University Governance, Radicalism and the Market Economy: Where Student Power Gave Way to Economics and Educative Possibility to the Corporate University

Abstract

This article explores student and staff perspectives on the changes to university governance in a South Australian university. From radicalism, representation, and possibility, through the rapid marketisation of the 1980s and to the distillation of accelerated global capitalism into the managerial veins of university institutions. Using the Flinders University Act a parliamentary tool to incorporate a university as a parallel for the rapid pace of changes made to universities in the country, resulting from Dawkins reforms and more recent Liberal/National Coalition changes to the structure and make up of Australian Higher Education. The article posits that pathway to enabling authentic student, and staff, positions in governance at the highest levels may be a new answer to disconnected student/staff bodies, and a partnering of universities with their communities in a meaningful and authentic way, to work counter capitalism for a united future.

Capitalist Reproduction and Student Politics in Higher Education: Pete Seeger Meets the Young Liberals, Hegemonic Stasis, and the Contemporary University

“…As a result, students began to demand a seat at the table to negotiate transformation of education at a structural level. Eventually, in Australia, academic hegemony adapted, enabling limited student "voices" in governance and decision making and with rising corporate governance of universities, students were eventually legislated into limited governance positions (Cornelius-Bell, 2021b). This incorporation of students into governance and decision making bodies has also been mirrored globally (c.f.…”

Harnessing Empty Institutional Priorities: Developing Radical Student Agency Through University Teaching and Learning for Revolutionary Transformation

“…To challenge this can be seen as a fundamental challenge to the existence of these systems. Indeed, this weak argument has been used historically to limit the power of worker demands for change in educational systems (Cornelius-Bell, 2021a). We know that, across the last five years, higher education has been in an increasingly dire, precarious and problematic state, and that traditionally, the education apparatus has served as a tool and site for reproduction of dominant society, even if this is now beginning to lose its place (Cornelius-Bell & Bell, 2021;Gramsci, 2007;Katz, 2001).…”