The fate of the university.

Cooper, Simon

The recent conference on the future of universities in Australia, sponsored by the Association for a Public University, (1) had a good turnout, nearly filling the venue where it was held. This fact alone seemed to provide a sense of relief to many of the participants, for at least the level of demoralization concerning higher education in Australia had not reached the point of no return. The suggestion that the university might actually be 'finished' was taken seriously, however, and there was no sense by the end of the weekend that a worse-case scenario--in which the present government would simply privatize and rationalize universities to the extent that they would become unrecognizable--could be avoided. The crisis in Australian universities has manifested itself in many ways, and there was no shortage of incidents of bureaucratic absurdity, managerial bullying, and failures of will on the part of individuals catalogued at the conference. The larger questions of how to save the university and, indeed, what type of university was actually desirable, were often lost in a context where many people were expressing their genuine dismay at how the crisis had affected them at a personal level.

Generally, however, the university was understood, and therefore defended against the policies of the present Government according to two different principles: that the university ought to be based around the ennobling functions of teaching, reflection and knowledge, and thus cannot be understood according to managerial principles; and that the university can be saved by stressing its essential role in contributing to Australia's transformation towards a 'knowledge nation'. The latter argument forms the basis for federal Labor's education policy, and is supported by unions and many on the Left. Indeed, the Left has replaced its long-held suspicion of universities as bastions of privilege, by a commitment to equalitarianism, where access to universities has become the core issue. A commitment to Australia as a 'knowledge nation' allows Labor to defend the (at least partial) public funding of universities. While the conference was too diverse for these positions to manifest themselves too overtly, it is apparent that they are, to a certain degree, mutually exclusive. Furthermore, they are inadequate as a means of resolving the crisis in higher education, which, while particularly obvious in Australia, reflects a global shift in attitudes to knowledge, education and industry.

In a room filled with academics at the weekend conference, it seemed odd that virtually no one unpacked the concept, first raised by Raymond Gaita and regularly used by him, of the 'life of the mind'. Many participants were quick to pick up this phrase and run with it as a shorthand term for academic freedom and all that is good about the university. Yet it is the issue of the intellectually trained (2) that cuts to the heart of the crisis in higher education. The life of the mind is a nebulous phrase; Gaita himself is unwilling to fully clarify its meaning, yet, however we wish to interpret the phrase, it is a mistake to overly-dichotomize, as Gaita does, between those who live the 'life of the mind' and those who practise what he calls 'managerial newspeak'. As Paul James noted at the conference, it is precisely the intellectually trained--the very proponents of economic rationalism and 'managerial newspeak'--who have returned to undermine the institutions that once housed them and showed them the life of the mind. From the Dawkins reforms of the 1980s through to the economic rationalist policies of the present government, there would be little opposition by either policy makers or academics to the idea of the life of the mind. It is simply that they understand this term rather differently.

For Gaita, the 'life of the mind' is essential to the identity of the university. He writes that 'nothing can rightly call itself a university if it does not impose on at least most of its members an obligation to reflect on the value of the life of the mind'. (3) In part, the life of the mind means the passing on of the cultural treasures that have accumulated through the ages. Those who teach have a responsibility to pass this on to the next generation. That this involves a relatively small number of people--Gaita draws the distinction between universities and institutions of higher education--and that the treasures are usually canonical texts, means that Gaita's position is likely to provoke criticism from certain quarters.

Despite the short shrift that Gaita gives to what can be called 'postmodern theory', and his at-times misplaced criticism of theoretical 'jargon', I think that he has a point in stressing that universities ought to be able to transcend the concerns and sensibilities of their own generation. This means more than simply extolling the virtues of the canon or western civilization, however. It means being able to reflect on the impact of intellectual practices on the wider world.

In some ways, Gaita is arguing for the university as a cultural institution, as well as an educative one. The problem lies in the fact that, for Gaita, the life of the mind means that the knowledge imparted by the institution, as well as the context through which knowledge is approached, is essentially unworldly. Gaita writes that the public duty of a university is to 'protect its students from worldliness'. In an article for the Age, as well as in his chapter in Why Universities Matter, Gaita takes a less-than-favourable attitude to the moments when knowledge becomes contaminated with worldliness. In the 1960s, he suggests, 'the universities were vulnerable to the claims of political idealism', (4) but since the 1980s, they have become infested with managerialism. While one might take issue with the way in which these two disparate discourses are equated in Gaita's work, I think his position is problematic for more general reasons. While the university has a role in allowing students to make the transition from knowledge to wisdom--one function of the life of the mind--it has long held a role as an institution which can both interpret and criticize itself as well as the outside world. At a time when both sides of politics in Australia are committed to extending the circulation of knowledge within an increasingly instrumental framework, the university needs to recognize precisely the worldly character of knowledge via the intellectual practices, while pointing out, in the spirit of Gaita's argument, the need to step outside dominant sensibilities in order to gain other perspectives. One can only make an argument for the importance of intellectuality (itself a contested term) as opposed to intellectual practice, when one is willing to grant a role to the critical and interpretative role of knowledge that is able to reflect on its role in relation to the wider social realm. So, while one might reject a certain type of worldliness--the gathering up of all knowledge within an instrumental logic--it is not desirable to simply abandon reflecting upon the relation of knowledge to its object--the political, social and ethical implications of knowledge--that is, its worldly context.

Furthermore, it is important to recognize that those within the intellectual practices, whether within the techno-sciences or reforming neo-liberalist managers, are at least partially driven by an 'unworldly' form of spirit--the life of the mind. One need only look at the language of the Dawkins reformers, or the scientists who developed cloning, to see that there is no lack of passion or imaginative zeal at the prospect of reconstructing what was thought to be a given. Clearly the pursuit of knowledge, living the 'life of the mind', does not automatically equate with an individual or social good. The critical role of intellectuality would then involve reflecting on the worldly significance of the life of the mind, without becoming contaminated with the more instrumental forms of worldliness. Unfortunately, it is precisely this instrumentalization of knowledge that drives the move to place the university at the service of the knowledge nation, under the guise of equality of access.

The university, as both a site of learning and as a source of cultural capital, has served different interests in different periods of history. The elitist tag long associated with universities, has to some extent been broken down with the expansion of the tertiary sector. This is a more contradictory development than many defenders of the university would acknowledge however. The expansion of the tertiary sector comes at a cost; greater access to university has also meant the reconstitution of knowledge within an instrumental framework. That both sides of politics uncritically embrace this transition can be seen by two newspaper articles that appeared just after the conference. (5) Andrew Norton, a speaker at the conference, stands as representative of the New Right education policy that is informed by the 'user pays' principle. His essential argument is that degrees provide a valuable share in the knowledge society, and thus students will recoup their outlay. Furthermore, Norton claims quasi-equality in this process in that fee-paying degrees allow greater opportunities for inclusion. Barry Jones, the outgoing president of the federal Labour Party is the author of Sleepers' Wake. His emphasis on the knowledge nation is one of the chief impulses behind, and is certainly representative of, current Labor policy.

Although they differ on the issue of public funding, both Norton and Barry Jones, as representatives of neo-liberalism and technocratic labour respectively, take a very one-sided view of the changing context for knowledge in our society. While providing a token nod to the critical-interpretative function of knowledge, the real focus for both is on the contribution knowledge can make towards the new economy. While Norton speaks only in individualist terms--greater salaries are a return on investing in a degree--Jones argues that a greater commitment to the information society will create a 'more cohesive society' and will 'empower citizens', making them, under the right circumstances, more 'informed and confident'.

Those who wish to defend a model of the university based around ideas of equalitarianism and vocationalism elide a vital question, namely, what types of people are formed within an information or knowledge society? A form of life governed chiefly through information means that the individual is forced to inhabit a world of shifting contexts and instability. At a personal level, we engage in an endless search for material to reshape our cultural lives. In terms of work, those in the knowledge industries need to develop a highly flexible, 'entrepreneurial' personality in order to remain employed. While some people find this a liberating context in which to work, others are less willing (or able) to work in a context of radical instability, committed to a life of endless retraining and skills acquisition, less willing to invest psychologically in skills that have a limited shelf life. While the expansion of the tertiary sector has led to greater opportunities for access, the gathering up of knowledge within an instrumental framework means a new set of hierarchies and power relationships have formed between those able to live within the fleeting and unstable settings created through the information society, and those who founder in the absence of more secure social and cultural supports.

At a broader level we need to ask to what degree do we want a full-blown 'knowledge nation'? Jones glibly lists the decline in industries dependent on the labour of the hand. Do we simply want to accept this trend, where the contribution of the knowledge nation to manufacturing and rural areas is to attempt to reconstitute them in terms of tourism and service industries? Do we want to see a life lived through media and information as the only form of life, or do we wish to regard other ways of life--smaller communities, stable contexts of work, manual labour--as more than merely impediments to be cast off as quickly as possible, recognizing them instead as vital contexts of support and stability in their own right.

A recent article in the Guardian by John Gray and Fernando Flores highlights some of the problems associated with an uncritical celebration of a knowledge/information society. In an extract from their book entitled Entrepreneurship and the Wired Life the authors declare that 'the career, as an institution, is in unavoidable decline'. (6) The middle classes can no longer depend on a stable context for work, or even be guaranteed their work will generate a sense of personal meaning in a world increasingly geared to obsolescence, image and change. On the one hand, the authors recognize the social value of traditional forms of work, based in local knowledges and the passing on of skills--and also the value of stable work contexts for the individual--security, and the location of meaning in work. On the other hand, they seem able to reconcile the loss of all this with the emergence of a new category: the 'entrepreneur'. Such a person works with a project-centred, rather than an institutional, focus. The 'entrepreneurial life is driven by bringing value to the community', according to Gray and Flores. However, how the community can remain under conditions of fleeting exchanges, mobile citizens and the replacement of local knowledge and work with entrepreneurship and short-term forms of association--the very processes which would undermine the conditions for community--are not considered. (7) Like Jones, Gray and Flores seem able to accept the replacement of traditional contexts of work and life by mobile and unstable flows of knowledge. While the possibilities for individuals are easy to present, the very fact that such thinkers still want to speak the language of community, while at the same time undermining it, suggests that this is a contradictory impulse that, at the very least, ought to give us pause. The fact that the examples given for the entrepreneur's constructive relationship with the community include the Body Shop and Bill Gates' Microsoft, does little to install one with optimism for the knowledge economy's role in regenerating communities.

We need to examine the larger role the university plays in creating and circulating knowledge within society, which may include recognition of the problems inherent in unfettered intellectual practice. A society chiefly governed through intellectual labour may lead to freedom and opportunities for some, however it will also lead to new hierarchies and divisions, and may erode the very values by which we might defend an alternate model for the university. It is a depressing fact that those who parrot the maxim 'there is no alternative' or its related variants are often those residing in universities, think tanks, or those who argue the need for lifelong learning. One important role for the university would be to suggest that, in fact, there are alternatives; indeed, that it may well be disastrous to proceed along the present trajectory towards a social arrangement chiefly governed by instrumental forms of knowledge. Allowed to pursue its critical and interpretive functions, the university is well placed to suggest alternatives, but to do so, the university, as a source of the life of the mind, has to fully acknowledge the challenge of thinking through the consequences of the intellectual practices it helps to generate.

(1.) The Association for a Public University was formed in 1999 as a response to the perceived crisis in Australian universities. The conference The University: Is It Finished? was held on 29-30 July 2000 in Melbourne.

(2.) This phrase comes from the work of Geoff Sharp, who has published many articles on the intellectually trained in both the old and new series of Arena.

(3.) R. Gaita, 'Truth and the University', in Coady (ed.), Why Universities Matter, Allen & Unwin, 1999, p. 33. See also his article 'Is the University Dead?', the Age, 1 August 2000.

(4.) Gaita, 'Truth and the University', p. 30.

(5.) B. Jones, 'Knowledge is Power', the Age, 2 August 2000; and A. Norton, 'The Answer isn't Public Funding', the Age, 1 August 2000.

(6.) See J. Gray and F. Flores, Guardian, 16 May 2000. Gray and Flores are associated with the Demos think tank which is a leading contributor of ideas for the Third Way.

(7.) This point is explored by Chris Scanlon in this issue of the journal.