ABSTRACT
External threats to the humanities at Canterbury University were met with the establishment of a neoliberal internship programme for Bachelor of Arts (BA) students. Neoliberalism was ushered in by a New Zealand Labour government in 1984. The Labour government was hell bent on privatising the public sector; the shorthand label for it was Rogermomics, a play on either Reaganomics or Thatcherism that preceded and produced the neoliberal hegemony. Ross Perlin, in his book Intern Nation, acknowledges competing tensions in the modern university with the neoliberal investment model undermining traditional education. Perlin's book reviews interns in the fashion and motion picture industry and in politics, but he begins his critique detailing the Magic Kingdom internships. Disney hires between 7000 and 8000 college student interns per year to work on unspecified menial tasks for minimum wage. Neoliberalism values education for rendering people suitable for the market. Students themselves see university education as offering a smooth transition into professional practice.
