IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2022 - 11

a comparable increase in the number of staff-except
in management. One of the consequences of Reagan-Thatcher
economic realignment has been the
elevation of managerialism and the supposition of the
superiority of management consultancy over professional
in-house expertise. As a result, as in many other
professions and industries, the expansion of university
employment has resulted not in more faculty but in an
inflated tier of administration. Some of these administrators
exercise a managerial mindset: they seem to
think that the academics work for them (not that they
should be supporting the academics whose work actually
pays their salaries), that the academics are not to
be trusted (expenses policies are a standard joke across
the entire sector), and that they can freely create work
without considering the consequences (because, like
accountability, consequences are for others). These
attitudes create an adversarial rather than a collegiate
environment.
But the " McKinseyization " of the university sector,
that is, the belief that everything (including impact?)
can be measured, and if it can be measured it can
be managed, with the consequence that academic
research is metricated to the point of meaninglessness
[22], is now leading to the " McDonaldization " of the
university sector (see [23]). Arguably, many global
fast food chains have little to do with food and the dining
experience; their core business is property management
within an asset-owning rentier economy,
and the actual production of food is effectively outsourced
to franchises. One can see universities going
the same way: the core business of senior academic
administration is becoming property management
based on potentially unsustainable debt-asset ratios,
while the generation of innovation, the custodianship
of knowledge, and the provision of a transformative
student experience are effectively franchised to the
professors who still believe that knowledge and education
are a benefit of growing the economy, not grist
for the pursuit of materialism.
The issues of monetized publication caused by
open access [24], [25] and the conflicts of interest
caused by iron triangles [26] have been examined
elsewhere. However, to close the circle by returning
to the subject of machine consciousness, it is reasonable
to consider the impact (sic) that contracting out
the conduct of research to those with the resources
(i.e., in computing, the BigTech companies rather
than the universities) has on the nature of academic
freedom-as the experiences of Timnit Gebru and
September 2022
Blake Lemoine might testify, if the vocalization of
a dissenting opinion or an awkward finding results
in being fired, this will also percolate through to the
voluntary suppression of negative results, controversial
positions, and detriment-free whistleblowing.
If there is a fear of speaking out, or if there is no
time to think, then there is no time to collect evidence,
to be critical, or to hold decision-makers
to account-precisely the kind of nonimpact an
authoritarian government would prefer to occur.
Arguably, the focus of university senior administration
on impact and profit at the expense of the scientific
ecosystem and robust education is depriving
academics not only of their attention and well-being,
but also of an important business model for digital
transformation. Suppose an academic team develops
a platform for delivering a public interest technology
[27] or a platform to support the scientific ecosystem:
for example, critically in publication (e.g., arXiv but
for peer-reviewed papers), but also in paper preparation,
conference organization and hosting, and team
working. This might also include platforms for social
coordination, such as citizen assemblies, charitable
donations, public consultations, and so on [28]. It is
not clear that such platforms would be operated by a
university as a nonprofit trust, rather than being commercialised
as another revenue stream to finance
ever more elaborate building programs to expand its
growing property portfolio.
Universities need not only to rethink their
engagement with their communities [29], but also
reclaim the trust they once had that they are acting
for the benefit of the common good.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful for conversations with Prof. Igor
Aleksander and Prof. David Q. Mayne (and much
else besides), and also for many insightful comments
from several colleagues. This does not mean
that they share the opinions expressed in this article,
and any errors of fact or judgment are mine alone.
 References
[1] D. Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY,
USA: Melville House, 2015.
[2] A. Mayor, Gods and Robots. Princeton, NJ, USA:
Princeton Univ. Press, 2018.
[3] B. Reeves and C. Nass, The Media Equation: How
People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media
11
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