The informational university : the uneven distribution of expertise and the racialization of labour

The political-economic technologies of measure are key to the division of labour in and across university settings. A quick listing of examples is sufficient to get an idea of what I am talking about here: systems of ranking institutions of higher education within a global frame serve to distinguish universities and the labour within them along national and geocultural lines of division; this in turn shapes the global mobility of students and thus the logic of economic accumulation, again dividing universities, labour and disciplines in terms of market competition and geocultural segmentation. The construction of special economic zones for higher education, which is most notable across the Asian, Middle Eastern and African regions, functions to divide national markets internally and externally along the lines of domestic and global spatialities that have implications for income generation derived from teaching and research activities in terms of the scope of student catchment and institutional sources for research funding.