Abstract This essay proposes academic craftsmanship as an ideal-type for interpreting and defending universities’ research, teaching, and public work under managerial regimes. It argues that neoliberal managerialism misdescribes universities as firms and academics as output producers, reinforced through benchmarking, performance comparison, accelerated time regimes, and research assessment. Drawing on Kielhofner’s paradigm model, it characterises academic craft through scepticism, critical thinking, and imagination; an orientation to truth-seeking inquiry; and values of collegiality, academic freedom, and commitment to the public good, elaborated through a structured values table. The philosophical grounding draws on Aristotle’s technē and logos, Sennett’s tacit and expressive instruction, and Arendt’s natality, treating academic work as embodied, dialogical, and public across techno-scientific, experimental, interpretive, and professional fields. Managerialism is then shown as craft’s antithesis, replacing intrinsic standards with metrics and compliance. The essay proposes universocracy, a collegial self-governance model in which federated guild-like communities align resources and accountability with scholarly ends.
Whitty et al. (Wed,) studied this question.