Welfare state and philanthropy in Higher Education: Theoretical insights under review

Abstract

The emergence of philanthropy as a regulatory argument will find its place in universities, following Market insights. The fundamental position of this study is that the shift towards philanthropy and charity, or even the substitution of charity for the social state, ultimately concerns the political definition of the social subject itself and the democratic composition of its action. In this context, philanthropy becomes a constitutive reason for action that is implied by the social biopolitics as a process of normalizing the pathology of social exclusion and not as a process of withdrawing it.

Under this assumption, placing the University at the core of action for survival and (lifelong?) growth, the detached philanthropic narrative, implies an answer to the social importance of the University and, by extension, to the politician in the public sphere.