LAUSR

In his concluding chapter, Heller discusses the neo-liberal universities that have now come to dominate US higher education. In times of limited state support, he argues that universities in the US have now been pushed to mirror the practices of private corporations which has led to total quality management systems becoming institutionalised. As part of this process, continual surveillance of teaching and research has occurred. Enhanced pressure has also been forthcoming on tenure, with an increasing casualisation of academic employment. University life has become structured by the ideological currents of neo-liberalist economics in an era of underfunding. Administrators, large corporations and corporate business models have come to dominate academia. Objective research is considered to be under threat from these changes. Trade union resistance is regarded as the main way to challenge the damaging consequences of the neo-liberal university. A resurgence of socialism and Marxist thought is also considered as offering the possibility of positive social change.