Doctored

I referred in an earlier post to Von Humboldt’s specification of Wissenschaft (the ‘broad science’ that goes on in universities) as a communal endeavour in the service of Bildung.

Bildung was the topic of this week’s PESGB seminar at the IoE, which was given by Asger Sørensen. Adorno described Bildung as the subjective aspect of culture; it refers not the Kantian idea of culture itself, but to its acquisition. I’m not sure why it’s considered notoriously difficult to translate into English. I think ‘cultivation’ – cultivation of the self – is fine. Isn’t it?

Sørensen’s abstract was as follows:

In German, the term Bildung has a special status in discourses on education, upbringing and formation, by some hailed as the ultimate ideal, by others dismissed as just another ideological construction. Trying to stay clear of these extremes, I will employ the idea of Bildung to develop the notion of Citizenship Education, discussing in particular how Habermas uses the concept in his theory of democracy in Between Facts and Norms. The hunch is that a “discursively formed public opinion can represent a process of Bildung or education in which citizens build better foundations to their opinions through discursive interaction.

Clearly these ideas have a great deal of relevance to my thesis on the purpose of universities. Also, I’ve just bought Habermas’ The Future of Human Nature to inform my work on cognitive and moral enhancement, so this was all very interesting. I was puzzled when Anders told us that, initially, Habermas described the connection between education and power/wealth as ‘illegitimate’ (that’s something I wonder about all the time – why should graduates get paid more than non-graduates? I just don’t get it), but later took on a view that resonates with Michael Young’s concept of powerful knowledge; a can’t-beat-them-join-them stance that entails comprehensive inculcation of high culture, so that all have the opportunity to be powerful.

My ‘fun’ reading this week is Owen Jones’ first book Chavs: the demonisation of the working class. Reading this, and hearing Anders talk about Habermas and his view on enculturation, reminded me how I felt when David gave us a book chapter on culture by E.D.Hirsch. Hirsch – and I feel uncomfortable writing this because I’m sure I often do as well – comes across as a snob. At the time I felt like he was trying to articulate why his tastes are ‘good’ and others are not, but his rationale didn’t quite hold water.

Since then, I’ve often thought how certain kinds of art, literature and music might be said to be ‘better’ than others. I came to a view that the good ones must make a greater, deeper contribution to our wellbeing than other kinds (because that, to me, is our ultimate aim – wellbeing). Some examples of obviously bad works in this sense include ‘lifestyle’ magazines that are explicitly designed to make us feel flawed and deficient, and romances that leave us feeling disappointed with the reality of love. Near the beginning of this talk, Alain de Botton accuses Walt Disney of peddling the kind of false hope that is a root cause of our anger, and explains how it is the job of philosophy to ‘let us down gently’.

Moving beyond the immediately obvious – and maybe this is what Hirsch was trying to say and I just didn’t see it at the time – but a lot of pop culture – films, novels, TV and music – tends to ignore complexity, cut out the harmonious (and mundane) elements of life, and present only a thin slice of conflict, drama, violence and/or eros. I don’t think this is good for our wellbeing. Zeldin writes about an aspect of this; he argues that in order to see alternatives to violent conflict we need more works that portray people getting along, embracing difference and learning about one another and themselves. Nehamas also alludes to similar matters when he speaks about the difficulty of portraying friendship – particularly visually – without drama. You can see that on the cover of his book (see left) he resorts to using fruit.

I enjoy films that people like E.D.Hirsch would consider ‘high culture’; films that portray situations and characters that are complex, nuanced and unpredictable. I like films that give you plenty of time to really notice and think about what you’re seeing. These are the kinds of films I watched at home with my dad when I was a child, and it’s highly likely they were instrumental in my becoming a deep and critical thinker. If I’d been raised on Disney and action movies, would I have seen the world more in black and white, good and evil? I don’t think a polarised way of looking at the world – or people – is healthy for us as individuals, or for society. So, maybe that’s a way in which ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture differs, that I can get behind.

The idea of ‘powerful knowledge’ just doesn’t wash with me. For a start, it appears unashamedly arbitrary in its content – this is what powerful people know, like and appreciate, so if you know and appreciate it too, you can join their gang. But my primary issue with it is that in the UK today we have an incredibly unequal society where wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of very few. An ‘enculturing’ education with the end of upward social mobility for the lower classes is not going to fix that. Unfortunately for those with the wealth and the power, we also need to apply pressures that create downward mobility if we are to achieve a more equal society. Sorry guys.

I want to return to something I wrote in my last post about encountering different approaches to life. I was responding to Karl Jaspers’ claim that tension between the individual and the world is necessary for self-knowledge and a true life; that we can never truly know another’s experience, but become ‘more whole’ by encountering the boundaries. There is a common thread running through this and the Nehamas interview, and Gadamer, Zeldin and Sachs’ writings on conversation and difference. Newman touches on it in his Idea of the University when he speaks of ‘a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every corner’, and it is this universality that many still consider the archetypal feature of the University.

A similar concept lies behind some highly successful TV shows; Wife Swap, Undercover Boss, Faking It, Rich House – Poor House, Supersize/Superskinny. Every episode sees the protagonist stepping into someone else’s shoes, immersing themselves in another life and coming away not only with a deeper understanding of the other, but also a fresh perspective on themselves.

One thing that hooked me into the Nehamas interview was his argument that there is no universal morality (I like this line of thought). While rejecting moral relativism, Nehamas points out that moral laws do not assume there is a single type of life that is good for all. If morality were universal we would not need rules. We construct laws – and social norms – that are applicable down to the ‘lowest common denominator’. Adjusting to them can, however, prevent us from living well; ‘rules’ for becoming an individual can be self-undermining. Nehamas likens the becoming of a person to the production of a great work of art, in that there is no recipe, no rule; we can only formulate the principles afterwards. He argues that certain lives are particularly admirable because of their differences from the lives of those around them, and so it is with art. To model life on the making of art – to engage in the ‘art of living’ – is to go one’s own way; to take ‘the road less travelled’, as Scott Peck would say.

When Richard asked him if living is an art that can be taught, Nehamas’ response seemed to underscore a conception of a ‘good’ or ‘admirable’ life as one that is, in some way, emergent or exceptional. I think – I suspect – that this Nietzschean concept of the ubermensch is often spoken of in these terms, and I find it problematic.

Consider again Carl Rogers’ presentation of what one might describe as a common process for learning to live well; a process that is founded on authenticity, acceptance and understanding. Rogers was a psychotherapist. His view of human becoming is one of mending what is broken; making the dysfunctional functional. If we view becoming from this angle, the analogy between life and art breaks down. When we describe an artwork as ‘good’, we generally mean there is something exceptional about it. If we speak of artworks as ‘good enough’ or ‘satisfactory’, we imply a lack of sorts; a disappointment. Art is art by way of its exceptionality. Why might we have higher standards for art than we do for our lives? Perhaps it is because with art we start with a blank canvas, whereas in ‘creating’ ourselves, our lives, we have to work with what is already there at the point that we start to become autonomous. By this time a lot of damage has already been done!

Design is judged differently to art. Design’s beauty is functional; we may find its form pleasing, but design may equally be considered ‘good’ by virtue of its unobtrusiveness, or its ability to make a difficult task easy. I would like to argue that living well has – or should have – more in common with design than with art, and that perhaps there is – as Rogers suggests – a common process that will set one on a trajectory to the good life. 

Rogers’ recipe – authenticity, acceptance and understanding – brings us back to the question of our relations with others, and the value of universality. In being authentic and working to accept and understand the other, we learn about the world and ourselves.

We’ve just had another general election, and what is truly remarkable about the result to me is that it shows how stable (or stubborn) our individual political leanings are. It seems that the significant shifts in voting have been from those who didn’t vote before, and those who voted for a smaller, more radical party in 2015 out of frustration with a watered-down primary opposition. What these groups want hasn’t changed; it’s just that no-one with a cat in hell’s chance of winning many seats – let alone a parliamentary majority – seemed to be offering it. It’s not so much that the public mood has shifted; more that the primary opposition is finally offering what these people want.

Now there are post-election polls showing that this effect is continuing; that the belief in the ability of the opposition to form a government is strengthening, and that were we to have another election soon we would be looking at a different result again. But I don’t think anyone is actually suggesting that blues will turn to reds in significant numbers. Do we have ‘floating voters’ that oscillate directly between Tory and Labour? Is that a thing? Has it ever been?

On election day I considered telephoning my German grandmother. She lives in East Hampshire – a secure Conservative seat with a high voter turnout. She never votes. Her companion (lodger/whatever) Ron voted to leave the EU. I thought we could discuss the the implications of privatising the NHS (Ron has diabetes, she has dementia), and selling her house to pay for care. That’s a policy that doesn’t bother me personally – it’s not like she’s going to need it – but it would bother her (and where would Ron live? Not with me).

I wanted to get them out to vote at least. If they voted Tory, what the hell, but at least they would have needed to think about why, because I would have asked them to. And if they’d chosen to share those reasons with me – Ron never holds back with his political views – I hoped I’d be able to listen, and accept, and try to understand. But it all seemed too difficult, and awkward, and ultimately pointless. Crucially, I heard my mother’s voice in my head, screeching ‘what were you doing, getting her all panicked like that? She’s in her 90’s for god’s sake, and East Hampshire would vote for a rotting corpse as long as it was wearing a blue bloody rosette.’

I still wish I’d called them. I was being a wuss. I took the easy option and told myself it didn’t matter. I think a lot of this hinges on our need to feel that others approve of us, and I’ll come back to that.

Last year Julie Beck also did a nice interview with Nehamas that focused on friendship and art. Nehamas’ view on friendship is both complex and simple; he explains at length why friendship is not intrinsically ‘good’ – and here we realise that, while Nehamas has ideas about the good life, he is ambivalent about whether friendship contributes to that. While it would be fair to assume that we like our friends because of what we have in common, Nehamas argues in both interviews that the opposite is also true; we are drawn to others because they are different to us, and we believe that our lives will be different – better – with them in it. But friendship, like beauty, is a non-moral value; it is double-edged and can be dangerous.

For Nehamas, friendship is a means to transformation. He claims that ‘when you feel that your relationship with somebody will not change you in any way… the relationship is over.’ This resonates with me a great deal. The idea that other people enter relationships for the purposes of self-development is startling (I thought it was only me that did that), but the more I think about it, the more I think that Nehamas is onto something here.

It is easy to read Gadamer, Zeldin and Sachs and be carried away by their enthusiasm for conversation and mutual change and the seeking of new solidarities. They make it sound more effective than I am finding it to be. I did my final thesis conversation today, and I enjoyed it immensely (my new book on The Art of Conversation has been very helpful). I’m still not sure that I’ve captured any real disagreement, and maybe that’s never going to happen when two individuals get together in private, away from the cheerleading or judgement of our peers; our instinct to get along is too strong. One counter-example I can think of is when Toby Young pulled a similar stunt to me at the 2015 Tory party conference, but given that he explicitly set out to create newspaper-worthy friction and usually doesn’t hold back in his derision of lefties, his account is surprisingly tame (I wrote about my own experience here). I’d love to see a full transcript of his conversation with the protester; I bet they actually warmed to one another, not that Young would admit to that. Reconciliation, peaceful conflict, whatever we call it – it requires us to put our energies into being kind rather than being right, which it’s very difficult to do when you’re convinced that the other person is wrong.

Colleagues and friends working in education often tell me they would find it very hard to talk to Toby Young, and they don’t see what it would achieve for them to accept him and to understand his perspective. They may even consider such an approach dangerous in its supposed quietism. Carl Rogers (1967) recognises this as a natural educational reaction:

‘What is life for if we are not going to do things to people? What is life for if we are not going to teach them the things that we think they should learn?’ (p21)

But, he maintains that

‘The more an individual is understood and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he has been meeting life and the more he tends to move in a direction which is forward.’ (p27)

We are scared to try to understand another, because it might change us. And yes, the more we are open to being ourselves and accepting the other, the more change is stirred up. But according to Rogers, all this is change in a positive direction. So, if I were to have a conversation with Toby Young along these lines, it is likely to change me in some way; but in a positive way. Not (necessarily!) the blatant persuasion that Toby had in mind at the conference; there many other ways in which such a conversation might change both of us for the better.

Wyatt, J.F. 1982. Karl Jaspers’ The Idea of the University: An existentialist argument for an institution concerned with freedom. Studies in Higher Education 7 (1), pp21-34.

I’m still playing around with Newman’s Idea of the University and have been delving into other ‘Ideas’ to lend my reading of it more depth. I’ve also been trying out a few of my thoughts about Newman’s Idea on my research participants. Transcribing these bits has been, well, interesting. I do have a tendency to go off on one when I’m talking about something I’m really into.

I came across this piece on Karl Jaspers the other day. It was one of those serendipitous right-hand-column discoveries you make when browsing Taylor & Francis journal articles. It’s almost as old as I am, but – like me – still fresh as a daisy 😉

Karl Jaspers wrote the first version of The Idea of the University shortly after the first world war, and published an extensively revised version at the end of WW2. It was translated into English in 1960 during the period of intense public debate on higher education that preceded the Robbins report. In his Idea, Jaspers – an existentialist – presents the search for truth as paramount and equates it to the human search for wholeness. Like Newman, he identifies the ultimate end of this search for truth as ‘human development & advancement’, while maintaining a decidedly conservative view of how this is to be achieved. He emphasises the transmission of culture – a complex concept, but primarily disciplinary culture – in addition to, and as distinct from, the other two objectives of the university – research and the transmission of knowledge. Distinct, but inseparable; these three activities join forces to ‘direct the individual to the frontiers’.

Jaspers identifies three modes of learning that take place in universities; schooling, apprenticeship and Socratic dialogue. He places particular emphasis on the latter. Jaspers’ ideal university is a ‘community of thinking’ that seeks wholeness and truth through a Socratic system. For him, this is ideal because it is formative, not isolated, and moves its participants towards ‘meaningful freedom’; a phrase also used often by his pupil Hannah Arendt. ‘Freedom of the intellect’ – academic freedom –  is for Jaspers the archetypal feature of the university.

In this respect, Jaspers is thought to differ somewhat from Von Humbolt, and more so from Heidegger (I’ve been reading a recent piece by Mark Sinclair on these two). Von Humbolt was all in favour of the unencumbered pursuit of Wissenschaft (rough translation – broad science), but specified it as a communal endeavour, in the service of Bildung and bound to Geist. If there is anything about the Humboltian ideal that Jaspers was explicitly rejecting, I suspect it would have been these slippery notions and their susceptibility to appropriation (they may seem more slippery to me because I am only 25% German). Indeed, Heidegger – during his brief period as the National Socialist rector of Freiburg University in the 1930s – was said to have radicalised Von Humbolt’s position, criticising Lehrfreiheit and arguing for a Gemeinschaft – a genuine community – as opposed to a fully autonomous Gesellschaft (yet again I am struck by how the Germans really have got the better language for discussing these matters!).

Jaspers classified knowledge into two different types; the ‘universal’, and the ‘individual’ or ‘unique’. It sounds like this division corresponds pretty well to what we might call the sciences (including e.g. sociology) and the arts, but Jaspers’ labelling is interesting; it highlights that ‘universal’ knowledge is about identifying rules – laws of nature. This led me to consider whether the other kind of knowledge  – I think ‘particular’ is a better term – is concerned with exceptions. I’m still wondering about that.

Jaspers was of the mind that the quality of an institution was not determined by what it taught, so much as the methods of teaching and the quality of those who teach. He writes about the courage to educate – an idea echoed by inspirational writers like Paulo Freire and Parker Palmer – claiming that teaching requires us to trust in the dormant possibilities of human nature. For Freire, ‘education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage’, and I propose the two are saying (roughly) the same thing. In loving, we give something of ourselves that we may not get back. We make ourselves vulnerable; we invest with no guarantee of return. This may sound less like trusting in the possibilities of human nature than gambling on it, but if the giving – the work we do – is rewarding in itself, then it is not a gamble. Many wise people feel that way about love as well – that to love without need or expectation is, paradoxically, the most rewarding way to love.

Wyatt calls attention to the problem of an existentialist arguing for the maintenance of an antiquated institution such as a university, and explains how Jaspers reconciles this, particularly given the particularly rigid departmental structures of German universities in the interwar period. Jaspers was writing about what the university should become rather than what it was, and his ideal was focused on the human possibilities of becoming whole. Key to his Idea is that tension between the individual and the world is a necessary condition of existence; it leads to self-knowledge and a true life. We can never truly know another’s experience, but we become more whole by encountering the boundaries. This resonates with Richard’s recent 3:am interview with Alexander Nehamas on Nietzsche and friendship, in which Nehamas explains that, while morality depends on similarity, friendship depends on and encourages difference. Friendship is essential to our becoming a person in that it enables us to try different ways of being; different approaches to life. I like that interview a lot – it certainly encapsulates why I’m friends with Richard 😉

Jaspers joins Newman, Heidegger and Von Hombolt in their call for unified universities, arguing that specialist institutions break up the opportunity for communication between the forms of knowledge. He argues for ‘a form of [collective] thinking which constantly strives to connect the various modes to form a totality’; to make possible the shared pursuit of truth. There are genuine basic differences between forms of knowledge, and communication gives us an awareness of these differences. Such conversations should aim to be productive and educative, not necessarily reconciling. This is a crucial point, and worth underscoring given my earlier attempts at titling my thesis. Am I hoping to reconcile different imaginations of the university? Is this possible? Advisable? Possibly not.

While Newman is clear on the kind of (responsible) character a university education produces (providing a list of specifics to rival Darcy’s ‘accomplished woman’), Jaspers argues that this should be considered a by-product rather than a conscious aim. He claims that it is not a university’s task to produce leaders of the people; the qualities of a good leader and a good scholar are not the same.

I might accuse Jaspers of contradicting himself here, but that’s because we disagree about what makes a good leader! Jaspers would cite willpower, resoluteness and pragmatism, while I – echoing Carl Rogers (1961) – would emphasise authenticity, acceptance and understanding. Rogers attests that these qualities are applicable to all human relationships, and I would add that looking at leadership from a relational perspective explains why we lead more effectively in some contexts than others. For example, I am good at my job because I am at ease among academics and teachers, have developed a warm regard for those I work with, and have come to understand their frustrations. Conversely, volunteering for Crisis at Christmas, where I felt unsure of myself, and the guests’ hardship was beyond my understanding, I was barely fit for guarding the janitor’s cupboard. At the time, my incompetence surprised and upset me. This is the problem with assuming that effective leadership is comprised of fixed personal traits like determination and pragmatism; it does not prepare us for the re-learning that is required – the relational work that needs to be done – when we find ourselves in a completely different situation.

Life has many facets and we may all in some way be leaders, but according to Jaspers and Newman we are not all scholars – nor should we be. Jaspers is clear that higher education *should* be preserved for the few; an ‘intellectual aristocracy’ that represents the possibility of mankind. I was not wholly convinced by Newman’s argument on this, and Jaspers’ view – as Wyatt observes – also comes across as elitist and paternalistic. Collini’s (2012) argument for reversing expansion is persuasive on practical grounds, but philosophically I find it jarring. I like to imagine a world where we are all engaged in the pursuit of truth, but not by sending increasing numbers of 18 year olds to university… something more universal, more inclusive than that. Not sure what yet.

Oaskeshott, M. J. 1967. The Definition of a University. The Journal of Educational Thought / Revue de la Pensée Éducative, 1 (3), pp. 129-142

Writing four years after the publication of the Robbins report, Oakeshott responds here to a ‘confusion about the nature of a university and the character of a university education’. We could call it confusion. We could also call it ‘diversification’, or simply ‘change’.

I need to remind myself what benefit(s) Robbins had in mind when he decided that such a significant increase in the proportion of the population would benefit from a university education. Did he imagine that the influence would work both ways? That the university would indeed have an effect on this broader population of students, but the students would have an effect of equal significance on the university? Students are not the only agents in the system; students’ families, and those who employ their skills post-graduation, also push back on the structure of the university.

Unlike before, I found myself irritated by Oakeshott’s prose. For some reason, today, I seem to have projected a pompous tone onto it. The idea of a university as ‘resisting attempts to define it’ is irksome; the university is surely more a structure of our own construction than an actor in itself. He makes unsupported assumptions that students come with mixed or uncertain expectations. I have little sympathy for his discomfiting ontological doubt – I’m sure he would rather his own position was more stable. Wouldn’t we all. Welcome to supercomplexity, Michael – I imagine you still retired with a decent pension and a spare bedroom.

Oakeshott acknowledges the impact of the students – where they have come from, where they are going – on the university. (p134). He argues in favour of its place following on from compulsory schooling; ‘the most impressionable years’, where interests and relationships are formed for life, and momentous decisions are made. He is of the opinion that a university is a more ‘favourable’ context for these happenings to occur (this would be an interesting argument to interrogate). He does, however, describe these happenings as ‘chance opportunities’ rather than the ‘gifts it intentionally affords’, drawing on the rather dubious simile of a railway station as shelter from the rain.

I think what he goes on to say on p135 exposes the blurred boundary between the two; a boundary that Newman – writing 100 years earlier – did not attempt to draw.

Oakeshott describes a university education as a specialisation; the acquisition of a single skill, incorporating a body of ‘strictly limited’ information. The aim as he sees it is for man to fill a specific place in his society and to satisfy a current demand; to sustain a current manner of living. This vision is wholly conservative. Even his ‘different and complementary way’ of regarding the ‘inheritance of human achievement’  is concerned with understanding, explaining and sustaining our existing condition, rather than imagining and creating any future condition.

And then, out of nowhere, he describes these as ‘the skills we need for transforming the world’. Where did that come from? He also acknowledges that studying history or science, for example, when one is not oneself going to become an historian or a scientist, may be a defensible course of action, as the world needs those who can recognise and appreciate great works without necessarily participating in (creating?) them. So I’m left doubting the certainty of his position.

I like this bit…

“not being comparable to a light-industry (having no product, in the strict sense), nor to a store (having no sales-list of items for disposal), a university is apt to confound the accountants. Profit and loss, cost and return on capital are not easily calculable; indeed, there is something inappropriate in making the calculations. It illustrates the truth that there is nothing great in the world that does not involve waste, and that the human propensity to avoid waste (which has itself been erected into a science) is, perhaps, one of our greatest intellectual vanities.” (p139)

…and what really illuminates how much has changed since Oakeshott’s time is his recollection of his own experience at university, which as I am finding through my own conversations is a crucial factor in our individual understandings of the university as a concept: ‘…the feeling of being emancipated from the pressures of immediate achievement… the opportunity to make mistakes without having to pay heavily for them.’ (p140-141).

Here, Oakeshott repeats his claim that the university was the way it was because of his own wants and expectations, and those of his companions. He feels that if these had been different, the university as it was would have dissolved. He focuses in particular on the perception of a university degree as a ‘passport to social prestige, to power and to emolument’ (now, that’s a lovely word!). He observes that – even in 1967! – we have gone too far in this direction, and says that ‘we are wrong to confine our admiration to these [qualities]’ – again, a statement that is ripe for unpacking.

“The time may come when, in the face of the vulgarity of a single-minded devotion of the exploitation of the world and of the barbarism of instant affluence, learning will have to hide its head, and universities will survive only by the exercise of the courage of their calling and by becoming retreats devoted to keeping alive, in hostile circumstances, the great disinterested enquiries of mankind. But that time is not yet.” (p.142)

Is that time now, or is it too late? Did we already sell ourselves down the river?

Blessinger, P. and Anchan, J. P. 2015. Democratizing Higher Education: International Comparative Perspectives. Routledge.

I bought this book over a year ago for a princely sum, fresh off the first print run. When it arrived I was disappointed – not only because of the boring black spine with white letters (my bookshelves are ordered by colour) – the content looked pretty dull too.

I’m pretty confident the editors won’t read this (I wrote to Patrick Blessinger once and he didn’t reply), so I’ll be candid. For a start, it reads like the authors themselves weren’t particularly interested in what they were writing. Another major issue is the amount of unnecessary padding. A degree of repetition is understandable – necessary even – if you are setting up a novel and complex argument. If all you want to get across is that higher education systems are generally getting messier (except perhaps in Scandinavia, which is undergoing a sort of higher education spring clean, and Russia, where we’ve really no idea what’s going on), and that an understanding of global trends in HE policy and governance enables those who work in HE to view their practice in context, I don’t think that needs repeated explanation.

sad face

When I met Ron Barnett for tea and hobnobs, he impressed on me the importance of gaining a global perspective on these matters, given my desire to generate novel imaginings of the University. In hindsight, I should have just picked a diverse selection of countries and read about their HE systems on Wikipedia, but I paid good money for this book and I refuse to let it get the better of me. I also refuse to spend any longer on it after today. This post is getting written tonight, then I’m going to watch an hour of Bladerunner (which I’ve been told will fill a gaping chasm in my cultural education), and then I’m going to go to bed. Tomorrow will be a new day, without this book in it.

I’m going to run through the countries & regions covered in the book and just pick out things that were novel and of interest to me.

The US
I knew about the whole community college/public university/private university split (mainly from watching the surreal comedy series Community). What I didn’t know was that racial segregation still has a pronounced legacy in the US HE system, with over 100 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). I enjoyed reading about these on Wikipedia; there are some interesting stats there about student wellbeing, academic support, etc., that shed some light on the attainment gap we have at UAL. It seems that in the US the stratification or clustering of HE institutions into different types is more pronounced (and more accepted?) than in the UK, where standardised metrics (REF/TEF/NSS) nudge us towards homogeneity.

Tuition fees at public universities in the US are similar to the UK, but have been that way for much longer, resulting in student loans being second only to mortgages in consumer debt. Most of the debt is federal, but there are several private student loan companies too (maybe you need a private student loan to attend a private university?!). The state of Oregon wants to pilot a graduate tax scheme called Pay It Forward, but that fact that it would take 20 years to pull in a surplus is apparently making everyone a bit too twitchy. Oh, short-term world.

Canada
There is no national education system in Canada; education is governed through the provinces (10) and territories (3). The full cost of university tuition is expensive – around twice that of the UK and US – with government funding focused on providing financial aid to the poorest 30%. Canada’s vast, rural territories are a real challenge to universal access. Long distances are a big issue. Canada led the way in ed tech development, but internet connectivity in rural areas is pretty poor too. First Nations people are underrepresented in Canadian universities with only 8% holding degrees.

Europe
I knew about the Bologna process and its aim of making credit frameworks compatible and facilitating the international movement of students. I didn’t know that the European HE Area had set common aims around widening access and quality assurance as well. Given that this is the case, I was a bit shocked to read that only half the Bologna countries systematically monitor participation in HE (by e.g. disability, gender, educational background etc). I guess I’m pretty used to everything being measured here.

I found it quite amusing that the EHEA doesn’t compare the quality of education itself – each country has its own QA measures, so it is the robustness of these quality assurance frameworks that is measured and then compared.  Ha. Measuring the quality of quality. Love it.

Portugal
Portugal has access strategies in place that lower entry requirements for certain groups. They sound a bit blunt, a bit clunky… but hey, it’s a small country. I like Portugal. Great place.

Scandinavia
Scandinavian countries have always had a strong commitment to the public funding of higher education. Saying that, neoliberalism does appear to be peering over the wall, notably in Denmark with the introduction of the Danish Productivity Commission. The rate of participation in HE is growing across Scandinavia and the current trend is towards centralisation, and merging of institutions.

Denmark has seen a massive reversal of the diversification of its HE institutions since the millennium, with large-scale mergers resulting in a shrinkage from around 150 institutions to only seven regional university colleges, nine business colleges and eight universities. Tuition is free for school-leavers, but a parallel system of work-based higher learning is only part-funded by the state.

In Sweden HE courses are free to all European citizens; other applicants have to pay full fees. Norwegian higher education is still free for everyone.

Most Scandinavian students leave home to go to university and, while financial support for students is relatively generous, many work to support themselves. Living costs in Scandinavia are relatively high – with the post-Brexit exchange rate, student living costs are comparable to London.

New Zealand appears to be grappling with similar issues to Canada regarding the educational attainment and social equality of its indigenous people (Maori and Pacific Islanders). New Zealand has eight universities, 20 polytechnics and three Wananga; publicly-owned institutions that provide university level education in a Maori cultural context.

Students contribute to tuition fees at a more modest level than in the UK/US, but this is on the rise as participation increases. Student loans have been interest-free since 2005. There is a shortage of graduate-level jobs. While there is a concern that NZ universities are slipping down the league table rankings due to policies that favour low student fees, modest public investment, and increased participation, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) is primarily concerned with the influence of universities on the economy.

South Africa
The South African HE system underwent complete restructuring since the end of Apartheid in 1994 and the dissolution of the Black (‘Bantu’) Education Act. Old institutions have merged and new comprehensive colleges have been set up. The country is aiming for a differentiated system of universities and community colleges, similar to the US, but the system remains unstable and the prognosis is uncertain. Internet connectivity is an issue.

Russia
Higher education has always been under state control in Russia. There have been periods of greater independence, for example following perestroika from 1985 to the 1990s. The chapter on Russia makes frequent allusions to ‘distorted measurements’ and gaps between official data and reality. The mobility of students between states is restricted because of the funding infrastructure, and international mobility is hampered by a number of factors, including money and language as well as differences in curriculum and credit transfer. 50% of students study on correspondence courses. Participation is decreasing, as is the number of higher education institutions. Closures and mergers are being executed in line with criteria that sound rather more absurd than those of the TEF. So we should count ourselves lucky, hey?

Hong Kong
High demand for undergraduate study in Hong Kong has resulted in a second tier of institutions offering sub-degrees; the limited number of publicly-funded institutions offering these having higher status than those requiring self-financing. This has some similarities with the community college system in the US, and the growth of community colleges in India.

Malaysia
Malaysia appears to have gone the whole hog with expanding and marketising its higher education system. The rhetoric in this chapter is very familiar – it is all about excellence and is unashamedly corporate.

In the penultimate chapter, Blessinger links back to Dewey’s seminal work Democracy and Education, I guess to make some sort of justification of why it is right and proper that higher education should be moving in the direction it is. He argues that as our social systems become more complex and interconnected, we need more formal, prolonged systems of learning to function properly within them.

And that’s about as much as I can take of this book.

Kreber, C. 2014. Rationalising the nature of ‘graduateness’ through philosophical accounts of authenticity. Teaching in Higher Education, 19 (1), pp90-100.

While the internet was down at work, I read this. I hadn’t heard of Carolin Kreber before; her work was suggested to me by a fellow EdD student at our last meeting in Oxford, and I’m pretty happy about having found her.

Kreber makes connections between graduateness and authenticity. She equates Ron Barnett’s ‘capacity for coping with strangeness’ (2005, p794) with openness to experience, and explains how this links up with what she describes as an existential dimension of authenticity; how human being is affected by, and deals with, the challenges of being in the world. She presents this disposition of openness as a prerequisite for the development of qualities of moral commitment and responsible engagement (Sullivan & Rosin 2008) which follow from the critical and communitarian dimensions of authenticity.

Kreber cites Sullivan and Rosin’s (2008) suggestion that the purpose of higher education is to enable learners to participate and identify with ‘something that is larger than oneself’. For Sullivan and Rosin, with their emphasis on responsible community engagement, this ‘something’ is social, and it resonates strongly with Hogan’s view of education as ‘the uncovering and nourishment of human potentials that benefits others as much as the self’. One of my research participants had an alternative take on this idea of something ‘larger than’ or ‘beyond’ the self, emphasising not only the public good aspect, but the role of higher education in showing an individual other possible ways of being, other than who they are now, and I’ll come back to that in a bit.

My attention was drawn to Kreber’s thoughts on ‘strangeness’. I don’t recall coming across the word in Barnett’s work, and I was intrigued (as I often am by the German language) by Kreber’s translation of ‘unheimliche’; something that is strangely familiar and therefore ‘uncanny’ rather than simply ‘strange’. Uncanny is a word I’ve used in the past without really thinking about what it really means, and the contexts in which we tend to use it, which are closely tied with human likenesses.

Further investigation on the Google revealed this rather fun chart of human likeness against familiarity, featuring the ‘uncanny valley’ of negative emotional response:

Not massively relevant to the philosophy of higher education, I know. Let’s move on.

Kreber proposes that students today are met with two challenges – one being what Barnett calls epistemological uncertainty, with rapid advancements in knowledge – and the calling into question of truth – leading to an awareness that the future is uncertain and unpredictable. Barnett (2007, p36-37) claims the challenge is made ‘supercomplex’ by the incompatibility of different interpretations of the world, which are increasingly coming up against one another as a product of globalisation and disciplinary specialisation.

Having spoken with Ron personally about this, I know he is optimistic about creating shared understandings. As I gather the data for my thesis, I’ve started to wonder whether our knowledge frameworks are as incompatible as we like to believe. Do we – as Theodore Zeldin observes in his book Conversation – focus on difference because we love drama? We find arguing fun to do and entertaining to watch. We also like to find patterns in things, which requires labelling, categorisation, clear distinctions… and often reductionism.

The embryonic findings of my research seem to support Zeldin and Gadamer’s view that we have more common ground; more scope for finding new solidarities; than we might have assumed. That doesn’t surprise me, because I’m a happy, positive soul (well, cheerfully pessimistic) and that’s what I wanted to find! I am also finding evidence that we might all be more self-interested than we think we are; a commonality that possibly gets in the way of us acting on whatever solidarities we build.

Unlike Cinderella’s glass slipper – which either fits or it doesn’t – the compatibility of interpretations appears to be subjective. Pluralism – so it seems to me – is about seeing the compatibility of different interpretations (‘Compatibilism’ specifically refers to the standpoint that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive). Pluralism is, of course, distinct from relativism, which lends validity to all points of view. Compatibility is not the same thing as validity. I am not a relativist. I may be a pluralist. Hence my view on incompatibility and supercomplexity.

Let’s get back to strangeness, because what Kreber says on this resonates strongly with something I read a few days ago at the very start of David’s book – A Hermeneutics of Religious Education – on the Heideggerian perspective that interpretation invokes a play or tension between a text’s strangeness, and its familiarity (p2). Thinking on this, it struck me that this tension is surely present when we are learning anything. We have to create and engage with strangeness, otherwise there will be nothing to learn.

Barnett argues that the anxiety that is felt when our existing conceptions are called into question is ‘a condition of what it means to be a student’ (Kreber 2014, p93). I’m not sure that’s the kind of thing that makes me feel anxious. I think I quite like having my mind bent around a bit. That probably explains why I like psychedelics so much.

It’s often said that anxiety can get in the way of learning. Procrastination is often said to have a basis in anxiety. I have found that taking a deep breath, holding it and letting it out slowly is a great way to finish that paragraph rather than making another cup of tea. But Barnett and Kreber are talking about more than breathing exercises; they feel that the appropriate response to strangeness is for students to be open to one’s own complex possibilities. This is what they mean by striving for authenticity.

The use of the word ‘authenticity’ is intriguing to me as it suggests being or becoming what one really is; i.e. a single, determined outcome, rather than a range of possibilities. I’ll return here to what my conversation partner said about students discovering other possible ways of being, and the personal example they gave that suggested a critical stripping away of assumptions and expectations that revealed their true self. Is becoming aware of what might be (and what you might be) the same thing as coming to know what is (or becoming who you really are)? This is what Barnett and Kreber – and my conversation partner – seem to be saying, or at least that the relationship is a reciprocal one.

N.B. when I told Richard I was reading about coping with strangeness by creating it, he told me that when he was a little boy he would pretend to be a monster, in order to scare the monsters away. I’m not sure that’s relevant to the debate, I just thought it was cute (and ingenious).

Education requires being open to change – which as David points out in his book is a necessary attitude for engaging in dialogue. There is absolutely no point in entering into a dialogue unless one is open to having one’s mind changed. If we are absolutely sure that we are right, and our aim is to change the other person’s mind, we demand they take a different, more flexible attitude to us; we enforce a double standard (this is a key point in Stone, Patten & Heen’s 1999 book Difficult Conversations). Openness to change, and to the revealing of additional complexity, is what Kreber means by contributing to the strangeness. She returns again to the metaphor of authorship (‘of one’s own life’, which I find a little problematic given my recent reading on free will and determinism), pointing out that where there is no authority to rest on, no confirmation to seek, we have to offer our own ideas. This goes beyond critical thinking; it requires us to invest in and commit to our own choices.

I had an idea today for something to do in the lead-up to the election. I thought I would pop along to the local canvassing meetups for all the main political parties. They couldn’t possibly refuse, could they? Not if I was just hanging around and listening in with an open mind? They’d probably find it very strange, and they’d be right  – it would be very strange, in exactly the way that Kreber is talking about; challenging and developing openness to experience, moral commitment and responsible engagement.

Watch this space for some serious strangeness!

Nixon, J. 2013. Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and their Legacies. London, Bloomsbury.

Nixon uses the middle section of his book to develop his ideas around higher education as interpretation through four thinkers; Hannah Arendt, John Berger, Edward Said and Martha Nussbaum.

I’d come across all of them before, and bought Berger’s famous book ‘Ways of Seeing’ shortly after his death earlier this year, but it was satisfying to have their viewpoints brought together in this way and to see explicit links made with higher education.

I first heard of Arendt through reading about Martin Heidegger, with whom she had a long-term on and off relationship – despite being a Jew and him a one-time Nazi. A lot of people would probably wonder what on earth was going on there, but I get it. I too am intrigued and attracted to people with different viewpoints to myself, because I know I’ll be able to learn something from them. It doesn’t make life easy, but I don’t like things to be easy. Arendt was also clearly someone who liked to challenge herself and engage with as many different viewpoints as possible.

Nixon focuses on Arendt’s ideas about thinking, and her own approach to thought itself. Arendt saw thoughtfulness as constant, endless questioning. Thinking is difficult, and the relationship between thinking and acting is complex and indeterminate. Thoughtfulness alone can’t enable us to achieve collective agency.

I’ve been simultaneously reading up on free will, and this of course relates, but I’m not entirely sure what side Arendt would have placed herself (in fact, as I read, the more I wonder whether there are in fact two sides), as she argued that there is no clear path between the realm of thought and the sphere of action.

Arendt was in favour of thinking without method (‘without pillars and props’) – and as something that can only be done alone. That’s a really interesting distinction, and it doesn’t sit comfortably with me; I feel like I’ve had some of my most memorable insights in discussion with others, which has forced me to sharpen my focus and think a bit deeper than I would have by myself. But Arendt also stressed that thoughtfulness is plural in that it demands thinking from the standpoint of others; what she called representative thinking. I’ve been talking about this recently with Richard – the ability to simultaneously appreciate different standpoints – but I feel like we haven’t reached a point of mutual understanding on that yet.

Plurality is a key theme that runs through a lot of Arendt’s thinking about thought. She describes as ‘plural’ the relationship between thought and action, and also describes thinking as herself being with herself; an activity where she is ‘both the one who asks and the one who answers’. (1978, p185). I think that’s a really lovely way of putting it, and her assurance that she is alone but not lonely when thinking in solitude is really helpful for me personally, given that, right now, I’m adjusting to being alone a lot more than I’ve been in the last few year or so. Arendt argues that thinking is an activity – not an action, even an inner one. We are only with our self while thinking, whereas when we act we are in the company of others (2003, p105-106).

A couple of other points, which I’ll probably return to (maybe in my thoughts about free will and responsibility), include Arendt noting the easy ordinariness of evil and the tremendous difficulty of being good. Also that – without recourse to specified methods and procedures – thinking is unpredictable and has unspecifiable consequences.

In comparison to the chapter on Arendt, I’m not sure the chapter on John Berger spoke to me that much. Maybe working at UAL for seven years hasn’t influenced me as much as I thought it had – or maybe it has, and that’s the point! The general message – that becoming attentive is a way of positioning oneself politically and personally – is insightful. I didn’t feel it was particularly contentious.

In the next chapter, Nixon relates the work of Edward Said to his theme of worldliness in higher education; an openness to new possibilities and horizons and a constant questioning of what is known. Nixon makes explicit connections between Said’s thinking and Gadamer’s, on building on fragile friendships (through argument, understanding and deliberation) to extend the bounds of solidarity (see From Oslo to Iraq and the Roadmap – 2004, p170), and the idea of ‘background’ (I guess what Gadamer refers to as ‘tradition’?) and how it ‘asserts itself into the foreground’ (p82). It might be worthwhile to check out the BBC Reith lectures Said did in 1993 on speaking the truth to power, where he speaks of weighing up the alternative interpretations, picking the right one, and then intelligently representing it where it can do the most good and cause the right change.

Said – again like Gadamer – highlighted the importance of the historical context when interpreting texts. Worldliness requires a recognition of the interconnectivity of texts, and the complex web of social relations that bind and distinguish them. We need global and transnational perspectives in our reading of social reality (I was reminded here that I still haven’t returned to Blessinger’s recent book Democratising Higher Education, which outlines international variation in HE policy, funding models, etc – and this is the advice Ron Barnett gave me as well. Oops).

An important assumption underlies Said’s approach, which is the mutual dependence of written texts, and their status as deliberate interventions. Texts have designs on their readers and a vested interest in how related texts are read and interpreted. Now, this is a very interesting point. It made me consider – what are the designs I have on my readers (not necessarily through my thesis, but the other texts that spring from its loins). What is my vested interest in how texts related to my own are interpreted? Another assumption Nixon picks up on is that the world is ‘escapably wordy’. We understand and represent the world and render it knowable through words; this is part of what the world is and what it becomes. Texts have authority; this is how they resonate with each other and their readers. They ‘invite their readers into their conversations’ (p88).

Said was against politics being taught in classrooms, but maintained that knowledge is always better than ignorance, without exception – and this was, in a sense, his politics. Nixon describes him as a powerful, rather than a forceful, figure, and Said also used this distinction, likening it to the difference between volume and intensity (or resonance) in music. Said also wrote about the later work of artists – rather than expressing reconciliation and serenity – as tending towards the troubled and complex, highlighting the ‘intransigence, difficulty and contradiction’ that artists communicate through their work toward the end of their lives. I found this really interesting.

Reading about Edward Said got me thinking about how texts change our interpretation of the world, particularly in light of Galen Strawson’s chapter in the anthology I’ve been reading on free will. I wondered whether Strawson would class such texts as ‘S’ procedures or ‘C’ factors. I suspect probably the former. I guess the more surprising or unexpected a text is, the more its potential for change – but too far and the reader will not engage, or react in a way that ultimately serves to reinforces their existing view (this balance was very much in my mind when writing a feature for the Mail on Sunday a few weeks ago).

The chapter on Nussbaum also connected strongly with the free will debate. Nixon describes her work as ‘deeply Aristotlean’ in terms of her assertion that we are vulnerable to factors outside our control (‘much that I did not make goes towards making me whatever I shall be praised or blamed for being’ – 2001a p5), and how this affects our moral appraisals of one another. Nussbaum argues that we have a moral responsibility to be responsive to one another’s needs, and this, I assume, is what Nixon is relating to higher education – an aim to develop this capability in students.

Are we good/bad because of luck? Or because of our goodness/badness?

I’ve not read Nicomachean Ethics (yet), but I really like the sound of Aristotle’s approach as described by Nussbaum (2001a, p319-320); to carefully examine the extreme positions of luck-supremacy and agency-supremacy through exploring the motivating concerns in each case; i.e. what might prompt someone to adopt either view, and in doing so to preserve both ideas. I also like what Nussbaum says about emotions being a form of judgement (similar to the Greek Stoic view) on certain things beyond our own control. She suggests these affective judgements have their origins in our helpless, purely responsive infancy and are connected to the development of practical reason and a sense of self.

But… I think this idea of education as developing learners’ capabilities to affiliate oneself with others raises more questions than it answers. I think we all affiliate ourselves with others; what divides us is who or what we include in those circles of affiliation. Some – like my friend Libby – a vegan who founded the refugee aid charity Calais Action – have a seemingly very wide circle of affiliation that includes all humans and animals. Some – like myself, for whom empathy and social imagination doesn’t come naturally, and human connection is exhausting, might appear to have a smaller circle. Most of our mutual friends would say that Libby is the better person. I’ve had a lot more formal education than she has, but she has love and imagination in spades (except perhaps for political conservatives, people who neglect or harm animals, and anyone who voted for Brexit). While I spend my evenings and weekends immersed in philosophy, moral psychology and policy in a quest to understand the Other (especially political conservatives), she is out collecting and distributing emergency supplies for the distressed and displaced of the world. I guess we are both cultivating our humanity – and our global citizenship, and our respect of difference – in different ways. Are both our ways valid? What were the educational influences on our approaches? Are we working towards the same ends? These are all interesting questions that I’ve found myself pondering in reading about moral psychology, and I’ll come back to them.

In his conclusion, Nixon describes the human condition as dealing with having no control and needing to have total control; the ‘complementary neuroses of late modernity’ (p109). We are aware that our actions interconnect and interrelate to a vast extent and in myriad ways; so much that we can never get a handle on the details. That bit was great – it blew my mind a little – but the rest of his final section descends into polemic, and I’ll chew over that in my next post.

Nixon, J. 2013. Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and their Legacies. London, Bloomsbury.

I found this a rather unusual book. It gripped, then it intrigued, and ultimately disappointed. And now I have the fun of articulating why that was! I made a lot of notes, and simultaneously took a couple of interesting tangents on free will and relativism/absolutism, so this might extend to two or three posts.

Nixon proposes that the current economic crisis has exposed tensions and contradictions in the future of the university. I’d thought it was the expansion and marketisation of higher education that had caused said tensions and contradictions, and that the economic crisis was largely a fabrication, but there we go. In any case, Nixon observes that certain undesirables are on the rise in UK society – lack of stable employment, inequality, consumerism, etc. – and constructs an argument for the pedagogical university; a place of ethical flourishing through interpretive enquiry and ongoing dialogue. That’s obviously why I’m reading his book – it pulls together the idea of the university and the interpretive tradition, and makes some great connections with Hans-Georg Gadamer into the bargain. The first section is great; very much along the lines of what I was going to write for my literature review (and now I’m going to have to do something else, oh well). The middle section considers higher education through the lens of four thinkers – Arendt, Berger, Said and Nussbaum – each with distinctive contributions to interpretive scholarship and thinking around interpretation. The final section explores epistemological and ethical implications for higher education practice.

In the first section Nixon explains how pedagogy permeates the practice and structure of HE. For Nixon, key pedagogic themes include deliberation, dialogue and the centrality of the question (referring to Collingwood, which David and I discussed a couple of years back). He highlights plurality, incommensurability and contingency as factors impacting on human understanding, and the importance of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics.

I’ve been reading a bit more on moral psychology and theology recently, and it was interesting that Nixon picked up on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s call for faith communities to embrace ‘religionlessness’ and acknowledge unresolved disagreements on issues of value as well as matters of fact. The other day I came across Linda LaScola (through Daniel Dennett’s work on consciousness, while prepping for next week’s PESGB workshop), who’s been researching non-believing clergy of different faiths. It’s really interesting work (and I love the way LaScola answers questions about herself – like she’s observing wildlife).

I think a lot of people probably think the connection between universities and theology is purely historical, but this is important stuff; we’re talking about the difference between right and wrong and living accordingly. Nixon – like Bonhoeffer – argues that we need to hold the argument open until we at least agree on what the disagreement is; and that this ‘holding open’ creates the moral and ethical authority of the university.

At this point I turned to Google to remind myself of the difference between morals and ethics. I’m still not 100% convinced I get the difference, but I’m a very early-career philosopher:

Morals = difference between right & wrong & living accordingly.
Ethics = philosophy of how that morality guides individual and group behaviour.

Nixon argues that interpretation is intrinsically ethical, because it is concerned with how we interpret the world in light of others’ interpretations of it (p15). He feels that universities have a role in ‘ensuring we learn how to build together an interpretable world within a global context’ (p13), through producing students who are active interpreters of the world. His focus on learning to live with difference resonates with the work of Jonathan Sacks as well as Gadamer, and he emphasises that the quality of pedagogical and collegial relationships is key to achieving these ends, as dialogue and understanding require reciprocity and mutual respect in addition to academic freedom – the recognition of different viewpoints and a commitment to exploring those differences.

Nixon cites Collini (2011) in highlighting the danger that many undergraduates will be palmed off with a narrow training while children of the privileged classes continue to attend properly resourced universities, echoing the situation in the US where a small number of private universities with high fees suck out the resources needed to sustain good public universities. There is an assumption underlying UK HE policy that market forces will drive up standards and drive down prices, but we’re not seeing any evidence of the driving down of prices; everyone is struggling to survive and finances are increasingly being diverted away from teaching and into recruitment, administration and management.

Is public education about social control and reproduction, or liberation and transformation? Nixon cites Bauman’s description of the majority being educated into obedient compliance and socially useful occupations, and the social and economic conditions enabling the enlightenment of the few crumbling with the post-enlightenment ‘liquid’ modernity. Freud, Marx and Nietzsche all had radically different visions when it came to education, but all envisaged a new order of thinking people independent from state and societal control; public educators as public intellectuals speaking for the public, where necessary against the state and societal norms.

Nixon argues that crucial to our survival will be a radical pluralism, a new politics of difference requiring a new kind of specialist; those able to act as translators between specialisms and cultural traditions; able to form ‘interpretive frameworks within which radical differences can be held in critical tension’ (p19). This is what Bauman (1987, p.143) refers to by the ‘art of critical conversation’ – ‘to talk rather than fight, to understand rather than dismiss’ – and this is exactly what I had in mind when I initially conceived the idea for my thesis; I wanted to try this mediating role out for myself.

Nixon presents a thorough treatment of the ‘two cultures’ divide (exemplified by the debate between C.P Snow and R.R. Leavis in the 50’s and early 60s) – the drive in the humanities being to understand and in the sciences to control. This prompted me to wonder about my own thesis and whether my methods and intentions hang together. Yes, I want to understand – but what is my eventual aim? Do I want to control? I do want to effect some kind of change, but I think I’m fairly open-minded about what that might be. I suspect the most significant change will be in myself…

Last week I had the urge to clear out my desk space at work, and came across a little brown envelope. Inside, I discovered a memo I’d been required to write to myself at our first EdD seminar, three and a half years ago:

I was so happy to read this, because I don’t feel conflicted anymore – at least not about that. I am having a whole tonne of fun.

But, it ties in with a few things I’ve been thinking and reading about recently, and links to my previous writing on employability and economics. I guess we all have our internal conflicts, and one of mine is that, while rationally I think we should all be working less for the sake of our health and the planet (see the NEF report on the 21 hour working week, and Tim Jackson’s CUSP report on sustainable prosperity), I have a competitive personality and something of a work ethic. This cognitive dissonance came to the fore in the last few months when I started to get cold feet about the plan we’d made to move up North and downsize. I realised I didn’t want to; I enjoy the fast pace of life in London, and its intellectual challenges. I had been ambivalent about going part-time and raising a family; now I was decidedly apathetic.

There are several mechanisms at play in the rise and resolution of this internal conflict. I was raised – explicitly and by example – to compete, to keep busy, to keep learning, to be independent and to plan for the future. In slight contrast my partner’s upbringing was explicitly socialist and (half) Catholic. This instilled values in him such as collectivism and a disinclination to accumulate wealth (which seems to include putting money aside to pay his tax return, annoyingly). He’s been a significant influence on my political education over the last few years – and has introduced me to new ways of having fun – to the point where I started to question the value of all this hard work and individual achievement.

I think it was probably a number of factors that converged to pull me back to what I recognise as my natural way of being. The first was getting called out at work for not doing a very good job on something I was supposed to have been working on over the summer, and not even having a completed registration document and UREC form to justify my slackitude. I suspect my subsequent forays into microdosing, and menopausal epiphany – ‘this is who I am and this is what I want’ – were also implicated, and it was also around that time that I started attending the PESGB seminars, which inspired and motivated me, while introducing a fun, social element to my academic vocation. My research shifted my thinking, as I began in earnest to explore viewpoints other than my own, seeking in particular to understand the neoliberal ideology. The nail in the coffin might have been Brendan’s tax return.

I’ve had several people recommend I read Weber, and I finally got down to him last week (this was ultimately Richard’s doing; he was getting all excited about the Protestant work ethic and I immediately saw the connection with my thesis). Weber gave me exactly what I wanted; a theory about the evolution of the capitalist spirit, and a substantial history lesson besides.

I learned about the Protestant Reformation; a split from Catholicism initiated by Martin Luther, who interpreted that human salvation can be obtained only through faith (‘sole fide’) – i.e. not through good deeds. This laid some of the foundation of the capitalist spirit as it meant that one can potentially attain salvation through any form of life. Luther also introduced the idea of one’s daily work as a divine vocation – a ‘calling’. However, Lutherans still frowned upon the accumulation of material wealth beyond one’s personal needs, particularly if it was obtained at the expense of others.

This concept of divine providence was – and continues to be – influential; the idea of God allocating you a station and a vocation in life. Yes, ‘social mobility’ is all the rage these days, but it wasn’t very long ago that having ‘ideas above your station’ was frowned upon – even considered immoral.

A point of note is that the emphasis on the ascetic importance of a FIXED calling provides an ethical justification for the modern, specialised division of labour; an ideal that began to dominate worldly morality and played a huge part in building the modern economic order. Machine production determines our lives; where the Puritans chose to work in a calling, many of us are now forced to. It is interesting to compare this with the utopian society Huxley imagines in Island, where only light subsistence industry is permitted, and citizens have a specialism they undertake part-time in combination with a rotation of different kinds of work.

Calvinism (also known as Reformed Christianity) was a subsequent major branch of Protestantism, and this is where things get a bit complicated with various sub-branches – Methodism, Quakerism and so on. The important thing to note is the Puritanical aspects of Calvinism and the related traditions, in particular the principles of ascetism (which arose from various dogmatic foundations) and predestination – the idea that we are either chosen, or damned, and we can’t earn our salvation (through, for example, good works). That having been said, the later Calvinist traditions – Quakerism in particular – held a view of one’s life’s work as an exercise in ascetic virtue; one’s conscientiousness as proof of one’s state of grace. So, there is a funny backwards logic at work here; the Lutheran view that we are allocated our lot in life stands, but if we believe that a conscientious attitude is proof of being among God’s chosen few, all it takes is a little faith, and then we can be conscientious and count ourselves among the chosen.

It’s important to emphasise that these religious reformers (Luther, Calvin, Wesley etc.) were only concerned with the salvation of the soul; they were not interested in social/ethical reform. Ascetism and predestination could be said to be religiously superficial, even incidental, but Weber argues that they played a part in a complex interaction of historical factors that had major cultural (and economic) consequences. These consequences were not foreseen by the reformers themselves, and in some cases were in direct contradiction to their intentions.

So – back to the vocation. Does it matter what it is? While in modern times we might assess the moral worth of a particular calling through its value to the community, the Puritan view provides an intriguing twist, as Puritans see the hand of God in all occurrences. Therefore, if God shows one of his elect a chance of profit, then they should take that path, with the caveat that one accepts the gifts and uses them for only in God’s service. In other words, one labours to be rich for God, and the temptation to use that wealth to fund one’s own leisure and pleasure must be resisted. The parable of the servant and the talent even indicates that it is not sufficient to hold ones riches undiminished for the glory of God; we should strive to increase them.  Hence the imperative not only to save, but to invest and accumulate.

It seems that being wealthy would be particularly burdensome given these conditions (and at this point I guiltily recall giggling at the woman complaining about the ‘great responsibility’ of being rich in the BBC documentary The Price of Inequality).

While indulgence was definitely not approved of, the Puritans acknowledged that financial wealth lent a certain ease to life. They accepted as unproblematic the notion that God blesses the chosen in this life as well as the afterlife, and that unequal distribution of the goods of the world is a dispensation of divine providence with secret ends unknown to men (that convenient get-out clause of God working in mysterious ways). Wesley’s advice was that those who gain and save should also give; a good conscience becoming one of the means of enjoying a comfortable bourgeois life.

Weber points out that the full economic effect of these developments came only after the peak of religious enthusiasm passed. Puritan ideals often gave way under pressure from the temptations of wealth, the unsustainable nature of the ideals effectively killing off the religion. As John Wesley wrote: ‘religion will produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase so will pride, anger…desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away.’  The pursuit of wealth has become stripped of its religious and ethical meaning.

So, even at the time of writing (1905), ‘the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs’ (p109). I love that sentence – there’s something very poetic about it.

Howard Becker’s How to Start and Finish Your Thesis (2007) is a nice easy read. I should probably start every month with it! A piece of sage advice that I’ve been following is to actively build ‘networks of mutual help’ (p175)

I’m really happy to include Ron Barnett in those networks, and I went to see him last Wednesday. It was fun – and slightly weird – to get the train out to the suburbs and take my tea in a proper cup with a chocolate hobnob. I gave Ron the lowdown on my job and my future plans, and on my thesis. We talked about the particularly pernicious systems of evaluation we have now in UK Higher Education, and the subsequent pressures on institutions and individuals. He told me about the case of Professor Grimm at Imperial College, who tragically killed himself under pressure to raise three times his salary in research funding. Having acknowledged that times are hard, we then steered the conversation into a happier place.

I was drawn Ron’s series of books about the future of the university because of their pragmatism and cautious optimism. During our chat Ron stressed that sometimes the walls do fall and systems of domination can crumble (citing the end of Apartheid and the fall of the Berlin wall). He pointed out that universities are still transforming students in an amazing way, and inspiring people are striving to make universities more open and more radical. Ron feels that we have a responsibility to be realistically cheerful. He believes that if we look carefully enough we can discern nuggets of possibility; I guess he is interested in my thesis because it takes up this particular quest. He gave me some useful advice which I will summarise here:

Take a global perspective when exploring the literature on higher education policy and governance – there is much to be learned from higher education systems in other countries, which often vary greatly from our own.

This is a valid point and I can see how having a better grasp on other countries’ HE systems has the potential to add depth to my conversations with participants. I have Patrick Blessinger’s recent book on this – Democratizing Higher Education – so will revisit it. It’s a bit dry, but rich in information.

Don’t be afraid to critique Gadamer’s view of ‘horizons’. Horizons are not internal to ourselves; they are imposed on us by global and national forces and we become unwitting carriers of ideology. Our horizons are not fixed either; objects on the horizon may approach or recede.

Ron felt that this particular line of critique had legs and that I might even try to knock out a paper reconstructing the idea of horizons – for art education, in higher education, or whatever. I explained to him that there is some tension between situating my work explicitly within art education and aiming for wider relevance, particularly considering I may not be working within art education forever (although I’m very happy where I am!). That tension is probably going to cause me some issues in the next few months; it might be worth dealing with it soonish – perhaps just a blog post to start with?

I wondered at this point of our conversation about the translation; whether the German word for ‘horizon’ bears exactly the same meaning. On googling, I found that the Germans have two words that translate into English as ‘horizon’ – horizont and gesichtskreis. Horizont has the exact same meaning as our word horizon. Gesichtskreis also means ‘horizon’, but is more commonly used to mean field of vision, or outlook. So, I wondered whether Gadamer was using gesichtskreis. But according to Eberhard (in The Middle Voice in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, 2004, p79) he did use horizont… he also uses gesichtskreis – to explain the use of horizont. Germans are funny (I am one quarter German so I’m allowed to say that, I think).

We finished off our conversation with some practical tips about writing and structure. Ron suggested aiming for a book-like structure, with eight chapters of around 6000 words each, in 2-3 parts. He advises keeping to two or three paragraphs per page to retain optimum grip on the reader. He felt that two of the chapters could explore the concept of horizons; one in terms of the wider context and background of higher education, and one on conversation and dialogue. That approach would fit with what I’m reading and, as I ponder on it more, I think I like the framing. Then Ron went into fantasy land by suggesting I draft a chapter every month… but of course he’s right – if I want to have my draft together in a year’s time, that’s what I need to do! Two things I can do right now include writing a 200 word outline (like the one in Becker, p53) – to ‘lay out the map of the trip the reader will be taken on’, and drawing up a contents page. A quick flick through Becker’s How to Start and Finish Your Thesis reminded that while there is no right way to write your thesis, the most important thing is just to get started with the drafting. It’s not going to be right at first, and the redrafting is going to take plenty of time. I think I’ll try Becker’s freewriting technique before the outline – just spew all my ideas down and see what’s there and how they fit together (or not).

I’m very conscious that I said I would have a first draft of a literature review ready by the end of April (ok, let’s say the start of May), so some micro-planning and calendar work is in order here. If I assume that this will constitute two chapters – one on the idea of the university and the other on conversation and ideological conflict – that’s 1000 words a week, from now. So I’m going to commit to that.

Becker summarises Stinchcombe’s six uses of the literature, including sourcing fundamental ideas (which should be clear before I start writing), locating solidarity between people in a field, exemplifying of well-organised and aesthetically pleasing work, and identifying yourself with a particular group or tribe. I’ve got so much on the reading pile at the moment and I probably need to stop buying books for now if at all possible, and split up my book-wading with a few articles. Maybe some empirical work similar to mine? I’ll put some feelers out.

Becker’s main advice regarding the use of literature is to say something new while connecting what I say to what’s already been said. I’ve picked a good topic in this respect I think – the Idea of the University is a topic that people have enjoyed talking about for years, and one that is constantly in flux, and particularly so at the moment. ‘Use the literature, don’t let it use you’, is a great mantra.

Actually – Becker’s example of the Waller quote about the original conflict of desires between teacher and pupil also piqued my interest. Is there an original conflict of desire between the student and the university? Both want to survive; for the student this means their happiness and future prosperity. But for the university these ‘ends’ of the students’ – through NSS and DLHE – may not be shared as ends but perhaps viewed as simply means to achieve survival and preservation of the organisation as it is (staff roles, working practices, etc). That might be an important insight.

I like Becker’s analogy of making a piece of furniture and leaving spaces for the bits you know you can get ready-made – drawer handles, turned legs, etc – ideas you can quote and summarise. It’s still a table you made despite some of the parts having been prefabricated.

I also think his point is important about paying too much attention to the literature and allowing it to deform the argument you want to make – ‘what you want to say has a certain logic that flows from the chain of choices you made as you did the work’. I think this is relevant to me as I suspect I am seeking a different kind of answer to the dominant approach to interrogating the idea of the university. My argument will make sense on its own terms, not if I try to fit it into the terms of the dominant approach. I *will* be somewhat at a disadvantage; my approach may seem strange and unreasonable – so I will need to explain why I haven’t asked those questions and got those answers.

So… next steps:

• Purchase book rest for desk (Done! Arrives tomorrow)
• Freewrite fundamental ideas
• Draft outline
• Draft contents page
• Literature-focused chapters: Assemble ‘prefabricated parts’ and check for gaps
• 1000 words by 5 March!

Clark, J. O., and Jackson, L. 2017. Ideology in the Academy: The Entrepreneur and Neoliberal Higher Education. Paper presented at PESGB London, Institute of Education, 15 February.

In his 2008 book The Craftsman, Richard Sennett writes about the decline of craft in the age of capitalism. The imperative for the young creative to find a niche leaves no time for the slow learning and habit required for craft acquisition, and the pursuit of profit erodes the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

Clark and Jackson’s view appears to correspond with Sennett, who writes that ‘good craftmanship implies socialism’ (2008, p288). Their critique of neoliberalism is founded on its status as a political ideology (with assumptions, beliefs and displacements that oppress the ‘other’). As socialism is also an ideology, I decided to ask them about that. I was surprised to receive a very short answer – that some ideologies are clearly better than others, and socialism is, of course, a better ideology than neoliberalism. Maybe I’m not as confident as I thought I was at arguing at these things. I just said, ‘okaaay…’ and left someone else (Richard, as it happens, who thankfully saw what I was getting at) to pick up the baton. What I wanted – and expected – was for them to explain what they mean by one ideology being ‘better’ than another, and to acknowledge that such a response might undermine their critique (e.g. ideology as oppression). I imagine all those present at the seminar were in favour of a more equitable society, but I think many of us would have been keen to chew over a philosophical rationale for that. If socialism really is a ‘better’ ideology than neoliberalism, how come neoliberalism is so clearly winning? It’s a bit like someone maintaining that Manchester United is a ‘better’ team than Accrington Stanley when they’ve never won a single game against them (which happens to be true – they’ve drawn every time – but possibly a bad example).

Sennett (in Gielen & De Bruyne’s excellent 2012 book Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm) distinguishes between art as individual self-expression and craft as a collective endeavour, and says that in recent decades art schools have privileged the former at the expense of the latter. Presumably this is related to the academicisation of art schools and subsequent changes to assessment practices, which have become more granular, criterion-based and individualised.

Collective endeavour cannot be neglected in the performing arts; music, theatre and dance are intrinsically collective and collaborative. Even solo performances generally rely on collaboration and interpretation between performer and composer, author or choreographer. This characteristic lead us to question how entrepreneurship is appropriate or even relevant to performing arts education.

I think we need to leave aside the question of whether entrepreneurship should be taught until we’ve agreed on what entrepreneurial skills are, and whether they can be taught. I’m not an expert on entrepreneurship, but to me it seems more like a set of attitudes – to seek profit, to enjoy responding and adapting to a market environment, and to find satisfaction in a volatile and uncertain life.

I think there is a widely-held preconception that those who study art at university don’t tend to do so well in the world of work, but that of course depends on your measure. The OECD lifetime earnings stats indicate that art & design subjects don’t lead to high salaries, but UAL doesn’t do badly with regard to post-study employment; we have positive flags in the TEF metrics for the percentage of our graduates in employment generally, and in highly-skilled employment. Of course, that just means we do better than expected (I’m imagining that creative subjects would have lower benchmarks)… so, who knows. At the end of the day, in spite of fees and underfunding (and low NSS scores), arts-specialist institutions are surviving, and (more importantly?) our graduates are surviving too.

So, my question is, what is the problem that entrepreneurship and employability education is trying to solve? Are we, as a society, lacking suitable skilled individuals in the creative and performance arts? Or is it a matter of creating a more level playing field; ensuring that tacit knowledge and skills are made explicit to everyone (not just the rich, white males who make up the vast majority of those self-identifying as ‘entrepreneurs’).

And – wouldn’t it be more useful (and more exciting), to look at this issue as art presenting a challenge to educational bureaucracy, rather than the other way around? The language used in measures like the NSS certainly exerts pressure on arts courses to become less like arts courses; steering course organisation, management, curriculum and assessment practices in directions that may not be appropriate to the discipline. So, perhaps we need to ease off on the slavish chasing of metrics and redirect our energies into creating a strong narrative around what arts education is and why it is good. But maybe that’s exactly what the metric-plus-narrative approach to the TEF has enabled us to do? I guess we wait and see…

I had a great chat with David on Friday about my literature review, through which I want to build a strong bridge between my methodology (conversation) and the subject matter (aims/purpose of higher education). He suggested a few things to read, including a chapter about Heidegger and higher education, some more Gadamer, and a couple of writers on character education. He also encouraged me to take Ron Barnett up on his offer of a chat, and – in light of my recent interest in Haidt’s Moral Foundations theory – put me in touch with another doctoral student – Oliver Bridge – who is doing his thesis on philosophy and moral psychology.

I fully intended to dig out my SCONUL card and pick up Michael Peters’ Heidegger, Education and Modernity from the IoE library, but then I got paid and caved in to the call of amazon. I now have two of Peters’ books arriving next week, along with a voice recorder (plus windjammer!) for my conversations. The Gadamer translation and its accompanying paper was easy to find online, and it was straightforward to set up meetings with Ron and Oliver – I’ll write about those later.

So – more Gadamer…

Gadamer, H-G, 2001. Education is Self-Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 35 (4) p.529-538, and:

Cleary, J., and Hogan, P. 2001. The Reciprocal Character of Self-Education: Introductory Comments on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Address, Education is Self-Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 35 (4) p.520-527

The first item is a translation (by Hogan and Cleary) of an address Gadamer made in 1999 in the lead-up to his 100th birthday. The essence of the address is that conversation is essential for human flourishing.

One very important point he makes – relevant for my thesis and life in general I guess – is how language pre-forms our thoughts. The norms and presuppositions of our native language, and the options we select within that, affect how we think and feel. I first encountered this idea many years ago when studying REBT to combat depression, and I’ve become very conscious of it recently because of what I’ve been reading (on conversation, conflict talk, moral psychology etc), and other events and influences in my life. For example, I recently started encouraging my partner to try not to swear quite so much, because I think that finding gentler, more positive ways of talking to yourself and others can transform a situation. That’s slightly different to what Gadamer meant, I think, but relevant.

I found the following sentence of Gadamer’s particularly intriguing: ‘only through conversation does language fulfill itself’ (p535). I guess some might argue there are many great works (the songs of Bob Dylan, for example) that stand alone as one-way messages that fulfill language, and in that sense I’m not certain what ‘counts’ as conversation. But it’s a beautifully poetic sentence, and it draws together a lot of strands. Philosophy *is* a conversation. Teaching *is* a conversation. Higher education *is* a conversation…etc.

When Gadamer made this address in 1999, he saw the telephone as a threat, and television as of no benefit whatsoever. He made no direct reference to the internet, which was still in its infancy, only saying ‘many new things now confront us’ (p536), and emphasising that we must learn to deal with these new methods of communication and the threat they pose. Fewer than than twenty years later and we consider a good old-fashioned chat on the telephone to be a relatively high quality interaction. I wonder what Gadamer would think of this if he were alive today. I’m almost glad for him that he isn’t, but if he was, no doubt he’d be pushing this idea harder than ever – that ‘the humane capabilities are the ones to stress if one is to educate and to cultivate oneself… [and to] survive without damage from the progress of technology and technicity’ (p537). This self-education and cultivation is what the Germans call Bildung – and it’s illustrative that the Germans have a word for it and we don’t, like the British don’t like to acknowledge its existence as a thing (as with Kummerspeck – the German word for the weight gained from emotional overeating).

Reflecting on the essence of Gadamer’s address, I realised that this is what motivated me to start attending the Wednesday evening Philosophy of Education seminars at the IoE. I wanted to talk with other people who wanted to talk – to really talk with the primary intention of educating and cultivating ourselves. I’m not saying it’s impossible to educate yourself on Twitter, but face-to-face conversation has certain rules and traditions that yield very different results; these have to do with exchange, response, equality of contribution, how interactions begin and how they end, etc. What I really like about the relationships I’m building at the IoE is that they are almost entirely conducted face-to-face. 

Gadamer describes his experience of going to university during the first war – with a ‘circle of cultivated and nice girls’ who – it appears – got him into reading Theodor Lessing and the great Russian, Scandinavian and Dutch novels. Similarly, through the IoE group I’ve been lent books and given film recommendations, and I’m starting to appreciate things that I didn’t think I liked before. 

My partner often suggests books (fiction) he wants me to read; partly because he thinks I’d enjoy them and also because he wants us to talks about them together. Some of them I’ve loved (Pullman, Asimov), others not so much, and he’s found it hard seeing me avidly reading things that other people have recommended. It’s caused a fair amount of tension between us, especially when the relevance to my thesis seems tangential, and I understand why; reading something that resonates with someone else is a great way of getting inside their heads (an imperative that tends to loses its urgency with someone who you already know inside out). Reading between the lines I guess that’s what was going on with the young Gadamer and his female fellow students, and I certainly think that this is the kind of thing Gadamer means by being-with-one-another as learners; the self-education of seeking-out and getting-to-know the people with the interesting experiences and the interesting questions who are going to challenge my ideas and introduce me to new perspectives. 

I’ll finish with one of the key points Hogan and Cleary took from Gadamer’s address, because it really does capture the essence of what I’m aiming to do with my thesis, and explains the approach I’m taking:

‘The self-critical venturing of different perspectives provides a more promising path in the search for truth than does any traditional epistemological quest for certainty.’

I have a stack of books on my shelf at home bemoaning the marketisation of higher education and its transformation from public good to private investment. They are well-argued and persuasive, and new ones seem to be published every month. I want to try something different; I want to find out what happens when people who think differently come to a dialogue seeking the truth. I’m bored of the polemic already; I’m surprised it’s not bored of itself.

Lythgoe, E. 2011. Paul Ricoeur: Thinker of historical testimony. Analecta Hermeneutica (3), p1-16.

At my last supervision, Ian suggested I might find Paul Ricoeur’s definition of ‘testimony’ to be relevant to my thesis on Conversation and the Idea of the University.

I think… it kind of is… and it kind of isn’t. If any of it is, it would be his writings from the 80s, where he describes testimony as a ‘natural, dialogical institution’, with a moral constituent, and reference to the future as well as the past. I guess what Ian was thinking is that my conversations with participants are going to generate a form of testimony; a ‘witnessing of’ the university. My participants may also have clear views themselves about what and how universities should be, and their testimony may be presented as evidence to support those views – either implicitly or explicitly.

The trouble is, Ricoeur changed his mind about what he means by testimony; his later works seemed to distance the prophetic or vocative aspects – the future constitutent – from the concept, and so much of this work is less obviously relevant to my thesis. My participants’ views and imaginations of the University as it is now and as it could or should be in the future are of more direct interest to me and my thesis than their personal experiences of it.

Of course, I don’t know for sure what’s going to come out of the conversations I have. It might well be that for many participants their own personal experiences will have informed their idea of the University and they feature heavily in our conversations; it’s a lot easier for me to see the relevance of the concept of ‘testimony’ in this sense. But does Ricoeur’s thinking add anything of value for me? I’m not sure.

Overall, what I got from reading Ricoeur on testimony is that it is a slippery concept, and perhaps yet another example of how we get caught up in language and tie ourselves in pointless knots. I’m reminded yet again of Huxley’s (1954, p47) call for us to learn ‘to look at the world directly’ rather than through the ‘half-opaque medium of concepts’, and Watts’ (1971) warning not to ‘confuse that system of symbols with the world itself’. That’s what psychedelics do for you I guess.

On 25 January I popped along to the annual Drapers’ Lecture at QMUL to hear Dr Jo Beall, Director of Education and Society at the British Council, talk about ‘Intellectual Property: Rights, Risks and Rebellions in International Higher Education‘.  I was hoping it wouldn’t actually be about IP (copyright etc… yawn), and it wasn’t… I think the two nerds in front of me were pretty disappointed. In asking ‘whose property are international scholars?’ we question the implications of the international movement of students and researchers for the creation of knowledge, national economies, and competition between nations and institutions for the brightest and best minds. We take dominant ideas about the purpose of universities and the aim of higher education, and tie them in knots.

The benefits of knowledge creation act on many levels below the big picture of development and progress. Individual researchers gain prestige, universities (through the REF) and research centres benefit through funding awards. These benefits appear to increase when we collaborate internationally. Nobel prize winners tend to be internationally mobile, and papers with authors from more than one country tend to get more citations (correlations not causation, obvs). 47% of UK doctoral students are international. The UK has always ranked highly in the so-called knowledge economy; we may have less than 1% of the world’s population but we produce 16% of the most cited papers (it helps that we speak and write in English, of course). But we’re definitely not resting on our laurels or thinking about giving someone else a turn… the competition is still very much on. Countries leading with us on research impact include the US, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden. Leading on publication volume are our four top collaborative research partners – the US, Germany, France, and Italy – so it will be interesting to see the impact of our exit from the EU.  Emerging contenders in the research arena correspond with the ‘BRIC’ group of countries at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development: China, Malaysia, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

Worldwide, demand for tertiary level education tends to be linked to demographics; high population growth, youth ‘bulges’ and a low supply are obvious factors.  International student growth in the UK is still quite far behind the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and Germany, and the loss of the UK post-study visa is thought to have limited the diversity of our international intake. There has been a marked decrease in the number of students coming from India, for example. A lot of our student ‘flow’ comes from Europe, so Brexit will impact here as well. International student mobility is strongly correlated with historic and cultural links; if we already trade goods with a country, we tend to trade students with them too.

The British Council has been doing some research on transnational education and its impact on individuals and educational systems. Transnational education often involves collaborative partnerships between HEIs in different countries, ‘flying faculty’, offshore campuses, online learning and so on, usually with the aim of providing a ‘quality’ education at a lower cost (drawing on the reputation and teaching methods of the host institution) plus cultural and/or language benefits. Transnational education places questions of public/private and civil engagement in a yet another different light, and has prompted criticisms of commercialisation and commodification. Ultimately, countries tend to prefer long-term partnerships that assist them in developing their own HE system.

One interesting question to discuss around international teaching and learning is: What do we think we are exporting? And what should we be exporting? ‘Should’ questions are conditional, of course – if we want to achieve X, what should we be exporting? Similarly, if we want to achieve X, should we continue to expand higher education? It’s the X that I find intriguing and incredibly elusive. Hence my thesis.