Download markets, expertise and the public university: a

Universities, Knowledge Regimes and Publics
John Holmwood
University of Nottingham
Campaign for the Public University
ESRC Seminar Series: ‘New Perspectives on Education and Culture’
Seminar 6: Knowledge Cultures
British Library, December 3rd 2012
Trajectories in higher education…
• From a social democratic (Robbins) to a neo-liberal knowledge
regime (Browne).
• From a knowledge society to a (global) knowledge economy.
• From a multi-versity (Kerr) to a mono-versity.
• From higher education as a national system to universities as
knowledge corporations within a global rank order.
Robbins: one axiom, four aims…
• “courses of higher education should be available for all those who
are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and who
wish to do so” (1963: para 30)
• “there is no single aim which, if pursued to the exclusion of all
others, would not leave out essential elements. Eclecticism in this
sphere is not something to be despised: it is imposed by the
circumstances of the case. To do justice to the complexity of things,
it is necessary to acknowledge a plurality of aims” (1963: para 23).
• the public benefit of a skilled and educated workforce (1963: para
25),
• the public benefit of higher education in producing cultivated men
and women (1963: para 26),
• the public benefit of securing the advancement of learning through
the combination of teaching and research within institutions (1963:
para 27),
• and the public benefit of providing a common culture and standards
of citizenship (1963: para 28).
A social democratic knowledge regime..?
• An inclusive public interest in higher education
• Education as a social right, underpinning democratic inclusion
• Higher education associated with economic growth in the
context of a secular decline in inequalities (from mid-1930s to
early 1980s) and the expansion of the welfare state
• Emphasis upon disciplinary knowledge and professional
expertise.
• Provision of knowledge for ‘evidence-based’ policy – linked to
the foundation of the SSRC (ESRC) in 1965.
• [Relatively low-level of community-engagement/communitybased learning because of ‘institutionalising’ character of
welfare state]
Two ‘critiques’ and one ‘pathology’…
• Rise of mass higher education and radical critiques of
inclusion/exclusion (gender, race and the new left).
– Critique of professions/knowledge as power.
• Neo-liberal critique of welfare state and idea of social rights of
citizenship (not initially applied to education).
– Critique of professions/state as power to be replaced by
markets.
• Pathology is the problem of funding as citizens become
addressed as ‘consumers’/’taxpayers’ (first identified by Clark
Kerr); reinforces instrumental orientation to knowledge
Emergence of a neo-liberal knowledge regime…
• Jarratt Report (1985) and shift from collegial/professional
organisation to managerial hierarchy.
• Market proxies and the audit of teaching and research (QAA
and RAE/REF).
• Shift from public funding of teaching to a ‘co-funding’ model Dearing (1997).
• Two further steps represent full-blown model:
– Impact agenda/ pathways to impact
– Implementation of Browne Review
The neo-liberal knowledge regime…
• Research is valued for its contribution to economic growth
and for the extent to which it can be ‘commodified’.
• Education is to be considered as an investment in human
capital and a private responsibility of individuals.
• Entry of ‘for profit’ providers – including, and especially,
multinational corporations.
• Stratification of universities and the creation of a new ‘elite’ of
resource rich, research-intensive universities and resource
poor, teaching-only institutions.
• ‘Freeing’ universities to pursue ‘for-profit’ activities, and to
seek ‘for-profit’ partners.
• From knowledge society to the knowledge economy.
• Higher education now as the engine of widening inequality
not its amelioration. (UK in top 10 of most unequal countries)
• Emphasis on ‘low aspirations’ and social mobility into
‘selective’ universities, but 25% of UK’s young people live in
poverty. Those without qualifications cast as undeserving
poor.
• But also generational inequality – shift in burden of costs of
higher education from current taxpayers onto young (fees,
and as future taxpayers in terms of the costs of the loan
system).
• Aim is to ‘lock in’ taxpayer rejection of public spending
But also an attack on ‘publics’…
• Idea of a ‘public’ depends on dialogue, with politics as the
representation of publics.
• Market as ‘non-dialogical’.
• Reduction of publics to the market is anti-democratic (cf
Occupy).
• Public university serves as a space for the production and
dissemination of knowledge, including the evaluation of
expertise.
• Impact agenda and the emphasis on co-production of
knowledge, but latter emphasises instrumental relations and
already constituted interests.
The ‘public’ …
British Social Attitudes Survey prior to Browne Review:
– 70% thought advantages of university education were more
than simply being paid more
– 65% were opposed to differential fees for the same course
– 75% thought fees prior to the revised system left students with
too much debt
– 80% thought children from better-off families had more
opportunities than those from less well-off familes
– 27% thought people in Britain have similar opportunities
regardless of income
Discussed in Stephen McKay and Karen Rowlingson ‘ The religion of
inequality’ in John Holmwood A Manifesto for the Public University
(Bloomsbury 2011)
But attitudes are softening in the latest survey …
Just not in the manner expected (or mobilised by Government
rhetoric):
•
•
Among those with graduate level qualifications, 42% support the
idea that students should pay for the costs of higher education,
and 30% believe there should be a reduction in the numbers
studying at university.
Among those without qualifications , 11% support the idea that
students should pay for the costs of higher education and only 19%
believe there should be a reduction in student numbers.