Saturday 26 December 2015

“Ugh! Commercial Aspects? How Dreadful!”

Vested interests are perturbed….
The higher education green paper is a radical document, explicitly designed to change universities. But beyond the debates about metrics, funding structures and social mobility is a far more fundamental reframing – of the very concept of higher education.
Oh oh! Someone’s sensing there may be trouble ahead, methinks…
The authors of the green paper do not view students as citizens in an educational relationship but as customers taking part in a market transaction.
*gasps* Oh noes! Filthy lucre! Tainting our purity!
In his classic tome In Defence of Politics, first published in 1962, Bernard Crick argues that some sectors of public life are simply too important to be handed over to the vagaries and vulgarities of the market.
Yes, god forbid that vulgar monetary concerns be allowed to penetrate the hallowed halls of academe…
The role of the state, he says, is to counterbalance the market and protect certain sectors because of their social importance and benefit to the public.
Universities did indeed once have social importance. But now? I’m not entirely sure…
We are moving from a public to a private notion of universities, in which higher education is just another market. This, above all else, should be of primary concern to the generations of yesterday, today and tomorrow, because it threatens the integrity of British cultural and civilisational development.
Really? How?
In downplaying the public benefits of higher education, we run the risk of disregarding values such as dialogue, creativity and democracy
I didn’t think today’s students, being such special snowflakes, valued those things, when it comes to opinions they don’t share…
To truly fulfil our potential we need to grasp the broader social value of universities and instil in our students the desire to acquire what US author David Brooks calls “eulogy virtues” not merely “resume virtues”, that is to say: “resume virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace […] eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral – whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?”
‘Deep love’..? And that’s on which curriculum..?!?

3 comments:

ivan said...

And I thought that the function of universities was to teach and impart knowledge to the brightest and best qualified to enable them to think for themselves and keep industry - and through that civilisation - running and not to create ignorant political airheads without a single independent thought between them.

Lynne at Counting Cats said...

‘Deep love’..? And that’s on which curriculum..?!?

A similar one to the Ungrateful and Very Racist Rhodes Scholar Statue Removal curriculum.

JuliaM said...

"And I thought that the function of universities was to teach and impart knowledge to the brightest and best qualified..."

That was then. This is now. I think they call it 'progress'...

"A similar one to the Ungrateful and Very Racist Rhodes Scholar Statue Removal curriculum."

I wish I could say that 2016 looks like shaping up to be The Year Everything Changed.

But if so, I fear it won't be for the better..