The University between Commodification and Simulation

Abstract In this article, I demonstrate the relevance of Baudrillard's work in an educational context. I build on Williams's (2016) analysis of how ‘commodification’ hollows out higher education using Di Leo's work (2024) on capitalism and the university. Contra Di Leo however, Baudrillard's ‘symbolic exchange’ is not an ‘unkept revolutionary and radical promise’, nor does it lie ‘beyond’ capitalism. Against the university's state of ‘rot’ along with its ‘slow death’, Baudrillard puts forward ‘imaginary solutions’ via his notions of symbolic exchange and seduction. I look specifically at how the ‘pataphysical’ approach might transform the university in a wider sense. I propose a contrast between the hyper-rational and pataphysical universities with the aim of combining them as part of ‘s-educ(a)tion’, as it is ‘seduction’ that resists the mania for positivist, technological transparency.