Universities and higher educational institutions are places where secular and scientific ideas develop to shape minds and guide individuals, families, states, and societies along a progressive path. These are not merely places to disseminate information but to develop knowledge by rejecting all forms of dominant ideas, powers, and knowledge traditions. The democratization and decolonization of knowledge in these places help deepen democracy and strengthen the struggle against all forms of authoritarianism, thereby empowering people and improving their living conditions. Freedom from illiteracy and ignorance is central to all activities that help drive struggles against all forms of exploitation and discrimination in society. All these activities within universities and institutions of higher education involve both the essentialist and emancipatory goals of students and staff, who are the twin foundations of all institutions of higher learning and teaching. The managerial parasites are destroying the organic relationships between staffs and students with the culture of consumerism in the campuses across the world.
The commercialisation and marketisation of education have replaced critical thinking and knowledge production and dissemination with a singular agenda of profit-making—at the cost of students, staff, and society in particular, and the nature of knowledge production in general. The idea of employability has replaced critical thinking and reflective engagement with ideas, existing knowledge traditions, and their limitations in producing new knowledge. Such a transformation within higher education has led to the creation of an environment where teaching and learning are replaced by the idea of profit-making, which has become strategic thinking, whereas research is seen as revenue-draining. Such profit-driven market logic has destroyed higher education across the globe.
However, these narrow functionalist ideas of higher education—pursued in the name of skills transfer and employability—have helped to create compliant minds and hands, which are essential for a compliant society where the idea of emancipation and revolution has been killed, giving rise to a breed of reactionary and mindless managers of higher education. For this managerial class, students are cash cows, and staff are mere numbers on balance sheets of staff costs, salary slips, and pension sheets. These managers have nothing to bring into higher education institutions. They have nothing to offer to enhance staff and student experience by facilitating and creating an environment of creative, critical, and collaborative learning and teaching.
The credential-free managers with compliant minds have entered higher education in the name of industry experience, without understanding the nature of teaching, learning, and research environments. Some of these managers lack even the basic qualifications to be a teaching assistant. They have never taught and have never written a page worth mentioning in their entire career. These managers do not have a doctoral degree, publication credentials, or teaching credentials—yet they become heads of departments, deans, deputy deans, deputy vice-chancellors, and vice-chancellors in the organisational higherarchy within the managerial lexicon of higher education.
Most of these deans and heads of departments control the so-called quality assurance processes without even knowing the basics of higher education. Some of these deans and other leaders of higher education can’t even write an email. These leaders use ChatGPT and other generative AI applications to write emails. One of my colleagues from a UK university said that
“the dean of the university writes emails to staff which is 69% copied from ChatGPT.”
Such people decide the nature of higher education. This is why public faith in higher education is declining—managers have destroyed universities as a social good and created a profit-driven educational system where education and training are missing, buried under tons of unnecessary policies introduced in the name of quality assurance and processes that are, in fact, detrimental to higher education.
These mindless managers without basic academic credentials also claim to be professors without having published a page, and they lead institutions of higher education. Anyone who disagrees with their agendas is crushed under restructuring and redundancies, which produce conditions for managerial bonuses at the cost of students, staff, and universities. Most British universities are nearly collapsing due to this managerial class and their political masters, who prefer compliant citizens over critical and radically thinking global citizens. So, these credential-less managers are minions of larger governing elites of states and societies who want higher education to be merely skills-based training for employability. These forces do not want secular and scientific education for radical reorganisation of society based on equality and liberty.
These credential-less managerial parasites live on staff member’s labour, student’s struggle and their family savings exactly like their corporate masters of capitalism, where lies, exploitation, inequality, and discrimination are inbuilt. These managers bring this toxic culture of capitalism to universities and other institutions of higher education to destroy them from the inside. These managers are not merely parasites but are also drunk with the power of arrogance and ignorance, working as agents of the governing class to destroy the very foundation of higher education. These managers need to be named and shamed in public, as they destroy a public good called education—which is a crucial tool of social, political, and economic change. It is important to expose the managers and their political masters in order to reveal the designs of a profit-driven capitalist educational system that destroys education itself by creating conditions of alienation among students, staff, and campuses.
The rise of hordes of managerial parasites—who lead higher education institutions without any credentials to be on campus—are not only enemies of staff and students; they are also enemies of the people, of reason, and of the scientific knowledge that society needs to progress on a path of peace and prosperity. The defeat of these toxic managers, managerialism, and the managerial class is central to the growth of a higher education environment that facilitates learning and teaching to produce knowledge, shape minds, and guide societies along a progressive path free from exploitation, discrimination, and inequalities. Universities and other institutions of higher education do not need toxic and unqualified managerial parasites, but thought leaders to facilitate an environment of learning ideas, skills, and ideals—to develop a society where there is no limit on human emancipation. Universities and other higher educational institutions for a better tomorrow are possible and inevitable.
