August 17, 2005
something lacking
I'm still having terrible problems with dialup. Hopefully we can go onto broadband today. The regulatory regime does need to be changed as the Manuka exchange only supports ADSL at speeds up to 1.5Mb/s. We are in the heart of the capital city and the exchange does not currently support ADSL2+.
I couldn't resist this Pryor cartoon.
Pryor accurately represents my feelings on the issue. The old student Liberal warriors do go on about the principle that students should not be required to join a university "union" or guild; and they tend to say the market should decide about whether universities should be allowed to charge students a mandatory levy for sporting, health, and other facilities. They see the Nelson legislation as merely stopping unions forcing students to pay their own money for services that they don't want or need. User pays should be the new principle.
Personally I was grateful that Flinders University had good free medical services that I could access when I needed them.
Ive always thought that this totemic issue is more about fighting old battles and settling yesterday's scores with the aspiring Labor politicians on the university battlefield.
Since many vibrant clubs on campus are already self-funding would not a better approach be to figure out ways the universities can help give a political education? What is always missing in these discussions is citizenship. But then our political parties are not known for their commitment to democracy are they?
It has always suprised me that we do not have a political cartoon website that is archived by the National Library. Good work is being produced by our cartoonists. The first page I turn to in the Australian Financial Review is the back one to savour the daily Rowe cartoon.
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June 27, 2005
dumbing down higher education?
The comment below by Professor Allan Luke, the former Queensland University dean and now based at Singapore's National Institute of Education, accord with my own experience of working in Australia's universities as an academic in the 1990s.
My judgement is that with the decrease in federal funding universities stay afloat financially from the cash generated by the international students paying big dollars for their up front, full fee paying courses. It is called export-led growth.
Luke says that Australian universities are facing a tough future:
They've been cut and they've been cut and they've been cut. And as they've been cut they've been told to go get the money in the creation of the multi-billion-dollar Asian student export business----to go get the money from elsewhere... what that's done is, that in instances, some of the bottom-end players have sacrificed quality. That has had somewhat of a detrimental effect to the reputation of Australian education more generally.
It's ironic isn't it. As the universities are pushed by the liberal state into the business world to hunt for the cash they need to survive, some students are now paying more for less.
That kind of deal is the market for you. The market works against or disadvantages the newer gum tree public universities that have little prestige. These cannot generate much income by way of student fees so they are forced by the logic of being businesses in the education market to keep on cutting costs and reducing services. And, as they may well be in the process of losing access to research funding in a commercially-driven educational world, they will become cut down teaching institutions offering budget services.
The future of the gum trees?
Stagger from financial crisis to financial crisis. To be taken over? Or to disappear? Become degree factories that generate a cash flow for the university and turn a blind eye to falling standards?
What does that scenario say about Australia as the clever country? The ever alert Evans Jones has an answer.
Update: 28th June
I've read the transcript of the ABC 4 Corners The Degree Factorythis afternoon at work. It argues that univeristies are dependent upon vocationally-oriented courses funded by foreign student enrollments, and that the managerial administrators are turning their backs on an increasingly decrepit Australian system. Dr. Simon Cooper expressed it thus:
The fear is that, if Gippsland becomes a teaching only institution, the teaching won't be teaching as it relates to some idea of education; it'll be a factory model of teaching. You'll get low-paid academics who simply are churning out material that students will pay for and consume, in a sense.
I would argue that this is already happening.
Andrew Norton over at Catallaxy has a critical perspective on the social democratic conception of public universities expressed by Tickey Fullerton on the ABC 4 Corners The Degree Factory. Andrew says that:
Realistically, since the government is not going to fund the whole system at much higher rates or create elite institutions, the only way to avoid this (partially, at least) is to abolish central control of student places and fees.
That free market approach or pathway is understandable from David Kemp's advisor, when Kemp was education minister in the first Howard ministry. A university education should be commodified and consumers should pay above the full cost of delivery the course. As it is a business let us do way with centralized control of the conservatives.
One point that I disagree with Andrew on is around the mode of governance of the Howard Government. Their neo-liberal mode of governance uses the market as an instrument to ensure, and support, elite institutions (the G5-or G8) and to re-work the old institutional divide to create elite and bottom end universities. You will pay a lot more to be educated by the former. That is the whole idea: you get what you pay for.
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March 18, 2005
the men from the government
The conservative account of student unionism conflates it with political activism, unbridled excesses and nefarious student goings-on.
The stereotypes employed are the partisan student activist more interested in the next election than the wellbeing of fellow students; and the battler studying part-time who has to pay for the services they do not use.
Well, there are other sterotypes:
It is difficult to accept the 'trust me I'm from the government' on this issue. They are about confrontation not compromise.
Seriously though. The men from the government cross their hearts and say they are market liberals who are in favour of negative (not positive) liberty. Yet they are imposing their solutions upon the universities, rather than letting the educational market sort out what student services are to be provided. They want it both ways.
See why we should not trust the men from the government? They are obsessed centralizers who have seduced by Leviathan.
Of course the men from the government will touch their hearts and say that their heavy hand and tough line was forced on them by their backbench, which is deeply opposed to a softly, softly compromise approach. We wuz was saddled with it they will say. What else can we do?
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March 11, 2005
automatic markets
I see that we have a new line coming from Canberra about the skills shortages in the economy. The shortages are now a product of a strong economy and presumably low employment. So says the PM.
It is a temporary glitch in the automatic workings of the economic system. Things will be back to equilibrium as soon as the capacity constraints are cleared:
The new 'growth created the skill shortages' line absolves the federal government from any responsibility about Australia running out of skilled workers due to its failure to invest in education and training during the 1990s.
The new line implies a notion of automaticity within market processes. Things will come right at some future stage, because markets are all about equilibrium, and disequilibria is only a temporary blip.
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March 10, 2005
the skills crisis
Everyone is now discussing the skills crisis, capacity constraints, the blockages to economic growth caused by the lack of a skilled workforce and the need to boost productivity. There is some very dubious reasoning on this issue.
Dyson
John Spierings has a good article in The Age today about the causes of the skills crisis. He says:
Since at least 1999, Australian governments, state and Commonwealth, have been aware of widespread shortages in key areas. Between 1993 and 2002 there was an overall 16 per cent decline in the training rate in the metals, building, construction, vehicle and electrical areas compared with the previous decade. This means that our national training effort has not been sufficient to replace and maintain the level of skilled workers in these vital sectors of the national economy.
This indicates that the cause of the current skills crisis is not the lack of ongoing micro-economic reform, as claimed by some government ministers. The cause is the cuts in both school spending during the early 1990s by both the Commonwealth and state governments, and in post school education in the latter 1990s by the Commonwealth.
The move by the cost cutters to reduce investment in vocational and university education was a bad one.
Spierings says that:
The lesson from successful OECD countries is to lift our commitment to all aspects of education and training - secondary, vocational and tertiary education - rather than playing one pathway off against another.
He adds that at a time when we have a shortage of skilled workers more than 78,000 school leavers were not in full-time learning or work six months after leaving school, of whom 40,000 had not completed year 12.
The link is obvious: educate our unskilled school leavers to become skilled workers. Does the Government know how to do this? I reckon a question mark can be kept there, given its track record in the New Apprenticeship Scheme that subsidises employers in areas where there are no skill shortages.
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January 28, 2004
the way the cookie crumbles
Universities are once again in the news with the latest commonwealth distribution of just under 25,000 fully funded university places by 2008.
The distribution has caused a stir in some states. Victoria and Queensland are crying foul. Some South Australians are arguing that they have been short changed by the Commonwealth. They are saying that South Australia has taken a hit for the sake of the rest of the nation. SA is being thrown in the educational trash bin. That parochalism is what you hear on talk back radio.
The distribution of 25,000 fully funded university places across the nation is designed to replace the partially funded places, or the over enrolments by the universities. These are being phrased out. Despite all the smoke and mirrors from those crying foul, it would appear that South Australia gains more than in fully funded places than it loses in the over enrolment cutback.
One real bone of contention is that South Australia will receive only 5.9% of the 25,000 fully funded university places. This is one of the lowest pieces of the cake. This is primarily due to its lower economic and population growth. The economic reality is that Western Australia and Queensland are growing faster than South Australia. So these states get proportionally more fully funded places than South Australia.
It's tough break. There is increasing demand for entry into SA universities and a need for new places. So SA slips into victim mode as the dream of Adelaide as an education city fades.
Another bone of contention is that it is becoming ever more difficult for school leavers to get into the prestige university courses. These courses are moving out of reach of all but the most exceptional students from a small group of elite schools. The 25, 000 fully funded places more or less replace the over enrolments and give a bit extra. That extra is not enough to cover the growing gap between demand and supply. The only option is pay full fees for the course.
Now education is important for South Australia. In the long term South Australia needs to address its decline in traditional manufacturing by nurturing a knowledge-based and globally competitive regional economy. It cannot continue to rely on wheat, wine, tourism, horticulture and aged care facilities. Nor can it afford its best and brightest to go to live and work interstate, as this would leave the state relatively impoverished and disadvantaged in relation to the other states.
Education is one circuit breaker of the vicious cycle of low growth, children moving to other states and South Australia going backwards relative to the other states.
But you hear very little from the Rann Government on fostering a university education. Few ideas come out of Nth Terrace these days now that Labor's old knowledge nation idea has been quietly dropped. All we seem to hear from the Rann Government is the need to raise school retention rates and all the nasty things the Libs are doing to make SA suffer. You hear very little about how higher education is linked to the new economy.
Update
Simon Marginson says that:
"....the intense scarcity of publicly funded places is a sign of things to come. Universities are heading in a very definite direction and it is not taxpayer-funded access - though exactly what the final outcome will be, and how it will affect students and families, depends on the outcome of the federal election expected this year....One suspects the Government's main motive in abolishing its over-enrolment device was to increase the scarcity of public places, and switch the arena of expansion from marginally funded public places to the new fee-paying market.
There is another issue here. One noted before on public opinion--the ndexation of public funding thathe Independentr Senators failed to secure. On this issue Marginson says:
"....Nelson's failure to index public funding is highly strategic. With the value of government funding continually being eroded, all universities are driven hard into the marketplace.
But the danger here is that not only will natural fee earners like Sydney and NSW charge higher prices that further close off access but universities with lesser status will cut costs and prices and battle it out in the bargain basement. This "race to the bottom" threatens to devalue the quality of Australian degrees, underlining just how crucial is grant indexation."
What has been quietly launched is the new full-fee-paying higher education market underpinned by low-cost government loans. That is what the Howard Government wanted all along. Nelson found the way to deliver it.
Welcome to the new world of university education in Australia.
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December 04, 2003
Watching the Senate
I'm now watching the Senate debate on Nelson's Higher Education Bill. I'm taken back by what I see. Shocked even, at the minimal kind of legislative review taking place. The background is one in which the core public funding of universities has been decreasing with the costs of education increasingly being shifted onto the students.
The Government's legislation and policies are currently being defended by the Independent Senator's; defended by (Senator Harris) and not by the Government Senator---Senator Vanstone---who is currently doing point duty.
How come? Why has the task fallen to them? Why have the Independents allowed themselves to be boxed into the corner where they will take the flak for this legislation? Why are they allowing the Government to get away with rejecting the ALP or Democrat amendments without providing any public reasons for doing so?
Democrat amendments distinquishing between universities and other commerical educational providers and then linking different regulations and funding to these different providers are automatically knocked out. They are not even considered. It's a charade that is being played out as the amendments of the ALP, Greens and Democrats will be rejected no matter how worthy they are in defending the autonomy of the liberal university (teaching, research and community responsibility) This is not about passing legislation for the good of the country or on the merit of the argument in the Senate. It is just about passing the government legislation whilst saying they are acting on the advice of the Vice-Chancellors. The Vice-Chancellor have made a shoddy deal.
To the Senate debate. The defences being made about the definitions of the basic object of the Act--what is a university---are poor. The traditional liberal principles that embody the ethos of university institutions (free thinking, quality, excellence, research, enlightened inquiry) are being ignored in favour of money and fee paying. The failure to say in the Act what public universities do, and what their obligations are as independent and autonomous institutions, means that the institutions of higher education have become money making institutions.
Now we shift to the ALP amendments that spell out what the financial viability of a university is. These are rejected without debate. No defence is made for the reasons why the Independent Senators or the Government reject the amendments that are being made by the Australian Greens, ALP and Australian Democrats. There is no public reason here at all. It is just machinery.
What do we glean from this. A backroom deal? It appears that it is vote for all government amendments and reject all the opposition ones. Since the Government is not even bothering to argue its case there is no reasoned argument. The deal has nothing to do with improving the legislation. Nothing by way of argument is being placed on the public record. It is just political machinery without even bothering to keep up the charade of debate and review.
Two of the Independent Senators Murphy and Harradine are testy. They gesture to the written advice they have from the Government about particular amendments, and they criticise the refusal of the government to provide reasons for rejecting the Opposition amendments.
However, Senator Vanstone can only huff and puff. She has little knowledge of the legislation and cannot, or will not, provide a defence.
What is even worse is that the Government does not seem to care that it is just the political machinery of a deal on show. It is actually indifferent to the process of public reason in our political institutions.
Update
7pm. I'm due to go out to dinner at a local Indian restaurant. The Industrial Relations amendments have been put on one side to allow for a deal to be struck between Nelson and Murphy. It's more of the same: all government amendments pass; all the ALP, Green and Democrat amendments fail. It's depressing.
11pm. After dinner. The "debate" is still going. Carr, Nettle and Stott Despoja are plugging away. The deal between Nelson and Murphy has been struck. The bill will be passed tonight.
I'm stunned. I thought that the 4 Independent Senators would have postponed the legislation until next year? Why the rush? The universities had enough money for next year. Postponement would have allowed let cooler heads to prevail.
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Senate deal making
The news reports this morning say that Nelson's big shake-up of higher education will pass into legislation today. The Federal Government has pretty much got what it wanted, even though it had to make some concessions to get the legislation through. We have a bit of pruning here and there with the heart of the deregulatory reforms remaining in place.
The roadblock is Senator Shane Murphy. He is the only one standing firm in his opposition. He opposes the Howard Government's demands that universities offer staff individual Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA). The link between the $404 million as the promised new funding and the AWA agreement have to be broken.
Lets hope Senator Murphy does stand firm. There is little in this package for those public universities who cannot raise the price of their courses to increase their cash flow because their customer base cannot afford the cost. These universities need the indexation of commonwealth funding to enable them to grow in the marketplace.
That capacity has been not been secured in the deal making. There is to be a review of funding indexation in the future (2007) but the government is only committed to implementing its response to the review; it is not locked into accepting any recommendation arising from the review.
It is definitely a two tiered university system that has been created; and one increasingly ruled by the dynamics of the market. In such a market the public universities will suffer and the private ones will prosper. On this issue the Howard Government has got its way. Further reforms will continue the deregulation, provide more incentives to commercialized education, and starve public universities. Effective growth in education will come from the private funding of courses.
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December 03, 2003
Deals on higher education
The Higher Education Support Bill 2003---the Nelson Reforms --- is now before the Senate. At the moment the legislation or the higher education reform package---Our Universities: Backing Australia’s Future--- is currently being debated within the committee stage. It is quite different from the earlier bill due to the negotiations between Brendon Nelson and the 4 Independent Senators.
Nelson has made concessions in an attempt to win Senate support before Xmas. He needed to because this bill is not that much of an improvement on the 1999 Kemp reforms, apart from additional funds for teaching and programs in education and nursing and a regional loading.
In the early debate the ALP (Senator Carr,) Australian Democrats (Senator Stott Despoja) and the Australian Greens (Senator Nettle) were concerned to defend public university education and to condemn the sweatheart deals. Though deal making was acknowledged as a legitimate activity the deal was seen as a bad deal, even though the Vice-Chancellors are signed off on the Nelson reforms.
The early amendments of the Bill that were debated deal the nature of the university-(there are provisions for the public funding for small private educational providers) and university autonomy (there are limitations on the academic freedom to teach any subject matter). These amendments passed, 35 to 33.
My immediate reaction was that the liberal university that was recognized as providing a criticism of society has gone. It has been replaced by educational providers who need not be universities. So we now have educational businesses providing vocational education on the cheap. What was once education is now a creditionalling for the marketplace. The aim of profit overrides the aim of education, whilst commercial success replaces academic integrity.
Will the 4 Independent Senators stand firm for those of our public universities (the gumtree ones) that cannot raise course fees and will continue to rely on public funding for their income? Will they support indexation of the Commonwealth funding of universities?
Or will they allow a two tiered university system to develop with the public tier being starved of funds?
Judging from this press release the answer is no: the Independents are not planning to hang tough and support the indexation of the Commonwealth funding of universities. It does not appear to be an issue of contention.
These reforms will favour the status seeking sandstones and wil allow them to go from market strength to market strength. University prestige is now up for sale. This is a world where the profit-seeking university invests and moves beyond tacitly endorses commercial firms and conduct to creating firms that sell intellectual property.
I caught a little bit of the debate just before the Senate closed at 6pm. Senator Harris was talking. It was a most unsual speech. I don't remember the content on the specific amendment. I recall its style: it was as if it had been written by someone in the Minister's office! Surely not?
It all looks as if a deal had been done. Sign sealed and delivered. The legislation will be passed tomorrow. Are there any hicupps? Stumbling blocks? Obstacles?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 07, 2003
what does it say
This is The Australian yesterday.
Brendon Nelson sits alone on the parliamentary benches. What does that signify? Deserted by his hard-line colleagues? Is the consensus that he so carefully built for his educational reforms beginning to erode. Is he confronted by setbacks?
The Senate Inquiry into higher education is due to to be tabled today. It will be immediately rejected by the Howard Government on political grounds. The Senate is not looking as if it will support the Nelson reforms let alone pass them by Xmas.
Michael Gallagher, the former departmental head of education, criticised the reforms because the policy framework had no vision of the future shape of the industry; was very intrusive; lacked indexation for operating grants; lacked access for students; would lead to cartel pricing and so undermine competition; and neglected the vocational and training sector.
The Vice-Chancellors continue to stand firm in their oppposition with the belated release of the draft guidelines to the Higher Education Support Bill 2003. As does the National Tertiary Education Union. There is still the proposal to introduce Australian Workplace Agreements into enterprise agreements; the tying of workplace reforms to extra funding; reducing the size of governing councils and excluding politicians from membership.
There is very little in these government reforms about other kinds of educational governance. The need to change the hierarchical nature of the univerisites, with their top-down top-heavy administration and small groups of academics arranged in schools and departments with little or no power or influence, is not addressed.
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November 04, 2003
a swamp that needs to be drained
An editorial in last Thursday's Australian Financial Review (subscription required, 30 10 03, p.78) gives an insight into how the market views the universities. On one level there is no suprise. It it is all about commerce and getting a return on monies spent on research.
From the perspective of economic reason the whole research system needs to be simplified. The maze of bureaucratic relationships in the research infrastructure creates inefficiences. It's a swamp that needs to be drained to ensure that the quality of the national research effort delivers a good commercial return on the public money spent on it.
More needs to be done because the direct return from the commercialisation of ARC-funded projects is just 3 per cent. Just 3% profit!
No wonder venture capital is not coming to the party. There is no incentive for dynamic entrepreneurs to provide the funds needed to turn successful research into commercial product.
It is clear what the Minister must do for the financial capital. Ministers Nelson and Gauran have to provide the right environment for more venture capital sucess.
And there is the suprise. Re-read the above. Is not the key to the whole proposed set of educational reforms---draining the swamp--to look after venture capital!The infererence role of government is to provide opportunites for entrepreneurs to make good bucks. That is the whole point of economic and cultural reform for neo-liberals.
The best way to do that is create a new two tiered university system between entrepreneurial, research-orientated universities and teaching institutions.
And what would the former look like? A story in last Monday's Australian Financial Review (subscription required, 3 13 03, p. 1) suggests that Monash is on the right track. They're breeding the new academics--home-grown millionare academics. One (a Dr. Frank Ng) who has shares in a start-up company based the successful commercialisation of his ARC funded research into biotech. (It's an obesity-control company called Metabolic Pharmaceuticals Ltd).
Attaboy Frank. The country needs more like you. There is $4 billion worth of research in the pipeline. It needs $400 billion to bring it to the market.
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October 16, 2003
Turmoil in academia
Academics across Australia go on strike today. It is a historic occassion.
Andrew Norton over at Catallaxy Files says the NTEU's strike is pointless, as it will inconvenience students and achieve nothing. Ken Parish over at Troppo Armadillo says that the NTEU strike is grossly premature. In contrast, John Quiggin, though ambivalent, will go on strike. He says that what is:
"...really objectionable point is the government's attempt to push its industrial relations agenda on to the universities while maintaining the stance that the universities are the employers and that employees must bargain with them if they want wage increases or better conditions."
Jean Genie over at Creativity Machine was on strike without the ambivalence.
The Minister disapproves. He talks about the industrial reforms being designed to increase workplace flexibility and ensuring that universities were not offering excessive benefits.
Excessive benefits? The Minister means paring back entitlements, such as redundancy pay and maternity leave. The university staff have had it to good for too long. The fat has to be trimmed.
The staff are also protesting at the prescriptive interference in the affairs of universities (in the content of courses and research) by the Minister; the attempt by the federal Government to impose its industrial relations policies---individual contracts---on the universities; and the Government's desire to abolish limitations on fixed-term or casual appointments. There is a deep antagonism to this kind of state interference from people who are hurting.
As Graham McCulloch says:
"The real workplace issues confronting universities are the decline in teaching and research infrastructure, rising staff workloads and loss of professional autonomy. Intellectual life in universities is drowning in a sea of quality assurance processes, performance indicators, business plans and excessive managerialism. These problems are to be compounded by a new and punitive layer of government workplace regulation."
These issues primarily arise from the public universities being run down by the Federal Government during the 1990s. The strike is a sympton of a crisis in higher education institutions, which are being transformed by the increasing commercialisation of tertiary education.
The corporatized universities want to be free of the heavy hand of government control so they can extract competitive advantage over their rivals. The more free market educational corporations understand how global imperatives drive domestic competition.
However, the Federal Government rejects any talk of crisis in higher education. The standard line, "There is no crisis", is its way to manage public opinion. Things are under control and on the right track.
Now Brendan Nelson, the Minister of Education, or the person in charge of Australia's $4.2 billion education export industry as the Australian Financial Review, puts it, is warning that the universities are tettering on the edge and mediocrity is weakening Australian higher education. They are in danger of sinking into mediocrity with 5-7 yrears.
More symptons of a crisis? Surely not?
The Australian Financial Review thinks there is a crisis. Whether Australia is to compete with the best globally, or steadily slipping behind is crucial. And all those stories of overcrowding, inadequate teaching, diminishing quality and deserting graduate students indicate that Australia is slipping behind. The Australian Financial Review can see that such stories damage Australia's international reputation and the increasingly valuable export sales of education services to international students. They understand how domestic issues are driven by globalised markets.
And the students are rebelling at the proposed increase in course fees by 30%, and refusing to take up full fee-paying places. Middle class parents are apprehensive at the increasing debt levels incurred by user pays. And the ALP, Democrats and Greens in the Senate are opposed to the refoms. They want a large increase in public funding to avert a disaster. There appears be little hope of getting the Howard Government's reform package through the Senate by Christmas.
Remember, there is no crisis.
Not even when Minister Nelson says the universities won't survive unless the 4 independent Senators pass his reform package.
Remarks like that suggest the universities have deep wounds from a thousand cuts. They are close to being on life support.
Remember there is no crisis. There is only crisis management.
John Howard will have to cut a deal. His reputation is that he knows how to cut a deal when he has to. Does he reckon he has to?
See how the PM controls things.
Update
This fragment calls those academics who did not strike yesterday as scabs who "have a duty to sacrifice forever any wage gains attained for them by the union."
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October 04, 2003
Higher education: another perspective
I found these remarks by Observa in the comment box to this post on education. They are too good to be left there. So I'm bringing them forward as a post by Observa.
This is what Observa says:
"By the early 70s with the advent of 'free' university entry the Left had seemingly broken the stranglehold, the sons and daughters of the privileged had previously enjoyed in higher education. To what extent this was the true case, I have my doubts. It may well have been the case, that the inexorable demographic blip of post-war baby boomers, was the real impetus for the plethora of new CAEs and Universities. Simply an idea whose demographic time had come.
This same demographic was to produce the rapid urban sprawl to the north and south of my city Adelaide, as they wed and formed new households. By the time a State govt. was prepared to address the problem with the new city of Monarto, the demographic problem had passed and Monarto became a costly zoo and woodland.
What of the expanded tertiary education sector? Well it suffered some inevitable amalgamations, but with a vocal supplier lobby group, jealously guarding its expanded role, it fared much better. These new polo-necked defenders of the faith, fought tooth and nail any attack on their empire. They happily enlisted the new converts entering their portals, to the idea that tertiary education was the answer to all societies ills, or at the very least, a bulwark against the chill winds of globalisation. Mind you it didn't mind opening its doors to globalisation, with international students, when it began to grow a bit short of local demographics. Never let it be said that the polo-necked left and their converts, were not against a bit of good old market pragmatism, when their tenure was on the line.
It could also create a few new courses in basket-weaving to drum up more business, or lower the academic bar if the numbers were getting a bit thin. If the market woke up to the increased number of lower grade graduates, you could always satisfy them with the increasingly necessary Honours or Phd grads. It would even acquiesce quietly with its favourite Labor govt.on a usually, morally repugnant HECS scheme, if financing the punters through the doors, was getting to be a bit of a problem. Overall, a very flexible and pragmatic sniffer of the winds of change.
When you create empires, you must ensure every sandstone foundation is in place. The Secondary schools are your feedstock, unless of course they consist of Technical schools which are of no use to you. You will inculcate a whole generation of educationalists that 'education is for life' and to stream some children away from academia and into physical skills training is heresy. You will happily condemn a generation of working-class kids to the unemployment scrap-heap for a rounded education and the greater good of society.
When Goodwood Tech, the last technical high school in Adelaide closed its doors some 12 years ago, I was told by the staff that every final year student had a job to go to. I personally apprenticed one such work experience lad, who was previously failing at Westminster private school and now topped his class at Goodwood. Can you imagine the crass troglodytes who ran that school? They used to get the students to clock on and off school each day and mark them down for absenteeism or lateness.
You could see the same occurring in the nursing profession as in-hospital trainig was commandeered by one of Adelaide's burgeoning new universities, Flinders. A new breed of tertiary educated nurses was put through the halls of academia, many of them to give up their profession soon after graduation, because it all got a bit mucky and demanding in the wards. The result, like the demise of the Technical schools, a serious shortage of nurses, plumbers, electricians, fitters and mechanics and the list goes on.
Where are we now? Well we have a large glut of academic graduates in many fields and a serious shortage of skilled technicians. The universities are on borrowed time with only the demographic echo effect of the baby-boomers to sustain their large claim on the community's scarce resources. Their time in the sun is up and is it any wonder the barbarians are at the portals with their talk of accountability, vouchers and life grants for consumers. Still, it is an articulate empire, even if it has fiddled too long. It remains to be seen, if an educated community will still dance to its tune, when there are not enough plumbers or nurses to attend to its drips."
This is a different perspective on the higher education to my own which adopts a writing from within the liberal university.
In response to Observa's comments to would add that the concern of many participants at the Senate Inquiry was that SA was in a very vulnerable position. A slow growing economy meant a declining university sector and a lack of income to pay for the increased fees. SA's universities were vulnerable because the SA economy was equivalent to a depressed region.
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October 02, 2003
a politically charged atmosphere
I attended the hearings of the Senate inquiry into the funding and regulatory legislation of higher education yesterday afternoon. I heard submissions from the University of South Australia, the student unions of the three universities in Adelaide, the Flinders University of South Australia and part of the submission from the South Australian Government.
That paragraph captures the surface tedium of a Senate inquiry. It presents itself as being pretty low key and just routine administration. Most people give inquiries such as these a miss. Yet it was a very politically charged atmosphere in that conference room in Adelaide University. You could feel the heavy action political power----something that is quite alien to a university, for all its academic politics. The politically-charged atmosphere signified a common understanding: that the people present understood the Senate to be where the political action is. They tacitly knew that the battle lines had been drawn up and the combat was in progress. All those present in the room---including the SA Government---grasped that they were engaged in combat.
Outside the room of federal democracy in action, the media continued to circulate the messages from the Howard Government about a hostile Senate. They produced their commentary on various proposals by the Howard Government to clip the wings of an obstructionist Senate in the name of more efficient governance. The Howard Government sees itself as the CEO of Australia UnLimited trying to get things under control.
Now it was not the Vice-Chancellor's supposed opposition to the shift towards market governance, and away from education as a public good, that made the Senate hearings so politically charged. That shift was accepted on pragmatic grounds. The politically charged atmosphere was partly due to the conflict between Senators Carr and Tierney and the hostility between Tierney and the Student Unions. But above all it was because the vice-chancellors had to be very careful in what they were saying in response to the senator's questions. Being too critical of the Howard Government's tabled legislation would invite payback. Few in the room had any doubts about the payback. So the Vice-Chancellors had to quietly slice up the legislation whilst appearing to do otherwise. Everybody understood what was what and some performed the task better than others.
What came through the question and answer sessions was that Nelson's reform package---entitled Our Universities: Backing Australia's Future--- would increase the market mechanism in higher education, was a short-term injection of funds and would increase the financial burden on students. It would also cause a deepening of the institutional divide, based on the universities' ability to compete in a deregulated market. And it would increase the coercive control over the universities by the state.
I presume that the libertarians would welcome the greater shift towards market mechanisms as a step in the right direction towards complete deregulation and the universities beginning to respond to price signals. But they would have to be critical and deeply opposed to the instrusive and heavy-handed control by the state over these public institutions.That obsessive control is very much at odds with the centrality of institutional autonomy and localised knowledge.
And they are critical.
The level of micro-management intrusion---the Minister can disallow individual academic courses---is a classic example of the conservative central control system. Though no doubt, the libertarians will probably fog things by calling it the old socialist command and control system run by the Politburo.
Whilst sitting there listening to the Senators questioning the Vice-chancellors, I thought about the deep desire for central planning by a government that talks the language of the free market. The conservative command and control seems to be on the increase behind all the government talk about the excessive and restrictive regulations and heavy centralized bureaucratic arrangements that stifle the education sector and prevent it from maximising its potential.
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September 24, 2003
Too clever by half?
I see that Brendan Nelson and Tony Abbott have now tied their reforms (increased funding to universities, deregulation of fees and loan schemes for students) to proposals for university workplace reforms to ensure individual contracts. This neo-liberal strategy has not been received kindly by the Senate or State Labor Premiers.
Everybody should calm down says the editorial in the The Australian. Individually negotiated contracts make it possible for university managements to reward high-performing staff, at all levels of the organisation, on the basis of their individual performance. It is all about merit. The free market is about individual merit and rewards.
The coercive nature of the top-down workplace reforms--if you don't do it then you won't get the funding is the pitch --- undercuts the Howard Government's claim about freeing up the universities. They claim that their reforms are setting the unversities free from regulation so they can become diverse institutions who operate in the marketplace as businesses in accord with their own strategies and tactics. But why not allow give the universities the space and incentives to devise their own labour market arrangements with their staff? Why be coercive? Why force people to be free? Why not encourage people to change custom and habitual practices. Why not offer them incentives to be free?
Or is creating industrial turmoil the point of this political exercise? The policy is one whereby individual workplace agreements must override certified agreements negoitated through the union. It is backed by a threat to make 2.5per cent funding increase conditional on the implementation of the workplace reforms. It also ties the funding to reform to ensure corporate governance. And the reforms are pushing voluntary student unionism. It also seeks to prevent academic staff from assisting union activities. That is a political exercise to break the power of the unions.
The market solution to merit basically means that universites as corporations will all try to hire Foucault for a term. As Academic Girl puts it:
"...universities and colleges in North American have become starry-eyed, wanting to having international reputations and hire the most reknowned, or at least the most fast-tracked, professors they can...."
This is not really practical for many regional universities. They cannot afford to hire Derrida since they will become second tier teaching institutions. They will be cutting wages for their teaching staff instead of seeking some international academic celebrity. So labor market flexibility means creating arrangements that favours the well-off universities and enables poorer regional universities to lower their wage rates through casual labour.
This strand of the Nelson reforms is about cutting benefits to academic staff to improve their productivity and efficiency. "Employment arrangements needing to be linked to the business needs of the institution" means doing more with less.
You can sense the bully boy tactics here behind the public smiles. No doubt there will be fists banging on ministerial desks when the Senate starts its sifting and winnowing of the government's legislation.
Update
The universities are not impressed with being forced to offer individual contracts. They see the heavy hand of Tony Abbott. Universities are being forced to offer individual contracts to staff by a certain a cut-off date to pre-empt funding cuts even though the legislation that has yet to be ratified by parliament.
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September 18, 2003
University reform
The Australian Financial Review carries a report that the Howard Government is willing to "make further concessions on its shake-up of higher education as it faces the tough task of pushing the historic reforms through a hostile Senate." The reforms provide new concessions for smaller and regional institutions, disadvantaged students and over-enrolled facilities to counter these institutions being disadvantaged by deregulation. Expect more modest concessions.
But the basic thrust of the reform remains in place despite these sweetners. This is:
"...to provide universities with the ability to reduce their reliance on government money and embark on more commercial ventures to boost revenue. Universities will be encouraged to operate more like businesses, maximising the lucrative benefits offered by the overseas student market and boosting the potential for greater private-sector collaboration because of improved transparency."
Business is all for the Nelson reforms. It says that these will align the universities with the emerging needs of the economy; are the key to innovation; will ensure the survival of high education sector; and enable the higher education sector to have the capacity to compete globally. Big business sees the universities as corporations and education as an industry. Hence the key drivers are competition, efficiency and entrepreneurialship.
Reform is needed. The universities are in poor shape after years of doign more with less. This is especially so in South Australia which can be considered a disadvantaged region.
Though reform is needed the Nelson proposals mean that it is consumers who will have to fill the funding hole left by the unwillingness of either major party to dramatically increase the public funding of universities. The Labor Party's offer of $2.4 billion in public funding will still leave the universities short of cash. Hence the look around for easy money; and allowing the universities the flexibility to raise money themselves so they have the resources to improve their facilities and teaching.
So which consumers are going to provide the easy money? Australians? There is resistance to 30% increase in course fees that can be funded by loans:--apart from courses in medicine, law and business that lead to well paying jobs. It means being saddled with debt for those unable to afford to pay upfront. So consumers largely means international students. They are easy money.
So the key thrust of the reforms is freeing up universities to increase their revenue through increasing student fees. It will work for the big prestige universities, such as Melbourne and Sydney, but not for Flinders in South Australia. Flinders will be unable to charge the 30% increase since its students will be a unable to afford to pay. So it will start a downward slide into a cheap second-rate, publicly funded regional university.
The old divide has been reinvented.
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August 21, 2003
educational reform
An article in the Australian Financial Review (subscription required, 18 08 03, p 60) indicates that using the market to reform universities is having the desired effect. Gone are the days when the liberal university was primarily concerned with the public good, was taxpayer funded, entrance is based on academic achievement and was free from the usual market pressures. That was what the social democratic university once was in the 1970s.
Today, the elite universities with a brand name (Sydney, Melbourne, NSW, Queensland, Western Australia and Monash) are corporations.They see themselves as big business and as a part of corporate Australia.
Though their CEO's still talk in terms of embracing the market (ie., being business-like) in order to keep the traditional values of scholarship and research alive and well, they do not see themselves as public educational institutions. They are entrepreneurial driven, and talk in terms of business booming and doubling in size in a growing market. They are bottom-line driven in the new commercial environment, they draw full-fee business and commercial research funding and increasingly rely on private income.
They derive their income from research companies or consultancies, fee paying students and service based ventures. Hence they are businesses operating under competition laws and so will increasingly come under the Trade Practices Act.
What has happened to the non elite ones? Some, such as Wollongong University, Queensland University of Technology and Curtin University of Technology, have successfully cultivated a niche markets through good strategic management. Finding a niche in the market is central to an a non-research intensive university.
The other smaller regional universities will struggle to survive given their weak opposition in the higher education market. They are primarily public institutions operating according to the academic goals of research and teaching, and they find it hard to enter the commercialisation race that relies significantly on research credentials and prestige.
The planned university shakeup by the Howard Government will widen the divide and entrench a multiered market.
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July 30, 2003
a part time uni
The Australian Financial Review has an article on the way students are juggling debts and studies. (no link, 30 July, p. 53)
The debt incurred in paying for their courses under the HECS scheme is reshaping their time at university. They spend less time on campus and more in paid work (permanent part-time work). Consequently, they cram rather than study, and they find themselves exploited by employers by being forced to work overtime or lose their jobs. They find that there is a decline in students services, increasing difficulties in accessing teaching staff, overflowing lectures snd tutorials ands poor library facilities.
Hence we have a disengagement by students from university life in order to chase the dollar to pay the debt and ensure they have the work experience to land a job after graduation. So they fail to turn up to classes and get their work done on time. Theyare enrolled in full time courses but are actually part-time students.
The tensions will only increase as universities keep raising fees. So tomorrow's graduates will be taking on a even bigger HECS debt than their predecessors, and so postpone buying a home and starting a family.
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July 21, 2003
a note on academia
In the light of this post at philosophy.com on the contemporary relevance of the classics, this interview in the Sydney Morning Herald about life in the humanities' coal face in Australian universities is interesting. The interview is conducted by John Wojdylo with Albert Brian Bosworth, a Professor of Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, and a world expert in his field. It is about the future of classics (and by implication the humanities) in Australia. Brian describes the negative side of the economic restructuring of the universities.
There needs to be more of this being said in the public sphere to counter the spin of the Vice-Chancellors and Ministers.
Several points are made by Brian in the interview:
1. university library funds all over Australia are being starved to the point where the University of Western Australia (a sandstone university) no longer has a basic research library. There goes scholarship.
2. resources are inadequate for undergraduate teaching. Teaching loads keep on increasing. More stressed out academics in teaching only regional universities.
3. though the senior faculty have done okay from ARC research funding, the classics department has become a 'disciplinary group' because of small staff numbers. The upshot? It is facing extinction.
4. the academic labor situation indicates the negative impact of casual employment on young scholars working in the humanities. 3 year research positions at the postdoctoral level are very hard to achieve and they are strictly limited in time. Even 5 year senior research fellowships provide no security. At a lower level talented scholars have to exist on short term contracts and causal employment which can take them into their forties. At that point it is very hard for them to retrain and change careers. Upshot? Unemployment.
5. there is an over-production of PhD's for which there are no jobs and so the graduate students are forced to leave the academy after struggling to get their foot in the door for several futile years. (For the US experience on this see this post by Invisible Adjunct.) Upshot? More unemployment.
I've interpreted the points a bit by reading between the lines in the context of the work done by Invisible Adjunct on the fate of the history discipline in the US.
My judgement? It is pretty clear that the future of the classics "department" is downhill. In the absence of substantive private endowment (not realistic in Australia) the classics "department" has no future. As the senior faculty retire they will not be replaced by bright young academics.
Philosophy is in a similar situation to classics.
Why? Why the devastation? Why is a whole generation being lost? Why all the wasted lives?
The most immediate cause is the current shift from the Menzies-style liberal university serving the national interest to a business corporation in knowledge economy. Tim Dunlop has comments on this with good comments by others. As this shift speeds up, the humanities fail to generate the cash flow they need to survive. They are not money earners because they do not attract lots of students, dues to a humanities degree do not offering good career prospects. So the humanities are seen as marginal, a distraction, or an ornamentation.
Hence they are cut back again and again and again until there is nothing to cut back. The devastation all seems so rational in an economic sense. It is a matter of shifting resources to where there is most demand.
In his own longer post John Wojdylo calls a spade a spade in place of all the fog that hides the devastation. He rightly talks in terms of an intellectual catastrophe in Australian universities and the decimation perpetrated at ground level in philosophy, history, classics and music, where Australia has lost world leaders in these fields, and is in serious risk of losing most of the rest. He describes the way the devastation explained away as a necessary step in the path towards future salvation through the market; and the failure to publicly fund the humanities, the pure or basic sciences and mathematics in the name of the public good.
The transformation of the university into a business corporation is a result of the neo-liberal cultural revolution. John describes this as requiring the private sector and universities to be both educated to view things differently and to change their practices; with the universities required to move closer to industry to ensure the closer interaction between the private sector and universities. Despite the failure failure of the private sector to invest in research in the universities John argues that the cultural revolution aims to permanently entrench neoliberal ways of thinking and values into everyday university life so that the liberal university becomes little more than a corporation selling a product in the global maket place.
If we step back to the broader public policy picture we can see that the current funding crisis of the universities has been engineered by the state. The neo-liberal state has engineered this crisis as a way to create pressure to shift to a full market model as the only rational solution.
John is dead right. The future of higher education in Australia is one of ever more deregulation and user pays, with an increasing shift to full fees in some courses in prestige universities to recoup the big cuts in public funding. As the American free market model is being imposed through a wearing down of resistance the more prestigious univerisites are using their market position to grab the cash.
Spare a thought for the personal cost of this pathway to unemployment and career change. So why do people keep doing PhD's in the Humanities when there are no jobs and they face the situation of overeducated unemployability? As Amanda over at Household Opera puts it, we have a very strange sort of denial going on. (link via Rana at Frogs and Ravens). Amanda describes this position as:
"...well, there are no jobs, you're going to be poor and anxious and overworked, and you'll have very little choice in where you end up living -- but the immaterial rewards of a life of devotion to learning make it all worthwhile!"
Like Amanda I find this scholarship/moral education stuff depressing given the grim reality of poverty and underemployment. The ship is going down in the stormy seas and the passengers are singing happy tunes about poverty and the lifelong benefits of a humanities education!
Is it a case of
"unwarranted happy thoughts only serve to lighten the emotional load as they make their merry way down the path to academic proletarianization"?, as Invisible Adjunct puts it.
I also find it very disconcerting that senior academics, such as Brian Bosworth, continue encourage humanities students to do PhD's, when they know that the graduate students will go into debt and not get a full time job in academe. I find that irresponsible. It is not just a case of pointing the finger at the neo-liberal policy makers. Many of the senior faculty have been irresponsible in their ethical responsibilities of care for their students and adjuncts.
By doing so they have expressed the hollowing out of the ethical values of the humanities. The humanities are a shell of their former self, as it is no longer the case that a humanities education makes you a more ethical person.
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June 25, 2003
user pays?
This cuts the ground from under the feet of the right to an education advocates. Tim Watts says:
"Australian taxpayers subsidised more than 70 per cent of the cost of my tertiary education.Even though I'm now out earning more than $60,000 a year, I will never pay back a cent of the cost of my tertiary education. My HECS fees were paid upfront and so I got a substantial additional discount from the Government... feel taxpayers basically paid me to get an elite education that is not universally available."
Middle class welfare is an acccurate description. So if you shift to a greater private contribution for degrees that lead to wealth creation, then how do you ensure greater access and equity for those who do not have the money to buy their degrees up front?
Loan schemes? Scholarships?
What we have is more in the way of ongoing economic reform that has been going since the 1980s. This economic reform that has been experienced as the dull compulsion of the market that reduces our quality of life. The economy booms, GDP is up, the corporations make more money and the wealthy are doing fine. Many, however, have suffered and they are angry.
That quarter century of economic reform, which put the market before social needs, is creating a different kind of world to the one we once knew. It is one where we are less dependent on governments and states, and more dependent on markets, prices and money. Consequently, we worry more, are more stressed and are more anxious about jobs and employment, even as work cuts ever more deeply into the texture of daily lives.
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May 18, 2003
Commercializing universities
The neo-liberal press has celebrated the proposed Nelson reforms to the universities. He has found a way forward with clever politics. Setting the universities of Australia free said The Australian. And the Australian Financial Review (no link, 15 May, 2003, p. 70) says the reforms ensure a richer and more fertile future.
The Australian spells out the argument:
"But for all its faults, Dr Nelson's package must be praised. It is designed to impose a market discipline on universities, a concept despised by those academics who believe that they should not have to compete on the basis of talent and diligence. The Nelson reforms seek to create a market culture in education in two ways. First, by allowing universities the freedom to charge students a premium based on course quality and, second, by ending the old-style industrial relations system that determines pay and conditions according to academic rank rather than by individual achievement. The desired outcome of both is to free the universities from the chains of conformity and give them the chance to prosper by focusing on what they do best."
And the consequences of these pro-market reforms?
"The end result for students is that they will be able to choose the university that offers them value for money. The end result for academics is that they will need to provide quality teaching if they and their institutions are to prosper..... Adopting the Nelson reforms will unleash the same expertise and energy at home that has created such a major export market. The idea of change might frighten some academics but Dr Nelson's reforms offer them a unique chance to help their institutions grow and prosper. It is a chance that all who believe Australia needs a world-class university system must embrace."
According to this account the only way forward is to make the universities into business corporations who sell educational services to consumers. Those who resist these reforms in the name of academic values are reactionaries frightened of change. This resistance is wrong headed says Alan Gilbert because it will be:
"...a tragedy for Australia's universities and, indirectly, for Australia's prospects of remaining at the forefront of knowledge-creation, innovation and technological development in an emerging global knowledge economy, if we fritter away this once-in-a-generation opportunity to create an internationally competitive higher education sector.....Nelson is to be commended for facing up to the reality that existing public policy settings are leading slowly but inexorably towards mediocrity. The long-term competitiveness of the Australian economy is likely to depend, among other vital prerequisites, on the capacity of Australian universities to match their international competitors. Under present policy settings, most are certainly falling behind."
What this means is that the elite Group of Eight universities will be the winners, whilst the cash-strapped smaller universities will lose out because they will not have the market leverage to charge full fees to students with access to deep pockets. Hence we have a two-tired university system. Robert Manne concurs with this judgement:
"...the Australian university system seems certain to become more hierarchical, with prosperous, high-salaried, research-oriented "world class" universities at the top of the pyramid, attracting the most talented academics and most promising students, beneath which there will be a larger number of less affluent, lower prestige, more vocationally oriented, mainly teaching universities, with limited involvement in cutting edge scholarship or research."
Such a divide is perfectly acceptable says the Australian Financial Review. It says that the regionals can fill the gaps in the market left by the elite universites. I doubt that this will happen as it is the elite universities who will have a richer and more fertile future. What is of concern to the free marketeers is that it is necessary for one or two of the elite Australian universities are freed from regulation so that they can become internationally competitive.
The alternative to deregulation as a way to provide money for cash-strapped universities is a massive injection of public funds. I cannot see that massive e injection coming from the ALP in the near future. So the road to deregulation will continue to be travelled by the liberal state.
Another consequence of the reforms is that the humanities will continue to be marginalized because they are not big money earners. Not a problem says the Australian Financial Review. The small regional universities,it says, can " specialize in the classical liberal arts degrees of the kind offered by successful colleges in the US." Ken Parish diasgrees with this account. He says:
"....the non-vocational humanities disciplines are unlikely to attract substantial numbers of full fee-paying students, with the result that these faculties will probably continue to wither on the vine at an even faster rate than over the last decade. The "sandstones" will maintain viable non-vocational humanities faculties for prestige reasons, but regional universities will probably move incrementally towards an almost entirely vocational mix of course offerings. NTU's abolition of its English department a few years ago will be seen as the "cutting edge", though not in a favourable sense."
The bottom line is the neo-liberals do not really care about the non-elite universities---they can basically fend for themselves. Nor do they treat the humanities sympathetically. because theses are the discplines that have gone postmodern, are the site of political correctness and engage in too much irritating critique.
Gilbert's defense of deregulation implies is that an educational corporation is not in conflict with academic values of the liberal university, and that a corporate university would protect these academic values and even enhance them. Is this the case?
For an alternative and pessimistic view, see Invisible Adjunct Here is a review of a book on Universities in the Marketplace This says that the commercialization of higher education is headed for a crisis due to the sacrificing of academic values for profit-making.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 01:49 PM | Comments (3)
March 02, 2003
Memories of academia
Whilst painting the front part of the electronic cottage yesterday in the autumn sunshine I got to thinking about academia and painting as ways of making a living.
This came up because a couple of professionals were tarting up the place up next door for tenants and we got to talking as they were leaving for another quick job. They asked me about the standard poodles who were keeping an eye on the comings and goings and about how the job was going. They talked about how they felt about getting bogged down on the job and the need to keep pushing through the depression.
It was one of those friendly chance encounters that make your day and make inner city living so pleasurable. It was the lack of this, coupled to the underlying unspoken hostility and suspicion in suburbia, that caused me to flee sububia to the inner city.
Whilst rendering a wall an hour or so latter I thought about the tedious nature of the job, then recalled that academia was similar. I hated the hated marking of bad essays and exams; could not get enthused about teaching; detested the hype about scholarship liberal education and meritocracy; recoiled from the worsening work conditions and the lack of money for research in philosophy; the ignorance masquerading as knowledge etc etc.
Basically I couldn't wait to get out. Political life was a breath of fresh air and I felt alive once again. I had no desire to return. Today if tenure was offered I would not take it. The security is not worth the sacrifice of autonomy by living a sick mode of life.
Then this morning, after breakfast, I read this and this by Dorothea; this by Alex; this and this by Liz and this by Baraita.
What did I came across in my reading? Insularity for one thing.
Few looked beyond the walls of academia to see themselves in the context of public policy or political life. Most were concerned with their life within the institution. I came across a narrow life of marking and teaching, little time of research and a life marked by trade union concerns. Alex is concerned with intellectual property and the pressures of research; Liz, who has got tenure, speaks about the pressures of research but loves her job and celebrates her job. Dorothea like me, thinks that academia is a lousy system that damages people.
Liz is very up beat about the play, autonomy, openess and creativity in academia. On her account there is a lot more of this in academia than in painting houses. I agree. But academia is still an inward-looking institution with some very bad practices that damage people.
Despite the phenomena of academics with weblogs, I see little effort being made by academics to engage with webloggers. It is still a case of high culture versus popular culture:---academics see webblogs as involving a dumbing down of their arguments for mass consumption; rather than as another kind of writing from a different place in civil society. Very few seem to understand the weblog as a way to foster the Habermasian public sphere like Tim Burke
Most of the commentary was within academia about academia with a little looking out beyond the ivy walls to the wider society via the internet. There was little effort to locate this academic mode of life into the broader dynamics of society and the economy--ie the way the state is shaping the shift to the knowledge society through market mechanisms. Why not view academia from the market perspective of the policy makers?
Maybe Australia is different because higher education reform is currently a crucial public policy issue of the Howard Government. These reforms are designed to force the universities to become education industries whilst protectign regional diversity. What we have is the push to tap into, and then apply the academic resources of new knowledge generated by an increasingly technoscience-based society.
What the policy makers see is the new economy being organized around networks of capital, management and information. They see that the access to techological know-how is at the roots of increasing productivity and competitiveness of the economy. For them academia is now a set of interconnected nodes through which communications flows occur. This is the network society. Maybe all this is accepted as the norm in the US and the market mode of university life is the way things are done around there.
So where to from now in terms of critique, when the ivory tower is no longer the ivory tower of scholarship. What we are noticing in Australia is that, intellectual practice shifts more and more outside the university and to the centre of civil society. Coupled to this fusion of the deregulated market and intellectual practice there is a decline in the critical and culturally interpretative role of intellectual practices.
What we now have is an instrumental market mode of life that is increasingly stripped of the established reference points in history, nature, place and tradition. It is a fundamental shift. Few in academia are addressing it. Maybe the US academic webloggers take this shifted for granted?
Still, the hollowing out of critique is a big worry. Do we sing songs and write poems instead?
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