'Docherty’s uncompromising account of how the University has been betrayed and diminished by the "totalitarianism of market fundamentalism" should be essential reading for anyone interested in the fate of higher education. He gives an impassioned and powerful defence of intellectual work and its significance. More, the book’s intellectual depth and range – covering literature, philosophy, theory, history, art and popular culture – clearly demonstrates both the scholarly virtues for which he argues and his active dissent from complicity.'
Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London

‘Docherty’s book is an elegant and powerful defence of the university as a space of free inquiry, a space that is increasingly circumscribed. Most worrying is academics’ choice of a comfortable life and the rewards of office over the rigours and unease of the academic vocation. It will not be possible to complete a personal development performance review form with a clear conscience after reading this book.’
John Holmwood, Professor of Sociology, University of Nottingham

Introduction
Part I: Betrayal
1 Private study
Part II: Crisis
2 Titles and entitlements: why ‘university’?
3 The exceptional and the ordinary
4 Another brick in the wall
5 Inflation, democracy, and populism
Part III: Survival
6 Origins, originality, and the privileges of nature
7 Preliminary hypotheses towards a manifesto
Index