Should I stay or should I go...
Amongst a certain
universiterati, Richard Hil’s tales of contemporary universities in Australia rings
quite true and somewhat disconcertingly. In his recently published book Whackademia: An Insider’s Account of the
Troubled University (New South, 2012) Hil has put on the record what many
of us talk about in the corridors and carefully selected public spaces. His
book should trigger a serious, national-level rethink about the state of our
tertiary education but I doubt it will shift already entrenched positions on
both sides of the chessboard.
A few declarations
first: Richard worked at my university briefly and while I didn’t meet him, I
know of him via colleagues who did work with him. I’ve chuckled a little at his
‘Joseph Gora’ columns in the Higher Ed section of The Australian. I am a pre-Dawkins idealist when it comes to the
transformative power of education (not just an idealist, actually; a
beneficiary of the same). I walked through the gates of university with the
intention of joining the teaching profession in the early 1980s, but was drawn
to the idea of the ‘academy’ somewhere around my honours year. A couple of
years studying in Japan had tripped the ‘curiosity’ wire in my mind and by the
end of the 1980s I thought I was heading for a career in learning, teaching and
the expansion of the body of knowledge. It was the wrong time to cultivate such
lofty ideals.
I am also an active
member of the staff union, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), for a
number of reasons not the least of which is the sense of the collective action
required to give education a meaningful role in building a strong and enriched
society.
My piece on
accountability (last post) is in fact a bit of a precursor to this response to
Hil’s book. There is a bit of accountability madness going on in the tertiary
sector which by and large impedes the joy of learning. It kills of the serendipity
and spontaneity that an exchange in the lecture theatre or the tutorial can
engender. I try to stimulate the wonder of knowledge and learning anyway, in
spite of the hurdles.
The post-Dawkins
regime has cultivated a particular ideology within the sector which I think
impedes the soul and purpose of a university. It has driven a utilitarian, skills-based
education (for which we had previously adequate facilities) which, in turn, is
helping to drive a certain degree of inward-looking individualism and that
leads to the sort of weeks we had in politics here, the week before our
political leaders broke for the winter recess. We do need to broaden our scope, our compassion and our
purpose.
I won’t reiterate the
content of Hil's book here—those of us in the system, of a certain
vintage—certainly know what he’s talking about. Those older than me are mostly
retired. Those younger than me have adapted in ways that I probably won’t
because I hold to a different view about the purpose of education and
scholarship. Yep, it is probably an old-fashioned notion but it matters to me,
and where I can, I try to parlay those views in the classroom.
I do have a problem
with the overdose of administrative and ‘transparency’ requirements that are
sucking up more and more of our time. Hil captures this quite well. There are levels of accountability which
are ultimately petty and potentially punitive. Not a lot of this actually adds
to the educational experience that might be made available to students…if we
could. We are encumbered by ongoing reviews and restructures which leave people
feeling insecure and fragile. At its most lamentable, there is an increase in
workplace health and safety issues leading, regrettably, to instances of
bullying and related behaviours.
Academic staff at the teaching/research
coalface feel the squeeze from above and increasingly from students who are
pressured to ‘succeed’, sometimes unreasonably and often in a shallow sense of
the word. It is the unhealthy manifestation of a particular competitive,
individualistic approach which seems to be all pervasive. I see the levels of
stress increasing among colleagues and many good people have left, and many are
considering their options.
Right now it is a non-teaching time. I arrived at work the other day at 9am. I had a series of meetings, consultations with colleagues and students, admin matters to attend to and so on. I actually got to start the work I needed to do around 4.30pm. I left the office, with work unfinished, at 10pm. It's a fairly common day in the #lifeofalecturer. Many of us average 60 hours a week, or more.
Universities are by
and large, run like some imagined ‘business’ or corporation. Actually, they’re
not supposed to be run that way. I explained to a ‘post-Dawkins’ colleague
recently that universities were supposed to be a little bit separate from
society, a way to ‘look in’ from afar, to think, to contemplate, to reflect on
the foibles of human nature, for better or worse, and what we might do to
understand that. He was a little surprised. Yeah, call me old-fashioned but…
But that approach
doesn’t make us irrelevant. Indeed, we could be more courageous and assert our
relevance. Society ought to be diverse, we can each contribute in different
ways, not prescribed conforming KPI-ed roles. Society can indeed progress
through serendipity and curiosity. We’re not exactly encouraging that in our
education systems at present. Indeed, in another conversation, I was talking to a parent whose child was taking a 'gap-year', a year off study between high school and university. I said that once upon a time, university was a person's 'gap-year' an important transition time. There was a little shock, a little nostalgia, a little shared guilt that university was no longer what it might have been.
It will take a
courageous education minister to say ‘stop the bureaucratisation and teach,
research and educate’. I’d like to start by setting a three year trial—let’s
just stop all this petty form-filling, matrix-building, citation-measuring for
just three years, and see whether or not the quality of education is better or worse for the experience. If it
is better, I will rest my case; if it is worse, I shall eat my PhD testamur.
If we can encourage students to engage
with the content not the assessment, not the grade at the end, then education just might happen in more
beneficial ways. I am forever grateful that my narrow, utilitarian first-year
undergraduate views were cracked wide open, challenged and expanded by any
number of passionate, engaging academics back then. They knew their material
because they got time to read and research and write and think. I’m not sure
that I’d quite manage to be an undergraduate in the same way today. There was
also a greater degree of ‘eccentricity’ among some of our teachers which
wouldn’t pass today. The thought we might sue our lecturer because they didn’t
perform to expectations and the educational contract was just…well…for heaven’s
sake, it just didn’t enter our heads.
Hil’s book will be the
corridor chat of the ‘ivory tower’ for a little while; we’ll all nod in
agreement, titter* at some of the quotes and people he cites (because we all know
them—or may even be them). His suggestions at the end for a kind of
low-intensity passive resistance address some of the day-to-day frustrations,
but they won’t fix a broken system. That takes enormous courage and a strong
and confident constituency. We’re not really there any more.
I think I am a
passionate, but tired, educator. I’ve spent many years in my field, seeking to
understand the world, specifically our Asian neighbours, in ways that might
make the world a better place. For many years, I accidentally-on-purpose ‘backed’
the right horse Japan; nowadays it’s all about China, so really, my expertise
is not really useful anymore…I’d like to do more but time is running out.
I will walk away from
my profession sooner rather than later. I have things I want to do, books I
hope to write, matters I need to ponder, that the present system impedes. I
don’t want to end up bitter and cynical but the bureaucracy is driving us in
that direction.
Vale education, it could be better but it will
just take…some courage.
*A pre-twitter
mannerism of those who enjoyed a conspiratorial chuckle behind discreetly-placed
hands.
