Welcome to Recognitions!
Welcome to Recognitions, the SubStack-based writing platform of Pattern Recognition: A Research Collective (PRRC).
With Recognitions, we aim to provide useful informational and organizing tools for people affected by or concerned about the current state(s) of higher education, particularly how it has been affected and shaped by broader, systemic processes of (for-profit) financialization, marketization, and consequent commodification, all of which prioritize monetary notions of “value” above all others. Here, we will investigate how such processes affect institutional governance and how they have shaped public perceptions of the value and purpose of higher education more generally.
On this platform and in our consultancy practice, we explore ways that nonprofit private and public college/university boards, employees, and other stakeholders can better understand and overcome the various institutional pressures brought on by financialization in order to re-center securely on education as a public good. Financialization can easily set various stakeholders at odds, with predictably negative effects on governance and morale. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Because many of the most formidable challenges confronting higher education today are systemic, rather than institutionally specific or unique, we will guide our readers through today’s heavily financialized context, because, within it, knowledge is indeed power. Both should be shared. The secrecy that accompanies for-profit financial interests’ involvement in non-profit finances, especially endowments, has made it very difficult to see what, exactly, is going on with the money. And without that information, it can be very difficult to challenge the austerity measures that have become almost “second nature” in higher ed, particularly--but not exclusively--in the humanities.
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We are a new, independent group and would very much appreciate any support you may be able to provide to help us get established.
You can subscribe to Recognitions here.
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