This book explores the ways in which the contemporary university is talked about and talks
about itself. Focusing on English higher education Jones documents how an under-confident
sector internalised the language and logic of government policy and individual institutions
then set about normalising competition and gaming short-term advantage at the expense of
collectively serving a common good. A flawed marketisation project was attended and sustained
by hostile discourses with purportedly woke universities becoming a soft target for
right-leaning politicians and media commentators and campuses reluctant battlefields for
manufactured culture wars. Within this context integrity deficits soon arose: universities
bragged about diversity and social responsibility without commensurate action global ambitions
went unmatched by local accountability senior management grew more distant and self-rewarding
as contractual precarity increased for frontline staff. Jones does not call for a return to any
golden age of academic self-rule. Rather he warns that without self-assured new stories
firmly underpinned by more transparent and moral forms of governance universities risk further
compromising their standing as trusted public institutions at the very moment they are needed
most.
