Nothing typifies the descent of Western Society into the abyss of market capitalism so much as the way higher education has been debased.
No longer institutions of learning and research, they are only to be valued on their ability to churn out "employment ready" students and to do research in partnership with the corporate sector that can subsequently be commercialised.
A wonderful report in the London Review of Books on a UK White Paper (Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System) provides a delicious catalogue of the process of this change.
The contribution has one of the best descriptions of the process by which market capitalism colonised public policy, writing;
Since perhaps the 1970s, certainly the 1980s, official discourse has become increasingly colonised by an economistic idiom, which is derived not strictly from economic theory proper, but rather from the language of management schools, business consultants and financial journalism. British society has been subject to a deliberate campaign, initiated in free-market think tanks in the 1960s and 1970s and pushed strongly by business leaders and right-wing commentators ever since, to elevate the status of business and commerce and to make ‘contributing to economic growth’ the overriding goal of a whole swathe of social, cultural and intellectual activities which had previously been understood and valued in other terms. Such a campaign would not have been successful, of course, had it not been working with the grain of other changes in British society and the wider world. Very broadly speaking, the extension of democratic and egalitarian social attitudes has been accompanied by the growth of a kind of consumerist relativism. The claim that one activity is inherently of greater value or importance than another comes to be pilloried as ‘elitism’. Arguments are downgraded to ‘opinions’: all opinions are equally valuable (or valueless), so the only agreed criterion is what people say they think they want, and the only value with any indefeasible standing is ‘value for money’. Government documents issued in the last 20 years or so are immediately identifiable by the presence of such buzz phrases as ‘it is essential to sustain economic growth and maintain Britain’s global competitiveness,’ ‘consumers must have a choice of services,’ ‘competition will drive up quality’ and so on.
Much later in the report it plucks an example of what our own Don Watson has dubbed "management speak";
Beyond the warped ingenuity of these Heath Robinson schemes to force ‘free’ competition to happen in closely controlled circumstances, such interest as the White Paper possesses may lie chiefly in its providing a handy compendium of current officialese, a sottisier of econobabble. One of the most revealing features of its prose is the way the tense that might be called the mission-statement present is used to disguise implausible non sequiturs as universally acknowledged general truths. Here is one mantra, repeated in similar terms at several points: ‘Putting financial power into the hands of learners makes student choice meaningful.’ Part of the brilliance of the semantic reversals at the heart of such Newspeak lies in the simple transposition of negative to positive. After all, ‘putting financial power into the hands of learners’ means ‘making them pay for something they used to get as of right’. So forcing you to pay for something enhances your power. And then the empty, relationship-counselling cadence of the assertion that this ‘makes student choice meaningful’. Translation: ‘If you choose something because you care about it and hope it will extend your human capacities it will have no significance for you, but if you are paying for it then you will scratch people’s eyes out to get what you’re entitled to.’ No paying, no meaning. After all, why else would anyone do anything?
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Showing posts with label Higher Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Higher Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Academic Journals
A good simple piece on academic journals in The Conversation today.
I've not heard the idea of authors being charged high fees, but certainly readers are. I'm going to assume the reality is about the cost to access not the cost to be published.
Most interesting observation is the extent to which journal publishing has become centralised among a small number of publishing houses. Interestingly the electronic distribution model feeds this development. It is easy for a library to subscribe to journals that arrive in the mail and get shelved. It is far harder to implement the systems interconnection processes and associated financial models to allow electronic publishing.
Consequently electronic journals favour centralisation - unlike the standard theory of e-commerce.
The threat to the publishing houses comes from the fact that freed of any print need, an e-journal can become totally public access. However, they are still not free to produce - to be reputable they need editing and funding.
The article credits Joseph Stiglitz as identifying knowledge as a public good. What is missed in this is the role knowledge plays ion the "new growth theory". That is, that economic growth all comes from the spill-overs of R&D not its private capture.
A useful strategy for the Australian Government might just be to start funding on-line only, open access journals in a number of disciplines. Existing high profile Australian Journals could benefit from a new economic model. After all, what makes an article "sing" is the amount it is cited. To be cited it needs to be accessible.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
I've not heard the idea of authors being charged high fees, but certainly readers are. I'm going to assume the reality is about the cost to access not the cost to be published.
Most interesting observation is the extent to which journal publishing has become centralised among a small number of publishing houses. Interestingly the electronic distribution model feeds this development. It is easy for a library to subscribe to journals that arrive in the mail and get shelved. It is far harder to implement the systems interconnection processes and associated financial models to allow electronic publishing.
Consequently electronic journals favour centralisation - unlike the standard theory of e-commerce.
The threat to the publishing houses comes from the fact that freed of any print need, an e-journal can become totally public access. However, they are still not free to produce - to be reputable they need editing and funding.
The article credits Joseph Stiglitz as identifying knowledge as a public good. What is missed in this is the role knowledge plays ion the "new growth theory". That is, that economic growth all comes from the spill-overs of R&D not its private capture.
A useful strategy for the Australian Government might just be to start funding on-line only, open access journals in a number of disciplines. Existing high profile Australian Journals could benefit from a new economic model. After all, what makes an article "sing" is the amount it is cited. To be cited it needs to be accessible.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Higher Ed in Oz
The Australian Higher Education sector ultimately continues to be in dramatic turmoil. This is really nothing new. The system has undergone ongoing change since the original expansion by Menzies, the initial abolition of fees by Whitlam, the Dawkins reforms of a unitary higher ed system and then HECS ending with the strangulation under Howard, driving Universities to other income sources (primarily fee paying international and postgrad students) and depriving student bodies of compulsory levies.
On the research side there has been an ongoing centralisation of research funding under both the ARC and the NH&MRC, that not only centralises the dispensation of funds but also establishes "rankings" for journals to assess the worthiness of published papers. The latter has seen various groups I'm involved with (the TJA and heterodox economists) lobbying on getting the journals they are associated with higher up the rankings. Meanwhile the funding process draws more and more universities together into cataclysms otherwise known as Cooperative Research Centres.
The latest round of stories just today tells us that the collapse in inbound overseas student numbers threatens University budgets, that postgradsuate coursework students don't get value for money and that young researchers want careers in academe.
The collapse in international students is firstly a classical problem of exposure of export industries to currency fluctuations, but also a response to the tightening of immigration laws. It is the sort of thing prudent business management includes in the risk profile of the business. But at the same time the Australian universities should consider how they have been treating their own brands. Not one has really pursued the idea of the Australian degree being "prestigious". They have also wasted huge amounts in competing domestically - why does almost every university have a "campus" somewhere in the CBD of Sydney?
A lot of the latter has been the proliferation of ever more esoteric Masters by coursework, much of which would be better administered within professions rather than at Universities. My parents graduated with Diplomas of Dermatological Medicine from USyd but that has been replaced by the Fellowship of the Australasian College of Dermatologists. Academic studies suggest that MBAs now have a negative NPV as an investment.
Finally, the young Wannabe academics say there aren't enough jobs and the salary is uncompetitive. My understanding is that the whole research funding mix also now means young academics bear all the teaching responsibility and the profs do the research. It is a disastrous outcome for all.
A lot of the latter is the consequence of the research funding model. Only the stars get funded. It is very hard to do any research of your own to make a name in Australia.
The consequence is that while we export education we perpetually try to import skilled workers. This isn't a TAFE/apprenticeship problem, as "Recent patterns of job creation underscore why it is so important that more young Australians be given the opportunity to get a degree. Between 2000 and 2009, nearly one-third of total job growth in Australia was in occupations classified as professional."
The economics has always been pretty simple, there is an externality in education. The social benefit of education is greater than the private benefit of education - there are spillovers of the benefit. The same is true of research. Both need to be better funded and funded under a model that encourages Universities to be responsible for their own decision making, and to spend more time building their brands by performance rather than by their success in form-filling or "marketing".
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
On the research side there has been an ongoing centralisation of research funding under both the ARC and the NH&MRC, that not only centralises the dispensation of funds but also establishes "rankings" for journals to assess the worthiness of published papers. The latter has seen various groups I'm involved with (the TJA and heterodox economists) lobbying on getting the journals they are associated with higher up the rankings. Meanwhile the funding process draws more and more universities together into cataclysms otherwise known as Cooperative Research Centres.
The latest round of stories just today tells us that the collapse in inbound overseas student numbers threatens University budgets, that postgradsuate coursework students don't get value for money and that young researchers want careers in academe.
The collapse in international students is firstly a classical problem of exposure of export industries to currency fluctuations, but also a response to the tightening of immigration laws. It is the sort of thing prudent business management includes in the risk profile of the business. But at the same time the Australian universities should consider how they have been treating their own brands. Not one has really pursued the idea of the Australian degree being "prestigious". They have also wasted huge amounts in competing domestically - why does almost every university have a "campus" somewhere in the CBD of Sydney?
A lot of the latter has been the proliferation of ever more esoteric Masters by coursework, much of which would be better administered within professions rather than at Universities. My parents graduated with Diplomas of Dermatological Medicine from USyd but that has been replaced by the Fellowship of the Australasian College of Dermatologists. Academic studies suggest that MBAs now have a negative NPV as an investment.
Finally, the young Wannabe academics say there aren't enough jobs and the salary is uncompetitive. My understanding is that the whole research funding mix also now means young academics bear all the teaching responsibility and the profs do the research. It is a disastrous outcome for all.
A lot of the latter is the consequence of the research funding model. Only the stars get funded. It is very hard to do any research of your own to make a name in Australia.
The consequence is that while we export education we perpetually try to import skilled workers. This isn't a TAFE/apprenticeship problem, as "Recent patterns of job creation underscore why it is so important that more young Australians be given the opportunity to get a degree. Between 2000 and 2009, nearly one-third of total job growth in Australia was in occupations classified as professional."
The economics has always been pretty simple, there is an externality in education. The social benefit of education is greater than the private benefit of education - there are spillovers of the benefit. The same is true of research. Both need to be better funded and funded under a model that encourages Universities to be responsible for their own decision making, and to spend more time building their brands by performance rather than by their success in form-filling or "marketing".
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
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