used by the
Nuffield Social Mobility Group (and many other
AlexCallinicos 27
official studies) are in some
ways misleading, since they are based on income
and occupation. In Marxist
theory a person's class position depends on her
place in the relations of
production and in particular the process of exploitation
- the extraction of surplus
labour from the direct producers. From this perspec-
tive, the working class
consists of all those whose conditions of existence
compel them to sell their
labour power on terms that lead to their exploitation,
which means that they work not
just to support themselves but to produce prof-
its for capital. This requires
their subordination to managerial power at work,
irrespective of whether they do
manual or white-collar work and of how skilled
they are. 52
Today many workers need to have
a university education because of the kind
of skilled labour needed by
capital. Above the mass of white-collar workers and
skilled manual workers is a
relatively small hierarchy of managers who receive
autonomy and material
privileges in exchange for supervising the rest of the
workforce and therefore merge
into the capitalist class itself. Below them are
relatively unskilled and
low-paid manual workers, often in precarious jobs. It is
this latter group whose
children find it hardest to get to university.
A major HEFCE study published
in January 2005 has shown that about 30
percent of 18 and 19 year olds
participate in higher education in England and
about 38 percent in Scotland.
The biggest recent increase took place under the
Tories, not New Labour.
"Young participation" doubled between the late
1980s and the early 1990s, but
rose by only 2 percent between 1994 and 2000.
Moreover, "there are broad
and deep divisions in the chances of going to HE
[higher education] according to
where you live. Young people living in the most
advantaged 20 percent of areas
are five or six times more likely to enter higher
education than those living in
the least advantaged 20 percent of areas." Thus,
comparing parliamentary
constituencies, the study found:
Young people in the four lowest
participating constituencies - Sheffield
Brightside, Nottingham North,
Leeds Central and Bristol South - have a one
in ten, or worse, chance of
entering HE. In contrast, in the highest participat-
ing constituencies - Kensington
and Chelsea, Westminster, Sheffield Hallam
and Eastwood (Scotland) - two
out of three young people enter HE. 53
You don't have to be an expert
in social geography to know that that the two
groups of constituencies cover
respectively some of the richest and the poorest
areas in Britain. More detailed
analysis at the level of census wards revealed:
a consistent picture - of the
areas with the lowest young participation rates
being disadvantaged in many
other ways, and conversely the areas with the
28 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
highest participation rates
enjoying many other advantages.
Children in low participation
areas are likely to be living in local authority
rented homes in some of
England's most deprived wards with, for example,
less space and fewer household
goods than their peers in high participation
areas. The neighbourhood maps
of participation show that often their nearest
secondary school will have only
a small proportion of its pupils gaining five
GCSE A-C grades. In contrast,
children in high participation areas are fre-
quently near schools, often
fee-paying, where nearly all the pupils gain these
grades. Adults in low
participation areas are likely to work in a manual occu-
pation, have a low income, to
receive means-tested benefits and not have, for
example, a car or an overseas
holiday. They are much less likely to have any
experience of higher education
than those in high participation areas, and the
two groups differ sharply
across a wide range of measures of political, cultural
and consumption behaviour. 54
Michael Corver, the author of
the HEFCE study, said that, "if all areas of the
UK sent the same proportion of
young people to university as the top 20 per-
cent of neighbourhoods do now,
there would be a million more students
entering higher
education"." His research confirms what is known more gener-
ally about inequality.
Advantage and disadvantage are cumulative: in other
words, what keeps the rich rich
and the poor poor isn't just one single factor but
a whole pattern that favours
some and undermines others, embracing the phys-
ical and mental health of a child's
mother during pregnancy, diet, living space,
exercise, individual attention
during the first years of life, access to books and
travel, quality of schooling
and parental support. Underlying this pattern is, of
course, the distribution of
wealth and income. 56
A child's performance at school
- critical, of course, to whether or not she
can get into university - is in
many ways a proxy for where she fits into this
overall pattern of advantage
and disadvantage. Research for the Treasury has
shown that:
• If one father's earnings are
double the level of another, his son's maths test
score is on average five
percentile points higher than the other's and 2.7 per-
centile points higher up the
reading test distribution.
• For a daughter the gain is
five percentile points up the distribution of both
maths and reading tests scores.
5 '
The New Labour government is
well aware of the inequalities in access to
higher education. The evidence
I have been citing comes from its own studies.
Moreover, education generally
has been central to the strategy that Brown has
pursued of seeking to reduce
inequality by improving individuals' ability to par-
ticipate more effectively in
the labour market. "Fair access" is one of the main
slogans of government higher
education policy, with the aim of increasingly the
proportion of those aged 1 8 to
30 who go to university from the current level of
around 43 percent to 50 percent
by 2010.
The authors of one study argue
that "there is no prospect whatever" of meet-
ing this target: falling birth
rates mean that the number of young people of
university age will drop
sharply after 2010-11. Moreover, the decline in birth
rates is especially high in
poorer social groups that participate less in higher
education, and so participation
by young people from these groups will actually
fall. 58
Whether or not this analysis is
correct, New Labour policies work against its
own aim of widening access to
universities. There are two main reasons for this.
The first is that Blair's and
Brown's overriding commitment to neoliberalism
has helped to perpetuate a
profound division between rich and poor. As the
Financial Times points out,
despite Brown's efforts to redistribute income to
poor households with children,
"by almost every measure, inequality is either
the same or more pronounced
after nine years of Labour than it was at the end
of Margaret Thatcher's tenure.
..says Mike Brewer at the IFS [Institute of Fiscal
Studies], Mr Brown has had to
spend more on redistribution 'to achieve noth-
ing'."" Thus, under
New Labour the pattern of cumulative advantage and
disadvantage that is reflected
in inequalities in access to higher education has
been further entrenched.
Secondly, one of the main ways
in which the Blair government has sought
university expansion on the
cheap is by abolishing the maintenance grant, intro-
ducing and now extending
student fees, and thus compelling students to finance
themselves by going into
increasing debt. Even before top-up fees (generally set
by universities at the maximum
level of £3,000 a year) came into effect in
autumn 2006, there was growing
evidence that the prospect was discouraging
young people from poorer
working class backgrounds from going to university.
The proportion of university
entrants aged 18 and 19 from state schools and
colleges rose slightly between
1999 and 2003-4, from 85 to 86.8 percent, but
fell to 86.7 percent in 2004-5.
The proportion coming from poorer back-
grounds also dropped back, from
28.6 percent in 2003-4 to 28.2 percent the
following year. 60
Statistically these variations aren't significant, but there have
been other signs suggesting
that student debt and fees may be having a negative
impact.
Applications to English
universities were 5 percent down in December 2005
compared to a year previously.
61 A poll of 7,000 year 12 students at state
schools who were predicted to
get three B grades or better in A Levels found
30 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
that 27 percent were less
likely to go to university because of the introduction of
higher fees. 62 Meanwhile,
applicants from the top three occupational groups
make up 73 percent of those
awarded places at the Russell Group universities. 6 '
Nevertheless, for all the
inequalities in access to higher education, the stu-
dent population has become much
larger and more diverse. There are a million
new university entrants every
year, more than one in four of whom come from
poorer backgrounds. This means
that the experience of being a student has
changed substantially. For one
thing, they matter more economically as con-
sumers and future workers. The
decline of manufacturing industry and the
expansion of student numbers
have made universities a much more important
factor in the economy of many
British cities.
According to the Financial
Times, a study commissioned by the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister:
found the main metropolitan
centres had managed to reverse population
decline and were emulating the
success of London, largely because an increase
in university education was
improving the calibre of the workforce and chang-
ing the profile of the
inhabitants.
Manchester in particular was
found to have transformed its fortunes as an
influx of students coming to
the city's four universities stayed on as graduates.
They then provided a market for
housing regeneration and fuelled the
growth of the local
knowledge-based economy. 64
The economic impact that
consumption by large concentrations of students
can have is very evident in
areas such as Oxford Road in Manchester or Clifton
in Bristol. But this should not
conjure up images of affluent student binge-
drinkers. All the evidence is
of growing inequalities produced by a system of
student finance based on fees
and loans. A government -commissioned study by
South Bank University and the
Policy Studies Institute published in November
2003 found, according to the
Guardian, that:
poor students leave university
with average debts of over £10,000, despite
taking on more paid work and
spending less than better off counterparts.
Student debt overall has more
than doubled between 1998-99 and 2002-03
from £3,465 to an average of
£8,666 for final-year students. More than half
of undergraduates in 2003
expected to leave with debts of £9,673 or more...
Mandy Telford, president of the
National Union of Students, accused the gov-
ernment of "spinning
figures to paint students as purveyors of some sort of
extravagant lifestyle".
She said: "What this survey shows is that 43 percent of
students have poverty incomes. This
is twice as many compared with similar
AlexCallinicos 31
households in the population at
large."
The report concludes:
"Students from lower income backgrounds were more
likely to be in debt, and
anticipated leaving university with the largest debts."
Students from better off homes
avoided high debts thanks to savings and "gen-
erous financial support"
from their families."
Another study, funded by the
Leverhulme Trust, predicts that top-up fees
may triple student debt.
According to the Guardian:
The research. ..also suggests
that disabled students, and students who do not
receive help from their
families, will be hit most severely... It found that
tuition fees have been passed
directly into debt: with the average figure rising
in line with the increase in
tuition fees.
In addition, the fees have not
led to a general increase in term-time work-
ing. There has, however, been
an increase among those who receive no
financial assistance from their
parents, further disadvantaging these students.
At the same time, the research
does suggest that fees have evened up the
playing field for some.
Students whose parents went to university used to be
much less likely to work in
term-time, but since fees were introduced, they are
just as likely to work during
study as other students."
A recent joint study by the TUC
and NUS found that between 1996 and
2006 the number of full-time
students who supported themselves through paid
employment rose from 408,880 to
680, 718, an increase of 54 percent. One in
ten of these worked full time.
According to the study:
Student employment is
concentrated in retail and hospitality, two of the low-
est paying sectors of the
economy...
• Among full-time students, the
retail sector accounts for 40 percent of
employment, with nearly half a
million working in that sector.
• Nearly a quarter of a million
full-time students work in the hotels and
restaurant sector, equivalent
to 21 percent of the working student popula-
tion.
• For all men working
part-time, the average hourly rate of pay is £6.21 an
hour in retail and £5.70 an
hour in hotels and restaurants. For all part-time
women the rates are even lower
at £5.98 and £5.51 respectively.
• Student employment in
hospitality increased by just over a third between
1996 and 2006, with a clear
gender split: the number of male full-time stu-
dents working in this sector
has grown by 22.9 percent since Spring 1996.
32 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
The number of female students
has grown by 45.8 percent, double the
increase among male students.
67
Some find themselves doing more
degrading and dangerous work, if the sto-
ries about some women students
financing their studies by lap-dancing are to be
believed. More generally,
however, students merge into the much larger popula-
tion of precarious workers
doing part-time, low-paid, casual jobs. This
workforce, many of them recruited
from among migrants, is as essential to the
functioning of neoliberal
capitalism as are the highly-paid and skilled jobs high-
lighted by ideologues of the
knowledge economy.
Ever since the 1960s expansion
students have been a transitional group,
caught between the social class
in which they originated and their future desti-
nation in the occupational
structure. Uncertainty about where they will end up
has helped to make them a
politically volatile group.' 8 This structural insecurity
remains today. There are
undoubted economic advantages that derive from
going to university: graduates
and those with "sub-degree" qualifications earn
on average 50 percent more than
non-graduates."
But this "graduate
premium" does not place most graduates in a particularly
privileged position. Only a
handful will end up in really lucrative positions - for
example, top-paying jobs in the
City. Most will become relatively well-paid and
skilled white-collar workers.
There, whether they are employed in the public or
private sector, they will be
subject to the same kinds of pressures towards
greater productivity and
competitiveness that we have seen at work in universi-
ties. The plight of academics
themselves, most of whom these days have one or
two postgraduate degrees, shows
very clearly that university qualifications no
longer secure a place in the
elite.
This overall pattern isn't,
however, radically different from the one obtaining
a generation ago: since the
1960s university has been a preparation for white-
collar work. One thing
university expansion of a neoliberal basis has done,
however, is to force
increasingly large numbers of students to become casual
wage labourers while they are
studying. The precarity they experience then is a
good preparation for the
neoliberal world of work that awaits them when they
graduate.
AlexCallinicos 33
Resistance is not futile
The neoliberal transformation
of universities over the past 25 years has been
relentless, but it has also
been piecemeal. Change has come not abruptly,
but through a process of drip,
drip, drip. At each stage the reaction of
many academics has been not to
oppose the latest unwelcome change but to
make it work in as little
harmful a way as possible. This has led to their collab-
orating in a process whose
cumulative effect has been to transform higher
education radically and, to a
large extent, for the worse.
The effect has been deeply
demoralising for many academics, who have
helped implement changes that
they really hate. Underlying their participation
has been the assumption that,
in the famous words of Mrs Thatcher, There is
No Alternative. Resisting
neoliberal "reform" is therefore futile. Acceptance of
this assumption leads at worst
to joining the other side, and becoming one of
the suits who currently run
British universities, at worst to the pursuit of indi-
vidual solutions - promotion or
early retirement.
But there is an alternative -
resistance isn't futile. This has become evident
since movements of resistance
to neoliberal globalisation began to emerge - in
Chiapas, Mexico, in January
1994, and then on a much larger scale at with the
protests in Seattle in November
1999 and in Genoa in July 2001. The World
Social Forum, the most general
gathering of these movements, has popularised
the slogan "Another World
is Possible" - in other words, we don't have to sub-
mit to the logic of neoliberal
capitalism. The first European Social Forum in
Florence in November 2002
broadened the focus of the movement to include
imperialism and war by calling
the unprecedented global day of protest against
the forthcoming attack on Iraq
on 15 February 2003.
Alternatives to neoliberalism
have become visible particularly thanks to the
way in which struggles in Latin
America have developed. In Venezuela,
President Hugo Chavez has based
himself on the support of the poor, using the
country's oil revenues to
implement genuine social reforms and defying the
hegemony of the United States.
In Bolivia Evo Morales was brought to the pres-
idency thanks to two mass
rebellions of the poor, in October 2003 and
May-June 2005, that removed his
neoliberal predecessors, and sought to
restore state control over the
oil and gas industry, which had been sold off to
foreign multinationals.
Closer to home in more than one
sense, in March and April 2006 a spectac-
ular protest movement among
French high school and university students
34 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
succeeded, with the support of
the trade unions, in defeating the draft CPE law,
which would have allowed
employers to sack workers aged under 26 without
explanation during the first
two years of their contract. This revolt against the
right wing government's attempt
to impose much greater precarity on young
workers was marked by a much
closer relationship between students and work-
ers than during the great
student-worker revolt of May-June 1968. "This time
the school and university youth
has acted as part of the world of labour", writes
Stathis Kouvelakis. 70
According to Kouvelakis, this
change reflected the breakdown of the tradi-
tional separation of function
between schools and universities, where the
workforce is reproduced by
being educated, and workplaces, where commodi-
ties are produced:
This separation tends in fact
to become blurred under the impact of the dual
basic tendency borne by the
neoliberal restructuring of capitalism: on the one
hand, the growing subordination
of the schools and universities to the capi-
talist-commodity logic that
transforms those parts which are most massified
and least
"competitive" into training centres that are more and more governed
by the same logic as that of
the positions (scarcely enviable) in the labour mar-
ket for which they are the
providers; on the other hand, the reduction of the
gap between youth in schools
and universities and young workers due to the
increase in wage-earning
activity among lycee [high school] and above all uni-
versity students.
Certain branches or sectors of
activity (fast food, call centres, department
stores, supermarket chains)
even specialise in this category of labour. If we add
to this the extraordinary
proportion of short-term contracts, sham proba-
tions, periods of unemployment
etc that in France are imposed particularly on
those between 18 and 26, we end
up with a range of positions which embody
a violent movement of
reproletarianisation of this part of the labour force.
Such a shift thrusts into the
distant past the old gap between a minority of
young people from well-off families
with access to the baccalaureat [high-
school diploma] and to
university, and a majority who are involved in
production.
This "great
transformation" has, of course (in comparison with 1968) not
only made easier the link with
workers but, above all, has given this an
"organic" character,
the character of the building of a common struggle, and
not of an alliance or
solidarity between separate movements.
It also explains the main form
taken by the student movement itself, which
brings it closer, including in
this perspective, to working class struggle: the
"blockade" (and not
"occupation", an interesting semantic distinction despite
AlexCallinicos 35
aspects that are often
comparable) of lycees and universities that are seen as
being a place and tool of
labour (and being intended for it) whose production
flow (lectures, examinations)
is to be interrupted. 71
The radical impetus of the
student movement imposed a discipline on the
trade union leaders, limiting
their room for manoeuvre and preventing them
from negotiating a deal with
the government that might have saved the CPE.
Nothing like this has, alas,
happened in Britain. Nevertheless, as we have seen,
the trend described by
Kouvelakis towards the large-scale involvement of stu-
dents in precarious labour is
very much at work here. And the French example
is an important one for
students and lecturers in Britain. Elsewhere in Europe it
helped to stimulate student
occupations in Greece in May and June 2006 that,
with union support, forced the
right wing government to postpone its plans to
privatise the universities.
What has happened in Britain is
the development of more militant trade
unionism among academics, which
led to the merger of the AUT and Natfhe to
form UCU. The first test came
in spring 2006, when the about to be merged
unions mounted a joint boycott
of assessment in support of their demand that
the university employers fulfil
their and the government's promise to use the
extra income from tuition fees
to begin to reverse the relative decline in aca-
demic pay.
The boycott received strong
support from lecturers, despite the bullying of
university managements, many of
which threatened to cut the pay of those tak-
ing part in industrial action,
and in some cases actually did so. Because
academics are service workers,
whose work directly benefits the recipients of
their service, industrial
action is always difficult. The most effective forms of
action, by preventing teaching
and marking, directly hit students by threatening
to deny them education or even
their degrees. This isn't an argument against
lecturers taking industrial
action. They should mount action that hits quickly -
all-out strikes or assessment
boycotts - so as to put the maximum pressure on
the employers to concede an
acceptable settlement with the minimum of dam-
age to students.
The student response to the
boycott was mixed. The NUS leadership was
supportive, but came under
pressure from a few student unions that cam-paigned against the boycott.
This was a reflection of two problems. The first is
the failure of the NUS
leadership to lead effective mass campaigns in defence of
students' interests, for
example, over the issue of top-up fees. Without any clear
evidence of the effectiveness
of collective action, it was inevitable some students
would be attracted by the idea
of themselves as individual consumers seeking to
enforce their rights against
the academic unions.
36 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
Secondly, there is the other
side of the social transformation highlighted by
Kouvelakis. Students are a
socially heterogeneous group. While most will end
up in some more or less skilled
white-collar job, some come from privileged
backgrounds that guarantee them
an affluent future. Others from poorer homes
still hanker after the very
well paid jobs that a small elite can attain, notably in
the City. Students hoping to
inherit a place in or climb to the upper regions of
the class structure are
unlikely to look kindly on collective action aimed at rem-
edying the inequalities from
which they seek to benefit.
The 2006 assessment boycott
came down to a game of chicken: who would
blink first - the unions or the
employers. Unfortunately it was the leaders of
what was about to become UCU
who blinked. Breaking promises to their mem-
bers not to call off the action
until a ballot had taken place, they suspended the
boycott on the basis of an
offer little different from one they had rejected a few
days earlier.
Union officials justified this
cave-in on the grounds that the boycott was
beginning to crumble (though
they offered no real evidence to support this) and
that, if the action had
continued, many university managements would have
withdrawn from national pay
bargaining. Local bargaining is undoubtedly a
real threat, but the only thing
that will block it is the assertion of union power,
not displays of weakness.
For all that, the strength of
the boycott showed the depth of many academ-
ics' loyalty to their unions.
This was perhaps most striking in some of the old
universities where young
contract staff helped to breathe new life into local
AUT associations, transforming
them into real trade union branches. The boy-
cott thus offered a glimpse of
the potential of UCU at the same time as it
pointed to the need for the
left to organise effectively within the merged union
to hold the leadership to
account.
The gap between the generally
progressive policies of both Natfhe and the
AUT and the behaviour of their
officials over the boycott is nothing new or
unique to university lecturers'
unions. Full-time trade union officials tend to
form a distinct social group
defined by their role in mediating between labour
and capital. They seek to
negotiate better terms for the exploitation of workers
rather than to lead struggles
aimed at ending that exploitation. This is why,
important though it is to elect
the best possible union leaders, rank and file
trade unionists should never
rely on them, but should organise for themselves.
The new UCU Left held its first
conference in June 2006. It will have to strive
to build strong rank and file
organisation that can take action, if necessarily
independently of the full-time
officials. Wider political horizons will be needed
as well. As we have seen, what
has dragged down so many workers in universi-
ties - and in other workplaces
as well - is the belief that there is no alternative
AlexCallinicos 37
to neoliberal capitalism. The
most important achievement of the movement for
another globalisation is to
challenge this belief - to show that there is nothing
natural about a world where the
market is sovereign. The left in universities will
be most effective where it
places itself as part of the worldwide resistance to
neoliberalism and war.
Much thought and work needs to
go into this. The European Social Forum
has provided a framework in
which education activists from across Europe can
meet and exchange ideas. But
this seems to be much more developed among
schoolteachers and their unions
than it is among academics. But, if another
world is possible, why not
another university as well?
Today universities perform a
ragbag of different social functions, including:
• individual self-development;
• the inculcation of complex,
socially useful skills;
• the pursuit of
"pure" research - that is the search for knowledge for its own
sake;
• the conduct of commercial and
military research;
• helping to reproduce a
cohesive dominant class; and even
• critical reflection on
society.
The current restructuring of
universities aims to subordinate them very
directly to the needs of
neoliberal capitalism. No wonder then that Bill
Rammell, the Minister of State
for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher
Education, should dismiss the
drop in applications for subjects such as philoso-
phy, history, classics and fine
art in the 2005 admissions season as "no bad
thing": "students are
choosing subjects they think are vocationally beneficial",
he explained. 72
But there is no particular
reason why the functions listed above should all
take place in the same
institution - indeed, they haven't historically. Many of
the most influential thinkers
of the past couple of centuries - Darwin, Marx and
Freud, for example - worked
outside universities. Albert Einstein ended up in
the academic splendour of the
Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, but he
wrote the articles that
revolutionised physics as a clerk at the Geneva Patents
Office. It is only since the
Second World War that universities have become the
main place where critical
theories of society are developed, and many think that
the effect has been to
encourage the production of abstruse theoretical dis-
courses designed for a
readership of academics. 73
We should certainly defend what
is valuable in existing universities against
the threat to destroy it
represented by their neoliberal transformation. For
example, given the pervasive
influence of dumbed down corporate media, it is
38 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
important that universities
continue to provide an intellectual space where crit-
ical thinking takes place. But
one subject of critical debate should concern the
role of universities in a genuinely
democratic society. Worthwhile activities such
as seeking self-development,
acquiring new skills, and pursuing research need
not be carried out in the same
institution. Nor do they have to be confined to a
specific period in one's life,
usually early adulthood - this is the element of truth
in official chatter about
"Lifetime Learning".
And there is certainly no need
to for universities to be run on the hierarchical
basis that they are today, with
managers and senior academics at the top. The
demands for the democratisation
of universities - for students and all university
workers to participate in
decision making - raised by the student movements of
the 1960s and 1970s have lost
none of their relevance.
But any real attempt to open
universities out and democratise them would
run slap against the drive by
the government, supported by big business, to har-
ness higher education to the
priorities of competition and profit. These
priorities could not, for
example, tolerate the large-scale redistribution of
resources from rich to poor,
funded through progressive taxation, that would
be needed genuinely to equalise
access to education from the earliest years
onwards.
What neoliberalism has done has
been to isolate and enforce a very pure
form of the logic of capitalism
itself. This, as we have seen in the case of univer-
sities, is a logic of
competition and profit. Challenging this logic means pursuing
a different kind of world,
governed by different priorities - those, for example,
of social justice,
environmental sustainability and genuine democracy. 74
Preserving and developing what
is valuable in existing universities can't be sep-
arated from the broader
struggle against capitalism itself.
AlexCallinicos 39
Notes
i
www.hesa.ac.uk/holisdocs/pubinfo/
student/insti tutiono405.html
2 HEFCE, Young Participation in
Higher
Education, January 2005,
www.hefce.ac.uk
3 P Hitchens, "Why Does
Everyone Find it
So Hard to Understand the
Tories?", 17
May 2006,
www.hitchensblog.mailonsunday.
co.uk
4 Department for Education and
Skills, The
Future of Higher Education, Cm
5735,
January 2003, www.dfes.gov.uk,
para 6.1,
p68.
5 D Harvey, A Short History of
Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005),
pi 5.
6 G Dumenil and D Levy,
"Neoliberal
Income Trends", Neiv Left
Revieiv, 11/30
(2004), ppin, 119.
7 M Brewer et al, Poverty and
Inequality in
Britain: 2006, Institute of
Fiscal Studies,
March 2006, www.ifs.org.uk,
P24.
8 C Leadbeater, Living on Thin
Air (London,
2000), p8.
9 T L Friedman, The World is
Flat (London,
2005), pio.
Third Way (Cambridge, 2001), ch
1, and
An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto
(Cambridge,
2003).
1 1 B Benoit and R Milne,
"Germany's
Exporters are Beating the
World",
Financial Times, 18 May 2006.
12 J Johnson, "Asia Faces
Jobs Crisis that
Could Hit Growth",
Financial Times, 27
April 2006.
13 R Brenner, "Towards the
Precipice",
London Review of Books, 6
February
2003. See also Brenner's The
Boom and
the Bubble (London, 2002).
14 H M Treasury, Science and
Innovation
Investment Framework 2004-2014,
July
2004, www.hm-treasury.gov.uk,
para 1.1,
P5-
15 As above, para 1.19, ppio-n.
16 The Future of Higher
Education, p2.
17 Lambert Review of
Business-University
20
3°
3 1
34
3 5
3 6
37
Collaboration: Final Report,
December
2003, www.lambertreview.org.uk,
para
2.4, pi5, para 2.6, P17.
As above, para 2.10, pi8.
As above, para 1.17, pn.
As above, para 1.19, pn.
As above, para 1.3, P9.
Science and Innovation
Investment
Framework 2004-2014, Appendix
B,
"Setting Targets and
Measuring Progress".
Science and Innovation
Investment
Framework 2004-2014, paras 1.4,
1.6, P7.
C Leadbeater, Living on Thin
Air, pi 14.
For example, A Cockburn and R
Blackburn (eds), Student Power
(Harmondsworth, 1969).
AUT, "The Pay Campaign in
Brief",
www.aut.org.uk/paybacktime
AUT, "The Academic Pay
Shortfall 19 81-
2003 ", www.aut.org.uk
H M Treasury, Science and
Innovation
Investment Framework 2004-2014:
Next
Steps, March 2006,
www.hm-treasury.
gov.uk, ch 4.
HEFCE, RAE 2008: Guidance on
Submissions, June 2005,
www.rae.ac.uk,
Appendix A, p3 1.
Lambert Review, Table 6.1, p82.
House of Commons Education and
Skills
Committee, The Future of Higher
Education: Fifth Report of
Session 2002-3,
I, HC 425-1, 10 July 2003,
www.dfes.gov.uk, paras 8 and 9,
p8.
The Future of Higher Education,
para
I.i4,ppi3-i4.
D McLeod, "Overseas
Student Numbers
Rise", Guardian, 13 March
2006.
D MacLeod, "International
Rescue",
Guardian, 18 April 2006.
Lambert Review, para 7. 10,
P95, para
7-^3> P99-
M Taylor, "AUT Calls for
Inquiry into
Vice-Chancellors' Pay",
Guardian, 9
March 2006.
G Dumenil and D Levy,
"Neoliberal
Trends", ppn6-i8.
40 Universities in a Neoliberal
World
38 "Third Stream as Second
Mission", 18
May 2006, www.hefce.ac.uk
39 J Boone, "Academics
Learn to License
Inventions", Financial
Times, 26 July
2006.
40 J Boone, "University
Company Sells Stake
for £25 Million",
Financial Times, 21 July
2006.
41 J Boone, "Most Colleges
'Set to Sign
Technology Transfer
Deals'", Financial
Times, 1 August 2006.
42 A H Halsey, Decline of
Donnish
Domination (Oxford, 1992), pp6,
176.
43 As above, P129.
44 Asabove, P131.
45 Asabove, P136.
46 See C Bryson, "What
about the Workers?
The Expansion of Higher
Education and
the Transformation of Academic
Work",
Industrial Relations Journal,
35 (2004).
47 C Bryson, Hiring Lecturers
by the Hour,
Natfhe, April 2005,
www.natfhe.org.uk.
48 C Bryson, "The
Consequences for Women
in the Academic Profession of
the
Widespread Use of Fixed Term
Contracts",
Gender, Work and Organisation,
11
(2004).
49 C Johnston, "Figures
Show Rise in Part-
Time Academic Staff",
Guardian, 20
February 2006.
50 A H Halsey, Decline of
Donnish
Domination, P95.
5 1 A H Halsey et al, Origins
and Destinations
(Oxford, 1980), PP205-206.
52 See A Callinicos and C
Harman, The
Changing Working Class (London,
1987).
53 Young Participation in
Higher Education,
pp9, 10-11,41.
54 Asabove, PP137-138.
55 D MacLeod, "Equality
'Would Double
University Admissions'",
Guardian, 19
January 2005.
56 B Barry, Why Social Justice
Matters
(Cambridge, 2005).
57 H M Treasury, Tackling
Poverty and
Extending Opportunity, March
1999,
www.hm-treasury.gov.uk, para
3.15^32.
5 8 Higher Education Policy
Institute,
"Demand for Higher Education
till 2020",
21 March 2006, www.hepi.ac.uk
59 C Giles and J Wilson,
"State Largesse
Brings Hope but Little
Change", Financial
Times, 19 September 2006.
60 A Smith, "Government
Failing to Widen
University Access, Figures
Show",
Guardian, 20 July 2006.
61 D MacLeod, "Fees
Concern over Fall in
University Applications",
Guardian, 15
December 2005.
62 M Taylor, "Fees Deter
State School Pupils
from University",
Guardian, 22 June
2006.
63 R Garner and B Russell,
"Private School
Stranglehold on Top Jobs",
Independent,
15 June 2006.
64 M Green, "Universities
and Local Power
Vital to Recovery of Leading
Cities, Says
Study", Financial Times, 8
March 2006.
65 L Ward, "Poor Students
Shoulder Debt for
Learning", Guardian, 19
November 2003.
66 "Fees to Triple Student
Debt, Says
Report", Guardian, 28
January 2005.
67 TUC/NUS, All Work and No
Pay, 2006,
www.tuc.org.uk, pp6, 4.
68 C Harman et al, Education,
Capitalism,
and the Student Revolt (London,
1969), G
Stedman Jones, "The
Meaning of the
Student Revolt", in A
Cockburn and R
Blackburn (eds), Student Power,
and A
Callinicos and S Turner,
"The Student
Movement Today",
International
Socialism, 1.75 (1975).
6<) The Future of Higher
Education, para 5.5,
P59-
70 S Kouvelakis, "France:
From Revolt to
Alternative",
International Socialist
Tendency Discussion Bulletin,
no 8, July
2006, www.istendency.net, P5.
71 Asabove, p6.
72 "Trend to Drop
Philosophy No Bad
Things, Says Rammell",
Guardian, 15
February 2006.
73 See, for an account of these
changes, R
Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals
(New York,
1987).
74 See A Callinicos,
"Alternatives to
Neoliberalism", Socialist
Revieiv, July
2006.
Alex Callinicos 41
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