Uncreative destruction: Competition and positional games in higher education

This chapter explores critically the educational situation of today and the more destructive aspects of competition, where substance gives way to various moves faking quality. It highlights three themes in particular: educational fundamentalism, positional games and manipulation of the image. Higher education is increasingly a matter of various people – primarily students but also university employees – engaged in positional games. Higher education and the associated payoff are often regarded as indicating an increase in the human capital or ability of the person concerned. Educational attainment has changed at a faster rate than the job structure, as a result of increasing over-education in jobs with low educational requirements. A successful education system involves more than simply ensuring that an increasing number of students become somewhat cleverer. With educational fundamentalism quantitative concerns take the upper hand over qualitative concerns and quality suffers. What an academic degree stands for becomes highly uncertain