Dark Academia – How Universities Die, by Peter Fleming

I ordered this book from our local bookshop a while ago but have only just found time to finish reading it. It’s an analysis of the decline of the neoliberal model of the university accompanied by the rise of commercialisation, managerialism and authoritarian models of governance. At 165 pages, not counting the notes and references, it’s a concise and compelling polemic, full of controlled anger and sprinkled with sardonic wit. The problem I have in reviewing it is that almost every page contains something that rings so true that I’d want to include a quote. There wouldn’t be any point in doing that as I’d end up quoting almost the entire book, so I decided just to include one excerpt, part of a paragraph in the introduction: Impersonal and unforgiving management hierarchies have supplanted academic judgement, collegiality and professional common sense. in many institutions, senior executives have no PhDs and have been trained in business or the military instead. Mindless performance…