Managing the research imagination? Globalisation and research in higher education

Abstract

This paper argues that, during the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries, universities have been captured by neo‐liberal regimes of truth. We suggest that this may inhibit the ‘research imagination’ within universities and, consequently, their role in the democratisation of knowledge. We consider the role of capital in the globalisation of higher education, and the resulting global circulation of people and knowledge. We then examine how what we have termed the ‘neo‐liberal colonisation’ of higher education has been achieved, ending with a discussion of the implication of these processes for the idea of the research imagination in universities.

Keywords:

• Higher education
• Knowledge
• Managerialism
• Neo‐liberal
• Research imagination
• Universities

Notes

1. To properly understand neo‐liberalism it is necessary to have an analysis of the structure and functioning of capitalism, best explicated by Marxist and neo‐Marxist theory. At the same time, the nature of the knowledge/power nexus within neo‐liberal states and the harnessing of bio‐power through the subjectification of citizens are best understood through the deployment of Foucauldian theory.

2. We are grateful to Professor Marilyn Strathern for this expression.

3. See, for example, the international league tables for universities published by the Times Higher Education Supplement (http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/, accessed 14 March 2006).