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The ‘politics of austerity’ in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 and the election of the Conservative-led coalition government in 2010 produced drastic cuts to public spending. It has involved the re-assertion of neo-liberal policies whose application to the financial sector had created the crisis in the first place. One consequence is the dismantling of public higher education in England, with the removal of all direct funding of undergraduate degree programmes in arts, humanities and the social sciences and the creation of a supposed ‘level-playing field’ to allow for-profit providers to compete for students.
This has led to the dramatic attenuation of the democratic functions of universities and consolidated the growth of a neo-liberal knowledge regime marked by increased managerialism, the growth of an ‘audit culture’ and performance management of teaching and research. In a new competitive environment, the university is seen by its managers as a ’brand’ to be promoted and protected. For the most part, attention has been on the consequences for teaching – the transformation of students into consumers – and the external assessment of research: game-playing in the REF and the displacement of the substance of research into the maximisation of scores on performance indicators of ‘excellence’ and ‘impact’.
