ABSTRACT

Over the past decades the spheres of higher education (HE) and cultural industries have evolved considerably. Globalization, massification, economic instability, technological innovation and neoliberal policy agendas have impacted considerably on both sectors, opening them up to greater competition, creating a downward pressure on costs and leading them to have very different relationships with their publics. Like never before, questions about what university education is, and indeed should be, are emerging along with threats to the economic viability of some of its institutions and academic disciplines as a result of new relationships between the HE system and the governments that largely fund and regulate it. Historically education in culture and the arts has enjoyed a social significance linked to values like creativity, inclusion and community; however, these subjects are increasingly positioned within a pervasive economic agenda. At the same time, the cultural industries are endorsed as part of the knowledge economy contributing to “UK PLC” and offered as a remedy to numerous financial and social ills, a logic that is critically discussed throughout this volume.