Illusio and Ethos in Academia

This chapter provides an analysis of the ethos of academics in neoliberal universities with the aim to develop an ethics for academics. More than adding to the large literature dissecting the nefarious impact of neoliberalism, the chapter critiques academics’ lack of collective response to the higher education crisis. Framing the discussion around three key factors, which, since the 1980s, have changed the ethos, structures, and roles of universities—namely financialisation, marketisation and managerialism, the chapter uses Bourdieu’s concept of illusio to help explain the apparent complicity of academics to reproduce neoliberal practices. Reasons advanced include that of epistemopathy: that knowledge, especially of impending doom, leads to disempowerment. Another key explanation is that neoliberal ‘rules of the game’ (such as pressure, control, rewards and punishment) only accentuated what was already there: academics’ inherent desire for symbolic capital. In fact, the chapter exemplifies complicit behaviours from resignation, radical or critical posturing, increased incivility, to prodigious publication metrics, which show both a loss of meaning and a threat to (or loss of) illusio. The chapter concludes that it is through the difficult and long process of transforming academic habitus that we have any chance of transforming universities.