The corpse of the university floats face down in the water, W. says. We’re poking it with sticks. None of us can believe it. Is it really dead, the university? Is that really its bloated, blue-faced corpse? Yes, it really is dead, and there it is, floating, face down, W. says. There’s no point pretending otherwise, not anymore. The university is dead, and there is its corpse.
Oh, there are signs of life in the university. It seems that it’s alive. But that life is the life of maggots, he says, devouring the substance of the university from the inside, living on its rotting.
There are parasites who live from death, and which death produces, W. says. The corpse of the university is a breeding ground. The corpse is where Capital comes to lay its eggs. The university is that rotten place where Capital deposits its eggs …
The old elite are going: isn't that W. and his friends said to themselves at the beginning of their careers? The old elite – the toffs from Oxford and Cambridge – were going, and now it was their time, the time of the working class. The time of new professoriate.
But that's not what happened, was it? The old elite sensed what was to come. The old professoriate new what was coming, which was why they were taking early retirement and disappearing into the countryside.
The rise of the manager: that's what they saw. That's why they got out in time. The rise of internal competition, and short-term contracts. The rise of funding bids and research excellence frameworks …
How quickly they came, the manager-flies, to lay their eggs! How quickly they hatched, those eggs. Until the university was full of maggots, blind and wriggling …
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