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The Never-Ending Crisis in British Higher Education

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From Financial Crisis to Social Change

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Abstract

Finn situates today’s higher education ‘crisis’—of finance, status and mission—in historical perspective, revealing that the notion has been an omnipresent feature of the discursive politics of British universities in the post-Second World War era. The chapter shows that the continuous presence of this discourse, whilst reflecting genuine changes in the position of the university in national life, also serves as a useful ‘imaginary’ deployed in political discourse in attempts to remake the academic profession. Thus, the present-day ‘crisis’ in the neoliberal university must be put into an historical perspective if the long-running transformation of universities is to be adequately understood, and neoliberal agendas successfully challenged.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The phrase is Sir Walter Moberly’s (which referred to something quite different, as we shall see) (Moberly 1949).

  2. 2.

    Notwithstanding the centripetal tendencies of devolution (Bogdanor 2009).

  3. 3.

    For anarchist critiques of the state’s role in education, see Ward (1996) and Suissa (2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Mike Finn

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  1. Mike Finn
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Torsten Geelan

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Marcos González Hernando

  3. Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Peter William Walsh

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Finn, M. (2018). The Never-Ending Crisis in British Higher Education. In: Geelan, T., González Hernando, M., Walsh, P. (eds) From Financial Crisis to Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70600-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70600-9_3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70599-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70600-9

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