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Abstract
The ongoing ‘rationalisation’ of tertiary education in Australia is symptomatic, it is argued here, of the deeper tensions inherent in corporate capitalism. This paper examines one aspect of the rationalisation process — amalgamation — based on research carried out at two amalgamated colleges, with the aim of ‘demystifying’ the rhetoric of ‘efficiency and effectiveness’ underpinning current managerialist approaches to education.
The impact of amalgamation on college life — increased bureaucratisation and centralisation of power harnessed to a form of ‘entrepreneurial zeal’, resulting in administrative inefficiencies and increasing staff alienation — may be partly explained, it is suggested, by the contradictions and limitations of the ideological/economistic parameters within which the amalgamation policy was conceived, namely the ‘Razor Gang’ proposals of the former Liberal government. This in turn, it is suggested, reflects something of the interrelationship between education policy, the fiscal crisis’ of capitalism, and the ‘legitimation crisis’ of the State.