I have discussed what happened next, at least for Britain, in “How my generation let down our students [5]”. The watershed of the 1970s culminated in the neoliberal counter-revolution that saw Reagan and Thatcher come to power. Competitive pseudo-markets based academic assessment on so-called “objective” indicators, especially research publications. Bureaucracies became more interventionist along with the wholesale corporatization of university culture. What was left of academic community was destroyed by the growing gap between a few established professors who took leave often and a reserve army of precarious young teachers. The publishing oligopoly exhausted library budgets with their over-priced journals, while the academics competed for the status of getting published in them. Everyone agrees that the contents are worthless and are not read. Faced with the challenge of the internet, most academics did their utmost to maintain the system of feudal private property that has now overwhelmed the universities.
Jovan Maud on 20 Mar 14Not sure if this article necessarily belongs in digital anthropology but it's an intriguing way of getting around the banking sector by using a type of virtual commodity, the pre-ordered game.
