Academics and their managers

With the rise of managerialism at universities - a point of growing concern to the Academic Freedom Committee (AFC) - Robin Briggs' lecture, The Knowledge Economy and Academic Freedom, at this year's TB Davie Memorial Lecture on 12 August was quite topical.

Briggs had plenty of experience to fall back on. He was "outed" as one of those at Oxford opposed to plans by vice-chancellor John Hood to streamline the university's structures; plans, said The Times Higher Education at the time, that was seen as an attack on its traditional democratic decision-making process.

So Briggs spoke on his own experiences at Oxford, growing managerialism, state funding formulas for universities and the commodification of academia, and administrative careerism.

Download podcast of the lecture.