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The Fate of Knowledge in the Modern University

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Public Universities, Managerialism and the Value of Higher Education

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical University Studies ((PCU))

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Abstract

The proliferation of new public management talk about ‘strategic plans’, ‘target setting’, ‘benchmarking’, ‘academic audits’, ‘quality assurance’, ‘annual performance review’, and ‘performance indicators has become a key part of life in the university. In this ‘new funding environment’ universities are required to demonstrate that what they do is contributing to positive economic and social ‘outcomes’. University funding (now called ‘strategic investment’) is more and more often required to be explicitly linked to specific government goals and narrow measures of ‘relevance’. Many now treat this as evidence that the university has been ‘marketised’. As we have seen, there are many advocates and critics of ‘marketisation’ who treat the ‘marketisation’ project as a reality and who talk as if this has either dramatically improved the quality of teaching or else fundamentally degraded the teaching functions of the university. This argument has also been made about university research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Global, Urban & Social Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Rob Watts

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  1. Rob Watts
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Watts, R. (2017). The Fate of Knowledge in the Modern University. In: Public Universities, Managerialism and the Value of Higher Education. Palgrave Critical University Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53599-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53599-3_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53598-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53599-3

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