Academic unions: conferring with Dawkins.

Hinkson, John

Twenty-five years ago when the Martin Report laid the basis for an expanded system of higher education in Australia, the academic unions drew their limited strength from the relatively small number of institutions to which they were, in the main, tied as local staff associations. *(1) Certainly the national union had little significance compared with the local association. Similarly, there were few expectations that the university would contribute directly to the 'national effort'. As some see it, this was the era of the ivory tower institution, a setting so framed by academic principles that the university seemed unrelated to 'reality'. It was as though the life of the mind could only exist in carefully nurtured settings differentiated from the broader society. This differentiation, often simply equated with elitism, seemed to be confirmed even in the mode of staff organization.

Thinking Ahead, the Federation of Australian University Staff (FAUSA) and Federated Council of Academics' (FCA) 'blueprint' for growth in Australian higher education, (2) signifies a radical change of circumstance. In part a reply to Canberra's demands that tertiary education respond to 'national objectives', the national unions also respond to perceived changes in the larger education--society relationship. The growing perception of the dependence of the economy, and more specifically the export-led recovery, on higher education reflects structural changes which have been unfolding for some time in the education-society relation: the new relevance of science and educated workers for a high-technology society. It is this connection which comes to allow tertiary education to be conceived of as an arena of industial relations, 'tertiary workers' now being organized within powerful nation-wide unions which substantially displace the local staff association.

It is not that Thinking Ahead, any more than the Green Paper which drew it into existence, reflects on the meaning of the change which has overtaken both tertiary education and society. This is not surprising, for the very developments which make education a national preoccupation today are a condition for the heightened significance of the national unions. It is not easy to step outside the bounds of one's formative conditions. Thinking Ahead, like the vice-chancellors, assumes much of what is assumed by the Green Paper; it can be said to confront it largely on its own terms. FAUSA and FCA do raise significant objections to aspects of the Green Paper, but as discussed below, their criticisms are constrained by what is commonly assumed. The critique of the Green Paper's attitude towards knowledge is illustrative.

Thinking Ahead sets out to defend academic scholarship in all its varied forms. The irreducible element in the argument is the 'creation and transmission of knowledge' which 'requires an environment of scholastic (academic) freedom in order to be fruitful and effective'. (3) Upon this academic foundation a number of functions depend. These include training and certification, research, advice, and public comment. This defence of varied functions within higher education is employed to criticize what is said to be the excessive instrumentalism of the Green Paper.

 The long-term success of higher education depends on maintaining
 both its immediate utility in training and research, and its role as
 intellectual critic. Ultimately the two cannot be divorced. The most
 practical economic and social innovations usually began as
 apparently far-fetched ideas. Those ideas would never be allowed
 to arise under a purely instrumental approach to higher education
 policy. (4)

In other words, knowledge at the most general or abstract level can make the greatest contribution in terms of economic and social change, so the rise of a narrow instrumentalism as applied by the Green Paper is likely to be self-defeating. This defence of 'far fetched' ideas, however, blurs rather than clarifies the questions raised by the Dawkins strategy, for it conflates general ideas in their technical innovative role with general ideas as interpretive critique. For Thinking Ahead, a high-tech export-led recovery is best achieved by a broad rather than a narrow instrumentalism; and, it hopes, cultural critique will be carried on its back.

A similar emphasis can be found in its comments on vocational training. The concern is that the Green Paper is so preoccupied with the relation between higher education and the economy that the government will expect a more specific reflection of vocational expectations in the courses offered by educational institutions. Much of the comment of the business world has favoured this more specific emphasis in course offerings. It is an expectation which devalues much of what is taught and researched in the humanities and the social sciences; it is also affecting work within the sciences. The response in Thinking Ahead is to defend generalist courses as crucial ways of forming the workforce. Drawing on the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (AVCC) and the OECD, the report points to the wrong-headedness of an over-emphasis on specific training. The OECD puts it in the following way:

 Outside a fairly narrow range of curricula, amounting to perhaps
 one-third of total offerings, there is no specific market for most
 arts and science degrees. Such graduates are employed on the basis
 that their three and four years of systematic study will have
 identified and made manifest their potential, taught them how to
 learn, instilled positive habits of mind and a capacity to apply
 themselves usefully to a wide range of occupational roles. In other
 words, however specific their education has been in terms of
 discipline, it is their general qualities of mind, personality and
 disposition that are valued. (5)

In this way Thinking Ahead defends much of current practice within higher education against the general thrust of the Green Paper, which is to tie the educational institution more closely to the economy.

But even if the Green Paper would, in contrast with Thinking Ahead, tie tertiary education to the economy in rather narrow terms, the contrast between the two is not all that profound. It is a difference within a broader commonality, a debate over what represents commonsense, given what is basically an instrumental attitude towards our educational institutions. Are we to be narrowly instrumental or should we pursue a more expansive and wise instrumental path? These are the terms of the debate between government and the academic unions.

The source of that general instrumentalism accepted by both reports is simply assumed, never investigated. Thinking Ahead is quite explicit at this point:

 Nonetheless, higher education's contribution to material production
 --to the augmentation of the economic life of the nation--is very
 important and a principal reason for the development of universities
 and CAEs, as public institutions, alongside the demand for access
 and the production of knowledge. (6)

It is not difficult to see why an academic union would be pleased to accept this relation to material production: it introduces a note of the 'real world' into these 'institutions of the mind', a note which resonates with the labour movement and union traditions, although the constituencies of the academic union largely see those traditions as alien. From a tradition noted for its antipathy towards union organization, the tertiary institution makes a great leap into the centre of politics, organized around the world of production, even if 'production' in the high-technology age means something different from the past. It seems that the credibility of a tertiary union, as opposed to the more traditional array of unions and associations, is enhanced many times over by this relation. This is to be expected when the tertiary education sector becomes the focus of a response to the economic crisis of the times.

The question is, however, whether the acceptance by Thinking Ahead of this new role for tertiary education is consistent, as it asserts, with the retention of the critical-interpretative role of the university. This requires that we look more closely at the meanings of the changed role of the university.

To describe the contribution of higher education to material production as instrumental--whether of the narrow or more expansive kind--suggests a contrast with an earlier science which still retained an interpretive and cosmological self-understanding. That the sciences have largely lost this explicit concern with a comprehensive human perspective, and see their interests as residing in the instrumental, is a fundamental shift. Yet an emphasis on science as purely instrumental gives little insight into the developments of the last thirty years. Throughout this period the sciences have been closely related to the economy. Why then, do the economic rationalists today focus so explicitly on higher education as the source of economic development.

Behind these references to material production, instrumentalism and economic rationality lies the emergence of an economy and society dominated by a new social logic: that carried by people trained in the analytical skills of the disciplines and embedded within the social relations of extended interchange typical of intellectual inquiry. Whether one refers to the social form as 'postindustrial' or as 'information society', it is a society dominated by the abstract intellectual technique now produced in institutions of higher education, and increasingly it seeks to take the high-technology path; hence the tendency to look to higher education for new lines of social development and for 'workers' trained in the more abstract and 'flexible' intellectual practices and relations engendered by these institutions. (7) These developments are now largely regarded as obvious and are integrated into social policy. Yet in terms of a perspective on society there is little recognition of the significance of now finding ourselves in the era of the intellectually trained.

It is obvious enough why many in these institutions and the unions which represent them welcome this development. It places the institution at the centre of social affairs and gives it a justification which intellectual training has never before enjoyed. It is certainly not this emergent institution which is embattled by the proposals of the Green Paper; it is the older institution--which is fast collapsing--and those members of the tertiary education community who wish to defend the process of comprehensive cultural interpretation, whether critical or conservative.

Affirming this new relation to material production, as Thinking Ahead does, is to affirm implicitly the form of the society which emerges, a society organized primarily around high-tech production and the more abstract social relations which are its setting. The 'interest' of the intellectually trained in enhancing this relation is, similarly, an interest in defending a society with a particular social relational configuration. Thinking Ahead and the unions, along with their academic constituencies, will be implicated in a process of social change the aims of which they do not attempt to grasp--changes in the form and quality of social life that many of its authors would find unexpected and unwanted. One key expression of this change is the way social relations enhanced by the communications revolution take a structural form whereby the tangible other has a radically diminished role in social life. Rather than support social settings which integrate extended forms of interchange with more direct forms which require the presence of the other, the high-tech society moves step by step towards a form where the autonomous self, enhanced by the technological fix, can exist oblivious to others. The continuity of community life necessary for the renewal of our common humanity is displaced by the fleeting relation.

The emergence of a postmodern society of this type is the 'bottom line' of the tertiary institute's relation to society today. This implication of the role of the university in postmodernity is perhaps most clearly seen in the media event where image comes to take on its own reality, emptying out those relations which subordinate image to knowing the other. The media worker is trained in the humanities. It can also be seen in the in vitro fertilization development which displaces the need for presence in conception. The universities now have companies which promote IVF sales. But from the standpoint of the relation between higher education and the economy, this relationship of the university to postmodern society is best seen in terms of economic production proper. Here the intellectually trained 'worker' is still largely unwilling to face what is an objective reality: that he or she is a member of a grouping the growth and strength of which is directly related to the expanding sector of socially redundant workers, part-timers and those forced to engage in mock work which only serves to remove them from the unemployment statistics.

It is examples like these which point to the different social reality of a high-tech, postmodern society. If we are to engage these developments and take hold of the emerging crisis which they reflect, cultural interpretation is indispensable. But at just that moment of cultural need the university, as an historical institution able to provide a setting for such inquiry, has begun to disappear into higher education as a sector of the information society.

The argument of Thinking Ahead that critical scholarship and an enhanced interest in 'material production' can co-exist in higher education ignores how an institution so tied to the information society will be forced to put critical endeavour outside its bounds. In part this is so simply because a close interconnection with the emerging society denies the social space necessary for critical inquiry. But the hostility towards cultural interpretation is more basic than this. For there is a conflict between criticism of this kind and 'material production' in the information mode which strikes at the heart of intellectual practice: the one champions intellectual technique and its conquest of the life-world; the other needs to develop a theory of culture able to critique the role of intellectuality in the information society. The suppression of this conflict undermines the possibility of a cultural politics appropriate to postmodern realities.

Rather than take hold of this situation, Thinking Ahead seeks to satisfy all parties. Effectively this is to choose the path of the information society, because there can be no doubt as to where power lies in this openness towards 'diversity. But the basic dilemma lies as much with the constituencies of the tertiary institutions as with the unions. That many in these institutions are pleased to exploit the 'opportunities' provided by the new institution is indicative of how the intellectual field has been recast over the last twenty-five years. And if we turn to the humanities for intellectual critique of recent developments, all too often we find them bemused by the Dawkins strategy, or actively engaged in new currents of thought such as carried in postmodernism which explicitly deny validity to any general problem of interpretation. An emphasis on 'local narratives' or local institutions is helpless before the general changes which constitute the new setting of intellectual and social life.

These features of Thinking Ahead are not likely to get most comment. And it must be acknowledged that the report contains much good sense. Yet even these instances are coloured by the grounding assumptions noted above. The defence of the small institution, against the 'unified national system' recommended by the Green Paper (which favours large-scale amalgamation), is a case in point. Where Thinking Ahead favours the small institution this is based not on the possible academic rationale for such a preference; it is an argument about equity and fair play.

While a strong argument in its own right, this defence of the small institution nevertheless bypasses the questions most crucial to an academic institution. It cannot confront the basic logic of amalgamation, which is about enhancement of the research effort with the achievement of 'critical mass'. It is this orientation which puts us in the hands of the new managers who have little knowledge of, or respect for, academic work, and who can only ask 'what product do we have to sell?' Against this logic of critical mass and amalgamation, an equity argument is secondary and weak. Essentially, Thinking Ahead has accepted the main strategy of the tertiary institute having an enhanced role in 'material production'.

Any argument against the Green Paper approach requires a perspective on the nature of academic work. Here what needs emphasis is not the elitist past of academia but the crucial role played by the fragile structures of extended interchange necessary for creative intellectual work. (8) A sensitivity to these issues helps to build a theory of intellectual practice which can relate intellectual 'products' to a social setting with definite characteristics. The Green Paper by default--and Thinking Ahead does not challenge this--has a 'theory' which simply relates the outcomes of intellectual practice to the cleverness of the academic; or more specifically, to whether a 'critical mass' of brilliant individuals has been gathered together.

This matter is more crucial than may first appear. If a 'theory' which informs practice (or social policy) suggests that intellectual creativity is the possession of individuals, at best triggered by the massing of large numbers of such individuals, then one line of action is likely. If, however, intellectual creativity is itself a process which is distinctly social, the decision maker would be sensible to ask how the necessary social circumstances can be reproduced. In the past these circumstances were achieved in part by happy coincidence, the small institute providing a sympathetic setting for the social relations of extended interchange essential for intellectual work; the necessary space and institutional protection for the pursuit of academic inquiry.

Today when such 'coincidences' are long passed, the absence of a theory of the social relations of intellectuals--of their formation in relations of extended interchange--denies insight into the conditions of creativity, and in turn a perspective upon appropriate institutional size and much else now under threat of 'restructuring'.

While this stress on a lack of a theory of intellectuality may seem academic, it goes to the heart of a range of developments which have been destabilising the labour movement for more than twenty years and have provided a setting for a resurgent 'New Right'. The absence of such a theory bears not only on such matters as institutional size, research 'critical mass', and the appropriate settings for intellectual creativity. It simultaneously lends support to the enhanced power of managers of information, who take knowledge production for granted and merely seek to 'market a product'. This absence also screens from view the implications of the rise of the media--underpinned by the new intellectuality--as a form of social integration and of the high-tech reconstitution of industry which undermines the historical basis of the labour movement.

The recasting of categories of thought, and the reconstitution of social practices which make up this revolution, also eat away at public traditions. The New Right thrust to privatize is a powerful aspect of this shift; the popular sense that the socialist idea in politics is 'archaic' is another. It is in this context that the idea of education as a public good is under threat.

The Green Paper reflects this tendency to not support public institutions in a number of ways: the willingness to privatize education; to see it closely tied to business; and to introduce into educational administration 'user pays' principles, as reflected in full fee courses and the graduate tax proposal. Thinking Ahead opposes this change as far as it bears on privatization or the graduate tax.

The need for a defence of public institutions today is certainly pressing but there are some large obstacles to be overcome if it is to be effective. The inroads made by the ideology of privatization are only one expression of a broad shift in social attitudes from a generation ago. That a defence of the public sphere is relatively rare is itself indicative of the new situation, as is the decline in commitment to the socialist ideal. For some this is a generational matter: the commitments to public institutions are an anachronism, they are those of a generation no longer in touch with reality. While there is much debate about specific policies such as privatization, usually this broader attitudinal shift is not spoken of directly so much as acted upon: witness the recent example of lifelong socialists jumping on the high-tech bandwagon in the form of Australia Reconstructed. (9)

The question is whether to view this change of orientation as a return to 'market thinking' and therefore a reflection of a resurgence of the Right, or to see the new market orientation and the New Right as themselves reflective of a more basic change in the cultural and economic conditions of life. In order to defend public institutions the former approach emphasizes a critique of liberal theory and practice--a critique of the free individual given expression through the setting of the free market. The latter approach would supplement a critique of the liberal idea with an account of circumstances significantly different from those of nineteenth-century Europe.

The defence of public education in Thinking Ahead is strongly in the former category, it largely reacts to the advances of the New Right evidenced in the Green Paper by the dominance of a market orientation. That is, rather than take hold of the New Right as a derivative element of a larger process which requires a broad perspective, the argument largely reacts to the New Right. The argument is constrained by what it opposes.

Within these terms Thinking Ahead is convincing. It argues, based on overseas evidence, that hidden behind the market mechanism is a privatization strategy which, rather than eliminate state financing of education, will be dependent on the state. In this situation of no change in financing arrangements, however, there will be a more significant change: the collapse of public education institutions which were constrained to serve the public good. Further, hidden behind the 'free access' of the market will be the reality of restricted access for the broad mass of students.

If these arguments are convincing in their own terms, in what ways are they limited? The essential problem is that the defence of public institutions (and of access) takes no account of how the educational and social setting is changing. Consequently, one could have a public institution radically different in character to that of a generation ago but as long as it remained 'public', there would be little examination or criticism of its make-up.

Recent attempts to privatize tertiary education are only one of the significant strategies of Minister Dawkins. There are larger issues. It is the relevance of higher education to the high-tech society which generates the setting in which privatization of education becomes plausible (and profitable), not the reverse. It is the rise of the high-tech society with its emphasis on the media for the formation of the person--and how that intersects with the market--which recasts social relations and breaks up the social basis for the received public traditions, not vice versa. To emphasize access, to the exclusion of what one has access to, means that the decline into narrow careerism, the issues of intellectual training and social redundancy, will not be part of the political debate.

In short, as the high-tech society takes shape it is education (as opposed to intellectual training) which is embattled. If the logic of that society cannot be reversed there will be few energies available to fight for public institutions.

It is only a few weeks since tertiary academics won a four per cent salary rise. It is a sign of the times that the rise was offset by a number of efficiency measures, including dismissal procedures for 'inefficient' staff. That the appeal mechanism against dismissal is a managerial/industrial relations one rather than an academic one is a further sign of the decline of an academic tradition.

While some find these changes unpleasant, and while indeed there may even be a backlash against them in the near future, there is no likelihood of a grand return of the historical university. The critical question is: what is the relation to be between intellectuals, work and everyday life? Does the future lie with the acceptance by intellectuals of a privileged place in an information order which conceals the arrival of Brave New World? Or is a different kind of revival possible, one which draws on the best of intellectual life in order to generate a renewal of education as one element of a resistance to a reconstituted form of class society, supercharged by intellectual technique?

* This chapter is reprinted, with minor amendments, from Arena, no. 84, 1988.

(1.) Report of the Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia, Tertiary Education in Australia, Canberra, Australian Government Printing Service, 1964-65.

(2.) Thinking Ahead, Melbourne, FAUSA/FCA, 1987.

(3.) Thinking Ahead, clause 2.1.

(4.) Thinking Ahead, clause 2.4.

(5.) Thinking Ahead, clause 2.7.

(6.) Thinking Ahead, clause 3.1

(7) Even if there is a debate about just how flexible this process should be, the 'narrow', instrumentalist strategy never proposes a return to the apprenticeship-style of training. Multi-skilling has at its centre the idea of an analytical training which is abstract in relation to any particular skill.

(8.) Social relations are extended by technology. This may be, for example, by print or information technology or aeroplane. Intellectual relations have typically been extended by print. Whether intellectual extension focuses on interpretative or instrumental concerns is a separate question. Nor can the value of extended relations be judged in black and white terms.

(9.) Australia Reconstructed, the report by the Commission to Western Europe to the ACTU and TDC, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1987, p. 126.