Industrialized Higher Education and Its Sustainable Alternatives

We argue that academic life is increasingly giving way to forces of industrialization and that many of the problems confronting higher education arise within this transformation. We discuss how a culture of standardization has led to academic monocultures; how faculty autonomy has been subverted by topdown management structures; how locally based academic communities have been dispersed by mission creep and institutional isomorphism; and how many institutions have grown unsustainably, even in the midst of austerity. Drawing inspiration from sustainability discourses, we propose that the individuals and communities that make up higher education seek out and nourish practices that permit organic (local, slow) institutional development and relationally structured cultures of care and responsibility.