I am in higher level education in the public university system. I used to view academia as a source of hope in society, and perhaps a progressive institution in someways, or some kind of source of hope with their supposed focus on science and research. After some years here, this “image” I had of academia has been shattered.
What are your perceptions of academia and research institutions, as Marxists?
Hopeless in short until a revo changes the baseline of society. They’re very much an arm of capital and reflect all its goals for better or worse. I’ve found many of the critiques of academia , its classist gatekeeping, and its epistemology made in Homoacademicus still hold for academia at large, its one part very bourgeois but another part still harkening back to feudal guilds and if you’re not deemed an acceptable apprentice, or if your particular branch can’t play funding politics, well you’re out before it truly begins.
I’ve found as I’ve gotten older STEAM academia is a lot less material bound than one would expect, just due to the nature of economics which drives it shape or form shape policy and research and also what’s an acceptable approach to novel problems so instead of dealing with the root cause of something its assumed better to look at shorter term sketchy patches.
Going to xth journals being really lazy with what they publish and who is considered an expert, almost ended up being an unknowing ‘expert’ myself back at the start of covid19 since a college acquaintance hit me up assuming I was in the field with a PhD she wanted for some broad overview style paper on it. Nah, too poor, and if I came into money I would always be found a poor fit because I have mannerisms of the lower class, along with the whole being trans gender and then racial minority thing, I’ve found most academics are reflective of the society they’re in so many of them are huge bigots, though generally they like to pretend to hide it.