In the cultural field, programs do not stop with the summer, on the contrary. So why should it be any different in the academic field? This is the time of summer schools and meetings with guests from all over the world. In the second week of July, CEPS is hosting the UNIKE (Universities in the Knowledge society; FP7 Marie Curie; more about it at http://unike.au.dk/) summer school, and as part of it, we will also organize an open lecture by the famous New Zealand social anthropologist Professor Chris Shore (University of Auckland). The title of his lecture is On Academic Entrepreneurship: The Transformation of New Zealand’s Universities.
We therefore kindly invite you to join us at the first “summer seminar of the school field”, which will take place on Thursday, 10 July 2014 at 5:15 p.m. in the Assembly Hall at the University of Ljubljana, Kongresni trg 12, Ljubljana.
Abstract
One of the most striking aspects of the way universities are being transformed in the global knowledge economy is the increasing emphasis many now place on promoting innovation and entrepreneurship as a core aspect of the university’s mission. Rendering academics more ‘entrepreneurial’ has become an implicit, and sometimes explicit, policy objective in many universities. Yet entrepreneurs are, by definition, individuals who own or manage a business and who, through risk and initiative, seek to make profits. How applicable is this Schumpeterian understanding of entrepreneurship to academics? This lecture reports on the rise of university entrepreneurship and commercialization in New Zealand, a country that has pioneered many of the reforms associated with neoliberalism. I explore some of the different sites and spaces of commercialization to ask; what impact is this having on the meaning and mission of the university, and on academic subjectivities? Who are the new academic entrepreneurs of the neoliberal university? And what does ‘entrepreneurship’ mean in a public university context? Finally, I analyze some of the implications and tensions that the rise of academic entrepreneurs is creating in the public university.