Dystopia is now: the threats to academic freedom

Abstract

A series of intersecting trends now threatens fundamental changes in the character of higher education. The gradual replacement of full-time tenured faculty with part-time teachers is the bedrock change, but it simultaneously serves the political impulse to defund higher education and makes it easier to impose the corporate model of instrumental education devoted narrowly to skills acquisition and job training. Humanities education should resist these trends with an alternative educational model.