The closing days of the twentieth century have seen two extraordinary developments: an information technology revolution and the end of ideological confrontation between major powers. These developments have had a profound effect on the social, political, economic and cultural organisation of humankind, often generically called globalisation, and in the field of higher education this has led in many countries to the adoption and implementation of a single paradigm of a university.This university is expected to operate like a business corporation in a market place producing and purveying technical excellence in knowledge to a large number of students and other clients. But the corporate university does have fundamental problems: first, in that the problems selected for solution through the application of technical excellence are determined by marketing considerations and therefore may not be very deep or great in significance, and second, that the organisational principles employed under this type of regime do not engender the long-term commitment of academic staff, and lastly that the human contact which is a necessary concomitant of excellent teaching and which is by its nature labour-intensive, must be reduced to the barest minimum in a cost-conscious corporatised university...
Corporatisation means that universities are assumed to be very similar to large business organisations and therefore being capable of being run as businesses, as for example when Ford Motors entered a partnership with Ohio State University on the assumption that ‘the mission(s) of the university and the corporation are not that different.’ Corporatised universities are expected to raise a much greater proportion of their own revenue, enter into business enterprises, acquire and hold investment portfolios, encourages partnerships with private business firms, compete with other universities in the production and marketing of courses to students who are now seen as customers, and generally engage with the market for higher education...
Another consequence of the corporatist paradigm is the decline of collegiality, a form of relationship where responsibility is shared, as originally by bishops in the governance of the Roman Catholic Church, and one also considered traditionally appropriate to universities. Corporatisation has undermined collegiality in two ways, firstly by removing the kind of equality that existed between individual academics through the possession of tenure and secondly by creating a sense of competition between universities as they confront each other in the marketplace...
In their study of university corporatisation Slaughter and Leslie found evidence that neglect of basic research was occurring, and secrecy and confidentiality about research results was a common by-product, and in fact secrecy was often made a condition of collaboration with industry. Competition also raises problems of conformity and lack of creativity and the corporate state may itself lose as much as it seeks to gain. One of the most publicly noticeable consequences of corporatisation is that tenure or the right of academics to continuing employment has become controversial: ‘...what job other than academic has flexible hours, summers off, paid sabbaticals, a guaranteed lifetime employment regardless of performance?’
...An untenured engineering instructor at the same University denounced this view in class, and believes that as a result, the school did not renew his contract. These cases show some of the difficulties implicit in the concept of tenure, viz. to provide protection against dismissal for the exercise of freedom of speech. Should this principle override the need to take responsibility for the views expressed? Chomsky takes the view that it does and has argued in support of Faurisson’s right to express a view with which Chomsky does not personally agree. One view is that academics should be seen as citizens rather than employees, ‘...tenured faculty are the citizens, and their citizenship rights include most importantly their freedom to make professional judgements of others without fear of retribution by the administration...
There are also problems of accountability to whom? In the case of university administrators, the problem is particularly acute. Is the administrator accountable to: a governing body, a government, a parliament, the courts or various administrative tribunals? Accountability is also applied selectively: Slaughter and Leslie report that while only one in ten of the university businesses they studied were successful, there did not seem to be any penalty attached to those responsible for the unsuccessful ones. The style of management in corporatised universities differs from that employed in traditional universities, not only in the emphasis on short-term employment but in the acceptable level of force in achieving organisational aims. The former administrative style of gentlemanly (admittedly sexist) collegiality among tenured and mostly respected citizens (to use Turner’s term) seems to have given way to a more robust even cut-throat style known as managerialism. While deploring the dichotomy between collegiality and managerialism, Coaldrake and Stedman assert the need for a managerialist ‘…contemporary university management is a complex amalgam of approach administration, academic decision making, financial management, strategic planning and marketing, residing in a large organisation with multiple stakeholders and subject to ongoing shifts in priorities and demands.’
The new paradigm of university administration, with its emphasis on flexibility and avoidance of committees, carries with it an increased risk of corruption and malpractice that the earlier paradigms strove so hard to eliminate. It is interesting to note that the University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest and possibly most prestigious, has felt impelled to institute a code of conduct and an anti-corruption strategy in what the Vice-Chancellor described as an attempt to ‘foster an atmosphere of honesty and fairness.’
...One aspect of corporatisation of deep concern to many is the loss from universities of the role of critic of society, a role which is compromised when universities become subordinated to market forces as a result of the reduction or elimination of tenure, casualisation, the market-orientation of research and teaching priorities...
From: William W. Bostock, AntePodium - An Antipodean electronic journal of world affairs published by The School of Political Science and International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington
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The above provides some context within which executive academic decisions related to disciplinary issues of academics, as well as management bullying occurs. Academics are not treated as the citizens described by Chomsky, but rather as 'employees'... One's loyalty is not to academic independence and scholarly debate, but rather to the corporation...
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