Marketing 'development' in the neoliberal university: A critical insight into UK Higher Education Institutions

UK higher education institutions (HEIs) are in competition with each other and HEIs across the globe for fee-paying students within a higher education model that promotes neoliberal values of individualism and competition in a global free market. This creates the conditions for the neoliberal university to actively market itself and its products in an international marketplace of potential students. We analyse three dominate frames employed by universities to do this: brand recognition, a discourse on the creation of global workers, and an emphasis on a degree as a product that is bought and sold. Current literature on marketing and HEIs focuses on how marketing works with the university as the unit of analysis, whereas the contribution of this paper is to advance critical insight into university marketing practices at the level of a specific discipline – development studies - with the intention to deepen our understanding of the effects of marketing practices on the discipline. That is, we ask in marketing development programmes what precisely is sold? Thus, we critically examine representations of ‘development’ within the development industry and explore the marketing of ‘development’ as a neoliberal product that it is conceptualised and sold by northern development actors to primarily northern audiences. We identify five key ideas of ‘development’ that are sold to northern publics: ‘development’ as a positive association for an individual, a commodity, an act of global citizenship, an exercise in northern nation branding and taking a broader perspective, ‘development’ as an overly simplistic, racist and misogynist trope. Bringing together these two distinct literatures, we present a conceptual framework to lead deeper enquiry into what is sold and how when marketing ‘development’ in the neoliberal university. Through this paper we aim to draw attention to the potential for contestation that can emerge between ethical and considerate representations of ‘development’ and the effective marketing of development studies programmes to fee-paying students

Superconductivity from purely repulsive interactions in the strong coupling approach : Application of the SU(2) slave-rotor theory to the Hubbard model

We propose a mechanism of superconductivity from purely repulsive interactions in the strong coupling regime, where the BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) mechanism such as the spin-fluctuation approach is difficult to apply. Based on the SU(2) slave-rotor representation of the Hubbard model, we find that the single energy scale for the amplitude formation of Cooper pairs and their phase coherence is separated into two energy scales, allowing the so called pseudogap state where such Cooper pairs are coherent locally but not globally, interpreted as realization of the density-phase uncertainty principle. This superconducting state shows the temperature-linear decreasing ratio of superfluid weight, resulting from strong phase fluctuations

Current-phase relation of the SNS junction in a superconducting loop

We study the current-phase relation of the superconductor/normal/superconductor (SNS) junction imbedded in a superconducting loop. Considering the current conservation and free energy minimum conditions, we obtain the persistent currents of the normal/superconductor (NS) loop. At finite temperature we can explain the experimentally observed highly non-sinusoidal currents which have maxima near the zero external flux.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, version to appear in Europhys. Let

Tuning Low Temperature Physical Properties of CeNiGe3_{3} by Magnetic Field

We have studied the thermal, magnetic, and electrical properties of the ternary intermetallic system CeNiGe$_{3}$ by means of specific heat, magnetization, and resistivity measurements. The specific heat data, together with the anisotropic magnetic susceptibility, was analyzed on the basis of the point charge model of crystalline electric field. The $J$\,=\,5/2 multiplet of the Ce$^{3+}$ is split by the crystalline electric field (CEF) into three Kramers doublets, where the second and third doublet are separated from the first (ground state) doublet by $\Delta_{1}$ $\sim$ 100\,K and $\Delta_{2}$ $\sim$ 170\,K, respectively. In zero field CeNiGe$_{3}$ exhibits an antiferromangeic order below $T_{N}$ = 5.0\,K. For \textbf{H}\,$\parallel$\,\textbf{a} two metamagnetic transitions are clearly evidenced between 2\,$\sim$\,4\,K from the magnetization isotherm and extended down to 0.4\,K from the magnetoresistance measurements. For \textbf{H}\,$\parallel$\,\textbf{a}, $T_{N}$ shifts to lower temperature as magnetic field increases, and ultimately disappears at $H_{c}$ $\sim$ 32.5\,kOe. For $H\,>\,H_{c}$, the electrical resistivity shows the quadratic temperature dependence ($\Delta\rho = A T^{2}$). For $H \gg H_{c}$, an unconventional $T^{n}$-dependence of $\Delta\rho$ with $n > 2$ emerges, the exponent $n$ becomes larger as magnetic field increases. Although the antiferromagnetic phase transition temperature in CeNiGe$_{3}$ can be continuously suppressed to zero, it provides an example of field tuning that does not match current simple models of Quantum criticality.Comment: accepted PR