Neoliberalismo escolar

¿Por qué la educación superior se volvió neoliberal?

(…) privatization, untrammeled competition, the retreat from social engineering, the proliferation of markets. These are exactly the principles and practices these critics find in the 21st century university, where (according to Henry Giroux) the "historical legacy" of the university conceived "as a crucial public sphere" has given way to a university "that now narrates itself in terms that are more instrumental, commercial and practical." ("Academic Unfreedom in America," in Works and Days.)

This new narrative has been produced (and necessitated) by the withdrawal of the state from the funding of its so-called public universities (…).

Faced with this situation universities have responded by (1) raising tuition, in effect passing the burden of costs to the students who now become consumers and debt-holders rather than beneficiaries of enlightenment (2) entering into research partnerships with industry and thus courting the danger of turning the pursuit of truth into the pursuit of profits and (3) hiring a larger and larger number of short-term, part-time adjuncts who as members of a transient and disposable workforce are in no position to challenge the university’s practices or agitate for an academy more committed to the realization of democratic rather than monetary goals. In short , universities have embraced neoliberalism."

Todo sale de un reciente artículo de Stanley Fish para el NYT donde responde a las críticas sobre el avance del pensamiento neoliberal en la educación superior americana, y sus consecuencias políticas y sociales.

Fish, además, sostiene en la nota que el "ser universitario" no debe intervenir en la vida política como vocero del ámbito académico, y si lo hace, debe hacerlo marcadamente por fuera de ese entorno, en nombre propio, y no hablando por la academia y al "aula" desde donde enseña. Esta ruptura, es la que, de acuerdo a él, evitaría que la reputación academia se pierda en cuestiones irresponsables:

"I define academic freedom as the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to expand it to the point where its goals are infinite"