50 years on from Warwick University Ltd, the UCU strikes challenge the business university
In the late 1960s students at Warwick University uncovered and published a number of documents that related to the links between the University and local business. At the time the idea that business should be able to significantly influence the priorities of what took place in an academic environment was regarded as very concerning.
It is still very concerning 50 years on but is now commonplace. If it is not direct business influence then certainly the influence of the ideas and practice of business, focused on profit and the market.
The late historian E P Thompson who was Director of the Centre for Social History at Warwick in the late 1960s edited a Penguin Special paperback, published in 1970 which have significant details and insight into what had happened at Warwick:
Below are some lines to E P Thompson’s conclusion to Warwick University Ltd
And what is wrong again is the whole system of values- the entire ordering of human priorities- of this insistent managerial propaganda. It is sad to see even scholars themselves hesitate in their work and wonder about the use of what they are doing. Even they begin to feel, defensively, that a salesman or an advertising executive is perhaps a more productive human being than an actor, or a designer or a teacher of English.
E P Thompson, Warwick University Ltd
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