[INDOLOGY] Op-ed

[dermot at grevatt.f9.co.uk]

To Dominik's references, may I add Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy 
Needs the Humanities (Princeton U Press 2010). Not specifically about the market model 
which misrepresents students as customers, but it does attack the idea that education should 
have economically measurable outcomes.

Dermot Killingley

On 29 Apr 2014 at 3:31, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:

> 
> 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 ), Marylin
> Strathearn (1997), Strathern and contributors (2000 ), again Shore
> (2008), 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 ) 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,
> 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, Bangalore, India.
> Project | home page | HSSA | PGP
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 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-unive
>     rsities-customer-se rvice-problem.ece
> 
>     Patrick
> 
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-- 
Dermot Killingley
9, Rectory Drive,
Gosforth,
Newcastle upon Tyne NE3 1XT
Phone (0191) 285 8053



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