Recognizing that academia has been leaving its ivory tower and has become more accessible than in the past, Ana and Valeria wonder about how managerial imperatives take center stage in academic practices.[1] As academia becomes more (but not fully) approachable and the number of first-generation students increases, there are concerns about the commodification of education and research. Wondering about the unexpected consequences of the neoliberal turn of universities, we reflect on how to challenge the neoliberal model of academia in a way that keeps the academic door open to people of all backgrounds and fights against the commodification of knowledge. Caring for each other seems to be a compass by which we can navigate neoliberal academia and simultaneously build an inclusive and collaborative university environment, attacking elitism and gatekeeping.
A growing body of literature is discussing the neoliberalization of academia, especially regarding the “brandization” of universities and universities as businesses.[2] Yet, most of this literature is Anglo-centric.[3] Questions remain unanswered, especially for students and researchers based in non-Anglophone countries. Valeria and a colleague reached out to an environmental sociologist and an environmental historian close to us, in Belgium and the Netherlands. Thanks to informal and anonymized conversations with them (ES and EH), Ana and Valeria then learned about their perceptions of the neoliberal model of academia and whether it influences their research in the environmental humanities and social sciences.
Prior to engaging in these conversations, we decided not to define the “neoliberal model” to the interviewees. We intended to follow their lead and embrace their vision on how universities operate as profit-seeking businesses. In what follows, the neoliberal model appears throughout the different lived experiences of researchers, and we dive into their meanings and practices.
Publishing in a Neoliberal World
The old saying “publish or perish” remains relevant, maybe now more than ever.[4] Publishing research is still the way to communicate findings and ideas, show progress, and ultimately create a global community by reading other scholars’ work and speaking to it in our own research.[5] Yet these contributions are embedded in intersectional struggles, privileges, and injustices.[6] An important point raised among academics is the financial inaccessibility of publishing, that is, how inaccessible it has become to publicly share insights and findings, activity at the heart of research. Publishing fees have reached unfair prices that exclude researchers and universities unable to meet these costs.[7] How has this happened? We have to talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room holding a neon-sign: the for-profit academic publishing industry.
For many academic publishers, research is a profit-maximizing business, as Chang, a prominent philosopher of science, wrote in an incisive personal statement.[8] As the “publish or perish” cycle is embedded in this system and researchers largely depend on it for career advancement, these practices remain unchallenged.[9] One interviewee shared that it can be difficult to distinguish a university’s culture (e.g., pressure to publish) from wider neoliberal practices in adjacent sectors like publishing. While some researchers in the environmental humanities and social sciences recognize this issue, they also acknowledge the need to run the publishing race, thereby contributing to this profit-maximizing system.
Our interviewees are concerned that researchers could be evaluated only through the quantity of publications. Interviewee ES shares that, when they were applying for a postdoctoral grant, the online module expected applicants to list their top ten key publications, implying that an early career researcher is expected to have that many publications. This is an example of what Halffman and Radder call a “regime of indicator fetishism”.[10] Today’s practices pose the risk of turning a researcher into a brand defined by their number of publications, however research in the environmental humanities and social science exceeds this metric.[11] Fortunately, there is overall agreement that publications alone do not fully capture the knowledge and skills of a researcher. For example, the Geosciences faculty of Utrecht University responded to this concern by adopting a promotion scheme based not only on the publication record of a researcher, but also on their engagement with society outside academia.[12]
In most places, there is increasing competition among researchers to reach the highest number of publications in the shortest amount of time.[13] With the growth of publications outpacing increases in the hiring of researchers, academics are now dedicating more time than ever—in most cases, unpaid—to editorial work as part of the collaborative peer-reviewing process, a process which serves the publishing industry in an unfair manner as it entails free labor, often for a for-profit industry.[14]
On this note, interviewee ES shares: “you constantly have to perform and act as having potential, potentially [making] a sort of future speculation on your worth. And then the only way to show that you have this future worth is based on past performance.” This is not different from other industries. Workers are usually evaluated on past performances. However, as interviewee EH notes, in academia, the peril is that research is not a prompt process and competition to publish risks lowering the quality of published work for the sake of publishing. As studies suggest, academic work in environmental studies is turning into “a sort of ‘fast food research’ void of quality and nutrition.”[15] In turn, the practice of academic publishing is distancing itself from one of the foremost endeavors of academia: to collectively expand our understanding of phenomena.[16] The peer pressure to keep up one’s brand as a high-publishing academic researcher fosters a ferocious and vicious cycle dependent on a for-profit sector.[17]
Brandization of Academia (and Academics)
EH tells us that, in both Belgium and the Netherlands, research funding comes mostly from the government, slightly more so in Belgium than the Netherlands. [18] For EH, “That’s why we don’t really need to brand ourselves in such a way, that puts a kind of limit on […] competitiveness.” When hearing these words, we feel reassured about the future possibilities of continuing to do environmental research in Belgium and the Netherlands: we might not need to market our research projects. Yet, we are reminded that national politics change the research environment through priorities in government-funding, as recent political developments in, e.g., the Netherlands show.[19]
As science under a neoliberal model has become an object of management, the pursuit of funding grows even more competitive and fundamentally political, bringing us back to the publishing pressure. EH notes: “I need even more publications because I have to outpace my colleagues to get that raise or to get that extra level and so on and so on. So that’s where then you really see purely putting a number on things, number of publications, number of stays abroad…” On these grounds, the neoliberal model of academia tells us to brand our research to increase the chances of funding. A new research project or institution should “sound very flashy, […] alluring and so it can attract attention from media, but also can get funding” (interviewee EH). This may increase your chances of funding, as research funders are allured by specific buzzwords used as a “marketing device.”[20] And, as we know, research in the humanities and social sciences is underfunded compared to the physical and technical sciences.[21] Studies on the eco-social crisis and its socio-political and historical foundations remain insufficiently funded, raising questions on the extent to which we are unpacking these phenomena under the current model of academia. This is particularly exacerbated because of the significant budgetary cuts by governments, especially contemporary far-right ones.[22] We see that environmental research in the humanities and social sciences is under financial pressure, with research on climate change in particular on shaky grounds according to EH. Thus, researchers are forced to market their ideas even more than before, and in a way that suits current politics.
Working Conditions
What surprised us from these conversations was how the neoliberal model, if brought to the extreme, expects researchers to fully dedicate themselves to academic work beyond their usual hours. Our conversations show that many researchers love exposure to different cultures, conducting fieldwork, doing archival research, and taking part in research stays or fellowships elsewhere. However, it is important to realize that being elsewhere is problematic when it becomes a normalized indicator of one’s performance as a researcher, especially when it affects how one’s personal life unfolds.[23] Moreover, being elsewhere can be impossible for some for reasons including ethical concerns, visa regimes, caretaking duties, and living and transportation costs.[24] Others are simply not willing to move, as interviewee EH openly shares. This tension between privileges and challenges in being elsewhere has many layers to unpack. Here, we start to realize that by reducing researchers’ lives elsewhere to a part of their brand, ignoring its role in enriching the research process, the neoliberal model marginalises considerations of ethics and care.
This speaks loudly to another point brought up during our conversations: the precarious format of work contracts in academia. Insecure employment is the norm for early and mid-career researchers.[25] EH explains that this influences how one can do research. Without a stable contract, you don’t have the capacity to go for challenging research projects—taking risks becomes a privilege.[26] The interviewees share their experiences and those of their colleagues: precarious contracts push researchers to aim for low-hanging fruit. Compelling research projects take longer (and so does the publication of their research) and cannot be pursued under short-term contracts. A way to cope is to apply for as many grants and funding schemes as possible. One interviewee explained that once, they ended up with 7 PhD projects at the same time. They turned into a project manager, forced to put their own research aside in their working hours. This explains why in the neoliberal university “most people do research in their free time, in their holidays” (interviewee EH), as is also suggested in other commentaries.[27] In a similar vein, education becomes a commodity, set aside by academics hired with precarious work-contracts.[28] If staff have limited time for education and conduct research in their free time, we are missing the point of academia.[29]
Conversely, universities actively attract foreign academics to enhance their brand, fight endogamy and patronage, or create a richer research environment. The European context, far from being isolated, presents a complex picture. Many international researchers who relocate to Belgium, whether by choice or necessity, are employed on fellowship contracts. Fellowships offer a significant monetary advantage for hiring institutions, as the total cost per hire is considerably lower than hiring researchers who are local residents. This encourages mobility and brings into conversation an otherwise geographically distant community of researchers; however, not all fellowships or contracts are the same. We see that the benefits under a fellowship contract are very disparate based on nationality, where most South American, African or Asian researchers do not receive unemployment benefits or contributions to their pensions, further exacerbating their marginalization.[30] The neoliberal university opens doors but fails to keep them open to everyone, maintaining a sense of elitism, especially in the context of universities as employers and researchers as employees.[31] And, once again, through this tension between new opportunities and financial imperatives, the neoliberal model of academia appears to unfold in a more complex way than we expected.
So, What Now?
Throughout these conversations we realize that, even outside of the Anglophone sphere, academia is not immune to neoliberalization. The neoliberal university is built on a systemic structure that has infused spaces worldwide.[32] Neoliberalism is omnipresent across sectors and ways of living. Transcending boundaries between public and private lives, neoliberal academia blurs social and work spheres. We overlook the potential of an inclusively educated and informed society as a “public good” (in the words of Catherine Liu at HowTheLightGetsIn Hay 2025[33]), while managerial imperatives pose the particular risk of turning knowledge into a commodity and researchers into entrepreneurs of themselves.[34] This can damage the very foundations of creating and sharing knowledge through universities.
On a macro scale, in addition to a neoliberal academia full of competition and precarity, we observe a crackdown on university funding, research agendas, faculty, and students. This is particularly the case with the recent far right turn in many places, and especially in the US, which has a far more neoliberal academic system compared to Europe.[35] As numerous European governments also shift right, Europe’s academic institutions are increasingly vulnerable and dependent on third-party funding. Simultaneously, the crackdown on US universities creates opportunities to invite American researchers to Europe, a strategy already actively pursued by many European universities.[36] This offers Europe an advantage yet also poses a potential intensification of existing pressures on its own strained academic system. The academic community must challenge the existing (and potential future intensification of) neoliberal practices, to set aside and surpass this strained model of academia.
We wonder how one might respond to the tenets of neoliberalism. Interviewee ES tells us they navigate academia through the lenses of industrial actions in the 1960s and 1970s. They prompt us to escape the elitist view of academics as non-workers, born at a time when research was a practice pursued in an ivory tower, built on significant privilege.[37] “Doing research is a job,” ES repeats throughout our conversation. So is providing quality education, regardless of the logo of a university.[38] Both interviewees feel that Belgium and the Netherlands have a rich structure for trade unions at universities. They encourage us to leverage this to address the neoliberal model of academia and challenge it from the inside. In this context, as a first step, EH emphases that it is critical to negotiate fairer employment contracts for employees, in order to challenge the core of neoliberalism: competition. For ES, it is most important to transgress the neoliberal imperatives in everyday life, whether that be in university corridors or on the screens, by caring for others. When the neoliberal model expects competition, instead let us nourish and care for one another.
[1] Christine Morley, “The Systemic Neoliberal Colonisation of Higher Education: A Critical Analysis of the Obliteration of Academic Practice,” The Australian Educational Researcher 51, no. 2 (2024): 571, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00613-z.
[2] Philipp A. Rauschnabel, Nina Krey, Barry J. Babin, and Bjoern S. Ivens, “Brand Management in Higher Education: The University Brand Personality Scale,” Journal of Business Research 69, no. 8 (2016): 3077, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.01.023.
[3] Denis M. Hogan, “US Colleges and Universities Are Becoming Giant Exploitation Machines,” Jacobin, August 19, 2023; Ben Kunkler, “Australian Universities Are Finance Investors With a Side Hustle in Education,” Jacobin, September 30, 2021; Stephen L. Muzzatti, “Strange Bedfellows: Austerity and Social Justice at the Neoliberal University,” Critical Criminology 30, no. 3 (2022): 495, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-022; Glyn Robbins, “British Universities Keep Squeezing Faculty and Students Tighter and Tighter,” Jacobin, February 1, 2023.
[4] Imad A. Moosa, “Publish or Perish: Origin and Perceived Benefits,” in Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits Versus Unintended Consequences (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018), https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786434937.00007.
[5] Jennifer Dusdal and Justin J. W. Powell, “Benefits, Motivations, and Challenges of International Collaborative Research: A Sociology of Science Case Study,” Science and Public Policy 48, no. 2 (2021): 235, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scab010; Aimee Haley, Alemu Sintayehu Kassaye, Zerihun Zenawi and Liisa Uusimäki, “Internationalisation through Research Collaboration,” Educational Review 76, no. 4 (2024): 675, https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2022.2054958.
[6] Simon Baker, “North-South Publishing Data Show Stark Inequities in Global Research,” Nature 624, no. 7991 (2023): S1, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03901-x; Tibelius Amutuhaire, “The Reality of the ‘Publish or Perish’ Concept, Perspectives from the Global South,” Publishing Research Quarterly 38, no. 2 (2022): 281, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-022-09879-0.
[7] Kayla Yup, “How Scientific Publishers’ Extreme Fees Put Profit Over Progress,” The Nation, May 31, 2023.
[8] Hasok Chang, “A Personal Statement on the Current State of Academic Publishing,” 8 January, 2018.
[9] Yup, “How Scientific Publishers’ Extreme Fees Put Profit Over Progress.”
[10] Willem Halffman and Hans Radder, “The Academic Manifesto: From an Occupied to a Public University,” [In eng]. Minerva 53, no. 2 (2015): 167, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-015-9270-9.
[11] Thomas Bauwens, Denise Reike and Martín Calisto-Friant, “Science for Sale? Why Academic Marketization Is a Problem and What Sustainability Research Can Do About It,” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023): 2, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2023.100749.
[12] Bauwens, Reike and Calisto-Friant, “Science for Sale?” 4.
[13] Christine Musselin, “New Forms of Competition in Higher Education,” Socio-Economic Review 16, no. 3 (2018): 15, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwy033.
[14] Mark A. Hanson, Pablo G. Barreiro, Paolo Crosetto and Dan Brockington, “The Strain on Scientific Publishing,” Quantitative Science Studies, 5, no. 4 (2024): 823. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327.
[15] Benjamin K. Sovacool, Jonn Axsen and Steve Sorrell, “Promoting Novelty, Rigor, and Style in Energy Social Science: Towards Codes of Practice for Appropriate Methods and Research Design,” Special Issue on the Problems of Methods in Climate and Energy Research 45 (2018): 13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.07.007.
[16] Max Kozlov, “So You Got a Null Result. Will Anyone Publish It?” Nature 631, no. 8022 (2024): 728. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02383-9; Moosa, “Publish or Perish.”
[17] Halffman and Radder, “The Academic Manifesto,” 169.
[18] Eurostat, “Public Expenditures,” Educational Expenditure Statistics, September, 2024, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Educational_expenditure_statistics#Public_expenditure (last access: 03/06/2025).
[19] Martin Enserink, “New Dutch Right-Wing Coalition to Cut Research, Innovation, and Environmental Protections,” Science, May 24, 2024; David Matthews, “Far-Right Governments Seek to Cut Billions of Euros from Research in Europe,” Nature, October 24, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03506-y.
[20] Bernadette Bensaude Vincent, “The Politics of Buzzwords at the Interface of Technoscience, Market and Society: The Case of ‘Public Engagement in Science’,” Public Understanding of Science 23, no. 3 (2014): 239, https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662513515371.
[21] Indra Overland and Benjamin K. Sovacool, “The Misallocation of Climate Research Funding,” Energy Research & Social Science 62 (2020): 1, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101349.
[22] Dan Garisto, Jeff Tollefson and Alexandra Witze, “How Trump’s Attack on Universities is Putting Research in Peril,” Nature, April 24, 2025; Matthews, “Far-Right Governments.”
[23] Gökçe Günel and Chika Watanabe, “Patchwork Ethnography,” American Ethnologist 51, no. 1 (2024): 131, https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13243.
[24] Farhana Sultana, “Reflexivity, Positionality and Participatory Ethics: Negotiating Fieldwork Dilemmas in International Research,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 6, no. 3 (2015): 374, https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v6i3.786.
[25] Steve Faser, “How American Universities Turned Red,” Jacobin, June 14, 2023.
[26] Simon Grassmann, “The Neoliberal Model Is Destroying Innovation in Science,” Jacobin, May 20, 2023; Michael Park, Erin Leahey and Russell J. Funk, “Papers and Patents Are Becoming Less Disruptive over Time,” Nature 613, no. 7942 (2023): 143, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05543-x.
[27] Chris Woolston, “Workplace Habits: Full-Time Is Full Enough,” Nature 546, no. 7656 (2017): 175, https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7656-175a.
[28] Ed Burmila, “The Fruits of Commodification,” Jacobin, August 4, 2017.
[29] Masud Husain, “On the Responsibilities of Intellectuals and the Rise of Bullshit Jobs in Universities,” Brain 148, no. 3 (2025): 687, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaf045.
[30] KULeuven. “Social Security for Staff,” https://www.kuleuven.be/english/life-at-ku-leuven/insurance-social-security/social-security/social-security-for-staff (last access: May 5, 2025).
[31] Significant and crucial reflections also speak to the point that neoliberal universities serve as gatekeepers and elitist institutions for students. However, considering the scope of this piece, we are not delving into these reflections, while acknowledging that neoliberal academia is problematic both for employed researchers and for (potential) students at said institutions.
[32] Halffman and Radder, “The Academic Manifesto,” 169.
[33] A philosophy and music festival where Prof. Liu participated in a panel about the state of academia.
[34] Wendy Brown, “Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution,” Zone Books, 2015, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt17kk9p8; Catherine Liu. American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique, University of Iowa Press, 2011, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20q1vch.
[35] Garisto, Tollefson and Witze, “Research in Peril.”
[36] Ashifa Kassam, “European Universities Offer ‘Scientific Asylum’ to US Researchers Fleeing Trump’s Cuts,” The Guardian, March 25, 2025; Rebecca Trager, “Europe Offers Refuge to America’s Researchers,” ChemistryWorld, March 27, 2025; Laurie Udesky and Jack Leeming, “Exclusive: A Nature Analysis Signals the Beginnings of a US Science Brain Drain,” Nature, April 22, 2025.
[37] Elif Lootens and Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, “Inside the Ivory Tower, the View from a “Space Invader”: An Exploratory Study into the Ways Racialized PhD Students Experience White Ignorance in Elite Universities in the UK,” Sociology Compass 18, no. 4 (2024): 1, https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13199.
[38] Beck Pearse and Mike Beggs, “Refusing to be Cheap or Flexible: Labour Strategy in Academia,” Overland, April 22, 2020.
*Cover Image: School in the year 2000 as predicted by French artist Jean-Marc Côté in 1899. Image in the public domain.
[Cover Image Description: Students sitting in a school with a machine feeding them knowledge.]
Edited by Teja Šosterič; Reviewed by Josephine Goldman