Universities in the Neoliberal Era

"The neoliberal transformation of universities has been lived by academics, rarely analysed by them. We know most about its consequences in the US and UK, and little from anywhere about its consequences for daily practice and resistance. Hakan Ergul and Simten Cosar's courageous book is therefore doubly remarkable: for drawing together experiences from many countries outside the West, and for exploring ethnographically how neoliberal culture works and sometimes can be challenged on the ground. A landmark book in a long struggle." (Nick Couldry, author of "Why Voice Matters", London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) "Not only an important book on the global influence of neoliberal ideology, policies, and practices on higher education, but a much-needed analysis of how these affect the lives and experiences of a diverse group of faculty and students within European and Mediterranean societies ... . Merging a critique of neoliberal assaults on HE with its effects on everyday practices, it provides a range of interventions to create a new space for understanding how neoliberal policies operate and what it might mean to resist them... A crucial book for assessing one of the most dangerous trends HE has ever faced, and should be read by everyone concerned about HE as a site of critical thought, the role of academics as engaged critical agents, and the mission of HE as a democratic public sphere." (Henry Giroux, Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest, McMaster University, Canada)

This timely and insightful volume will appeal to researchers, academics, students and advocates of academic freedom from different disciplines and academic cultures whose agendas prioritize higher education policies, university systems, academic production and academic labor.This book explores the question of how and to what extent the ongoing neoliberal transformation of higher education exerts influence on the university and academic everyday life in different societies. By listening to, observing, and comparing the critical voices of academics and students – the voices that matter – the book reviews first hand experiences from different societies and university cultures located within the European and semi-Mediterranean landscape, including the Czech Republic, Morocco, Turkey, and United Kingdom. 
By bringing together original fieldworks combining the structural analysis of the neoliberal shift with the academic individual’s repositioning, struggle and response, the book documents a number of similarities and differences experienced in different academic cultures. The chapters present a rich variety of subjects, including academic labor, academic identity and knowledge production, (un)employment, (in)equality, academicfeminism, oppression and resistance from ethnographic, political and sociological perspectives. This timely and insightful volume will appeal to researchers, academics, students and advocates of academic freedom from different disciplines and academic cultures whose agendas prioritize higher education policies, university systems, academic production and academic labor.