Troubled by the past: history, identity and the university

Abstract

Much emphasis is currently placed on the impact of marketisation on higher education and the damage it has caused to forms of academic and student identity. Evident is a concern that much of value in these identities has been lost amidst the pressure of audit, performance indicators and consumerism. This paper explores the changes to these identities to gauge how appropriate the ‘loss’ thesis is as a diagnosis of current challenges. In exploring these issues, the paper argues that, while the past is troubling, the reasons for this trouble have as much to do with concerns over democratic accountability as they do with external political interference. The paper concludes by using this ideological tension to characterise the university as ‘mediating publicness’, a characterisation that may provide an alternative to current concerns over loss, doubt and institutional inertia.