The Purpose of Higher Education
Something that I and other colleagues have noted at institutions similar to my current employer is that there seems to be an omnipresent implied, when not explicit, anti-intellectual current defining the place. While a bit muddled at times, this CIF entry in The Guardian captures this sense. I chuckled at this line:
This has undoubtedly led to a mass increase in the population of students in the UK, but with it a rise in degrees in such subjects as sports, human resources and marketing – which may have slender academic perspectives but are in essence vocational.
During the most recent reorganisation of my home institution (where we slimmed down from seven faculties to five and dispersed the social sciences as an organized, going concern in any recognizable form) my “department”, a political science department, was placed into the “School of Management” in the Business School, along with, yes, human resources and marketing, among other intellectually and pedagogically compatible departments (e.g. shipping and logistics).
I was completely unaware of the meaning of “former Poly” when I applied for my present position, being neither British by birth nor culture, and naturally assumed that if the word “university” was in the title, the institution did as it says on the tin. My initial ignorance of the term “former poly” aside, this entry does seem to capture the ambiguity of the position such institutions find themselves in. At mine, the current pitch is all about vocation and applied knowledge, period. We have styled ourselves as “The Enterprise University”, emphasis in original, for the past two or three years, after all.
The budget cuts the sector has only just begun to face in the UK (and it will get a lot worse in the next few years) does beg the question, and not to sound glib or flip, but: what’s the point? What purpose should a university serve in broader society? The British have a clear idea, again pointed out by the Guardian entry: “which is why we have the total absurdity of the business secretary, not the education secretary, pronouncing on the future of higher education”.
While pondering this, I’ll return to writing a book proposal . . .
I’m not averse to vocational education – indeed, one of the problems with Britain is the shortage of people skilled in jobs like plumbing and construction. The problem as I see it is that in the last decade or so we’ve created a culture which says you have to get a bachelor’s degree to get a “decent” job, without telling students that there just aren’t many jobs for the degrees they’re being encouraged to do. To resort to stereotype, you have thousands of media studies graduates pouring out of the system every year chasing a tiny handful of low paid (or even unpaid) jobs. If they really want to be in the media, they’d be better off skipping the degree and just plugging away at finding a position, while if they didn’t want to be in the media they’d be better off doing a more academic degree which beyond its educational and cultural value would probably make them more employable in some other job.
On top of that, and more directly to your post, in the last five years the government has increasingly been pushing the message that tertiary education is only useful in so far as it helps employers, which is extremely pernicious. This is only going to get worse under the coalition, especially with the budget cuts.
There’s similar trends going on here in the United States, too, especially in state universities. As various states are strapped for money, one of the first places they cut (at least in my state) is higher education, and then everything rolls downhill as the university then decides who will get more of the axe and who will get less of it.
A major part of the discourse about what to do with public universities concerns emphasizing their importance in educating the “workforce of the future”. And that’s fine up to a point, since people do have to earn a living, but it also indicates (to me, at least) a shift in educational priorities towards those determined by local and regional employers; those subjects that don’t readily or clearly address those priorities will increasingly be whittled away.
Rather obviously, when HE covers 45%, it is going to be more about future economic value. This is quite surely the reality of the US ‘college’ system, outwith those schools that still offer an elite education at elite prices, and quite surely also the reality of the massified components of European HE. Why you expect it to be otherwise, why you would thus ask students to pay you their own money to be inculcated into elite culture, when that elite has no place for them, is the question you might ask. And when you’ve asked that, you might ask if in fact they are being ripped off anyway, and whether the massified HE they receive actually adds meaningful value.
Of course, if you want it to be different – if you want, for example, HE to deliver students into the world with a critical consciousness – you are asking for somebody to pay you to undermine the fabric of society.
Historically, academics of a radical bent have been able to get away with that kind of thing, because there were relatively few of them, and they actually taught the youth of the elite, who might have funny ideas for a few years, but would settle down [and for a couple of decades when there were a lot more, after c. 1965, people hadn't yet noticed the absurdity of the position]. But the position of a highly-paid professional subversive is absurd, however much you [or indeed I] might wish that it’s not.
That’s a good line; I might borrow that. You will, of course, get a footnote.
De nada.
I did mean to comment on this yesterday — this is a good line, but I’m not necessarily looking for more critical subversives in higher education. Rather, I’m looking to preserve the more academic subject areas as opposed to the flourishing trade / vocational subjects. And, again, nothing against the vocations, but a university should be . . . a university. Not a voc-tech, nor one giant business school. I want to continue teaching students to engage critically with their subject area, regardless of the outcome of this critical engagement — i.e. I don’t want to train a generation of unthinking lefty progressives, but rather I want to train people to think and engage. Learning the meaning of “enterprise” is less useful or interesting than engaging with the concept of the hegemonic ideology of enterprise.
Useful or interesting to you/in your opinion. And indeed, in mine. But somebody has to want to pay you to do that, and as I was pointing out, the fact that scholars were ever paid to do that, let alone well-paid in large numbers, is an historical oddity.
While trying to conjure up an essential mission for ‘The University’ is a practice very widely carried out by defensive scholars in recent decades, it is trivially demonstrable to be an enterprise based on empirically false premisses. One may have any number of opinionated arguments about what one thinks the purpose of HE should be, but starting from the basis that there is an essence to it, and that essence is unconnected to economic utility and credentialling, is to be on a hiding to nothing.
While my role as an instructor (adjunct med school faculty) is high-end vocational-technical, I went to school with the expectation that I would indeed cultivate my critical consciousness and be exposed to a wide a variety of stuff as possible. At the risk of sounding like the California buzz-monger that I am, unless one has a very specific course of study in mind (engineering, finance, medicine), then education should not be about looking for work, especially when we’ve come to the point where the guy taking your order at the dry cleaner has a master’s degree. Education should be about exposure to novel ideas, and questioning what one is about. You know, what the dead guy said about the unexamined life.
Then again, my educational debts are all paid off.
As a scientist, I’d like to disagree with you. Education should be about exposure to rigorous theoretical models and their discussion, with the aim that the students will be able to use those models in their chosen fields.
The questions on “what something is about” belong to a small number of professional philosophers. That’s their job. One day, perhaps, it will bring fruits to the society, although until this day, no fruits have been borne by the tree of moral philosophy since the days of Zenon.
A science student should be intrigued by properties of things, not by their essence. “Essence” is metaphysics. Asking “what is the nature of electomagnetism?” is futile. The question should be along the lines: “How will an electric particle interact with magnetic field in this setting?” If you cannot write your question in terms of equations, you have seriously erred and delved into the realms of metaphysics and theology.
Of course, a young person’s healthy development should include a phase where they are allowed to delve into metaphysical questions, but that phase should take place during secondary school, as it does in continental educational systems. In university, such questions should be left to those who have decided to waste their lives pondering them.
As an historian, I’d like to point out that there is useful knowledge in the world which is neither concerning the properties of matter, nor of metaphysics. Knowing what has happened in the past is of great potential practical value, as this blog and many others demonstrate. That many people function in ignorance of, and indeed contradiction to, demonstrable historical fact is a shame, but many people do likewise in the face of demonstrable scientific evidence too.
I agree with you, and beg pardon for my inconsiderate tone. I simply wish to point out, that the university education has many facets. When scientists are educated, there is no place in their education for idle pursuit of humanities. The worst fallacy a scientist can do, professionally, is to succumb to the prusuit of metaphysical questions. No progress has been made in such questions since antiquity, and considering them is a professional suicide. (I know that American undergrad education usually requires a number of first-year humanities courses, including philosophy, but in the European continent, they are covered during high school.)
However, in addition to science, the pursuit of scholarly subjects is a worthy field, which can and does give rewards to the society. However, it should not be cast as the only type of acceptable academic pursuit. “Questioning what one is about” belongs only to the professionals a very narrow, limited and ultimately fruitless field. It does not cover even most of the scholarly subjects.
Thank you for your courtesy, but I’m afraid that this:
“Questioning what one is about” belongs only to the professionals a very narrow, limited and ultimately fruitless field.
is just silly. I will say two words in refutation: “Research Ethics”.
“Research Ethics” is not pursuit of study. It is a meta-field, a set of mores and customs governing the pursuit of science. There is no need to study it normatively. It is simply part of the culture of the field. If something is considered acceptable by both the researcher and their peers, it is acceptable. If not, then it is not.
Of course, the research community may be an interesting subject of an descriptive ethnographical study, but there cannot be “normative” study of research ethics any more than there can be a normative study of reproductive ethics.
If the researcher poses a question: “Is the subject I’m studying morally correct?” that is his to answer. However, in that case, she is no longer applying science but acting as a human being, bound to the moral code used by herself and hopefully, by her community. The question cannot have a clear, scientifically probable answer. And when looking for the answer, the researcher is only a human, quite as poorly prepared as our neolithic ancestors. There has been no advance in the field of ethics for the last ten millenia, at the least.
If something is considered acceptable by both the researcher and their peers, it is acceptable.
Like those drowning-studies the Germans did in the 1940s, or the decision of UK govt scientists in the 1950s to infect ‘volunteers’ with toxic agents while telling them they were doing ‘common cold’ research?
You don’t do research on human or animal subjects, do you?
Dave,
as most persons, I do have a personal code of ethics, according to which the types of experiments you mention are totally unacceptable. However, I make no pretense that there is any kind of rational basis for it. There is no rational, scientific reason to believe that any particular ethical system is more correct than any other system. Science does not discuss ethics.
So, if we wish to research things that are real, the only way to research the horrendous experiments you describe would be to see whether the contemporary research community accepted them. Only the community response (and perhaps also the stated views of the researchers) is documentable and can be described in a scientific manner. However, there is not a meter that can measure inherent “goodness” or “badness” of any action. Only one’s conscience can do it, and that is not measurable, i.e. not scientific.
Sorry for not posting below your post. It seems to be impossible.
universities and colleges provide an excuse to generate governmentally insured loan fees, and create wage slaves.
Oh, also, credential factories/proof of class
extended adolescence/drunken orgy
Lurker is Spock
No, Spock was half-human, this guy’s a physics textbook with a speech chip.
I went to college *mumble-mumble* decades ago. It didn’t take me long to figure out that for the vast majority of students it was either a glorified vocational school or an opportunity to drink excessive amounts of beer for a few years while doing just enough work to stay there. This didn’t bother me, since the school also provided the opportunity for a good education for those who wanted it. But I have since made the mistake of confusing having a degree with being educated.
Might it be worth considering Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Let’s assume that, for students, the purpose of higher education can generally be said to be the attainment of a better life.
For students from backgrounds that allow them to expect their material needs to be met satisfyingly, “better” means become more well-rounded, able to critically engage with the world, and other intellectually and emotionally satisfying stuff.
For students whose backgrounds don’t allow them to expect material satisfaction, well, you worry about filling your belly before you worry about fulfilling your spirit.
I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I would guess that the proportion of less-abstract university offerings has grown alongside the proportion of students who are paying their own way through school.