Only a few spaces are left for the annual Worldviews Lecture on Media and Higher Education, featuring Rajani Naidoo, Chair in Higher Education Management and Director of the International Centre for Higher Education Management at the University of Bath. Professor Naidoo will deliver a lecture titled, “Beyond the Competition Fetish: Higher Education for Global Wellbeing.”
Prof. Naidoo contends that universities everywhere have a competition fetish. There is a modern-day magical belief that competition will provide the solutions to all of the unsolved problems of higher education, protect against risk, and drive up quality. The term fetish is used to describe an irrational belief in the quasi-magical powers of competition and the need to transform relations between people into relationships between things. This year’s Worldviews Lecture on Higher Education will explore the varieties of competition in higher education; the material, social and psychological animators of competition; and the consequences of these processes on global wellbeing. The view that there is no alternative to competition will be countered by highlighting global wellbeing trailblazers and by introducing potential new visions for higher education and alternative ways in which it can be organized.
The lecture will take place on Wednesday, April 13, 2016 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the Ground Floor of the OISE Library, University of Toronto. There is no cost to attend, but spaces are extremely limited. The lecture will also be webcast live for those unable to be at the lecture in person.
Information about the lecture, registration, and accessing the webcast can be found at: Worldviewsconference.com.
The Worldviews annual lecture is a spinoff of the popular Worldviews Conferences on Media and Higher Education, which have been organized by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, OISE/University of Toronto, the Washington-based Inside Higher Ed and the London-based University World News. Academica Group has also joined us as a sponsor.