ABSTRACT
Recalling the Weberian idea of Beruf (vocation) as central to a reclamation of the public university today, this essay inaugurates a debate against the contortions imposed by the charge of the ‘vocational’ within neo-liberal universities. That the modern-day interpretation of ‘vocation’ as job training has eaten into the ethic of the public university’s ‘calling’ is pointed towards, through an elaborate discussion on the modes of successive privatization and financialization of higher education. The shift from a profit-generating order of corporate takeover to an abiding preoccupation with shareholder value is evidenced within the governance practices of universities, and grounded in a metrical reproduction of rating/ranking parameters that extend across institutions, disciplines, infrastructures, publications, learning-‘outcomes’, placements, students and professors. Ranged against this relentless instrumentalization of scholarly pursuit in deference to investor attitudes, Brown urges for a reimagining of the university’s vocation as living ‘for’ the public rather than ‘from’ it.
