Collegiality: can it survive the corporate university?

Abstract

This paper raises pressing issues regarding the present and future of the university. It is strongly critical of worldwide corporatisation and the response of academics to what the authors consider to be a crisis or impasse. As a mark of capitalist ascendancy, the university as corporate has, it would seem, lost its soul and its autonomy. The focus on collegiality invokes the communitarian and independent spirit which has for centuries been the foundation of university ideals, but which is presently undermined by managerialism and its profit-driven motives. A crass utilitarianism appropriates and ‘brands’ academic values to retain pseudo-prestige, while impoverishing the sense of vocation without which collegiality is rendered an anachronism. In their last section, the authors propose a way forward, indicating that a revival of collegial governance is both possible and imperative.