Search

This article argues that UK universities are at risk from a process of ‘hollowing out’ – that is, of becoming institutions with no distinctive social role and no ethicalraison d'etre– and that this is a process which undermines the possibilities for meaningful institutional and academic identities. It begins with a condensed, and necessarily partial, review of recent UK higher education policy trends to indicate the historical context and direction of change and to highlight the growing separation of management and academic agendas and the linked rise in gloss and spin compared to academic substance. In the remainder of this article we focus on the normative dimension of these changes and unpack their implications for the nature of the university and of academic work. In so doing, we illustrate the breadth and depth of the threat posed by ‘hollowed-out’ universities, indicate alternative, more positive currents and call for a ‘re-valuation’ of the UK university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that theTimes Higherprovides a powerful tool for understanding the changing character of UK higher education (HE) and can usefully be seen as representative, and in some ways constitutive, of that changing character. Drawing on an analysis of a sample of stories from theTimes Higher, it documents the changing policy climate of UK HE from 1979 to 2010. It offers a broadly chronological account of themes that have emerged as prominent at different times during this period, pointing,inter alia, to fears about threats to the humanities, the rise of various forms of instrumentalism and the incorporation of HE institutions and agencies into a common mindset characterised by a preoccupation with marketing and corporate success. The last of these is embodied in the changing format of the newspaper itself and in its own activities as a key player in the HE sector, notably as a sponsor of university rankings and awards. Whilst being sensitive to countervailing tendencies, the authors suggest that the growing instrumentalisation of HE and related cultural shifts represent a changed ‘structure of feeling’ in UK HE. They conclude that the university rankings, awards and other image commodities that are a key part of this changed structure of feeling now play such a substantial role in the cultural life of universities that the norms of both rationality and professional ethics which tended to prevail in deliberations about university strategy 30 years ago may no longer be taken for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]