ABSTRACT
The global financial crisis of 2008 signaled the beginning of the end of the post-industrial age. The prolonged stagnation that followed 2008—accompanied by sovereign debt, low productivity and high unemployment in major economies—was an indication of the failure of many of the claims that had been made since the 1970s about the economic power of post-industrial economies and knowledge societies. Economic failure translated into fiscal contraction. This affected all kinds of government spending including on a super-sized university sector. During the post-modern era, mass higher education had grown ferociously. Philosophies of post-industrialism legitimated a relentless expansion of government budgets for education along with other social sectors. The resulting levels of sovereign debt and government budget deficits were not sustainable—not least because the economic promise of post-industrial economies was never realized.
