Alienation, class and enclosure in the UK universities

We are in the midst of a 'research-bourgeois' revolution within higher education in the UK. Part of the global project of neo-liberalism to strengthen the link between money and work, and driven by research assessment, diverse research use-values are being subordinated to homogeneous RAE-value. Academic research workers are becoming alienated from the product of their labour. Once freely available to all academics, 'intellectual commons' - well-stocked library, material security, time and other resources - are being enclosed, access becoming dependent upon production of RAE-value. Two new classes are emerging in academia as some research workers are forced to alienate their own research-labour-power, selling their ability to carry out research work to 'research capitalists', who are able to appropriate a portion of the RAE-value which results.