Tag Archives: higher education

The utility of the economic lexicon in HE

Higher education, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

The utility of the economic lexicon in HE

This post is prompted by a reading of Philip Roscoe’s publication, ‘I spend therefore I am: the  true cost of economics’ (2014) Viking

Roscoe’s wistful and entertaining appraisal of the discipline that is economics provides another useful reference point in my quest to go beyond the technical instruments of capital in my doctoral research analysis. In a previous post entitled, ‘Conviviality with a cause’ I observe Bev Skeggs’ assertion that as sociologists we have a duty not to reproduce the logic of capital in everything we analyse. In applying the logic of capital we convert everything into commodity. We become the subject of capital and we internalise its imperatives. The notion of a commodity or commodification in this context merits closer examination.

Roscoe’s wide-ranging treatise which includes a section on, ‘Lists, rankings and the commodification of education’ highlights the malignant legacy of the Chicago School of Economics and in particular, Becker’s theory of human capital which has helped to, ‘reinforce a myopic understanding of the point and purpose of education.’ Roscoe depressingly describes the ‘subtle repositioning’ of education as, ‘some kind of experiential commodity, like a safari or an adventure day in a hot-air balloon.’

In my post entitled, ‘The marketisation marvel in higher education’, I bemoan the existence of a discourse and managerial structure in higher education that is dominated by enterprise and an emulation of the business world although I do assert that universities are still distinguishable from private sector companies. Roscoe it seems, is less optimistic as he contemplates the commodification of university education which has recast students as customers who, according to Roscoe, do not see that buying a tin of beans from the supermarket is a profoundly different transaction from embarking upon a process of education that requires them to participate, ‘to the limits of their ability, imagination and emotional reserve.’ He echoes Mary Beard when he calls for dissatisfied students who are unsettled by what they have learned and, ‘driven to a critical examination of their preconceptions.’

Has higher education become a commodity? Is it now ‘fungible’ (a term deployed by Roscoe); something that is freely traded; one degree or university being indistinguishable from the next with the ‘student experience’ being the differential?

What other signs are there of commodification in higher education?

At the Engage 2013 Conference in Bristol, Professor Ella Ritchie, Deputy Vice-Chancellor with specific responsibility for Engagement and Internationalisation (University of Newcastle), warned that we were in danger of treating university-community engagement as a commodity. And in my post entitled, ‘Why extreme volunteering is too extreme’, I express concern about the industry that has of late emerged around student volunteering or ‘employability’ as it is called these days and suggest that we are in danger of commodifying the very act of student volunteering.

So, does our use of terms and notions such as ‘capital’ and ‘commodity’ REALLY restrict our ability to critically reflect on these important issues? It seems to me that utilising the concept of commodification in this context actually galvanises the sort of reflection that is so badly needed in higher education today on many levels.

It is sometimes necessary to administer a little jolt!

Roscoe wants us to look beyond the ‘machinery of calculation’; beyond the ‘lists, rankings, scores, tabulations and algorithms that populate our lives’ and says that humans are, ‘distinctive because we can treat others as persons, distinctive in our ability to empathize with, commit to and understand one another, and to build relationships that are strong and mutually nourishing.’

But Roscoe does NOT want us to abandon economics altogether. Instead, he wants us to ‘occupy’ economics; make economics subservient to a higher social and democratic vision.

And why not; the economic lexicon does have its uses.

References:

Bev Skeggs, ‘Values beyond value? Is anything beyond the logic of capital?’

2013 BJS Annual Public Lecture, given at the London School of Economics on 17th October 2013 –

http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=2057

 

The marketisation marvel in higher education

Higher education, , , , , , ,

The marketisation marvel in higher education

This is the first of two posts prompted by a reading of Colin Rochester’s publication ‘Rediscovering Voluntary Action:  The Beat of a Different Drum’ (2013) Palgrave Macmillan

After 45 years of working with and writing about, volunteers and voluntary organisations, Rochester is better qualified than most to stimulate and inform a debate about the notion of a ‘invented’ unified voluntary and community sector in the UK; to observe the nature of the relationship between government and this sector as it takes on the ‘mainstream’ delivery of state services; to revise the typology of voluntary action; and to call for a radical revision of the research agenda in this field.  My second post will be about voluntary action and the research agenda.

Rochester’s seminal work is published against the background of the rise and rise of a neo-liberal discourse that has seeped into every aspect of our lives.  It is a refreshing and timely addition to the congregation that is calling for a different approach to how we understand what it is to be a person in the western world; an approach that enables us to acknowledge and embrace expression as a form of sociality and being.

The beginning of the neo-liberal agenda in this country, in this context, is marked as the election of the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 which Rochester sees as a milestone, alongside 1945; a marker of a new phase of political and social history.  As many have observed elsewhere, this agenda continued to thrive through the New Labour administrations and we now have a new multi-party consensus about the, ‘parameters and driving forces of public and social policy’.  Rochester declares that the rise of neo-liberalism has led to the permeation of voluntary organisations and volunteering by the values and norms of the market as part of a profound and far-reaching change in the political culture, not only of the UK but also of much of the World.

No doubt Rochester would agree that these market values and norms have pervaded many domains of our existence; personal and professional.  The marketisation of higher education, for example, observed daily by those of us who work in the sector, gained impetus this month with the publication of the OFT Call for Information on Higher Education in England.  In response to the OFT findings, Paul Clarke (Director of Policy at Universities UK), acknowledges that in the opinion of the OFT, some higher education structures and practices, ‘belong to an era that has now passed.’  The parallels between Rochester’s analysis of the voluntary & community sector and what is happening in higher education today are striking.

According to Rochester, the ‘invention’ of a unified voluntary sector in Britain facilitated the casting of voluntary sector organisations in a more central role on the stage of social policy in the delivery of state services.  He describes the promotion of a unified voluntary sector as a ‘massive sleight of hand’, whereby the organisational norms of bureaucracy and the culture and practices of the private sector has ensured that the real beneficiaries of this greater role in the provision of state services are the top two percent of voluntary agencies including NCVO and ACEVO, and those in government bent on privatising public services.  He says that Government has been able to implement its policies under the cloak of ‘public esteem for charities’ and the argument that voluntary organisations have distinctive characteristics which given them ‘unique’ advantages over statutory bureaucracies.

Rochester questions these ‘distinctive’ characteristics as he observes the increasing homogenisation of the voluntary and community sector.  He is not referring to all voluntary organisations but the small minority that have been trusted with this new role of providing state services.  He says they are unrepresentative and that they have, ‘more in common with the agencies they have supplanted than they have with the bulk of the organisations that comprise the sector and provide the evidence for the characteristics featured in government rhetoric.’

My experience of working as a manager in the public and voluntary sectors concurs with Rochester’s observations.  Indeed, as a boundary-crosser, moving between these sectors (and then into higher education), it could be argued that I have been culpable in transmitting new managerial norms and practices from one sector to the next.  Rochester is particularly critical of the infrastructure organisations, the CVSs which have actively played their part through initiatives such as the ChangeUp programme and says that voluntary organisations have been, ‘nudged, bribed and sometimes coerced into becoming more and more similar in their structure and behaviour to the bureaucratic agencies of the state and the market.’

As someone who has been involved with the voluntary sector as a volunteer and as a manager, I have observed the colonisation of some of the larger charities by former local government employees who have in many respects turned their charities into the mirror image of the organisations they had left behind.  And in the circumstances you can hardly blame them.  As Rochester points out, the biggest voluntary organisations have been given a more central role in the delivery of public services and have gained substantial new resources as a result.

Rochester concludes that the models of business organisations have come to dominate our society and social institutions over the past thirty years.  He says that being ‘business-like’ was the ‘desirable characteristic’ and this meant imitating the approaches and techniques used in the private sector without questioning how appropriate and/or helpful they might be in organisations that were based on very different values and principles.

Many of us can bear witness to a similar trend in higher education.  What has elsewhere been described as the ‘economic ideology of education’ is a phenomenon much debated. But it is not a recent revelation.  In 1890 German university professors complained that their world was increasingly dominated by blind economic processes, by the power of money, and by the weight of numbers (Salter and Tapper 1994).  In universities today, this manifests itself in a discourse and managerial structure dominated by enterprise and an emulation of the business world.  As a member of the new management clan in a university, I am no innocent bystander though at times it feels like I’m drowning in an alien discourse that bears little or no resemblance to my own academic practice.

According to Rochester, many voluntary organisations have lost sight of their original purposes and functions, and apart from not distributing their profits or surpluses as dividends, they are indistinguishable from private sector companies.  I believe that universities ARE still distinguishable from private sector companies.

As the marketisation marvel glides confidently into the admissions arena, I hear colleagues declare “it’s official, we are now a ‘private enterprise’”.

Really?

This post represents my own views and not those of my institution.

References:

OFT report: higher education is a market, but the student-university relationship remains unique – UUK Blog posted on 14 March 2014 by Paul Clark

http://blog.universitiesuk.ac.uk/2014/03/14/oft-report-higher-education/

Salter, B. and Tapper, T (1994) The State and Higher Education The Woburn Press

It’s about the (academic) community, stupid!

Academic community, , , , ,

I recently had a conversation about my doctoral research with an acquaintance I met at a dinner dance who asked, ‘what are you doing it in, what are you doing it for?’  Not an unreasonable response.  I began my reply by saying that it was in the sociology of education and whilst I was conjuring up an answer to the latter question (it changes from day to day), they retorted in a jocular fashion, ‘the sociology of vegetation? You’re researching vegetables?’  The acquaintance laughed, a little uneasily.  Perhaps they had misheard me.

My sense of humour is reasonably well honed but at that particular moment I was not in a frame of mind to see the joke; on them or on me.  I hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place.  Rather than finding the retort comical, I took it at best to be idiotic and at worst, mocking.  I raised my eyebrows and civilly withdrew from the conversation.  There was no other exchange on the matter until the end of the evening when we said cheerio and my hapless acquaintance wished me luck with, ‘the vegetable thing’.

How should I have reacted?  Maybe I should have given an equally jocular riposte.  Moments earlier they had told me about their counselling course and, thinking about the state of my vegetable patch at home, I could have suggested that my parsnips would benefit from some talking therapy.  Rather lame, I admit.

So, what is the research about? It’s about community in higher education.

When invited to talk about community, those participating in my doctoral research (all academics) chose to focus primarily on their experience inside the university; that is, on the academic community.

In the ‘80s, Cohen concluded that people construct community symbolically, ‘making it a resource and repository of meaning, and a referent of their identity.’ (Cohen 1985 p118); I invited the research participants to draw upon their repository, to describe their idea and experience of community and also to picture it in some symbolic form.  Some began by approaching the question as an intellectual exercise.  This was unsurprising.  However, as the exchange went on and as we explored values and a sense of belonging, more idiosyncratic thoughts and stories emerged.  These stories revealed deeply held values which manifested themselves, not only in their day-to-day academic practice, but also in responses to situations when they felt threatened or excluded by the academic community, or by their institution.

All have a stake in the game of higher education; all believe in the game.  They are complicit players in what Bourdieu describes as the, ‘prolonged cohabitation of a socially very homogeneous group’, linked by a ‘cullusio in the illusio’ (Bourdieu 2004 p7).  Higher education not only provides their livelihood but, more fundamentally, connects with their values and serves their need to do what they do; research, teach and, in many (but not all) cases, make the world a better place:

‘To the outsider the game may appear insignificant but to the players it becomes the meaning of their life, mystifying the underlying conditions of domination that make the game possible.’ (Burawoy 2010 p24)

Whilst I would question Bourdieu’s description of the academic community as homogeneous, particularly in a contemporary context, I find the notion of ‘complicit players’ worthy of consideration.  We are all potentially complicit.

In July 2012, I attended an excellent SRHE (Society for Research into Higher Education) symposium on ‘Structuring Knowledge: new visions of higher education’, where Ron Barnett made an entreaty for the play of the imagination, and for others to enter a dialogic community, and to see their world as he sees it – as a relational entity.  At the same session, Gert Biesta reflected on a need for a more accurate account of what is going on in higher education.  He called for a ‘non-epistemological’ approach, one that allows for the telling of different stories other than the story of knowledge – stories about what it means to be an academic or a researcher. And whilst in response, Michael Young called for a differentiated epistemology rather than none all (because then, ‘all we are left with is meaning making’), he did acknowledge a need for ‘community’ and for people to feel a part of something; a point that many of those present endorsed.

So, whatever your role in higher education or the vegetable patch; academic, student, administrator, volunteer, collaborator, dean, enthusiast…

what does (academic) community mean to you?

If you need a prompt, click here for a cut-out kit for you to assemble, ‘Communi-Tea Party at the Academy’

http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/per/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Julie-E-Bounford-Poster.pdf

 References:

Bourdieu, P. (2004) Sketch for a Self Analysis, Polity Press

Burawoy, M. (2010) Conversations with Pierre Bourdieu: the Johannesburg Moment

Cohen, A.P. (1985) The Symbolic Construction of Community, Taylor & Francis

Why ‘extreme’ volunteering is too extreme

Volunteering, , ,

At the turn of the year I read NESTA’s ‘14 for 2014’, predictions compiled by their ‘team of in-house experts’ for the coming 12 months.  My attention was drawn to the topic ‘The rise of extreme volunteering’ by Lindsay Levkoff Lynn.  (For some reason, for me the word extreme always conjures up an image of the sport they call extreme ironing but that may just be an indication of how much I loathe that particular activity; a topic for another posting maybe.)  Lindsay says that extreme volunteering is about regular people going beyond the usual levels of volunteering, and gives some great examples such as the City Year volunteers; 18-25 year olds who dedicate a year, full-time, before university, or work to support head teachers in turning around underprivileged UK schools, and Shared Lives Plus, whereby families ‘adopt’ someone in need, giving them a place to live and making them a part of the family.  I have no doubt that these, and many such similar schemes, truly change people’s lives.

For many, volunteering is simply a way of life.  It’s in their DNA, and represents the more positive side of human nature.  What worries me is Lindsay’s prediction, and in particular her application of the term ‘extreme’ in the context of volunteering.  I am concerned that –

–          any volunteering which is construed as ordinary, or not extreme, may be viewed as a lesser activity.  We seem to be in an age where people feel they must do something out of the ordinary to get noticed and we are in danger of not valuing the mundane without which, society would come unstuck.

–          any cause or need which is construed as ordinary, or not extreme, may be viewed as a lesser cause.  There is a danger of ignoring basic needs, such as having some form of day-to-day human contact, which can be met via a simple act of kindness, no matter how small.

–          volunteering might be relied on to take the place of state services in times of austerity.  There is nothing wrong in recognising the value of neighbourly assistance, particularly in hard times such as these.  There is a danger, however, in accepting a lesser role for the state in the welfare of our society, and in assuming that volunteering will fill the gaps.

–          the notion of a gap year as a ‘give back’ year detracts from the idea of giving.  I agree that those young people who are privileged enough to take a gap year at all are likely to appreciate the notion of giving back but this may well detract from the act of giving itself.  Of course, the volunteer also benefit from volunteering, but does it have to be promulgated as some sort of reciprocity?  Why not just give?

I first started volunteering at the age of thirteen years, helping my parents, Triss and Bas Driver, at the Cambridge PHAB Club, founded by my amazing godmother, Joyce Mitchell who, at nearly ninety, is still actively involved.  My parents were also involved in running a youth club at the United Reform Church in Victoria Road also in Cambridge;  this at a tender age when they weren’t much older than the club members themselves.  I have a vivid memory of Mum and Dad running the pram race from Cambridge to Ely as a fund-raiser.  This was in the 1960s – remember those Silver Cross prams? – you can easily accommodate a grown man dressed as a baby in one of those!  And they’re still volunteering; although maybe not the pram racing these days.  I’m indebted to them both for passing on that lifelong passion.

I was also lucky enough to take two gap years, before and after my undergraduate degree over thirty years ago. Volunteering featured in both, particularly the second, when I worked as a full-time volunteer at the Cambridge Women’s Refuge.  As an undergraduate I had been involved hospital visiting, working with the Gingerbread Group, supporting lone parents, and with the College Nightline Service, which served, not only students but also the wider community.   As a postgraduate, I had the privilege of being involved in the miners’ strike, not only in the political act of picketing, but also in putting together and distributing food parcels to the miners’ families.  I had the time to do all this because I hadn’t had to work my way through college, unlike so many, who must now do so in order to pay their way.

Students bring a passion and volunteering ethos to our universities.  And higher education institutions should indeed support, encourage, and most of all, recognise and value, what they do.  I’ve been impressed, for example, by the work of UEA’s Stop the Traffik student society, and the incredible commitment of individual students, who are driven by a desire to make a difference.

I’m concerned, however, about the industry that has of late emerged around student volunteering, or ‘employability’ as it is called these days.  I’m not denying that volunteering is good for the CV, and I always encourage young people to make the most of their credentials in order to improve their prospects of employment.  It’s certainly useful to have an addition to the standard CV when setting out your stall.  However, it is absolutely vital that accreditation, and indeed certification in the form of instruments, such as the Higher Education Achievement Report, does not end up commodifying the very act of volunteering.

Lindsay predicts that in 2014 extreme volunteering will become the norm, and that we will live in a better world as a result.  I say, don’t neglect the mundane and value all who want to make a difference.

You can find her prediction here –

http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/14-predictions-2014/rise-extreme-volunteering