Power and the game of higher education: Self-validating aggrandisement or transformational praxis?

Aidan Cornelius-Bell, Piper A Bell

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

The anglosphere’s higher education system primarily serves a narrow group and fails to advance liberatory educational goals, instead functioning to human capital. Universities perpetuate capitalism through “job readiness” and continue defunding humanities, arts, and social sciences. Students and staff, especially casualised workers, face increasingly poor conditions, setting scene for the current dire landscape. This chapter advances that education is complicit in reproducing dominant Eurocentric knowledge, which fails to address human needs. While attempts are made at plurality, these are assimilated into the dominant episteme and students are forced to engage with capitalist epistemologies to graduate into precarious work. Education continues to require complicity in hierarchical rules that benefit the ruling class, and transformation is frustrated. The chapter positions academics as constrained by powerful hegemonic culture, answerable to corporate interests rather than human interests. However, in hope, the chapter suggests the system can be challenged by elucidating inequitable and unwritten rules to students, sharing discourses of equality/inequality, and working collectively towards liberatory praxis outside capitalist epistemologies. The chapter argues that shining a light on alternatives offers a path forward to break this cycle.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLudic Inquiries into Power and Pedagogy in Higher Education
Subtitle of host publicationHow Games Play Us
EditorsAmelia Walker, Helen Grimmett, Alison L Black
Place of PublicationUnited Kingdom
PublisherRoutledge, Taylor & Francis
Chapter4
Pages45-57
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-003-45097-9
ISBN (Print)978-1-032-58346-4, 978-1-032-58656-4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2025

Keywords

  • Power
  • Higher education
  • Pedagogy
  • Praxis
  • Capitalism
  • Neoliberalism

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