On academic capitalism

Abstract

This forum contribution discusses the increasing trend toward academic capitalism and profit-oriented entrepreneurial practices in the fields of education and research. This occurs as universities, in different ways and subject to greater or lesser financial, administrative, and ideological pressures, act less like centers of disinterested education and research and more like economic enterprises that aim to maximize their revenues and/or advance the economic competitiveness of the spaces in which they operate. This development has become more global thanks to intensifying competition among relevant institutions (reflected, inter alia, in international accreditation for teaching and international rankings for research), intensified competition between the wider economic and political spaces in which they are embedded, and the ‘me-too-ism’ that leads social actors to jump on the latest bandwagon. I also consider the expansion of predatory academic capitalism and, because this is the least familiar type, I use my limited space to illustrate this rather than the more widely discussed examples of academic capitalism and entrepreneurialism (further examples of all case are presented in Jessop 2017).

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