The Quest for Appropriate Accountability: Stakeholders, Tradition and the Managerial Prerogative in Higher Education
British higher education has undergone an unprecedented transformation over the past twenty years from an elite and individualised personal option embodied in historic universities (and their qualified institutional imitation in post-war expansion) to an industrialised, mass higher education system...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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Published: |
Sage
2004
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In: |
Studies in Christian ethics
Year: 2004, Volume: 17, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-21 |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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Summary: | British higher education has undergone an unprecedented transformation over the past twenty years from an elite and individualised personal option embodied in historic universities (and their qualified institutional imitation in post-war expansion) to an industrialised, mass higher education system designed to produce a standard, reliable, predictable human ‘product’ suited to the putative needs of British industry and commerce. This ‘reform’ or ‘modernisation’ incorporates key features of ‘managerial modernity’ and it has been imposed without effective critique or resistance. In this paper we outline and analyse aspects of the quasi-totalitarian ‘normalisation’ of the education system as a whole, and pose some basic questions about the adequacy of the result as means of intellectual maturation and fundamental socialisation. It is concluded that the limits of ‘accountability’ have been narrowly and prescriptively drawn, and that both the tacit assumptions and targeted outcomes of this facility for social reproduction may be held in part responsible for a reduced and diminished ‘post-humanity’. Some marginal figures offer material for creative resistance, but what resources, if any, do conventional Christian theology, ethics or pedagogic practice offer in the face of this forced homogenisation of the human? |
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ISSN: | 0953-9468 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Studies in Christian ethics
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/095394680401700101 |