18 June 2008
what is a university for?
[an unfinished piece that I'm not going to use for anything else - enticing, eh? There has been quite a lot of stuff recently about falling standards, grade inflation, crises in the Humanities, etc, most of which is true...]
Called into to speak to his tutor about non-attendance of classes on a Thursday morning, a student responded in the following way: 'but there's a disco on in the Union on Wednesday nights! How does the university expect me to attend classes if they put these events on?' Whilst we might chastise the student for failing to put his priorities in order, his confusion about the segregation of play and work in the contemporary university speaks of a wider set of concerns about the function and role of higher education, and the student's role within it. Just what is a university for these days?
Ask a student and you'll get a series of mixed answers: 'to get a degree', 'to have fun', and even occasionally 'to learn something new'. All of these things may be happening (despite the best efforts of university management) but it is increasingly clear to anyone who goes near one that the contemporary university is riddled with conflicting economic demands and suffering from a serious identity crisis. Old-fashioned Enlightenment ambitions for the university as a place to freely express secular and scientific ideas have become buried in a morass of bureaucracy and relentless audits. As another generation of nervous A level students prepare to take out a lengthy series of loans to make an 'investment' in their future, the time has come to ask: whatever ever happened to the aims and hopes of the modern university? Of learning for its own sake? Of allowing students time to explore subjects that may be not be of any use to them in future – and all the better for it? The time has come to propose some alternatives to the current university in the name of proper higher learning. And perhaps even to think without universities altogether.
In his recent work on education, Against Schooling: For an Education that Matters, Stanley Aronowitz charts the steady encroachment on both sides of the Atlantic of the corporate university, a place more concerned with balancing books, meeting the demands of future employers and hosting corporate conferences than expanding young minds. Aronowitz is a long-time activist, humanist, teacher and sociology professor who lives and works in New York, and the book is peppered with personal reminiscences about attempts to set up genuine centres of learning for adults, including New York's Free University in 1965 (Aronowitz is currently working on plans to set up a new higher education institution in New Orleans). Nevertheless, there is the sense that one is fighting a losing battle – that the complete corporate and bureaucratic takeover of the institution has already happened and that students and teachers are merely performing a poor imitation of pedagogy, on the one hand, and enthusiasm on the other.
It is mark of the dreary cynicism of our age that there now seems no way back from university fees, even though it wasn't so long ago that full grants were given to students from working-class backgrounds. Fees coupled with massive expansion leave students (and staff) increasingly unsure about their status. Is the student a client (as the university brochure assures them) or a subject to be (potentially) criticised? Already universities are afraid to fail students for fear of legal action against them. After all, hasn't the client paid for a product? And isn't the customer always right?
What universities need is less consultants and middle managers indulging in 'blue skies thinking', the outcome of which is always that universities become more like businesses, and more self-critique. The celebritisation of academia - the guest star-lecturers, the honorary degrees, the bid to get a by-line in a national daily - must stop. Knowledge is anonymous and universal or it is not knowledge at all.
Called into to speak to his tutor about non-attendance of classes on a Thursday morning, a student responded in the following way: 'but there's a disco on in the Union on Wednesday nights! How does the university expect me to attend classes if they put these events on?' Whilst we might chastise the student for failing to put his priorities in order, his confusion about the segregation of play and work in the contemporary university speaks of a wider set of concerns about the function and role of higher education, and the student's role within it. Just what is a university for these days?
Ask a student and you'll get a series of mixed answers: 'to get a degree', 'to have fun', and even occasionally 'to learn something new'. All of these things may be happening (despite the best efforts of university management) but it is increasingly clear to anyone who goes near one that the contemporary university is riddled with conflicting economic demands and suffering from a serious identity crisis. Old-fashioned Enlightenment ambitions for the university as a place to freely express secular and scientific ideas have become buried in a morass of bureaucracy and relentless audits. As another generation of nervous A level students prepare to take out a lengthy series of loans to make an 'investment' in their future, the time has come to ask: whatever ever happened to the aims and hopes of the modern university? Of learning for its own sake? Of allowing students time to explore subjects that may be not be of any use to them in future – and all the better for it? The time has come to propose some alternatives to the current university in the name of proper higher learning. And perhaps even to think without universities altogether.
In his recent work on education, Against Schooling: For an Education that Matters, Stanley Aronowitz charts the steady encroachment on both sides of the Atlantic of the corporate university, a place more concerned with balancing books, meeting the demands of future employers and hosting corporate conferences than expanding young minds. Aronowitz is a long-time activist, humanist, teacher and sociology professor who lives and works in New York, and the book is peppered with personal reminiscences about attempts to set up genuine centres of learning for adults, including New York's Free University in 1965 (Aronowitz is currently working on plans to set up a new higher education institution in New Orleans). Nevertheless, there is the sense that one is fighting a losing battle – that the complete corporate and bureaucratic takeover of the institution has already happened and that students and teachers are merely performing a poor imitation of pedagogy, on the one hand, and enthusiasm on the other.
It is mark of the dreary cynicism of our age that there now seems no way back from university fees, even though it wasn't so long ago that full grants were given to students from working-class backgrounds. Fees coupled with massive expansion leave students (and staff) increasingly unsure about their status. Is the student a client (as the university brochure assures them) or a subject to be (potentially) criticised? Already universities are afraid to fail students for fear of legal action against them. After all, hasn't the client paid for a product? And isn't the customer always right?
What universities need is less consultants and middle managers indulging in 'blue skies thinking', the outcome of which is always that universities become more like businesses, and more self-critique. The celebritisation of academia - the guest star-lecturers, the honorary degrees, the bid to get a by-line in a national daily - must stop. Knowledge is anonymous and universal or it is not knowledge at all.
