TY - JOUR

T1 - Varieties of academic capitalism and entrepreneurial universities

T2 - The Structural Transformation of Higher Education

AU - Jessop, Robert Douglas

N1 - Article is for a special issue on Academic Capitalism, deriving from conference in Jena, March 2015

PY - 2017/6/30

Y1 - 2017/6/30

N2 - This article begins with a brief review of research on the development of ideas about the knowledge-based economy (analysed here as ‘economic imaginaries’) and their influence on how social forces within and beyond the academy have attempted to reorganize higher education and research in response to real and perceived challenges and crises in the capitalistorder since the mid-1970s. This provides the historical context for three ‘thought experiments’ about other aspects of the development of academic capitalism. The first involves a reductio ad absurdum argument about different potential steps in the economization, marketization andfinancialization of education and research and is illustrated from recent changes in higher education. The second maps actual strategies of the entrepreneurial university and their role in shaping academic capitalism. The third speculates on possible forms of ‘political’ academic capitalism and their changing places in the interstices of the other trends posited in these thought experiments. The article ends with suggestions for a research agendum that goes beyond thought experiments to substantive empirical investigations.

AB - This article begins with a brief review of research on the development of ideas about the knowledge-based economy (analysed here as ‘economic imaginaries’) and their influence on how social forces within and beyond the academy have attempted to reorganize higher education and research in response to real and perceived challenges and crises in the capitalistorder since the mid-1970s. This provides the historical context for three ‘thought experiments’ about other aspects of the development of academic capitalism. The first involves a reductio ad absurdum argument about different potential steps in the economization, marketization andfinancialization of education and research and is illustrated from recent changes in higher education. The second maps actual strategies of the entrepreneurial university and their role in shaping academic capitalism. The third speculates on possible forms of ‘political’ academic capitalism and their changing places in the interstices of the other trends posited in these thought experiments. The article ends with suggestions for a research agendum that goes beyond thought experiments to substantive empirical investigations.

KW - academic capitalism

KW - entrepreneurial university

KW - cultural political economy

KW - Schumpeter

KW - entrepreneurship

KW - Max Weber

KW - political capitalism

KW - varieties of capitalism

KW - thought experiment

KW - knowledge-based economy

KW - economization

KW - financialization

KW - securitization

KW - finance-dominated accumulation

KW - economic imaginary

U2 - 10.1007/s10734-017-0120-6

DO - 10.1007/s10734-017-0120-6

M3 - Journal article

VL - 73

SP - 853

EP - 870

JO - Higher Education

JF - Higher Education

SN - 0018-1560

IS - 6

Y2 - 16 March 2015 through 17 March 2015

ER -