The Global Corporatisation of Universities: Causes and Consequences

The closing days of the twentieth century have seen two extraordinary developments: an information technology revolution and the end of ideological confrontation between major powers. These developments have had a profound effect on the social, political, economic and cultural organisation of humankind, often generically called globalisation, and in the field of higher education this has led in many countries to the adoption and implementation of a single paradigm of a university. This university is expected to operate like a business corporation in a market place producing and purveying technical excellence in knowledge to a large number of students and other clients. But the corporate university does have fundamental problems: first, in that the problems selected for solution through the application of technical excellence are determined by marketing considerations and therefore may not be very deep or great in significance, and second, that the organisational principles employed under this type of regime do not engender the long-term commitment of academic staff, and lastly that the human contact which is a necessary concomitant of excellent teaching and which is by its nature labour-intensive, must be reduced to the barest minimum in a cost-conscious corporatised university. Some realistic and practicable strategies to minimise educational costs of corporatisation are suggested.