The work describes how the New Zealand consumer model of education has gone global, becoming the way of organizing and funding university systems. I draw on my own experience of university systems in New Zealand and the UK to describe the consequences of this model.
History
Pagination
1-1
Language
eng
Research statement
The decline in the stability of university funding across the Anglophone world, and the withdrawal in particular of reliable funding for the humanities, has led to transforming curricula and changing patterns of academic work. My creative research addresses the shared nature of university reforms across New Zealand and the United Kingdom and the consequences for both academics and students. Drawing on my own experience at the University of Canterbury and the University of Oxford, as well as scholarship and government reports, I demonstrate how the logic of reform has created its own momentum, leading to vast increases in managerial power and salary, to the detriment of the core purpose of the university. At the heart of the piece is a concern with how the knowledge and expertise of which universities are guardians have been fulled absorbed by financialized systems of value. My writing ultimately shows the effects of three decades of university reform. While conversations about the ‘covid crisis’ tend to assume that the instability faced by the sector is directly related to the pandemic, I situate it in its longer history – without which the current circumstances make little sense. I offer a new way forward, suggesting that overcoming this ‘covid crisis’ will require a more profound reclaiming of power by students and faculty.