Financialising the university: What is to be done?

Andrew McGettigan concludes his article on financialisation and higher education with:

“I am frequently asked, ‘what then should be done?’ My answer is that unless academics rouse themselves and contest the general democratic deficit from within their own institutions and unless we have more journalists taking up these themes locally and nationally, then very little can be done. We are on the cusp of something more profound than is indicated by debates around the headline fee level; institutions and sector could make moves that will be difficult, if not impossible, to undo, whether it is negotiated independence for the elite or shedding charitable status the better to access private finance.”

This is a similar conclusion to that of Brenna Bhandar writing on the LRB blog:

“If there is anything alluring about property as a form, it lies in its mutability, its capacity to be something other than private and exclusive. It is in all our interests to support students, academic and support staff, outsourced cleaners and others in their struggles to reconfigure the ownership of the university, and seize democratic forms of governance the better to create and distribute the social goods that we produce collectively, in spite of current government policies and management strategies.”

There are three responses to this that I can suggest:

• Conversion: Constitute universities on co-operative values and principles. Read Dan Cook’s report: ‘Realising the co-operative university‘.
• Dissolution: Radicalise the university from the inside, starting with the relationship between academics and students. Read about Student as Producer.
• Creation: Build experiments in higher education outside the financialised sector. Read about the Social Science Centre.