Mass Intellectuality and Democratic Leadership in Higher Education

Higher education in the UK is in crisis. The idea of the public university is under assault, and both the future of the sector and its relationship to society are being gambled. Higher education is increasingly unaffordable, its historic institutions are becoming untenable, and their purpose is resolutely instrumental. What and who have led us to this crisis? What are the alternatives? To whom do we look for leadership in revealing those alternatives? This book critically analyses intellectual leadership in the university, exploring ongoing efforts from around the world to create alternative models for organizing higher education and the production of knowledge. Its authors offer their experience and views from inside and beyond the structures of mainstream higher education, in order to reflect on efforts to create alternatives. In the process the volume asks: is it possible to re­imagine the university democratically and co­operatively? If so, what are the implications for leadership not just within the university but also in terms of higher education's relationship to society? The authors argue that mass higher education is at the point where it no longer reflects the needs, capacities and long­term interests of global society. An alternative role and purpose is required, based upon 'mass intellectuality' or the real possibility of democracy in learning and the production of knowledge.

Series Editor's Foreword 1. Introduction (Richard Hall, De Montfort University, UK, and Joss Winn, University of Lincoln, UK) Part I: Power, History and Authority 2. Pedagogical Labor in an Age of Devalued Reproduction (Stevphen Shukaitis, University of Essex, UK, and Stefano Harney, Singapore Management University, Singapore) 3. The Co-operative College in Historical Perspective: Visions and Challenges (Tom Woodin, Institute of Education, University College London, UK) 4. Academic Voices: Public Intellectuals or Intellectualising the Public? (Mike Neary, University of Lincoln, UK) 5. Openness, Politics, Power (Martin Paul Eve, University of Lincoln, UK) Part II: Potentialities 6. Emergent Educational Experiments Beyond 'Extreme Neoliberalism': Exploring Brazilian, English and Greek Academic Activists' Trajectories from within and against the Neoliberalising University (Joyce Canaan, Independent Scholar) 7. Still Spaces in the Academy? The Dialectic of University Social Movement Pedagogy (Eurig Scandrett, Queen Margaret University, UK) 8. Bradford's Community University: Exchanging Knowledges, Nurturing Activism or Promoting Intellectuality? (Jenny Pearce, University of Bradford, UK) 9. Specialist Institutions and Aesthetic Education (Jonathan Owen Clark, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, UK, and Louise H. Jackson, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, UK) Part III: Praxis 10. Towards an Autonomous University Group - Birmingham Autonomous University 11. Reconciling Mass Intellectuality and Higher Education: Lessons from the People's Political Economy (PPE) Experience (Joel Lazarus, Independent Scholar) 12. Somewhere Between Reform and Revolution: Alternative Higher Education and 'The Unfinished' (Gary Saunders, University of Lincoln, UK) 13. Grassroots Education for Sustainability as Ecology of Mind: the Head, Hands and Heart of Societal Transformation (Thomas Henfrey, Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, Bristol, UK) 14. Mass Intellectuality from the Margins (Sara C. Motta, Newcastle University, Australia) Part IV: Conclusion: Politics, Aesthetics and Democracy 15. Practising What We Preach?: Writing and Publishing In, Against and Beyond the Neoliberal University (Gordon Asher, University of the West of Scotland, UK) Bibliography Index