[INDOLOGY] Op-ed

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Traphagan makes an excellent point.  I have also long maintained - in
conversation with patient friends and colleagues - that "business" is an
entirely inappropriate metaphor for understanding or regulating what
happens in universities.

Anthropologists like Cris Shore and Susan Wright
(1999<http://www.jstor.org/stable/2661148>),
Marylin Strathearn
(1997<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5299904>),
Strathern and contributors
(2000<http://books.google.at/books?id=yKSBAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PT2&ots=dV_4fcs3Sc&dq=strathern%20audit%20cultures&lr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=strathern%20audit%20cultures&f=false>),
again Shore (2008 <http://ant.sagepub.com/content/8/3/278>), and other
social anthropologists have identified and studied the spread of "audit
culture" and the marketization of higher education since the 90s, and
documented some of its distorting effects on teaching and research, and the
effect of this cultural change on the working lives of academics.

The costs of the audit process itself is rarely, if ever assessed. Nor has
a serious public challenge ever been mounted, to my knowledge, to the
logical circularity of the processes involved attempting to establish
public trust in academic processes, although studies like Power
(1995<http://books.google.at/books?id=oK0QpgVfIN0C>)
do reveal major flaws and deceptions that often accompany a reliance on
numerical and audit-style assessment in general, and even its pointlessness.

--
Dr Dominik Wujastyk
Department of South Asia, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies<http://stb.univie.ac.at>
,
University of Vienna,
Spitalgasse 2-4, Courtyard 2, Entrance 2.1
1090 Vienna, Austria
and
Adjunct Professor,
Division of Health and Humanities,
St. John's Research Institute, <http://www.sjri.res.in/> Bangalore, India.
Project <http://www.istb.univie.ac.at/caraka/> | home
page<http://www.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>|
HSSA <http://hssa.sayahna.org> | PGP <http://wujastyk.net/pgp.html>





On 28 April 2014 15:31, Patrick Olivelle <jpo at uts.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:

> You my like this op-ed written by one of my colleagues here at the
> University of Texas at Austin about the "business model" for universities
> talked about both here and in Europe.
>
> http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20140425-universities-customer-service-problem.ece
>
> Patrick
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> http://listinfo.indology.info
>


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