Soundings 84/85 Summer/Autumn 2023

The crisis in higher education

Editorial: the crisis in higher education, pages 5‑16
Dave Featherstone lock_openFree to download

Beyond the consolations of professionalism: resisting alienation at the neoliberal university, pages 27‑42
Jonathan S. Davies, Adam Standring lock_openFree to download

Resisting higher education’s (re)production of elitism in an ethos of care-taking, pages 43‑57
Beverley Hayward lock_openFree to download
In a marketised higher education system, some students - and campuses - are more equal than others

Leadership, excellence and the marginalisation of refugees in Higher Education, pages 58‑71
Ian M. Cook, Prem Kumar Rajaram, John Clarke lock_openFree to download
Plans to close the CEU’s Open Learning Initiative reveal some of the glaring contradictions within current HE discourses

A university in Buxton - a place of extinguished chances or a promise delayed?, pages 72‑89
David Davies
Complicity with market-driven practice is driving out the proper purposes of a university

The reflections of a health-practitioner on entering academia, pages 90‑102
Amy Morton
Working in the vocational sector of HE offers many insights into its complexities and contradictions

Hallways to learning: creating brave spaces inside contemporary Higher Education, pages 103‑116
Fatema Khatun, Gary Poynton, Josh Evans
Precarious academics from non-traditional backgrounds are exploring new spaces of belonging inside the modern university

Branch life: negotiating national and local activism in UCU, pages 117‑128
David Featherstone, Bill Schwarz in discussion with John Narayan and Lucia Pradella

The idea of a democratic university, pages 129‑147
Michael Rustin
This article seeks to develop in future-oriented and programmatic terms an analysis of the contemporary neoliberal university that was initially set out as ‘The neoliberal university and its alternatives’, in Soundings 63, Summer 2016.

What constitutes a democratic university?: a German perspective, pages 148‑153
Mark Schmitt
Employment rights are a crucial part of a democratic institution

If we are to fix the education crisis the dominant ideological approach must be changed, pages 154‑167
Stuart Cartland
Education is a public good not a private asset.

The politics of government intervention in the HE market, pages 168‑185
Andrew McGettigan talks to Kirsten Forkert
The government’s commitment to creating a ‘market’ in education requires it to make frequent interventions

Higher education policy and a future Labour government: distinguishing the probable from the possible, pages 186‑198
Howard Stevenson lock_openFree to download
Labour’s current plans for universities are unpromising but transformation is never impossible

Book reviews

Emma Parker, Vron Ware, Return of a Native: Learning From the Land, pages 199‑202

David Byrne, Simon Winlow and Steve Hall, The Death of the Left: why we must begin from the beginning again, pages 203‑210

Leila Prasad, Sita Balani, Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race, pages 211‑225

Other articles

The long resolution? Responding to economic and social change in postwar South Wales, pages 226‑238
Aled Singleton
How external economic actors have led to profound changes in the lives of generations of people in South Wales

From Starmer’s scuffle to the Siege of Ottawa: the resistible rise of the anti-vaxxers, pages 239‑252
Steve Iliffe, Jill Manthorpe
What is driving current campaigns against vaccination?

The rise and rise of real estate neoliberalism, pages 252‑268
Adam Peggs
The state has been fostering the financialisation of housing provision since the 1970s