Performativity, Post-modernity and the University

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11893408
AutoresRobert Cowen (autor de correspondencia)
Año1996
Volumen32
Número2
Páginas245-258
Fecha de publicación1996-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0305-0068 • E-ISSN: 1360-0486
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03050069628876
OpenAlexW2130004299
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas34
Referencias citadas14

The article identifies, comparatively, the crisis of the contemporary university as both government policies, in several countries, and the post-modern critique, notably Lyotard's, highlight the reconstruction of university systems around 'performativity' in an increasingly competitive international economic world. The comparative motif of the article is sustained less around concepts of 'mass' and 'elite' higher education systems than around the aggressive interventions in the definition of university knowledge by governmental insistence on a certain kind of 'product' from universities, and careful measures of their 'productivity'. The immediate consequences, as far as they are yet known, for university cultures are identified, especially the corrosive effects of the redefinition of 'quality control' and the displacement of academic leadership by a culture of 'management'. The final argument in the article is that the university in several systems of higher education is undergoing a process of 'attenuation' in its financial, pedagogic, personnel and research relationships

Argument (complex analysis · Economic growth · Economics · Elite · Higher education · Modernity · Performativity · Political economy · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Higher Education Governance and Development · Law