Auto-ethnography from two gilded ages: Thorstein Veblen, Bonnie Urciuoli and the higher learning in the United States.

The impress of corporate management practices on universities is not new. Thorstein Veblen dissected it a century ago, paying special attention to ceremonial discourses and practices that universities used to burnish their image as they competed against one another. A century later, Bonnie Urciuoli has analysed the discourses that liberal arts institutions use to create an image of the product they are selling, the 'good student' who will make a good corporate employee. For both authors, these institutional imaginaries have real effects, diverting faculty and student attention from the work of critical social analysis to curry favour with elites upon whom colleges and universities depend for financial support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]