Shaping for Mediocrity: Universities and the Cancellation of Critical Thinking

An insider account of the struggle for the soul of the university.

In 2021, as part of a programme called Shaping for Excellence, bosses at the University of Leicester made redundant numerous scholars in what was simultaneously an attack on academic freedom and trade union organisation. The authors of Shaping for Mediocrity not only had front-row seats in the campaign against these mass redundancies, they were in the ring -- both as targeted employees and as trade union officers and negotiators. Shaping for Mediocrity tells the inside story of these attacks and the campaign against them. It situates this story within a longer history of struggle to make the university a place where critical thinking is possible, showing how events in Leicester are both reflective of higher education in the UK following four decades of neoliberal "reform" and a particularly egregious instance of the increasingly authoritarian management of public institutions such as universities. Who makes the university and how? And what is the university for? These questions run through Shaping for Mediocrity. The book provides lessons for anyone who believes that workers have a right to organise, that employees must be allowed to question their employers, and that the university must be a critical institution.