ABSTRACT
The modern development of university curricula and teaching methods on a worldwide basis has been primarily a piecemeal affair. Rarely has it been explored on the basis of a systematic conception of knowledge. This has given rise to conditions of extreme vulnerability which have recently been exploited in some parts of the world to the most dire effect. Specifically, there is a broad, symbolically arrested, postmodern approach to higher education which has been forced upon British universities and, increasingly, continental European ones since the late 1980s. The strategy was invented by parties of the right but has been continued with equal – if not greater – authoritarian vigour by parties of the left. The broad rationale for this strategy is the cult (or, rather, fetish) of ‘efficiency’.
