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Market values dominate sector
2 July 2009
Report says new universities are constrained by the priorities of business, writes Melanie Newman
The role of universities in turning undergraduates into critical thinkers is being undermined by marketisation, academics have warned.
Intellectual development is still a priority of the elite universities, says the paper in the journal Teaching in Higher Education.
However, new universities' links to business via vocational courses and industry placements make them more likely to frame pedagogy purely in business terms, it adds.
Rather than transforming their students into critical scholars, these institutions are simply producing "a more confident and content mass who remain a willing workforce".
"Parts of British higher education are pedagogically constrained by the marketisation that has accompanied its expansion," say Mike Molesworth, Elizabeth Nixon and Richard Scullion, the authors of the report and members of Bournemouth University's Media School.
Although the sector should critically reflect on the market economy beyond campus, the paper suggests that "the emerging role" of some institutions is to "fix in students an unquestioning acceptance of the primacy of consumer desires".
The authors criticise the emphasis some universities place on industry placements, which they say confirms the view of a degree as a means to a job.
They also point out that institutions offering vocational courses as a route into some industries are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.
"Students tend to reject deep reflection on vocational subjects, especially those rooted in consumer culture, such as public relations, marketing or advertising ... A student committed to such work ... may experience unpleasant dissonance where education facilitates critical reflection on consumer culture.
"Having obtained money from consumer students on the basis of a desire for an attractive job, a curriculum must not undermine the 'done deal'."
The authors argue that institutions that treat specialist knowledge as a commodity risk undermining themselves in a world in which knowledge is shared more openly. Critiquing facts is more important than acquiring them, the academics say.
"If the value of facts is reduced and complex learning is unattractive, what is left to be sold is the passport of the degree certificate," the paper adds.
"Marketised education is not even an effective preparation for the workplace because it may not provide the imaginative and critical graduates who are able to deal with technological and societal change, let alone instigate changes themselves."
Higher education's commodification is being driven from the top, the authors say, pointing to Bournemouth's "Get a better job, get a masters" campaign as an example. Students themselves are playing ball, arriving at university with the desire for a 2:1 "framed primarily by its subsequent bargaining power in the job market", they add.
The paper, "Having, being and higher education: the marketisation of the university and the transformation of the student into consumer", says: "Tutors must critically reflect on their role in maintaining education as personal transformation."
melanie.newman@tsleducation.com.
Readers' comments
This entire problem could be solved by reverting back to polytechnics. Let the majority of Post '92 institutions become polytechnics again, and let them provide pieces of paper for a price -- a ticket that gets punched for merely breathing the air and perhaps regurgitating uncritically a few selected facts. Let the pre-92 universities and certain select post '92s continue to provide quality reflective learning. After all we need both planners and executers for our future. I think you can probably figure out which will produce which.
This entire problem could be solved by reverting back to polytechnics. Let the majority of Post '92 institutions become polytechnics again, and let them provide pieces of paper for a price -- a ticket that gets punched for merely breathing the air and perhaps regurgitating uncritically a few selected facts. Let the pre-92 universities and certain select post '92s continue to provide quality reflective learning. After all we need both planners and executers for our future. I think you can probably figure out which will produce which.
Looking at the shambolic states of London Met and Leeds Met as cases in point of failed institutions which started calling themselves universities thanks to the stupid act of Major's govt, I endorse your view about these so called universities reverting back to Poly status , shrinking in the proces and recruiting locally. Currently the industry cannot find power engineers, electronic engineers and even software engineers who can work with legacy systems where COBOL expertise is needed ( which the old polys supplied and we were exporting these skilled software people to Europe in 1980s and 90s). Now they are imported from India on work permits or software system maintenance outsourced to India. Instead of these skills the new universities are churning out trendy business studies, business information systems graduates without the hard knowledge of the real business needs and development aspects and plethora of Java programmers who have no knowledge of how the real world systems work. These can be easily be the growth areas of newly reverted polys. Those who taught in both pre and post-92 universities know that the post-92s ape the pre-92s without the student potential base. What a waste? But the post-92s would not listen and the work permits would not shrink.
While the article's point about critical thinking & liberal education is interesting, the comments so far smack much more of right-wing poly-bashing. As a post-92 lecturer in a business school, who engages in the field of critical management studies, I deliberately build courses which aim to challenge & engage in critical reflection, aided by the kind of personal engagement pre-92's increasingly reserve for research students. The fact that some students reject this at first, and sometimes struggle, makes the subsequent discussions that more engaging, and their transformational achievements that much more rewarding.
The real problem is that developing and exercising critical intellectual skills is intensive and expensive, and demands a high level of personal attention, which is why - outside of Oxford and Cambridge - it tends to be found mainly in the problem-based learning curricula of the better medical schools. High volume student throughput is incompatible with high levels of personal attention, and this is drive by policy not the market. Highly marketised systems (the US for example) are able to deliver a fair bit of personal attention and critical skills teaching. In the British system, personal attention is by and large delegated to people who don't do much research. I would have been glad to have been an undergraduate at some of the pre-92 Polys. Portsmouth, Lanchester, Bristol or South Bank were all great, and Portsmouth has managed to remain so.
The exercise of good critical thinking skills means not merely being able to evaluate the worth of someone else's argument, but to lay out your own arguments in a clear fashion, stating any assumptions, the premises, and the inferential steps leading to conclusions. In this vein, it would be easier to take Howard Fredrics "arguments" (here and elsewhere) more seriously if they weren't always couched in such sarcasm and bile. This is sad, because it is possible to make a genuine case for the polytechnic system (not that I buy into it). But Fredric's suggestion fails from the outset because he has already written off most new universities/would-be Polys. Unfortunately, people often tend to be impressed by weak arguments that play to their existing prejudices, so I'm sure many new-Uni-bashers will consider Dr Fredrics' "argument" to be a brilliant gem. But it's not. In fact, his final statement is utterly shameful: "After all we need both planners and executers for our future. I think you can probably figure out which [type of institution] will produce which". I'm happy to agree that the mean academic performance of pre-92 students is higher than that of post-92 students; but in both cases there is a distribution. There will be plenty of old uni students who will never be the "planners and executers" of the future; likewise, there will be a high-performing group of students in post-92s who are capable of fulfilling this role. You can see that this is the case by looking at the lists of alumni of any institutions. However, Dr Fredrics wants to institute a class-based system, a kind of educational apartheid in which everyone knows their place, the place for new university students being cannon fodder for industry and the place for old university students their CEOs or MPs. Why is he so bitter?