REFLETS MAGAZINE - Revue d'information et de réflexion économique - n°100 - 58

dossier

GrANdes écoles

Managerialization of education

Universities as market actors
and knowledge in
a neoliberal society
ESSEC Professor of Management Marie-Laure Djelic
worries that universities today exist within a neoliberal
logic where economic growth and quantitative
criteria are the only basis for valuing their academics’ production.
She warns against knowledge losing its momentum.

t seems recently that academics
are being put forward as having
the answers to many of the complex
problems faced by contemporary
society.
Professor Marie-Laure Djelic (E87 ), as part
of her ongoing analysis of the history of
capitalism, has looked into the history of the
key modern institution for the production of
knowledge – the University. Its role has
evolved over the past hundred years. The
medieval university aimed to serve God and
Church. The Westphalian university served
science and the nation. The modern university was supposed to shape « man » as an
empowered individual thinker and citizen.
Today – along with the advance of neoliberalism – universities have been reinvented
as servants of the market.
« What I find most worrying, is our new way
of analyzing the usefulness of research.
Some of the traditional knowledge doesn’t

have a direct way of serving the market –
like languages or medieval history. We may
start to lose this. »
In line with the neoliberal ideal of less state
intervention and funding, the university is
expected « to act as a private firm, seeking
financing from other private firms, based on
the perceived economic value behind
its research ».
This is impacting the careers of faculty :
professors with the same diploma are paid
according to their market value. The economists and the « commercial » sciences take
the upper hand.
« Professors are increasingly being measured through numbered values – the number of students they teach in a given year,
the amount of research they produce, and
their famous h and g indexes… »
What’s worrying here is that such a focus
has taken attention away from content.
If a number determines your « value »,

why bother reading the research and
publications that it represents. You can’t
count substance !
« Some professors are even learning how
to manipulate the system so that they get
more citations and thus higher index numbers. Younger faculty may find themselves
in a situation where they have to manipulate because these are the number on
which their career will be based. »
Professor Djelic describes the situation like
an academic « iron cage » – and one that
will be difficult from which to break free.
She argues that the whole underlying ideology needs to change – moving away from
the notion that economic growth is the only
way to measure value creation. Hopefully,
the younger generations might realize that
this paradigm is not a sustainable one.

To read a full version of this article :

http://knowledge.essec.edu/points-of-view/universities-as-market-actors-and-knowledge-in-a-neoliberal-society.html
To download the pdf of the full version :
http://marie-laure-djelic.faculty.essec.edu/ (on the right hand side : « Scholars in the Audit Society »)

N° 100 - juillet/août 2013

http://knowledge.essec.edu/points-of-view/universities-as-market-actors-and-knowledge-in-a-neoliberal-society.html http://marie-laure-djelic.faculty.essec.edu/

REFLETS MAGAZINE - Revue d'information et de réflexion économique - n°100

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