December 05, 2003
It's such wonderful news
I'm depressed after watching the Senate pass the Howard Government's higher education legislation yesterday.
Leunig
As Adorno wrote somewhere in their Dialectic of Enlightenment the culture industry promises us freedom but it delivers unfreedom.
As the chapter heading says The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. That argument is now relevant as the transformations of the liberal university reinvent the university as a comercial enterprise.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at December 5, 2003 10:00 AM | TrackBackI had very little doubt that it would go through. I've never overestimated a politician since i've been old enough to vote (and before).
Posted by: dj on December 5, 2003 12:05 PMHave a read of this:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/09/1070732206913.html
As a microscopically minor and intermittent sessional footslogger in the system, I don't have any idea where it is going. But I am often appalled by the self deception of Uni's flogging their debased courses and pretending they are valuable and have integrity. RMIT teaching Hong Kong Chinese public relations? They don't even speak the dominant language.
Posted by: David Tiley on December 11, 2003 12:12 AMI guess that politically speaking--ie. in terms of the federal election--education has been defused as a big issues.
That would annoy the ALP. What will happen to theem if the same happens to health?
What was passed was primarily about funding and finance. That stll leaves all the issues of the university as a viable centre of the nations intellectual life.
Flogging debased courses etc means that the old liberal university is transforming itself into the culture industry. Once they stood against it in the name of enlightenment. No longer.
They are selling cultural product just like Hollywood.
That sort of issue is somethign that politicians are intersted in.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on December 11, 2003 07:01 AM