The Crisis of Higher Education: Neoliberalism and the Privileging of “Innovation” in The Twenty-First Century

The authors of this paper maintain that challenging the frame of “innovation” as a privileged keyword for higher education is a fresh and useful intervention in the conversation about the neoliberalization of higher education in the United States. Since our home institution, Purdue, is being celebrated by US News for “innovation,” the focus on the concept enables us to offer a Purdue lens on the topic. The authors argue that three high profile developments that have taken place since 2013 under the leadership of Purdue President Mitch Daniels—the University Honors College, the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Program, and Purdue Global—may also be regarded as “ideological innovations.” Alongside the laudable aspects of each of these developments, we argue that each serves the administration’s plan to decrease faculty power, especially in the humanities, by promoting initiatives that, in each case, increase the precariatization of instructional labor at Purdue and that move curriculum design and the hiring of teaching staff away from traditional academic departments and toward a more centralized model of educational control under the direction of high-level university administrators in and outside the College of Liberal Arts.