Universities in a ‘mode 2’ society

Abstract

Two different modes of discourse for thinking about the future of higher education are contrasted – the dominant discourse of markets, managerialism and technology, and other more reflective discourses that focus on deeper social structures and cultural formations, and also scientific and wider intellectual change. One reason perhaps for the continuing dominance of the first mode, despite its obvious affinities with decaying neoliberal ideology, is there is a multitude of alternatives, one of which, the idea of a Mode 2 society, is the major focus of this chapter. Another is that it has to be expressed in sufficiently accessible and persuasive terms. A plethora of alternatives underscores the need to develop a new compelling language of higher education, to replace both the concept of massification as the dominant organizational framework and also the ideology of neoliberalism as the dominant policy and normative narrative. To imagine a new future, and to build a better one, it is first necessary to be able to describe it.