Academia is no longer for academics

There is a sense of helplessness that gradually stifles the aspirations of many to obtain an academic position in a world where the University is incompatible with social and community life; in a world where the backbone of the institution consists (in many cases) of a majority of teachers reduced to technical experts with no job security, compared to a privileged minority.

The intellectual figure, that is, the individual embedded in a system of knowledge production that serves the interests of the local/regional/national community, will become a relic without a fundamental change in the way universities operate. That said, it is important to recognise the elitism that has marked the University since its earliest days.

A bit of history

It is only since the 20th century that the University, as an institution, became gradually accessible to larger swaths of each country's population. Since its inception around a millennium ago, the institution had been reserved to a privileged few, primarily male literate scholars, with very few exceptions for the rest. Said simply, the ideological struggles of the 18th century in the form of social and philosophical debates, followed by the revolutionary periods of the 19th century and early 20th century, marked historical turning points that led to the establishment of public education in the late 19th century and its consolidation in the 20th century.

This period was the golden age of the public intellectual, a humanist figure usually affiliated to a university, who, ideally, had the ability to rigorously link a diverse array of fields into a critical worldview. Through the development of audio-visual media (radio and television), the presence of public intellectuals grew, sometimes shaping public opinion on matters of societal salience, such as war, racial discrimination, colonial practices, and minority rights, to name a few.

As countries developed their higher education institutes, many universities became increasingly dependent on state subsidies that, de facto, were contingent on the fulfilment of the state's priorities, although most universities remained spaces of open public debate.

The proliferation of ideological camps

With the advent of technological advances, however, came the fragmentation of public debate into ideological camps, each of which hosted intellectual figures that reflected the editorial stance of each outlet. In a true public sphere of argumentative debate, this would pose no problem. Nevertheless, the increasing concentration of media into corporate conglomerates with their own agendas to shape public policy arguably led to the amplification of ideological differences.

Radio and TV channels could now offer a range of ideologies, hosting public intellectuals that merely followed each channel's stance, which fostered the insulation of audiences into an early version of an echo chamber. Some had clear ideological convictions, whereas others simply saw a chance to develop this into a business model where engagement equals increased profit margins through a flourishing of marketing and publicity campaigns.

The proliferation of the internet and, subsequently, the creation of the smartphone in the 21st century, facilitated this path-dependence. From then on, almost any content could be accessed at one's fingertips. This individualisation of technology had an immediate effect on the consumption of media.

YouTube channels and a variety of streaming services became readily available, all with their own ideological agendas, offering users a product rather than an idea, in the form of 'controversial' content that maximises engagement. Public intellectuals such as Jordan Peterson, Slavoj Žižek, and many others became flagships of specific ideological currents defined along a vague left/right-wing spectrum.

Parallel developments in Higher Education

This process coincided with a wave of privatisation in the education sector from the 1980s onwards, particularly in the Anglo-American sphere, leading to differentiated systems within the system. That is, those with the means to access 'better' education could. The public system remained in place but oftentimes stripped of the necessary resources to compete with private offers.

Furthermore, a managerial corporate model was implemented in many universities, creating stiff career paths that did not reflect the traditional dynamics of university staff. "Research and development specialists", "quality assurance specialists", and "academic quality specialists" – to name a few – sprouted as job titles for new university staff.

At the same time, higher education slowly began depending on insufficient public funds and, in the Anglo-American sphere particularly, on donations of successful alumni and on a constant influx of foreign students able to pay higher tuition fees. A result of this is, ironically, the scarcity of tenured positions for doctoral graduates and the increase in precarious adjunct positions.

This is, again, particularly acute in the Anglo-American sphere but also common in many universities across Europe. A secondary effect of such scarcity is tribalism, reflected in the form of certain tenured professors privileging their group of protégés for future positions.

Alongside its traditional mission of knowledge production for the common good, ranging from the natural sciences to social sciences, education, and humanities – according to their most traditional divisions – universities became partners of industry.

Global competition in the form of technical knowledge production that can be patented and commercialised has forced some universities, with pressure from their respective funders (be it states or other entities), to prioritise politically significant and economically profitable fields. National imperatives and market needs collide. Start-up incubators have become corollaries of this intricate relationship. In many cases, the result is a reduction of the role of university professors – once hailed as intellectuals – as researchers and technical experts at the mercy of industry.

The uncertain future of the intellectual

Nevertheless, the death of the intellectual figure will not be due primarily to the zeitgeist of technical expertise, nor to the fragmentation of knowledge production, but to the structure of an institution increasingly dependent on funds that guarantee positions and research projects. With an emphasis on the humanities and social sciences, such dependence fosters competition between small groups whose work is stuck in almost predefined theoretical frameworks and methodologies.

The University can only be saved from within (without denying the need for structural and ideological change at the political level). However, the difficulty of access to university positions for young (and not so young) applicants, the growing precariousness in certain cases, the emphasis on meaningless international mobility as part of the selection criteria, and institutional tribalism rob many of the hope of contributing to attempts at internal reconstruction.