Neoliberalism and the University

Abstract

The rise of neoliberalism during 1980s and 1990s has fundamentally transformed public institutions and the traditional university. Within few short decades, the social democratic model which sees education as the fundamental human right has been replaced by the commodified neoliberal university based on assumptions of individuality, rationality and self-interest summarized by the notion of homo economicus. With the arrival of the age of the digital reason, however, the wheel of development has made another turn. New technologies have brought into prominence new ways of knowledge making, dissemination, and governance such as peer- production, co-creation, co-design, co- responsibility, collective intelligence, and peer government. In this way, the neoliberal university has developed a strong inner conflict between its political economy university based on principles of the free market and the (digital) logic of collective knowledge production and dissemination. In the age of the digital reason, neoliberal principles are increasingly becoming unfit for ‘core businesses’ of higher education – teaching and research – and this inability forecasts the inevitable end of the neoliberal university as we know it.