A Traverse gathers related articles addressing various debate topics.
It’s been a long time since academic discussions about research and teaching were part of the board meetings of the department of Anthropology and Sociology of the University of Amsterdam. Most of our meetings today deal with administrative problems only. Sometimes these departmental meetings are followed immediately by teaching obligations. Usually, I find it hard [...]
‘Now, of course, we live in Thatcher’s psyche if not her anus, in the world she made, of competition, consumerism, celebrity and guilt’s bastard son, charity: bingeing and debt.’ Hanif Kureishi (2008: 271) The hidden injuries of the neo-liberal University. In a recently published piece titled ‘Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Injuries of the Neoliberal [...]
The idea of audit, originated from financial regulation, has been introduced into public sectors to rank and assess professional performance against bureaucratic benchmarks and economic targets in response to organizational failure either due to inefficacy (low quality) or scandals (Power 2007: 3, Shore 2008, Shore and Wright 1999). The past two decades have witnessed an [...]
To all appearances higher education in both the Eu and the Us has turned into a more fashionable topic for politicians and journalists than it was ten years ago. Since rumour has it that in the ‘age of globalisation’ we are living in a ‘knowledge society’ and that our economies are basically ‘knowledge economies,’ higher [...]
Institutionalized education in most part of the human society seems intrinsically hierarchical. One is supposed to progress from a ‘lower’ level of learning to the ‘higher’; ‘average’ kids study in mediocre schools, and the ‘outstanding’ go to top colleges; and, finally, ‘degree’ is by definition hierarchical. Recent discussions on higher education have focused on the [...]
Aux yeux des hommes politiques et des journalistes, l’enseignement supérieur, en Europe comme aux États-Unis, est, semble-t-il, un sujet beaucoup plus porteur qu’il ne l’était il y a dix ans. Puisque, selon les rumeurs, dans « notre ère globalisée », nous vivons dans une « société de la connaissance » et puisque nos économies sont fondamentalement des « économies de [...]
In 1999, China’s State Council issued a ‘Decision Concerning the Deepening of Education Reform and the All-Out Promotion of Quality Education.’ This document introduced the term ‘education industry’ (教育产业) along with two major policy changes: a dramatic expansion in university admissions and the devolution of part of the control over higher education from the central [...]
‘The whole business of peer-reviewed journals has no effect on the external world and is just a Rube Goldberg machine designed to get people tenure.’ James C. Scott (2007: 385) ‘Accountability has turned to . . . bean-counting.’ Chester E. Finn, Jr., former Us Assistant Secretary of Education, on current schools policy (quoted in Dillon [...]
The situation. The cycle of knowledge production depends on a symbiotic relationship among academics, publishers, distributors, librarians, and users who build on and challenge present and past knowledge to forge new knowledge. As an editor who acquires scholarly book manuscripts in the Usa, I have watched this cycle become alarmingly dysfunctional in recent years, although [...]
En prônant l’élargissement du soi au Soi, en célébrant la valeur intrinsèque de toute chose, Arne Næss oublierait-t-il l’homme ? Augustin Berque souligne le caractère problématique de l’ontologie développée par le philosophe norvégien. De fait, l’homme ne risque-t-il pas de se sentir bien à l’étroit dans une existence vouée toute entière à la réalisation de [...]
