This is a summary/key highlights taken by Java of Adam Cragie's Master's thesis. The thesis is subtitled "Analysis of We Are The University's Experience" and was submitted in 2013.

Key Questions

A good key question: "Why has a student protest movement finally emerged adter a decade of student apathy?"

1. How do we explain the resurgence of radical political activism at The University of Auckland?
2. How odes The University of Auckland manangement respond to various forms of contestation, and why does it respond that way?

Literature Review Highlights

Universities turned into a a new form of shit

Overarching story is that universities have sunk deeper into their role reproducing the capitalist system. As univeristies have found themselves immersed in neoliberal capitalism they have responded by producing neoliberal subjects. Capitalism too powerful.

Probably a good note here is that universities have served many masters, including colonial-capitalism. They continue to serve the contradictive systems of capital by continuing the narrative of 'innovation' particularly in ways they try to wash or better the sympotoms of capital – e.g. by continuing to insist on 'greening' harmful insdustries rather than primordial care of less consumption or changing/challenging our needs.

• The education system us at the heart of capitalist reproduction (Lewis 2003).
• the insitutional forms and practises of educaiton socialise studnes into the socio-political environment required to stabilise and reporduce the production and consumption relationships demanded by the form that the state and capitalism take at any given time.
• universities become increaingly seen as coporatised research insitutions with key function of training the future of professional labour and contributing to economic growththrough research woth profit-potnetial (Giroux 2002; Shore 2010)
• This overriding "commercialisation of knowledge" places knwoledge as a product to be bought, sold, owned and markeded (Shore 2010, 16). Shore (2010) argues that this has resulted in the emergence of a 'schizophrenic university'.
• These include goals from: "creating a highly skilled workforce" and "economic transformation"; to "pride in who and what we are" and "safeguarding out shared and diverse cultures" (Ministry of Education 2007, 8-9).
  • Largely not the goals of universities, perhaps additional value, but not core education, research and service.
• In order to create a new 'model of person' necessary for the neoliberal knowledge ecnonomy, the functions of the public university have been reprioritised toward the private, rather than public, good. It is within this socio-economic context taht The Univeristy of Auckland (UoA) operates.
  • We live in a society [/s]

The Neolibearlisation of Education

• the literature does suggest that there has been a braod shift int he citizenship activities of youth and students aawy from disruptive contentious political actitivies towards civic engagement based volunteer work and capacity building (Sax 2004; Spanier 2008; Vowles 2004).
  • Student activism changed from disruptive to civic engagement.
• The types of reforms that the state enacted are characterised by Peck and Tickell (2002) as 'roll-back' neoliberalism.
  • this envolved retreating from old style Keynesian Welfare National State (KWNS) to a Schumpeterian Workfare Policy Regime (SWPR) (Jessop 2002).
  • Economic description of the changes
• The post-Fordist SWPR of accumulation demanded the extension of market principles into all societies' facets, grounded by the belied that this would promote innovation and flecibility in teh new global economy (Jessop 2002).
• Harvey (2005, 71) who found that a major bias of neoliberal policy is that the state favours "the integrity of the financial system and solvency of financial institutions over the well-being of the population or environmental quality".
• It is this shift in focus from the well-being of the people to the wellbeing of financial institutions which provided a major impetus for reform (Gordon 1992; Robertson and Dale 2002; Lewis 2003; McTaggart 2005).
• The legitimation of state authority over education was now framed in terms of its economic benefits, and no longer from its benefits to the heath of the nation (Codd 2005).
• The state is actually attempting to reduce its need for legitmation through withdrawing from direct responsibility for the implimentation of sical policy services by promoting individual responsibility (Dale and Robertson 1997).
• Harvey (2005, 71) ... a 'good business environment' requires labour that is adequately socialised, within a similar regime.
• Although the view that education should be a form of "training for citizenship" (Treasury 1987, 5) was present under the wefare state model of education (Ray 2009), the major shift is in the type of citizenship for which the education system was to train students.
• The stated function of KWNS's education system was to create citizens who would engage in the democratic participation, foster social coheasion and have a strong sense of being a New Zealander (Ray 2009). In stark contrst, Treasury (1987) saw the function of education as creating individuals for their economic role. This model of person Tresury (1987) sought to create was a responsiblised individual capable of fulfilling their potential in market relations. These reforms attempted to inscribe new values into the student's habitus through a process that chnaged both their expectations and expectations of them (Reay 1995).
• The state (re)made the subjects' habitus' so they would "serve as partners in the innovative, knowledge-driven, flexible economy" (Jessop 2002, 251).
• Treasury (1987) argued that the marketisation of education would result in greater educational innovation and flexibility due ot the need to meet market demands. To achieve this the workplace had to be better integrated into the classroom and the market would ensure this occurred.
  • What education innovation has happened in the last 30 years?
    • Online learning was forced by a pandemic and continues to be a band-aid solution with worse outcomes, but saving universities a lot of money and allowing them to exploit a more diverse range of international students (it has however increased accessiblity, but in that same swing has just made it more viable for students to work more jobs at the same time, rather than fixing workload issues, we have increased exploitable time! It also increases social straticfication within the university as those who can't afford to bus in, or must be working have less access to opportunity)
    • Lectorials are a cost-saving measure largely hated by students and remove otherwise better, smaller classes with clearly better pedagogical outcomes.
    • Digital libraries make accessing resources easier, but continue to be strangled by publisher exploitation, and have led to the closure of valued physical libraries as third spaces. The best digital libraries are illegal.