Corporatization Of Universities Research Articles

Constructing “Kin” Citizens: An Investigation of Canadian Kinesiology Programs’ Mission and Vision Statements

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to explore how social forces related to the corporatization of universities play out at the granular level of institutional mission and vision statements in the racialized context of Canadian Kinesiology. The stated aims of Canadian Kinesiology academic units (N = 36) were collected from their public-facing websites, and we conducted a critical discourses analysis of our evidence. We argue that mission and vision statements construct Kinesiology as an altruistic and impactful scholarly project and conceal the contested nature of health, scientific knowledge, and community engagement in the field. Careful analysis of the data, with particular attention paid to that which is unspoken, silenced or erased, highlights how these guiding declarations can renew the field’s underlying racial and colonial logics. To conclude, we note instances when programs use institutional statements to unsettle dominant scripts and open possibilities to work toward a more progressive and just Kinesiology.

Introduction to the Simon Fraser – University of Calgary Special Issue

With this year’s graduate student conferences hosted separately at the University of Calgary and Simon Fraser University, our goal was to encourage discussion and debate around the topic of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has been at the forefront of public attention; even forcing our respective conferences into the disembodied safety of virtual space. However, it is important to remember that COVID-19 is not the only crisis faced in recent years; the overdose crisis, crisis of the corporatization of universities, economic crisis, crisis of truth and misinformation, and the looming environmental threat of the Anthropocene, have been with us and will continue to be grappled with into the foreseeable future.
 Crises echo through the past to the present, such as those experienced by our Indigenous communities. They re-emerge, still to be grappled with and struggled against. As individuals and researchers, we may assume any number of these crises are out of scope or outside our area of expertise. We often fail to consider them. However, crises defy temporality and spatiality as easily as disciplinary borders; both squeezing and stretching, accelerating, and suspending notions of the like. The contributors of this special issue consider an array of crises as they collide with diverse fields and disciplines, encouraging us to reflect on how they intersect our own. Ultimately, we aspire to trouble the notion of crises themselves. Questioning our understanding and reapplying it where we had not previously considered. In these general ‘times of crisis,’ what counts as such? How is it communicated and miscommunicated? What are the effects on resilience, recovery, and possibility? Where can we seize opportunity following a crisis?
 The Chinese symbol for crisis is composed of two parts: opportunity and danger. Where the Simon Fraser University conference focused on resilience in a crisis, the University of Calgary conference expanded on potentials of opportunity. As invited editors to this special edition, we viewed contributors, not as tackling separate entities of the term ‘crisis,’ but instead, as a framework to building back stronger, seizing an opportunity, and practicing resiliency as we maneuver through this danger to a better future. As Zhang and Li (2018) have argued, it is in a co-creation of both sustainable and resilient development which can lead to assurances of overcoming and withholding a community’s vulnerabilities, or their potential crises. This development may use standards setting as an opportunity to ensure resiliency (Thompson, 1954), encouraging democratic participation for an equal seat at the table, and taking the lessons learned during a crisis to apply to a better future (Brundtland, 1987).
 In the field of communication, we are oftentimes stretched to an incohesive front based on the competing discourses of the canons of our field (Carey, 1997, 2009; Peters, 1999). The study of communications then is not a discipline, but a field of fields, perhaps a crisis of definition in our own knowledge community. In these competing views we see the beauty of this interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, as reflected in how graduate students across Canada thrive in their specializations. Emerging as a new group of scholars who, as the world was faced by crises all around, produced these articles in the pages which follow for this special edition; we as the invited editors see the ways in which graduate students practice resiliency in their work, seizing opportunities, and overcoming the crises which surround.
 危机
 Crisis.

Huelgas democratizadoras: La rebelión estudiantil en el Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (1980–1982)

Huelgas democratizadoras: La rebelión estudiantil en el Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (1980–1982)

Safety in numbers: security on campus and the importance of the corporatization of universities

When visiting universities during recruitment tours, many students and parents want to know if the student will be ‘safe’ while attending the institution. This paper uses a qualitative examination of security at a Canadian university to argue that the increase in security measures on campuses is driven by both the desire to provide physical security and the pressure from the increasing corporatization of academia to use security as a recruitment and retention tool. These goals can be served by the same security measures or compete for budgetary priority. Overall, this study demonstrates how the concepts of corporatization, institutional risk management, security theatre, and university branding are present in how the university designs security policies and brands itself as a ‘safe’ environment, and how this can leave students wanting.

A profession in peril? University corporatization, performance measurement and the sustainability of accounting academia

This paper examines the effects of university corporatization on accounting academics with reference to an in-depth case study of a research-intensive English business school that strongly embraced managerialist and marketized approaches to higher education. It discusses how accounting research became marginalized as the school directed research funding towards business disciplines it deemed more likely to deliver top-ranked publications, large research grants and substantial industry partnerships. The paper moreover explores how accounting teaching, curriculum design and the administrative hierarchies of the business school started to be colonized by teaching fellows with backgrounds in private sector accountancy tuition. As a result of these two developments, the school’s accounting department gradually transformed into a teaching-only operation which delivered largely standardized and highly technical accounting education. The paper links this transformation of the accounting department to the growing emphasis on research and teaching performance measures in the English higher education system and concludes that the academic accounting profession, as defined by original research and research-informed teaching, is in danger of disappearing at many English business schools.

Reimagining university–community engagement

This article is based on a keynote address to the second Higher Education Conference in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the environmental and inequality crises confronting South Africa and the world. After an examination of the societal context of universities, the article discusses critical issues in relation to university-community engagement. It attempts to address these issues by firstly providing an overview of the long-standing debates in our country concerning the academy’s responsibilities and accountability to various constituencies beyond the universities gates and the imperative to rethink scholarship to engage communities meaningfully. Secondly, it will provide an appreciation of the overarching political economy of higher education and the corporatisation of universities before drawing conclusions about the processes that impede or allow the university to be responsive to community engagement. The article will provide a few historical and contemporaneous examples of the work of university-based researchers with various communities. The research of those who have an orientation toward working class communities and aim to democratise knowledge production will be highlighted. It will be argued that the latter’s “praxis epistemology” (Amini 2017) assists us in reimagining university-community relations.

Exploration of University Sustainability Report Indicators: Evidence from Indonesia

Due to the phenomenon of university corporatization, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is now widely adopted by many universities worldwide, although it was initially used only by large companies. This study tries to add a lifeworld perspective to the university's sustainability report. This is an effort to maintain the university as an educational institution with different values from the company. This study provides a new perspective on lifeworld in the preparation of sustainability reporting of universities in other countries with different life world. The author explores sustainability reporting indicators in one of the universities in Indonesia based on the GRI standards and university lifeworld. This study uses a qualitative method with a case study approach at one of the universities in Indonesia. Data is collected from documents consisting of reports and other relevant data that can be accessed through the university's website and data from interviews with informants. As a result, the indicators of the sustainability reporting of universities in Indonesia based on the Global Reporting Initiative and lifeworld were systematized. The university lifeworld is a culture and educational values that reflect its identity. The indicators of the GRI consist of economic, environmental, and social. Lifeworld indicators are curriculum set product and policy, a number of research, and a number of religious, nationalism, and other activities. This research contributes to enriching theory in sustainability reporting research at universities using Habermas theory. This research is helpful for higher education stakeholders and can be used to prepare university sustainability reports.

The Past, the Present, and the Future of Shared Governance

This article explores the past, present, and future of shared governance at colleges and universities. It starts with a description of the seminal 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities developed by the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education, and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. It then examines several present-day factors, such as increased scrutiny of institutions of higher education, intrusion from external funders, and corporatization of universities, affecting shared governance. It concludes with recommendations for faculty engagement in strengthening governance.

Teaching for Quality Learning at Changing Universities. A tour de force of modern education history – an interview with Professor John Biggs

Professor John Biggs is a world-famous psychologist and educationist who in 2017, was invested as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for “significant service to tertiary education, particularly in the fields of curriculum development and assessment”. John Biggs has been actively involved in education for six decades and has been a Professor of both Education and Psychology. Professor Biggs’ most ground-breaking and innovative contributions – such as SOLO taxonomy, constructively aligned OBTL (Outcome-based Teaching & Learning), criterion-referenced assessment and students’ surface and deep approaches to learning – are all discussed in this wide-ranging interview. Moreover, Biggs discusses his illustrious academic career, his concerns about the corporatisation of universities and his alternative vision of higher education, and also what he refers to, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, as his “constructive but misaligned retirement”.

Responding to institutional climate change in higher education: the evolution of a writing group to group peer mentoring

ABSTRACT Changes in higher education internationally, including the corporatisation of universities, greater codification of research and teaching performance, and more precarious employment, have led to a chillier environment for academics. Employing an autoethnographic approach, we interrogate our career experiences as academic women and the important role our writing group has played in helping us navigate the competing calls on our time and energy, shape our careers, and heighten our career satisfaction. There are salient lessons about the value of adaptive group peer mentoring for those entering what is an increasingly uncertain academic environment.

Corporatisation of universities deepens inequalities by ignoring social injustices and restricting access to higher education

There has been an unprecedented demand for equitable access to post-secondary education post 1994, perhaps because of the change in policies broadening participation of black people in traditional institutions of higher learning in South Africa. The dramatic increase of people of colour attending institutions of higher learning coincided with shrinking government subsidies, which led to universities redesigning their identity according to corporate culture. Thus, they turned to double digit fee increases and persistent long-term outsourcing of services to overcome the problem of funding insecurities. However, it is not clear how corporatization of institutions of higher education enables equitable access and efficient delivery of higher education to the majority of blacks who were previously disadvantaged by apartheid policies. The primary objective of this paper is to conduct a meta-synthesis of a systematically retrieved sample of empirical academic literature to present an argument on the systemic deficits in corporatization of higher education and the corporate identity which distort the ideal university. The PRISMA statement is followed to ensure transparent and complete synthesis of the literature reviewed to maintain the integrity of individual studies. Thereafter, the paper presents a detailed account of how corporatization of universities deepens inequalities; ignores social injustices and restricts access to higher education. In addition, the paper makes a claim that corporatization of universities impairs the academic quality and freedom of the university as well as portrays education as ‘private good’ for self-actualization.

THE NEW MODEL OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY OR PRIVATIZATION OF UNIVERSITIES?

Автор характеризує суперечності нової моделі економічної діяльності університетів, пов’язані з генеруванням ними власних (позабюджетних) доходів і збільшенням частки приватних джерел фінансування. Закордонні вчені розглядають такі процеси як приватизацію державних університетів. Стаття узагальнює їхні думки щодо передумов, видів і форм приватизації у сфері вищої освіти.В Україні залучення коштів приватних осіб могло б сприяти розвиткові університетів. Однак воно не зможе розв’язати навіть поточні проблеми університетів. По-перше, українські заклади вищої освіти (ЗВО) потребують значних коштів на оновлення і розширення матеріально-технічної бази, розвиток науково-дослідної роботи та фінансування інших украй важливих потреб. Такі витрати під силу лише державі. По-друге, в інституціональному середовищі України приватне фінансування університетів зіштовхується з численними пастками недовіри з боку споживачів (платників) освітніх послуг, роботодавців, приватних інвесторів і потенційних донорів. Найменшу зацікавленість у розвитку університетської освіти виявляє приватний бізнес.Автор пояснює це тим, що освітні послуги за своєю природою є довірчими благами: їхня якість не можна виміряти й оцінити під час вступу до ЗВО та укладення контракту на навчання, а іноді й під час освітнього процесу. Можна лише довіряти (або не довіряти) університетським рейтингам, оцінкам національних органів із контролю якості освіти, які беруть на себе високі витрати вимірювання якості, рекомендаціям фахівців тощо. Крім того, сам ринок освітніх послуг є ринком з асиметричною та неповною інформацією, а його суб’єкти можуть виявляти недобросовісну та опортуністичну поведінку. Наведено фактичні та статистичні дані на підтвердження таких висновків.Автор аналізує спроби акціонування університетів у деяких країнах і пропонує вивчити досвід деприватизації університетів у Польщі. Запровадження нової моделі економічної діяльності університетів потребує також змін у правовому регулюванні та часу для їх усвідомлення суспільством.

Slow scholarship in writing retreats: A diffractive methodology for response-able pedagogies

The corporatization of universities has led to increasing pressure on academics to publish as quickly and prolifically as possible. Writing retreats have been used as one way of ensuring the production of academic papers by providing spaces for academics to write, and pressurizing them to publish shortly thereafter. This paper provides an alternative way of viewing and conducting writing retreats – that of Slow scholarship, which foregrounds attentiveness, care, thoughtfulness and quality rather than quantity and production. A ‘response-able’ pedagogy is suggested as a way of enacting a Slow scholarship, using a diffractive methodology for reading and writing and responding to peers’ writing at writing retreats.

MacIntyre, managerialism and universities

MacIntyre’s earlier work and concern with social science enquiry not only exposes its limits, but also provides an insight into how its knowledge claims have been put to ideological use. He maintains that the institutional embodiment of these ideological ideas is the bureaucratic manager who has had a negative role to play in social structures because managerialism revolves around a notable absence, or at least marginalisation of conflict since the nature of rational debate and conflict is unpredictable and unmanageable, and hence would seriously undermine the perception trying to be projected of a competent technocrat in control of their organisation. MacIntyre, in lamenting the place of contemporary universities in society, highlights how most universities have become business corporations and irremediably fragmented and now serve purposes so alien and foreign from their initial conception as sites of constrained mutual rational debate and conflict. As a result, MacIntyre’s account of how managerial authority is justified in bureaucratic institutions and its social role and character is scathing and particularly apt for explaining the malaise of contemporary universities. In order to overcome this malaise, I want to struggle against the corporatisation of universities by revitalising and extending upon MacIntyre’s argument that a university is set up for constrained disagreement and imposed participation in conflict, and also highlight the importance of reason or wisdom and its development because it enables us to see the interconnectedness and interrelationship between different forms of knowledge that can lead us to truth and of the good.

Teaching Spanish Literature to Chinese Students in Spain in a Bilingual Environment

According to a report published by the European Commission in November 2013, Spain remains the leading destination for European university students in the Erasmus exchange scheme. Both this non-domestic audience and the launch of the European Higher Education Area have caused far-reaching changes in the Spanish university system. A more recent phenomenon to be added to this scenario is the arrival of Chinese students, of whom around 100 chose the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC) in 2014–2015, a university whose first official language is not Spanish, but Galician. This new situation has serious consequences for this university, both in managerial and teaching terms. The aim of this paper is to build on the experience of Chinese students and their teachers by focusing on how Spanish literature is taught and learned at the USC. Managerial aspects will be discussed within the context of current corporatization of universities, and teaching aspects in relation to comparative literature as intercultural pedagogy.

University Leadership and Public Policy in the Twenty-First Century: A President's Perspective, by Peter MacKinnon

University Leadership and Public Policy in the Twenty-First Century: A President's Perspective, by Peter MacKinnon. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2014. ix, 190 pp. $65.00 Cdn (cloth), $24.95 Cdn (paper). Peter MacKinnon, former law dean (1988-98) and president (1999-2012) of the University of Saskatchewan, states that he wrote this book to illuminate features of the present condition of Canadian universities and to point to ways of improving them. He has done this. He states that his book is about and is neither memoir nor local history, though it contains elements of both (p. viii). Unfortunately, insofar as the book is memoir and history (and a significant part is) it suffers from being written by a lawyer since the author provides only the evidence that supports his case. In the interest of objectivity I should note that I was a faculty member of the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) from 1966 to 2001 and have followed its ups and downs since. 1 have known Peter MacKinnon from the time he arrived in Saskatoon in 1975. We have discussed and agreed on many things, especially before 2002, and have disagreed on others, especially after that date. The first two chapters are basically a history of the recent past of the U of S seen through the eyes of an author who favours change that attempts to alter a path, rather than incremental adjustment. The six chapters that follow discuss policies that he believes are of interest to everyone concerned with Canadian universities. In the first two chapters MacKinnon advocates strongly that the U of S should commit to meeting the highest standards of medical-doctoral universities and concentrate on selected areas in which it could become pre-eminent, while affirming its sense of place. In fact, during his presidency he pushed the university to become research intensive, to attract international students and to emphasize graduate education. In the process of advocacy MacKinnon tends to denigrate those who disagreed with his vision of what the U of S should become, while often misrepresenting their ideas. He also ignores how his operating policies differed from those he advocated while campaigning for the presidency. In the six policy chapters MacKinnon occasionally engages in lawyerlike selection of evidence, for example by ignoring the role academic administrators have played in creating conditions that led to faculty unionization from the U of S twenty-five years ago to Simon Fraser University this year. The policies he chooses to discuss are central to the life of any university. These include tuition levels, relations with governments, academic freedom, university autonomy, philanthropy, university-industry partnerships, corporatization of universities, the tensions created by methods of labour relations, university governance and collegial management, the role of universities in advancing Canada's scientific capacity, the changing nature of Canadian university presidency and the effects of the global search for talent. …

University–community engagement: Case study of university social responsibility

Corporatisation of universities has drawn parallels between contemporary universities and business corporations, and extended analysis of corporate social responsibility to universities. This article reports on case study of university–community engagement with schools and school communities through youth engagement programmes to enhance democratic principles in student leadership and raise aspirations for university education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Data from over 1200 respondents suggest that university–community engagement produced positive outcomes for individual student participants, schools and school communities and also benefited the university in terms of brand recognition and good standing in the community. This raises questions about the social responsibility of universities as agents of change to entrench society’s fundamental values of democratic participation and social justice.

The University Corporatization Shift: A Longitudinal Analysis of University Admission Handbooks, 1980 to 2010

This paper explores university corporatization and its impact on university literature, examining the frequency and placement of content in the admissions handbooks (viewbooks) of six Ontario universities from 1980 to 2010, at five-year intervals. Government budget cuts implemented in the mid-1990s served as a point of interest in the timing of corporatization. Content analysis showed a decreased emphasis on academics and an increased emphasis on the university experience; academics moved toward the back of the viewbooks, and student experience and university-specific advantages moved toward the front. The timing of these changes, however, did not correlate, as expected, with government budget cuts of the mid-1990s.

Characterizing Industrial Design Education in Turkey: A Current Synthesis for Future Directions

In recent years, we see an expansion of schools offering degrees at different levels in the field of industrial design in Turkey. Reasons for this expansion can well be found outside the design field itself as well as the national education reforms. This shift towards corporatization of universities is a business model usually adapted from foreign models. This adoption in education models also lead to the expansion of industrial design programs especially in private universities. Despite the rapid growth of industrial design education in Turkey, there is relatively little knowledge about the features or qualities that serve to identify these design departments. The main aim of this article is to discuss characteristics of industrial design departments in Turkey as a case regarding programs’ profiles in geographical distribution, housing universities and faculties, academic members, student selection criteria and student numbers. Final remarks are recommendations for a prospective state of design education in Turkey

Deregulation, Debt and the Discipline of Law

The introduction of a user-pays regime is in the process of transmuting higher education from a public to a private good, which has particular ramifications for law. The issue has been thrown into sharp relief by the Coalition government's proposal that university fees be deregulated. When I published Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law in 2012,1 wholesale deregulation was not on the political agenda, although the commodification of higher education and the corporatisation of universities were already inducing a shift away from disinterested knowledge towards its capitalisation and exploitation. I briefly overview how this state of affairs came about and consider the implications of the new regime for law graduates.