Category: Culture

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Convention for Higher Education: IV

The final session began with reports back from the workshop session, followed by talks from John Holmwood, Tom Hickey and Martin McQuillan.

John Holmwood talked about the trajectory of higher education from the Robbins (`social democratic’) to the Browne (`neo-liberal’) report, describing the changes in policy. He rejected the claim that there is a need for cuts in education spending, mentioning the Aubyn report showing that UK higher education is the best value for money in the world, and the Wolf [?] report on aspiration to university.

Tom Hickey discussed the UCU response to the current situation and asked what connection there is between trade-unionism and the vision of a university. Like John Holmwood, he noted that the public strongly supports access to education. On the subject of organization, he pointed out that autonomy is dangerous in a system of privatized universities, and that UCU is the only organization distributed throughout the sector. He proposed that UCU put forward a vision for universities, defending self-managed scholarly activity.

Martin McQuillan took his topic from Tamson Pietsch’s idea of the enclosure of the epistemological commons. He gave an account of the forms of management of English universities such as companies limited by guarantee (which can be taken over). Other models are available, such as the University of California system, or private universities backed by private equity, as in continental Europe. He gave two examples of dangers for university education: `open access’ which is put forward as giving the public access to taxpayer-funded research, but will mainly benefit those (business) who previously paid for data; and MOOCs, which as well as being criticized for their pedagogy, but which are also run by private bodies which want to monetize lectures. The ideological drive is to justify private profit as a public good.

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Convention for Higher Education: III

The second day began with talks from Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor at Salford University, and Terry Brotherstone who had served on the von Prondzynski review of university governance in Scotland.

Using experience from Africa, Martin Hall talked about world cities and the role of universities in understanding the contemporary urban condition. Drawing an analogy with the Manchester cotton trade, he described a process of importing raw data from Africa (East Africa currently generates a disproportionate number of data, especially in medicine) which are then refined and returned as books which cost (literally) the salary of a Kenyan academic. Having come from South Africa four years ago, he described a University of Cape Town study on black students entering university and the disruptive effect it had on their relationship to their home village, and compared it to the similar disruption experienced by `widening participation’ students who are the first in their families to go to university.

Terry Brotherstone described the von Prondzynski review of governance which arose from a union campaign on policy and not simply in defence of terms and conditions. The report, he said, addressed a double democratic deficit, of democracy within universities and of public engagement with universities, so that `autonomy’ was interpreted as management doing what they like. He noted that the report needs a serious critique from the left.

In a workshop session later that day, Harriet Bradley from Bristol and UWE opened a discussion on (mis)management in universities, beginning by saying that it is possible to manage without being managerialist. The main weapon used in imposing this particular management style on universities was devolved budgets where academics were made to feel that another department was getting `our’ money. The introduction of private sector practices in public universities had led to a layer of aggressive middle management, and to universities being run by non-academics (businessmen as dispensers of wisdom, in Priya Gopal’s talk) or by academics who depend on non-academics, such as directors of finance.

The discussion here was especially good with managerialism being explained as a version of the Zimbardo experiment. One piece of advice put forward was that academics should learn to read accounts. With regard to governance, the question came up of who owns our universities, to whom management is accountable (in theory to parliament, meaning in practice, to nobody) and of whether we should look for a maximum wage for heads of universities. A telling statement was that it is common to hear the phrase `I can’t tell who made that decision.’

The question of student engagement was raised, where students are often seen as a threat, due to evaluations and the National Student Survey for example, and the danger of student participation coming close to the student satisfaction agenda. One question which arose was where students are equal and where not (i.e. where should students have, or have not, an equal say with staff?).

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Convention for Higher Education: II

This is the second part of a summary of talks at the Convention for Higher Education, following part I.

The second plenary session was opened by Gill Scott who spoke on twenty five years of the BA in Humanities at Brighton, a successful interdisciplinary (carefully distinguished from multidisciplinary) programme bringing students into critical engagement with the disciplines. The video on the programme’s site gives a better flavour than my account.

The panel for the rest of the session was Thomas Docherty from Warwick, Priya Gopal from Cambridge, and Will Hutton, journalist and now principal of Hertford College Oxford.

Thomas Docherty spoke on the relation of forces (circumstance and nature) in the university, saying that on current trends the university will not even be a marketplace, with all the hubbub and argument that would imply. Finally, he quoted Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex taking over the university.

Priya Gopal spoke on the neoliberal university, making the point that businessmen have replaced intellectuals as the providers of universal wisdom. (This is the stand-out talk of the convention for the combination of style and content.)

After declaring his interest as chair of the Independent Commission on Fees, Will Hutton spoke provocatively on university reforms, claiming that fees have been good for the autonomy of universities. He described George Osborne’s introduction to the government’s new aerospace policy document as something Tony Benn could have written forty years ago. He was heard respectfully.

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Convention for Higher Education: I

Having just come back from the Convention for Higher Education at Brighton, I am putting up summaries of discussions. These are broken up by session, to avoid having a very long account, and to make it easier to comment. Panel speakers are named, because they had already agreed to have their names used, but not contributors from the audience. Apparently, videos of the talks will be online in the near future.

In the first session, I estimated about sixty people were present. The speakers in the first session were Caroline Lucas MP, Luke Martell from University of Sussex, and Peter Scott columnist and one-time Vice-Chancellor at Kingston.

Caroline Lucas spoke mainly about the political context of the public university and especially the effects of fees on applications and access, and how the idea of studying for love of learning rather, and the words `public good’, have largely disappeared from discussions of higher education. She also mentioned the UCU proposal for an education tax on large corporations, which would allow the abolition of fees.

Luke Martell talked about resistance to privatization at Sussex and the balance between trade unions and students in the campaign. He described an initially negative response from the trade unions to the campaign, with academics complicit in marketization, and considered the limitations of information or propaganda activity as opposed to occupation and other forms of action. He was especially critical of the one day strike.

Peter Scott gave his view that we must take back the claim to be radical, which is currently made by the government. He said that supporters of the selective, academic (in the bad sense) system have not come to terms with mass higher education, and that while higher education needed reform, to deal with inequities that were in the system, it did not need this reform. Noting that the question is what is the trajectory of the reforms, he pointed out that Browne introduced a paradigm shift in the sector (this was developed further by John Holmwood on the second day). In answer to the question `what is to be done’, he said we need clarity about values, and that we should celebrate the mass system of higher education, end league tables, and weigh all forms of impact including social critique.

In the discussion at the end of the session, the issue of role of trade unions in universities was raised, and the problem of the depoliticization of unions and the lack of concern amongst academics about outsourcing. There was a comment about a general lack of radicalism amongst staff, even those organized into trade union branches. A participant from Brighton said that the Sussex occupation had shaken his faith in trade unions, and that he was supporting the `pop-up union’. Luke Martell shared this disillusion with trade unions but pointed out that they do have important resources and mobilizing capacity. It was noted from the floor that while class had been raised as an issue of access and widening participation, the white maleness of the panel (Caroline Lucas had had to leave early) did not inspire confidence in its ability to deal with the diversity of university students and staff. The von Prondzynski review of governance in Scottish universities was mentioned in the context of the role of academics in governance. A colleague visiting from the US mentioned the role of debt in higher education and how it destroys any idea of education. Finally, it was stated that unions are best placed to resist the changes in the sector, but cannot do so in a narrow way, and the question of how to politicize `support staff’ was raised.

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Mooconomics 101 exam

MOOCONOMICS

Venue: anywhere with wifi that lets you use Google

Date: whenever you feel like it

Instructions to candidates:  You may not use any external information, unless you can get away with it, nor should you use your free hand to shoo the cat, pick cornflakes from your navel, or scratch unhygienically. Answer any questions which appeal to you. Pictures of kittens will only be considered as a tiebreaker …

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Where is Professor Ludd when you need him?

It may be time to keep certain people away from computers, lest they corrupt the youth. The starry-eyed carny barkers for iTat have decided that no university is complete without a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course. A number of British universities have joined Futurelearn, a consortium led by the Open University which will “offer a best-in-class educational experience that will delight students”. The main reason for offering MOOCs seems to be that they are popular, especially in America. The main feature of a MOOC is lectures, mostly by star professors, recorded and made available online as part of a course taken by `students’ who are not present at the university and who have no contact with the person who is `delivering’ the course.

The argument put forward in favour of MOOCs is that they allow millions of people who would not otherwise have the chance to `access’ higher education. By integrating tests of knowledge and understanding into the course, it is possible to assess students and give them something of the university experience, for free.

Clearly cost is an issue here. As Moshe Vardi, editor in chief of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (so not an obvious opponent of the use of IT in education) puts it:

It is clear, therefore, that the enormous buzz about MOOCs is not due to the technology’s intrinsic educational value, but due to the seductive possibilities of lower costs. The oft-repeated phrase is “technology disruption.” This is the context for the dismissal (and later reinstatement) last summer of Theresa A. Sullivan, University of Virginia’s president, because she was not moving fast enough with online education. The bigger picture is of education as a large sector of the U.S. economy (over $1T) that has so far not been impacted much by information technology. From the point of view of Silicon Valley, “higher education is a particularly fat target right now.” MOOCs may be the battering ram of this attack.

Higher education is one of the few public goods yet to have been taken under private control and run for profit. MOOCs offer a cheap way of selling something which can be passed off as a university education, without the inconvenience of dealing with students or, probably, academics. Individual profit and loss accounts for teaching staff are already here. Once a university realizes that it only needs its star teachers to give one show, perhaps for a cut of the advertizing revenue, why should it bother hiring permanent staff?

The aim, in the pursuit of lower costs (i.e. profit), is to remove the essential elements of a university education and replace them with an inferior substitute for one of them, the ersatz lecture.

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