ABSTRACT
The increasing subjection of public institutions to the reductive rigours of monetarist economics has gradually, over the past 15 years or so, produced a crisis of confidence in certain quarters. No longer does it seem generally plausible to prescribe the forms and values required for public welfare on the basis of institutionalized expert authority, i.e. that of civil servants, politicians, professionals in general or (in particular) educators. Instead, cultural authority is now projected on to ‘the market’ and a bereft humanity seems to be condemned for the time being to organize all its affairs within the general parameters of capitalism, whose apparent claim is that matters of value and priority must be adjudicated simply by the forces of supply and demand. In other words, since there can be no welfare without profitability, the former can be subsumed under the latter: the good may be equated with the profitable. Faced with this ideological challenge, higher education staff, who have traditionally raised their own serious claim to cultural authority, are called upon to formulate a response which is both critical and constructive, neither retreating into a merely rhetorical expression of lost ideals nor colluding with a social system whose disorders are plain to see. The problem is, as always, one of articulating an explorative, critical, yet practical understanding of the various forces and processes involved.
