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Vulnerability theory and higher education

ABSTRACT Vulnerability theory stresses the role of an active state that is responsive to our common human needs: health, safety, sustenance, shelter, education, and fulfilling work. This article studies institutions of higher education in the US and UK through the lens of vulnerability theory, examining the role of the state to serve the public interest through its colleges and universities. The history of higher education in the US and UK, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, reveals advances in the development of institutions with a public mission committed to broad student access, strong faculty employment rights, and the public domain of research and knowledge. Since the 1980s, however, the imposition of state neoliberal policy has undermined the public mission of higher education through cuts in public funding, rising tuition and student debt, contingent faculty employment, and commercialization of academic research. Such changes have weakened the institutional structure of higher education, leaving universities ill-equipped to resist the most recent political and ideological attacks on intellectuals and progressive social movements that are nurtured in higher education institutions. At the same time, organising by faculty and student unions and professional organisations presents the potential for collective action as a form of resilience, resistance, and social change