My presentation for the second De Montfort University, Alternative to Cuts workshop, on 29 March 2011

1. Beyond Cuts and Taxation: Critical Alternatives and the Idea of Higher Education

4. Part 1: dominant narratives Is autonomous/socialised consumption and production of our common [education] wealth possible?

6. The growth mantra: HEFCE (2011). Mission. http://bit.ly/guyOqK

7. The growth mantra : The HEA Strategic Plan, 2008-13: http://bit.ly/g22wgb

8. • The UK sells more brainpower per capita than anywhere else in the world. In 2008, this amounted to £118 billion in knowledge services – worth 6.3% of GDP (The Work Foundation, 2010). • The UK has 1% of the world’s population but undertakes 5% of the world’s scientific research and produces 14% of the world’s most highly cited papers (UUK, 2010). • HEIs are worth £59 billion to the UK economy annually and are a major export earner. Through their international activities they are one of the UK’s fastest growing sources of export earnings, and last year bought in £5.3bn (UUK, 2009). HE and hegemony, commodity and economy

11. “ the financial capitalism and transnational corporations do not accept any form of regulation and consider the crisis to be a structural condition to be viewed as part of the contemporary production of value. On the other hand, the parabola of Obama indicates that reformism has come to halt and neo-Keynesian receipts are blunt weapons.” Libera Università Metropolitana: www.lumproject.org

13. “ student debt, in its prevalence and amounts, constitutes a pedagogy, unlike the humanistic lesson that the university traditionally proclaims, of privatization and the market.” Jeffrey J. Williams, “Tactics against Debt”: http://bit.ly/fQvP8N

14. New system transfers the cost of HE from the taxpayer to graduates themselves Dearden et al. (2010) http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5354

22. our liberal aim is “to democratise capitalism, to extend democratic control to the economy by means of media pressure, parliamentary inquiries, harsher laws, honest police investigations and so on.” Is it enough that “the institutional set-up of the (bourgeois) democratic state is never questioned”? Žižek, S. 2011. Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks. London Review of Books , 33, no. 2: 9-10 http://bit.ly/dQjnKV

27. the logic of 'security' is the logic of an anti-politics in which the state uses 'security' to marginalize all else, most notably the constructive conflicts, the debates and discussions that animate political life, suppressing all before it and dominating political discourse in an entirely reactionary way. Neocleous, M. (2007). Security, Liberty and the Myth of Balance: Towards a Critique of Security Politics. Contemporary Political Theory 6, 131–149. http://bit.ly/gariqH

28. Do. More. Work.

29. Part 3: totality and global higher education

30. There is a strong correlation between energy use and GDP. Global energy demand is on the rise yet oil supply is forecast to decline in the next few years. There is no precedent for oil discoveries to make up for the shortfall, nor is there a precedent for efficiencies to relieve demand on this scale. Energy supply looks likely to constrain growth. Global emissions currently exceed the IPCC 'marker' scenario range. The Climate Change Act 2008 has made the -80%/2050 target law, yet this requires a national mobilisation akin to war-time. Probably impossible but could radically change the direction of HE in terms of skills required and spending available. Energy and work

31. I = P x A x T The impact of human activities (I) is determined by the overall population (P), the level of affluence (A) and the level of technology (T). Even as the efficiency of technology improves, affluence and population scale up the impacts. [See: Jackson, T. (2007). http://bit.ly/cldoaZ ]

36. Student-as-producer : ‘ extends the concept of production to include ways in which students, as social individuals, affect and change society, so as to be able to recognise themselves in the social world of their own design. ’ http://bit.ly/9Milqc The Really Open University: emphasis on the need for praxis, in re-asserting the idea of the university as a site for critical action, resistance and opposition, led by students. http://bit.ly/bYc22h The University of Utopia : to invent a form of radicality that confronts the paradox of the possibility of abundance (freedom) in a society of scarcity (non-freedom). http://www.universityofutopia.org/ See also: The UCL occupation: http://ucloccupation.wordpress.com/ The Social Science Centre: http://socialsciencecentre.org.uk/ The University for Strategic Optimism: http://bit.ly/fSx9wC The Really Free School: http://reallyfreeschool.org/

37. The Peer to Peer University: co-operative production through sharing and accreditation. http://p2pu.org/ The Institute of Collapsonomics : an analysis of meaningful socio-cultural resilience, and our capacity to develop agile and mobile associations, which can solve problems and develop alternatives. http://collapsonomics.org/

39. “ only in association with others has each individual the means of cultivating his talents in all directions. Only in a community therefore is personal freedom possible... In a genuine community individuals gain their freedom in and through their association” Karl Marx Bottomore, T.B., and M. Rubel, M. 1974. Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy . London: Penguin.

40. In. Against. Beyond. ‘ the universalization of capitalism not just as a measure of success but as a source of weakness... It can only universalize its contradictions, its polarizations between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. Its successes are also its failures.’ ‘ Now capitalism has no more escape routes, no more safety valves or corrective mechanisms outside its own internal logic... the more it maximizes profit and so-called growth – the more it devours its own human and natural substance’. Meiksins-Wood, E. (1997). Back to Marx. Monthly Review, 49(2), 8-9.

41. “ At the heart of it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future”. Paul Mason, why it is kicking off everywhere

42. Are there other ways of producing knowing? What authority does HE/do universities have? In a knowing world, rather than a knowledge economy, what does the curriculum mean? Does a pedagogy of production need to start with the principle that we need to consume less of everything? What does this mean for ownership of the institution at scale [local, regional, global]? How can student voices help in the struggle to re-invent the world? What is to be done? See: http://globalhighered.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/a-question/

43. Licensing This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons, Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/