Knowledge for Sale: The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education

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Lawrence Busch (University Distinguished Professor in the Center for the Study of Standards and Society, Michigan State University)

Knowledge for Sale

The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education

Lawrence Busch (University Distinguished Professor in the Center for the Study of Standards and Society, Michigan State University)

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English

MIT Press
19 September 2023

Higher & further education, tertiary education

Series: Infrastructures

How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this.

How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this.

A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach.

The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the needs of the market. The market-influenced changes to higher education include shifting the cost of education from the state to the individual, turning education from a public good to a private good subject to consumer demand; redefining higher education as a search for the highest-paying job; and turning scholarly research into a competition based on metrics including number of citations and value of grants. Students, administrators, and scholars have begun to think of themselves as economic actors rather than seekers of knowledge.

Arguing for active resistance to this takeover, Busch urges us to burst the neoliberal bubble, to imagine a future not dictated by the market, a future in which there is a more educated citizenry and in which the old dichotomies-market and state, nature and culture, and equality and liberty-break down. In this future, universities value learning and not training, scholarship grapples with society's most pressing problems rather than quick fixes for corporate interests, and democracy is enriched by its educated and engaged citizens.

By: Lawrence Busch (University Distinguished Professor in the Center for the Study of Standards and Society Michigan State University)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 137mm,
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780262549264
ISBN 10: 0262549263
Series: Infrastructures
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 19 September 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Further / Higher Education , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lawrence Busch is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University and the author of Standards- Recipes for Reality (MIT Press).