£7.99 – £8.99
openDemocracy Political Books of the Year 2017
What if we have lost the ability to think straight? And what if this is why the shocking injustices of contemporary life go unchallenged in spite of being widely acknowledged? And what if the university, the institution that is supposed to help us to think, is in on the act?
In this polemical account of how universities are failing both their students and society, Sinéad Murphy shows how the Zombie University of the twenty-first century is keeping us down rather than raising us up, and asks whether, in spite of everything, it could be brought back to life, and whether we could dare to think again.
Sinéad Murphy teaches philosophy at Newcastle University. She is the author of three other books: Effective History (Northwestern, 2010), The Art Kettle (Zero, 2012), and The Jane Austen Rules (Melville House, 2014).
“For those of us seeking to defend our universities from the attack they have been under, and at the same time build a better educational ideal, [this] book has something to contribute that should make us feel uncomfortable – and all the more determined.”
“The wholesale and disastrous marketisation of higher education [is] powerfully described by Sinéad Murphy in her book, a right horror show.”