Dark Academia: How Universities Die
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Book Overview
"Fleming's books are sparklingly sardonic and hilariously angry"--Guardian
"An excellent and important book''--Journal of Education, Innovation, and Communication
To Professor Peter Fleming, there is a strong link between the neo-liberalization of higher education over the last 20 years and the psychological hell now endured by its staff and students. He believes that impersonal and unforgiving management hierarchies have supplanted academic judgement, collegiality, and professional common sense. He bemoans the modern system of higher education and shines a spotlight on what's gone wrong and why.
While academia was once thought of as the best job in the world, one that fosters autonomy, craft, intrinsic job satisfaction, and vocational zeal, you would be hard-pressed to find a lecturer who believes that now.
Fleming delves into this new metrics-obsessed, overly hierarchical world to bring out the hidden underbelly of what he terms the 'zombie university'. He examines:
*Commercialization
*Mental illness and self-harm
*The rise of managerialism
*Students as consumers and evaluators
*The competitive individualism which casts a dark sheen of alienation over departments
*And much more
Arguing that time has almost run out to reverse this decline, this book shows how academics and students need to act now if they are to begin to fix this broken system.
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