Academic Freedom and the Ethics of Marketing Education

Francine Rochford (La Trobe University, Australia)
Copyright: © 2011 |Pages: 182
EISBN13: 9781613503720|DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-599-5.ch010
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Abstract

Academic freedom is acknowledged to both define the university and to protect its status. A commitment to academic freedom must be reflected in organisational structures and attitudes. However, many of the uses to which universities are put by the state, and the choices made by universities themselves, can erode the effective protection of academic freedom. The deployment of marketing techniques, including technological advances, to mimic the activities of private corporations, are frequently part of the wider systemic threat to the university ‘system’ in most modern economies – its deployment in instrumental economic goals. If these goals are pursued to the exclusion of other university goals, universities’ raison d’être will be diminished. In particular, academic freedom as a corollary to scholarly practice and a model of inquiry will be threatened. The casualization of the university workforce is both a managerial mechanism to effect economic goals and a cause of growing instrumentalism in the sector. Universities’ increasing deployment of casual staff presents a problem for the real exercise of academic freedom, and is an abandonment of the ethical role of the university.
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