The future of the humanities in today's neoliberal environment
Main Article Content
Keywords
Neoliberalism, University Curriculum, Humanities, Financialization, Common Good
Abstract
This paper approaches the decline in the study and teaching of the humanities within the
university context from a global financial perspective. As humanities departments are
either closed down or have their curriculum attenuated, obviously we can say that the
revenue that was previously present to support such programs has not been forthcoming.
Accordingly, this paper argues that resources that could have supported the humanities have
been available to the university, but they have been applied elsewhere to increase the
administration and ancillary support staff, in supporting the social sciences and in
augmenting business and management programs. This paper links such decline to the
growing financialization of the economy, the ideology of managerialism and the emergence
of the “academic capitalist” regime, as defined by Slaughter and Rhoades (2004, 2005). These developments can be traced to an underlying ”˜neoliberal ideology' - a form of liberalism in which the market freedoms achieve an extreme dominance. One observes that higher education has continuously embraced the central neoliberal principle that denies the concept of public good, in regarding education as a private good rather than a public good. The
emphasis on such notion encourages the belief that individual choices and market exchanges
most efficiently determine the allocation of resources, and necessarily entails that subjects
more directly related to monetary interests will prioritized over the humanities.
References
Bolden, R. (2007). Trends and Perspectives in Management and Leadership. Development Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter. Retrieved from: http://www.mbaworld.com/blrarchive/scholarly/7/index.pdf
Browne Report The Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance. (2010). Retrieved from: http://hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/report/
Cassirer, E. (1985). The philosophy of Symbolic Forms. R. Manheim (trans.) New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cohen, P. (2009). February 24). In tough Times the Humanities must justify their worth.New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?pagewanted=all.
Cotoi, C. (2011). “Neoliberalism: A Foucaultian Perspective,” International Review of social research Volume 1, Issue 2, June 2011, 109-124
Daniels G. and McIlroy, J. (2008).Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World: British Trade Unions under New Labour. London: Routledge.
Dembinski, P. M. (2009). Finance: Servant or Deceiver/ Financialization at the Crossroads. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Donaghue, F. (2010). Can the Humanities survive in the 21st Century. Chronicle Review Retrieved from: http://chronicle.com/article/Canthe-Humanities-Survivethe/124222/.
Friedman, M. (1974). Free Markets, Free Men,” Selected Papers No. 25Chicago: Graduate School of the University of Chicago. Retrieved from http://www.chicagobooth.edu/~/media/917BA065D1914F8F8DF7536680FD7EE7.pdf
Friedman, M. (1980). Free to Choose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Geiger, R. L. (2009). Culture, Careers, Knowledge & Money: Change in American Higher Education Since 1980. Jena Germany: Keynote Address, Deutsche Gesellschaftfür Amerikastudien.
Ginsberg B. (2011). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administration University and Why it Matters. New York: Oxford University Press.
Giroux, Henry G. (2010). On Critical Pedagogy.New York: Continuum.
Keohane, N. (2001). The Liberal Arts and the Role of Higher Education.In Philip G. Altbach.
Gumport, P. & Johnstone, D.B. (eds.), In Defense of American Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Pp. 181-201.
Kerr, C. (2001). The Uses of the University 5th edition.Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.
Krantz, J. & Gilmore, T.N. (1990 February). The Splitting of Leadership and Management as a Social Defense. Human Relations 43, 183-204.
Leer J. & Collins, J. (1995). Working in Chile's Free Market,” Latin American Perspectives, 22 (1), 10-29.
MacIntyre, Alstair. (1998). Whose Justice? Whose Rationality. London: Duckworth.
Macpherson, C. B. (1977). Democratic Theory: Ontology and Technology. Democratic theory: Essays in Retrieval. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marcel, M. (1993). Developmentalism, Socialism and Free Market Reform: Three Decades of Income Distribution in Chile.World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No 1188/1993.
Mill, J. S. (1864). On Liberty. London: Longmans.
Morgan, J. (2010). Take off the cap so students and market system can shape UK higher education, Browne recommends. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/413806.article.
Robert B. & Denhardt, R.B. (1993). The Pursuit of Significance: Strategies for Managerial Success in Public Organizations. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Rosow, S., & George, J. Globalization and Democracy. (2014). Lanham Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
Ryan, W. (2012, February 1). Number of Humanities Degrees Awarded Plummets. Cornell Daily Sun. Retrieved from http://cornellsun.com/node/49503
Scott, William. (1992). Chester I. Barnard and the Guardians of the Managerial State. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.
Slaughter S. & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic Capitalism in the New Economy: Challenges and Choices.American Academic, 1 (1): 37-40.
Slaughter S. & Rhoades, G. (2005). Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education. Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University.
Thorsen, D.E. & Lie, A. (2006). What is Neoliberalism. Retrieved from http://folk.uio.no/daget/What%20is%20Neo-Liberalism%20FINAL.pdf
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, (2009). The Philosophical Investigations.Oxford: Blackwells.
Zaleznik, Abraham. (1990). The Managerial Mystique: Restoring Leadership in Business. New York: Harper and Row.
Zapata, F. (1976).The Chilean Labor Movement Under Salvador Allende: 1970-1973. Latin American Perspectives, 3(1), 85-97.
