The storm breaking upon the university

ePetition on Research Councils and Economic Impact

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:03:00 +0000

By Editors

The following petition was posted earlier this afternoon at the Number10.gov website (by Prof. John F Allen, Queen Mary University of London). If you agree with the petition, please sign (at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/honest-discovery), and please also forward this message to any of your colleagues who may be interested. The petition opens today, 2 June, and is open until 3 October.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to promote discovery and innovation in UK science.

We request the reversal of a policy now being applied by the UK Research Councils. This policy directs funds to projects whose outcomes are specified in advance. Science has never worked in this way, and never could. The real world is blind to our hopes, fears, and aspirations. Scientific research seeks to describe this world, replacing ignorance and error with knowledge and understanding. Where a specific outcome can be predicted with confidence, then there is no research.

Practical and economic benefits arise from scientific discoveries. Science has economic impact precisely because curiosity-driven research reveals patterns and features of the natural world that we did not know, and did not expect.

The UK taxpayer should not support investigations with foregone conclusions, however beguiling. UK research must not be guided by wishful thinking, nor relegated to producing footnotes for ground- breaking discoveries made elsewhere.

We call upon the Research Councils to return to their mission of advancing the frontiers of human understanding. Public support for science must renew its investment in discovery if it is to create prosperity and well-being.

The French universities protest movement

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Chitty (hotmail)) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:53:00 +0000

By Andrew Chitty

John Mullen, who teaches at Université de Paris 12, has posted a report on the current protest movement in the French universities:

French universities exploding in anger

The University of Utopia conference

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Please note this conference on 4th June in Lincoln:

The University of Utopia - Radicalising Higher Education

Conference description follows:

Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) sets out, for the first time, the paradox of the modern (new) world: the possibility of abundance (freedom) in a society of scarcity (non-freedom); and the dangers that are inherent in this paradoxical situation for the development of the emergent capitalist society.

More suggests the universality of education as a way of resolving this paradox. For the humanist More, the highest pleasures are those of the mind, and true happiness depends on their realization. On More’s fantasy island, Utopia is a universal school for all its citizens, where all civic life is education. Citizens attend public lectures in the morning, participate in lively discussions during meal-times, and, in the evening, receive formal supervision from scholars. (Meiksins Wood, 1997).

In 1953, with the publication of The University of Utopia, the educational philosopher Robert Hutchins extended More’s allegory to a liberal humanist reappraisal of higher education. Anticipating the vocationalist critique of contemporary higher education, Hutchins wrote ‘The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens’ (p.3). Hutchins’s views have been repeated and endorsed in the increasing volume of critical literature on the commercialisation of higher education.

However this critical literature has struggled to provide any convincing alternatives to ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). This absence of any radical alternative, occurs not because of a lack of imagination, but by virtue of the nature of liberal-humanism itself. For Zizek (2002) liberal humanism ‘precludes any serious questioning of the way in which this liberal democratic order is complicit in the phenomena it officially condemns, and, of course, any serious attempt to imagine a different socio-political order’ (167). What this amounts to, for Zizek, is ‘a prohibition on thinking… the moment we question the liberal consensus we are accused of abandoning scientific objectivity and recourse to outdate ideological positions’ (168).

The aim of this conference is to recover the freshness of More’s critique, while going beyond Hutchins's liberal fundamentalism, in order to imagine some real radical futures for higher education. The conference addresses the problem of inventing a form of radicality that confronts the same paradox that emerged in Tudor England, and continues to undermine the progressive development of the postmodern world.

The conference will be of interest to all staff in further and higher education who are concerned about the future direction and role of the changing university within the emerging global knowledge economy.

Keynote Speakers

Professor Ron Barnett, Institute of Education. “The Utopian University: Challenges and Prospects”.
Professor Antonia Darder, University of Illinois. “Breaking Silence: A Study into the Pervasiveness of Oppression”.

Thematic Workshops

Patrick Ainley, Joyce Canaan. “The Student Experience”.
Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, Jon Nixon. “Academic Labour”.
Cath Lambert, Mike Neary, Elisabeth Simbuerger. “Teaching in Public”.
Dennis Hayes, Terence Karran. “Academic Freedom”.

A modest revolt

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Chitty (hotmail)) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:58:00 +0000

By Andrew Chitty

In a letter to the THE on 12th February twenty leading UK scientists, including Nobel prize winner Harry Kroto, responded to the stipulation that applications to Research Councils for grants must now include a two-page 'impact report' (obviously a code for 'economic impact report') by proposing that reviewers for grant applications simply decline to take these reports into consideration. Here are two news reports on this letter:

Scientists call for a revolt against grant rule they claim will end blue-skies research, Times Higher Education, 12 February 2009

Leading UK scientists call for revolt against grant rules, The Great Beyond, February 12, 2009

Learning in the Square

noreply@blogger.com (Alana Lentin) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:52:00 +0000

by Alana Lentin (from alanalentin.net)

All over Italy, students and academics are on strike. They have taken education out of the classroom and into the streets and piazze (squares) in protest against the cuts to education (across all levels) and research being proposed by the Minister for Education in Berlusconi's government, Mariastella Gelmini. Read more here.

Beyond these cuts, the reforms being proposed by the Minister also include separate schools for non-Italian children. This effort in effect to exclude immigrants from the education system is being likened to Apartheid by many Italian anti-racists.

My immediate reaction to the Italian protests is to ask what is it about British society which leads to the almost complete absence of protest regarding the brutal marketisation of education which has been steadily advancing over the last decades. Except for pockets of resistance, such as Sussex University itself, there is little outcry against fees for students, the introduction of student loans, the tyranny of the 'Research Assessment Exercise' or the hegemony of security studies and business studies over all else.

Britain differs fundamentally from other European countries. Italy in particular is witnessing a rise in what can only be thought of as fascism which is particularly worrying since the re-election of Silvio Berlusconi and his army of neo-fascists and anti-immigration secessionists. The death of two Roma girls while sun tanners looked on last July explains the deep seated hatred that many Italians have for non-Western foreigners and the Roma in particular. The government is actively encouraging Italians to believe that their security is threatened by the existence of immigrants in their midst, even sending troops out onto the streets in the summer of 2008 to quell citizens' 'fears' for their safety (although no direct threat was identified).

An atmosphere such as this naturally polarises the population more than one, such as is more prevalent in Britain where certain concessions to 'diversity' and multiculturalism have quelled the racial tensions of the past and consumerism (ongoing despite the credit crunch) has dumbed the potential for protest on any other issue. So what is preferable: a society where everyone sort of ambles along and accepts the fact that many students won't be able to go to University next year because the government messed up the figures and doesn't have enough money to pay their grants, but out-and-out fascism is unlikely, such as the UK? Or a more polarised society where immigrants are burnt out of their homes and their children thrown out of school, but hundreds of thousands turn out on the streets and demand democracy?

Answers on a postcard please...

Change in universities, “technology transfer”, and the commercial world: a summary

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:51:00 +0000

By Robert Miller

This is a summary of my essay 'Change in Universities, “Technology Transfer”, and the Commercial World: An Irreconcilable Clash of Cultures?', published here in June 2008.

The world currently faces unprecedented economic challenges, whose solution will require far-reaching innovations, in which universities, government research institutes, and commercial industries large and small, must all work together. In the last twenty years, in the UK and New Zealand (countries on which this essay primarily focuses), a style of university administration has developed, with excesses of both managerialism and demands for accountability which prevent real innovation from emerging. In their research role, this has placed short-term aims above more fundamental long-term initiatives. University staff spend too much time and effort on tasks which detract from these more important goals. This has been demoralizing and insulting. It undermines trust within universities, the integrity of scientists, the public appreciation of science, and, increasingly, it undermines science itself.

Practical implementation of basic research done in universities (often commercial, but not necessarily so) has almost always required a set of skills, experience and habits of thought quite different from those of the scientists from whom the basic ideas originate. Often practical applications originate with people who know the human face of real practical problems, rather than from the basic researchers. When fundamental research is turned to practical uses, it usually requires talents in addition to those of persons doing the fundamental research.

Much academic research can be criticized, because it is now dominated by “game-play”, entirely internal to itself, serving a number of vested interests (not least the publishing industry). Its proper function, that of providing new understanding, from which practical solutions may emerge, is, to an ever-increasing extent, ignored. Such “game-play” is exaggerated by the Research Assessment Exercise, and its equivalent in other countries, but was going on long before those policies were instituted. For far too long, leaders in academia have turned a blind eye to this; and now academia pays the price. The historic tradition of science is thus now to a large extent subverted. Until university researchers can address such criticisms, they become an easy target for excessive government control. Since the world of academic science is now international, this will require rethinking many of the national and international ways in which science is organized. This is already beginning to occur, with the increasing importance of open access, internet-based journals, with less exacting (or even no) peer review. Not least, a correct balance (and interaction) between theory and experiment needs to be achieved, especially in biomedicine and biotechnology. This would enable progress both in basic understanding, and in its practical applications to proceed more quickly, more securely and more cheaply than at present. The era of fundamental physics between 1890 and 1940 is a superb example of such fruitful interplay at its pinnacle, from which many other disciplines should learn.

In relation to “technology transfer”, the proper role of university research, especially in new fields like biotechnology, should mainly be to provide a large “well” of expertise, covering a very wide range of subjects, regardless of its commercial potential (which cannot be judged in advance). Technology transfer in biotechnology differs from that based on the physical sciences. In the former case, predictions for practical applications arising from basic knowledge are far less exact and certain than those in physics-based technology. This means that there must be much more effort in testing actual usefulness, long after the basic principles have been formulated. This in turn has implications for the way biotechnology should be organized, requiring styles different from those found useful in technology based on the physical sciences.

The practical development of basic science, which may require much larger investment than the basic research, and sometimes very big risks, requires fostering a culture of mutual respect, and regular communication at many levels, and on equal footing, between academia and the commercial world. Effective deployment of basic research in the form of practical applications is most likely to arise if such a climate of continual dialogue between academia and the commercial world is achieved. This will require change in attitudes within academia; but it will also require increasing openness and transparency within the commercial world, and adoption within that world of some of the ethos traditionally associated with universities. This is already starting to occur. In UK such a climate of mutuality and regular interaction between academia and the commercial world has not developed very well over many generations, because of radically differing attitudes within the two worlds. Examples where it worked well were in Germany (1830-1880), a period when many of our modern university traditions developed, and in more recent times in USA (based on local  state-wide  rather than nation-wide interaction between universities and commerce).

Large industrial enterprises can often be criticised, because of their focus on their own commercial success, negating what should be the real objectives of their industry (which wider society requires), and sometimes operating way beyond any democratic control. There should be the possibility of greater public influence on such industries, since in part they use taxpayers’ money, or rely on previous basic research carried out in universities at taxpayers’ expense.

To provide inspiration to young people about the values of science and the technological benefits to which it leads, and to warn against the moral failures of uncontrolled large-scale technology, education in universities, for both would-be scientists, and would-be business people, should include important background courses on the history of past successes of technology, as well as honest discussion of some of its past moral failures.

Robert Miller
University of Otago
New Zealand

The author’s research has been on the theory of brain functions, and its relevance to major mental illness, especially schizophrenia. This essay is also based on the author's reading more widely in the history of science and technology.

Demise of a National Research Facility

noreply@blogger.com (Hazelc) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:54:00 +0000

By Hazel Cox

The government changes in research councils may be in danger of damaging the UK's contribution to world research and our ability to advance research knowledge for the benefit of the country as a whole.

After 40 years of a service that provided computational chemistry facilities to UK academics, we were told on Tuesday (8th July 2008) that funding has not been renewed. This is a catastrophic oversight and is without any strategic thought or justification. Over 100 UK research groups have used this facility in the last 3 years (40 proposals have been received since the beginning of the year). Surely this is an excellent investment in UK science and the high-impact publications (including Science, JACS, etc.) that result and the acknowledgements by speakers at International conferences, is really testament to the significance and potential of the research performed as a result of this National Service for Computational chemistry software (NSCCS).

This is not just a service for computational chemists, it has gained strength and momentum over the years to allow access for all chemists (in particular experimentalists) providing hands-on training where necessary, and workshops in which the writers of software (often International) are available to talk to users. Furthermore, given the expense of experiments, access to the most recent chemistry software (quantum, classical, simulation, solvent models, etc.) to use as input into experiment design is very cost effective. Science from fundamental materials chemistry, structure and reactivity, catalysis, chemical physics to chemical biology and more have benefited from this service. The only criteria for time on the machines and access to the latest software being that the research is of excellent quality (all proposals are peer reviewed).

But this is not just about the NSCCS, this is about national facilities in the UK. It seems the latest policy change within the EPSRC is that all national services in the future will be subject to response mode bids (although this has not been announced publicly yet) and it seems in this most recent case no strategic importance is used to prioritise such bids. Thus, the research councils are investing in a small number of research groups (which is great) but at the expense of a service that everyone can apply to and is of great benefit, significance and importance to the UK international research standing. Furthermore, given the expense of experiments, access to the most recent chemistry software (quantum, classical, simulation, solvent models, etc.) to use as input into experiment design is very cost effective whether that be through collaboration or directly (and the funding of the service is extremely modest, £2.3m over last 3 years). At a time when the success rate of proposals is hitting an all-time low (approx 5-10% success rate for response mode), National facilities are imperative if the UK is to continue to be competitive in the international arena (and to support researchers of excellent science that are not lucky enough to get funded due to lack of funds not due to lack of excellence).

Please do all you can to stop the demise of this UK national facility and help save UK science. Please sign the petition.

Academic freedom detainee released from detention after 31 days.

noreply@blogger.com (Alana Lentin) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:03:00 +0000

By Alana Lentin

Following the cancellation order on his deportation, and after being detained for over 30 days, Hicham Yezza has been released on bail after the Home Office refused to grant him temporary release.

Hicham, a prominent political journal editor, writer and University member was arrested under anti-terror legislation for the possession of 'radical material' on May 14th. The document in question is widely used for research purposes and was downloaded from an official government website. At the time of the arrest the document was being used as material for a PhD proposal (supervised by staff in the Department of Politics and International Relations) of a student friend who was also arrested.

In the wake of the arrest the Home Office attempted to deport Hicham: a move that elicited widespread condemnation. Alan Simpson MP said: "The basis of that removal is to try to justify the abuse of power under the Terrorism Act" (see website for text of speech). The deportation order was cancelled in the midst of protests and a concerted campaign for Hicham's release, but he remained in detention for weeks in various immigration removal centres. The Home Office attempted to justify Hicham's continued detention by claiming he had an 'absence of close ties' to the UK. This was despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including hundreds of character references from friends and university colleagues, testifying to his excellent character and exceptional contributing to British society over the last 13 years.

Hicham's arrest highlights the routine and inappropriate use of the terror laws in Britain. Despite the fact that the 'radical material' was immediately confirmed as research material by academic supervisors, both Hicham and Riswaan Sabir were held for 6 days. This is a pre-charge detention period that would be illegal in most EU countries. This development comes in the wake of recent national debate surrounding the extension to 42 days pre-charge detention and at a time when the US Supreme Court reaffirms the writ of habeas corpus in relation terror suspects held in. Yet the UK Government continues to undermine this cornerstone of liberty and accelerates the erosion of fundamental civil liberties. When asked for comment on his release, Hicham said: "Being detained for the past 31 days has been the most harrowing experience of my life. The support my campaign has received from thousands of friends and supporters - including MPs academics, artists and concerned citizens in Nottingham and beyond - has been nothing short of inspirational and has sustained me through this difficult time. I have spent almost half my life in Nottingham and throughout that time have done my utmost to be a productive and positive member of the student and local communities. I look forward to continuing my fight for justice and I hope sense will prevail."

Campaign coordinator Musab Younis expressed his delight, commenting: "The incredible success of the campaign is testament to Hicham's deep roots in the community and unique contribution as a well-known activist, academic, writer, and artist. The campaign will press ahead in its aim to secure Hicham's right to stay in the region. We confidently expect a swift and positive resolution to this case, in line with the values of justice and free speech that we expect our country to uphold." We are delighted that Hicham Yezza has been granted immigration bail and has been released," said David Smith, immigration specialist with law firm Cartwright King and who is representing Mr Yezza. "The judicial review will now continue and we hope that the case will proceed in an orderly fashion to its proper conclusion."

Press conferences will be scheduled shortly: see our campaigning website updates.

Contact the Campaign:
Phone: 07948590262 / 07505863957 / 07726466211
Email: staffandstudents@googlemail.com
Stop the Deportation of Hicham Yezza
Website: http://freehichamyezza.wordpress.com

Rushing to Nottingham's Defence

noreply@blogger.com (Alana Lentin) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:25:00 +0000

By Alana Lentin

Two academics from the University Nottingham have condemned the campaign in support of Hicham Yezza, an employee of Nottingham University charged over terrorism offences and released only to be re-arrested over spurious immigration offences. The two, Dr Sean Matthews and Dr Macdonald Daly, while expressing concern for the situation currently facing Mr Yezza who is being indefinitely held in immigration detention, condemn what they call the "irresponsible, opportunistic and unethical conduct of many colleagues involved in the campaign to support Mr Yezza."

The authors of the statement start by making two substantive points. Firstly, that "we are confident that the University's declarations about upholding academic freedom have been reflected in its response to the arrests." Secondly, they claim that "we do not believe that the arrests constitute a challenge or threat to academic freedom."

The argument therefore turns around whether the arrest of Hicham Yezza and Rizwaan Sabir, originally for downloading and printing an Al Qaeda training manual, was in contravention of academic freedom. Matthews and Daly contend that academic freedom has not been violated and that the University, in immediately reporting the matter to the police, was merely fulfilling its legal duty.

They also place the blame at Yezza and Sabir's door by claiming that they acted irresponsibly by colluding to print out the document (Mr. Sabir, a student asked his friend, Yezza, a staff member to print the document out for him for free). Had they not done so, the matter would never have come to the notice of the authorities. In making this claim, the authors are noting that banal occurrences of this nature happen on a regular basis. What they fail to do is make the connection between Sabir and Yezza's actions and the heavy-handedness of the response. As was noted in the letter signed by staff and students at Sussex and Brighton Universities, it is clear that if the two "culprits" were not of Middle-Eastern/North African origin, their actions would have gone unnoticed, given that the document they printed out is widely available on various official websites, including that of the US government. Simply, a two-tiered rule is being applied: one for those safe in the knowledge that their white privilege will shield them from the law, even if - as happens on a regular basis - they contravene "the rules" by getting a friend to do their printing for them; another for those on the "most wanted" list that connects them by skin colour, religion and/or national origin to those purported to be "out to get us".

What is even more worrying about this case is the connection to immigration. Hicham Yezza is now being held in detention pending potential deportation from the UK for violation of his immigration status. This appears spurious given that he was working for the University, which must have been aware of his legal status, and about to apply for British citizenship based on his 13 years of residence in the UK. Despite this, the authors of the statement claim:

Had Mr Yezza been able to substantiate his claim to the University that he had the appropriate legal employment status, as all employees are required to do when they take up a post, or even had he been able later when the University asked him, as it is legally required to do, to provide documentation to substantiate such a claim, he would not have been arrested for immigration irregularities. Again, the responsibility for his arrest appears to relate to his own failure to provide appropriate documentation.

By putting the case in such procedural terms, Matthews and Daly are missing two points: Firstly, procedurally, no University in the UK employs anyone before their immigration status has been officially verified. Therefore, the immigration offences he is deemed to have committed appear mainly to be bogus. Secondly and more importantly, the authors fail to admit that current policy on "terrorism" works also to demonise "immigrants" as potential terrorists. Thus, by very virtue of one's status as a non-citizen from outside the EU, the US, Australia, etc. one is potentially guilty of plotting against the British state. Countless people, many long-term residents of the UK, have fallen victim of this politics that condemns people, especially those of "Arab" or "Muslim" origin, to de facto suspicion. As is documented in the film Taking Liberties, this has led to individuals being condemned to indefinite house arrest or imprisonment in criminal and/or immigration detention centres despite no hard evidence being brought against them relating to their purported links to terrorism.

This leads back to the issue of academic freedom. Part of what the current attack on universities from government and big business is doing is to silence individual academics who have chosen this career precisely because traditionally it enabled us to speak openly and freely about issues that concern us. It is ironic that, on the one hand, the talk is of liberalisation and flexibility, and on the other, we are being asked to police our students, suspected of involvement with "radical islamists". In the logic of the market, academics are styling their research funding applications to suit what they think will be funded rather than what they wish to research; what they believe will benefit society.

Ironicially, one of the biggest research areas identified by the research councils in tandem with government policy, is that of "security studies". This is exactly what Rizwaan Sabir was engaged in, downloading a document that is considered by security specialists crucial to the understanding of why "they hate us" and how terror networks such as Al Qaeda function. The question left begging, thefore, is just what kind of research is admissible and who should be allowed to carry it out? In absence of a clear response, we are all left asking the question, who will be next to be picked off, and how soon before it is not someone who can be attacked through the vehicle of immigration offences as was the case in Germany last year. And what, in the present climate, will no longer be deemed admissible research? If these are not questions of academic freedom, surely little else is...

Against the Deportation of Hicham Yezza

noreply@blogger.com (Alana Lentin) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:14:00 +0000

By Alana Lentin

Staff and students at the Universities of Sussex and Brighton are signing a joint letter of protest against the proposed deportation on Hicham Yezza addressed to the Minister of State for Borders and Immigration, Liam Byrne and the Vice Chancellor of Nottingham University, Colin Campbell.

Hicham Yezza, a staff member of the University of Nottingham who was arrested under the Terrorism Act for downloading an Al Qaeda training manual freely available from a US government wesbite. Although Mr Yezza was cleared of all terrorism charges, he is now facing imminent deportation on spurious immigration related offences. The University of Nottingham where Mr Yezza has been both a student and a member of staff for the last 13 years has done nothing in his support. He is currently in immigration detention awaiting deportation.

We are concerned that the actions of the Home Office, and Nottingham University's public silence over the matter, amount to an attack on intellectual freedom in this country that affects us all. It is also a matter of deep concern that the government, rather than admitting its mistake in arresting Hicham Yezza, has preferred to take the draconian measure of deporting him despite his longevity in the country.

Letter from staff and students at the Universities of Sussex and Brighton regarding the proposed deportation of Hicham Yezza to Liam Byrne MP, Minister of State for Borders and Immigration and Colin Campbell, Vice-Chancellor, Nottingham University (Copy send to The Guardian Education and The Independent).

Replies c/o Dr Alana Lentin, Department of Sociology, University of Sussex, Falmer, BN1 9RH. a.lentin@sussex.ac.uk

Brighton, June 3 2008

Dear Mr Byrne and Mr Campbell,

As academics and students at the Universities of Sussex and Brighton, concerned with the freedom of academic inquiry and study, we are writing to you with reference to the recent arrest of Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza at the University of Nottingham. The apparent offence was the downloading of an Al Qaeda Training Manual from the internet, freely available on a US government website. The response of the authorities and the University of Nottingham, in its singular lack of support, is a matter of serious concern to all British academics and students.

This matter has been compounded by the re-arrest, detention and potential deportation of Hicham Yezza on grounds of irregularities in his immigration status. It reflects very badly on this country that in response to the embarrassment caused by the initial arrest, further action against Mr Yezza should be taken merely to deflect public criticism of his handling by the security services. Hicham Yezza has been educated in Britain, has lived here for 13 years and makes a positive contribution to life in our country. As fellow citizens and residents, we believe that these actions are in dangerous contravention of our freedom as both scholars and human beings to contribute to research into matters of public concern. We are also convinced that if Mr Sabir and Mr Yezza had not been Muslim that their "offence" would not have come to the attention of the police. This has severe repercussions for students and staff of ethnic minority background or international members of our community who should feel secure as students and staff of our universities.

At a time when British universities are facing cuts and seeking income from international students, it is deeply ironic that the security and immigration services are making such efforts in alienating people from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa from coming to our country. We stand in solidarity with Hicham Yezza and others who may face the appalling situation to which he has been subjected and demand that he is released from detention and allowed to go home to Nottingham. We also call on Mr Campbell, as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, to issue an apology to Mr Sabir and Mr Yezza for their treatment by the University and to do everything he can in his power to halt the deportation of Hicham Yezza.

Yours sincerely,

'Challenging the market in education': report

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:41:00 +0000

by Les Levidow

On 17th May 2008 the UK's Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) hosted a conference on 'Challenging the market in education', looking at all educational levels and so also involving the National Union of Teachers. A booklet with the same title has been published by the UCU Campaigns Department, hopefully available from hq@ucu.org.uk.

I attended the workshop on 'The marketisation of university funding – impact on teaching and research'. It was good to see a high-profile conference recognising threats from a pervasive, subtle process of marketisation, not simply from privatisation. Some points from the booklet and workshop update my 2000 article, which emphasised that pervasive process and its diverse forms. Through marketisation, social relations are turned into business relations – between entrepreneurial partners, market competitors, vendors and consumers, managers and managed, etc.

Here is my report, which may be useful more widely than in the UK.

Marketisation of higher education takes many forms and disguises. Formal privatisation, e.g. transferring financial assets or contracting out services to the private sector, is only the most overt form. A more widespread threat is marketisation, effectively transforming and transferring intellectual assets into commodity-type relations. The marketisation process is generally disguised through benign language such as reform, modernisation, knowledge society, quality, etc. The drive comes partly from international institutions (e.g. World Bank, European Union) but also from university administrations, which often adopt business language and structures. For many years the Vice-Chancellors have addressed 'the business of higher education'.

The marketisation drive takes many forms. Academic units are turned into 'cost centres', whereby staff internalise a cost accounting for their time, with less willingness to cooperate with apparent competitors. TRAC forms, supposedly a record of activity, can be used as timesheets for disciplining labour time according to market criteria. E-learning systems supposedly help students but are often designed to separate students from teachers, turning their relations into consumers-vendors. Partnerships with the private sector effectively marketise university resources, putting staff under pressure to accommodate. A grotesque example is the Open University's involvement in the Metrix consortium with military supply companies, together bidding to provide military training, previously unbeknownst to most OU staff. See http://www.qinetiq.com/home_metrix_review/about_metrix.html.

As an effective response to those diverse examples and disguises, university staff can campaign against the ways that marketisation undermines our working conditions – for example:

- the drive for higher workloads and/or redundancies;
- attacks on our professional capacities and roles; and
- degradation of quality, especially through performance criteria

To be successful, a campaign against marketisation and its effects needs a broad vision. This can be developed in several ways:

- locating any specific threat within the wider neoliberal agenda;
- carrying out a battle for ideas for the public good versus marketisation;
- proposing alternative forms of quality and modernisation towards a different future;
- highlighting and defending the gift economy, as the cooperative basis for our academic work; and
- making alliances with civil society and community groups, including of course students.

Members need a brief strategy document explaining the pervasive threat of marketisation, especially how local examples relate to national and global policies. This document would help to inform discussion on how to resist and counterpose alternatives.

Les Levidow
Development Policy and Practice
The Open University
L.Levidow@open.ac.uk

The AHRC's funding decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:06:00 +0000

By James Ladyman

Let us accept for the sake of argument that the AHRC is obliged by the government to maximize the economic impact of research in the arts and humanities. Philip Esler contends in the latest THES that funds must be diverted from postgraduate funding to the 'vital strategic initiatives' adopted by the AHRC to ensure this (I refer to the Council's own ring-fenced funding initiatives, not those foisted upon it by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, or the cross-council initiatives, all of which are equally problematic but for which the AHRC itself cannot be solely blamed). However, there is no evidence that such schemes really do maximize impact. There is no doubt that by hosting some of the most prestigious academic presses, and because of the long tradition of scholarship in our universities, the UK punches well above its weight in research and publishing. The total economic impact of excellent academic work in terms of overseas student fees, book sales and visits to the UK by overseas academics, is very high but easily taken for granted. Indeed, it seems the AHRC has not even attempted to cost it. On the other hand, when you look at the list of the current initiatives I think it is fair to say that they do not reflect the kind of research in which most academics in the arts and humanities have traditionally engaged. I have yet to be convinced that the likes of 'Beyond Text' have any significant intellectual value, and it is the latter that is noticed by those around the world who are currently the most economically valuable end-users of our arts and humanities research. The strategic initiatives are distorting the research agenda of academics because within universities there is now so much pressure to get grants and to adapt one's research in whatever ways necessary to do so. Yet what will be valued by our colleagues internationally is research that follows the agenda set within the disciplines not the schemes dreamed up by the AHRC. If the AHRC uses a proximate criterion of impact rather than pure academic excellence as a criterion for funding this will be to the detriment of the research base that is so economically valuable. This is because the only reliable predictor of the economic impact of academic work in general is its academic excellence, since that is what is valued by scholars and leads to books sales, conference invitations, visits to the UK and so on. The AHRC risks neglecting its responsibility to ensure that the UK continues to benefit, not least economically, from the academic sector.

Philip Esler stated that the AHRC would not ever be able to return to previous levels of postgraduate studentships. Other research councils devote only 30% of their total funding to studentships. The AHRC proportion has been 38%. As of the start of the block grant regime, the percentage will be 32%. The obvious response to this is that the AHRC unlike the other councils has a distinctive role as virtually the only source of funding for postgraduates in its area of research. There is also the point that the demographics pointed out by the recent Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee select committee report (more old arts and humanities academics and fewer young ones) very much call for supporting the entry of young people into arts and humanities research and hence for PG funding. The AHRC has a responsibility to help restock the academy.

The matched research leave scheme allows a large number of scholarly projects to be supported with short but significant amounts of leave for academics, and it allows young researchers to get temporary jobs as replacement teachers. It is a form of spread-betting compared to the large grants that fund huge projects and concentrate funds in the hands of a few academic stars. It is almost universally agreed that the matched leave scheme is a very efficient way of supporting research and the most valuable scheme the AHRC runs. Yet we were told at the meeting with the AHRC on 1st May that the current matched leave scheme is incompatible with Treasury rules about full economic costing. It does not seem to have occurred to them that their job is to tell the Treasury that the scheme is the most efficient use of funds to maximize impact and that therefore the rules need to be bent or changed. As with the proportion spent on PG funding, I have the impression that the leaders of the AHRC do not put the obvious arguments in defence of the scheme, but simply go away with the aim of doing what they are told. Esler repeatedly offered the most lame arguments from critics and used them as an excuse for his policies rather than challenging those arguments. I urge all academics in the arts and humanities to write to the members of the AHRC council and tell them to reverse the cut in postgraduate funding and the shift in funds from many small research grants to a few large ones and even worse to ill-conceived strategic initiatives. I also urge people to write to the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee select committee in relation to their recent report (page 44) and AHRC policy.

Professor James Ladyman
Department of Philosophy
University of Bristol

Philippe Corcuff on French university reforms

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:17:00 +0000

By Kees van der Pijl

In Le Monde, Saturday 19 April 2008, there was a verbatim report of a debate on the need for reform of French society that included a significant part on universities reform.

Of course, 'reform' these days is a code word for deepening capitalist market discipline on every aspect of social life, and three of the four participants in the debate obviously took this understanding of the term for granted. The two politicians taking part, Xavier Bertrand for the presidential party UMP, and François Hollande for the Socialists, agreed on the need for reform; no need to repeat the generalities they exchanged. The insert with graphs and figures accompanying the article, showing that 55 per cent of all French people consider that 'reform' in the last fifteen years has mainly benefited 'the privileged' had apparently not been shown to them, or else they did not consider it relevant.

The most interesting debate was between Jacques Attali, a former associate of François Mitterrand, and a sociologist, Philippe Corcuff. Attali has headed a committee 'for the liberation of growth'. This report, according to its chair's contribution to this discussion, has established that the state in France functions to preserve a system of rentes de situation, rents appropriated on account of economic or social position (other than profitable enterprise). Basically Attali says that the welfare state still persists in France and that this gives people entitlements which should be stripped away to match what is happening in neighbouring countries such as Britain.

Corcuff challenged this idea All the talk of 'rents', he said, is simply meant to create a climate in which people's entitlements can be taken away, in a situation where the top 10 percent of the population already owns 46 percent of national wealth. Since 1982, the share of wages in the French economy has fallen by ten percentage points.

About the universities, Attali claimed that his committee's proposals concerning higher education have gone down well with everybody. The idea of creating ten top universities for instance, 'without devaluing the others'—the standard phrase to cover the obvious objection. Again no apparent awareness that this links in directly with growing inequality; the upper class, increasingly separate from the rest of society, also wants its own route through higher education.

Corcuff had valid points on this issue too. He noted that there is already widespread discontent about the new universities law (loi Pécresse). This law, he argued, is not the ultraliberal law as many claim, because the universities remain in the public domain. Instead the law has been passed under the pressure of university presidents, and under the aegis of 'autonomy' in fact turns universities into feudal institutions. University presidents, he noted, are those who have abandoned research and teaching and who as a result have little or no standing in either field. It is a shocking thought that such people are given the sovereign power of hiring academics and evaluating careers. This caste of university bureaucrats has been greatly strengthened by the loi Pécresse, which turns them into a sort of company managers. But research and higher education are not products like soap, they are public goods, Corcuff maintained. What the current university reform does in the name of autonomy, is to reinforce localism, clientelism, and bureaucratic arbitrariness.

One would think that what is happening in France has some striking similarities with what is going on in British higher education. The notion of exchanging professionalism for loyalty to institutions (led by managers who in spite of academic titles have little or no standing as professionals in most cases), is indeed a form of feudalism. It represents a sharp break with the idea that an intellectual's status is ultimately decided by a professional community which today is global, and that a good university tries to bring those with established reputations to its own institution and ensures that they flourish there . By creating an appropriate environment, such a university will also ensure that new generations of researchers and teachers are raised to the same level and that students get the best education possible. This is a matter of civilisation and something worth fighting for.

Kees van der Pijl
International Relations, Sussex

The discourse of marketisation

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:08:00 +0000

By Charles Owen

I am one of the people quoted by John Gill in his THES article on 30 November 2007. He asked me specifically about two passages from a HEFCE Board Paper:

'To implement the outcome of this rethinking, there will need to be significant culture change. HEIs' staff will need to be more aware of and aligned to the strategic needs of the HEI. Academics' goals are often related to their discipline rather than their institution and they will need to develop institutional loyalties in addition to discipline loyalties. Corporate planning processes will need to be communicated more effectively for those processes to be more successful.'

And:

'HEIs will need to develop their business process and become more efficient, so that they can re-invest. The Committee advises that HEIs should not be afraid of the language and culture of business.'

A precis of my comments to Mr Gill is:

"In a sense they are right, there is a big culture clash between the language of business and the way most academics view their lives.

"But as to the thesis we shouldn't be afraid of that language, that's highly presumptuous; many people dislike it but that's a quite different matter because it's often hollow and has all sorts of presuppositions built into it that we academics don't accept.

"There are big problems with language and communication within Higher Education institutions, but the language of business has colonised universities in an unacceptable and divisive way.

"The use of the word loyalty is corporate speak. Very few of us went into academic life to be loyal to a particular institution, and that is as it should be.

"We recognise that if the institution succeeds then everyone gains, but our primary duty is to our students and our discipline."

It is thus with some interest that I read the guidance in Leeds Met ACTs Source Booklet, referred to in Alexandre Borovik's last contribution to this blog. It confirms that I am just the sort of person they wouldn't want.

I am a linguist, and my concern is that the discourse of marketisation is interfering with independent thought and obfuscating serious issues of educational policy. But in this message I particularly want to consider the democracy challenge posed in an earlier comment by Frankie:

"I think it is crucial that there is discussion on the connection between the expansion of the undergraduate body at universities in the last 20 years and the marketisation of the same institutions.

"Another related point is about whether the desire to contest the university as yet another wealth creation unit in society highlights a marked lack of concern for the real proletariat who have long had to suffer working in purely wealth creation units."

I am not the first to note that it is an error to suppose that recent trends in marketisation amount to democratisation. There is much evidence to the contrary, and university management discourse is part of that evidence.

Consider a term such as 'stakeholders'. This is the kind of word which permeates university management discourse and you might think it has a democratic ring to it. I certainly had no trouble finding it in the section of the Leeds Met document entitled "More Effective Behaviours". These behaviours (note the use of the plural to garnish the word with spurious technical status) are categorised under headings such as "Working co-operatively with others" and "Building meaningful relationships and networks". A senior employee, must, under the first of these be:

"Able to pull various stakeholders together to agree course of action and achieve goals."

and under the second must:

"Build rapport by displaying empathy, tact and diplomacy with internal colleagues and external stakeholders."

My question is: 'Does the embellishment of common-sense and decency with pseudo-technical management mumbo-jumbo represent a great stride forward in university governance since the 1970s?' I doubt it.

From a practical point of view, "stakeholders" may now be so deep-rooted in our discourse (not in mine actually) that it is pointless to complain, but don't delude yourselves that these shadowy flag-carriers of democracy truly represent the great British public. Rather, they are a sharp-suited, self-interested sub-set thereof.

The irony is that this sub-set excludes some of the very people it ought to include - my office cleaner for example. In a society which believed in the universal social importance of universities, instead of focussing primarily on 'wealth creation', this man would be a stakeholder because he needs his grand-daughter to be taught punctuation by a well-trained English graduate so that she can in her turn go on to study English if that's want she wants. But in our society, stakeholders are primarily wealth-controllers, i.e. politicians, employers, funding bodies (preferably foreign governments) students with money "to invest in their futures" and parents of same. Who is more likely to serve the interests of the proletariat (as Frankie puts it)? Someone who can pull stakeholders together or someone with an interest in their academic discipline and a commitment to teach it to all-comers?

Corporate discourse, as it has colonised higher education, with its "stakeholder relations managers", "best practice implementation", "policy roll-outs", "light touch reviews", "effective and efficient strategy development" - indeed the whole dreary and deceptive lexicon - tacitly excludes the very people it pretends to include, and alienates many whose inboxes are poisoned with it daily. In this way it is far more hypocritical than the specialist jargons of academic disciplines, which do not claim to be instantly or easily accessible but, unlike corporate discourse, must continually undergo the rigours of critical analysis in order to survive.

Charles Owen
Department of English
University of Birmingham

Loyalty to corporation, services to customers

noreply@blogger.com (Editors) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:55:00 +0000

By Alexandre Borovik

HEFCE wants from staff loyalty. From an article by John Gill in THES, 30 Nov 2007:

A report from the Leadership, Governance and Management Strategic Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for England says that the sector is "on the cusp of substantial and complex change" and calls for staff to adopt new attitudes.

It says: "Staff will need to be more aware of and aligned to the strategic needs of the higher education institution.

Academics' goals are often related to their discipline rather than their institution, and they will need to develop institutional loyalties in addition to discipline loyalties."

It also warns universities not to be "afraid" of the language and culture of business, and says that managerial leadership is not valued or rewarded highly enough.

So, the new corporate mentality of universities make them love loyalty and demand loyalty from their staff.

But it is widely accepted that a person's answers to the question "What you do not like?" provide more insights into his/her personality than answers to a positively charged question "What do you like?" Let us apply the same approach to universities and see what they do not like.

A case study is provided by the Leeds Metropolitan University's programme document "Leeds Met ACTS: Attitude, Character & Talents" for its new staff performance development system, see Leeds Met ACTs Source Booklet. Staff attitudes are divided in two groups: More Effective Behaviours and Less Effective Behaviours. It is the Less Effective Behaviours list that is interesting. A few gems:

Does not accept the concept of "customer" or "service user"
Does not demonstrate respect for rules, regulations and procedures
Does not prepare written or verbal communication effectively for meetings and other interactions
Does not engage with the Vision & Character of Leeds Met
Does not volunteer new ideas/suggestions for improvement
Sceptical about change – lets negative reaction to change affect morale of self and others
Fails to explain the need/reasons for change
Talks negatively about others and the university
Uses learning and development opportunities purely for own self development or recognition

We see the prominent role of the concept of "customer" or "service user". It is another key buzzword; I feel that it is directly linked to the loyalty issue.

Indeed, Lewis Elton's brief letter to THES ("Client not customer", 25 November 2005) contains a remarkably precise formulation:

Students are neither customers ("persons who buy"), nor consumers ("persons who purchase goods or services") - they are clients ("persons who seek the advice of a professional man or woman"). [...] (All quotes are from the Collins English Dictionary.)

If we accept that students are clients who seek the advice of a professional man or woman, we instantly recognise that the relations between a client and a professional are regulated by professional codices controlled by a wider professional community. You cannot just come to a solicitor, hand her money and dictate what she has to do for you -- a solicitor's primary responsibility is compliance with the law and extensive professional regulations. Similarly, you cannot come to GP and demand a prescription -- it is a doctor's duty to decide what is best for you on the basis of his experience and, again, norms of his profession.

In my humble opinion, only loyalty to their disciplines and their communities makes academics what they are. In the present disputes about the future of academia, we have to insist that we are professionals, that only the peer review and peer control of professional communities ensures both rigour of research and high standards of education -- and, of course, we have to insist that students are our clients. Moreover, it is crucial for survival of universities that some of our students become our disciples and absorb the ethics norms of our communities.

HEFCE wants to de-professionalise university staff by cutting their connections to professional communities and professional networks.

It could be part of a wider picture: anecdotal evidence suggests an increasingly hostile stance of the Government towards learned societies. But this is a serious issue which has to be properly discussed on its own.

Disclaimer. Should I remind you that my views are mine alone and not those of my employer, or of any professional organisation, or anyone else, for that matter?

Alexandre Borovik (Mathematics, Manchester)
Reposted from his blog Managerialism in Academia

Thanks

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:53:00 +0000

By Gordon Finlayson

Thanks Andrew for setting up this blog. It is vital that we raise these issues, and we need a place where we can do this.

A word on economic impact.

One thing that we should bear in mind is that even if the only value of Higher education were its economic impact (which is untrue, but this is another matter) there is a great deal that can be said about the economic value of teaching and research in the Humanities, that is not currently being said.

It seems obvious from documents such as the White Paper, and the Science and Innovation Investment Framework, and I have heard this confirmed by various moles with their ears close to Government, that there is a belief that the Universities are not paying their way, that the Government has not seen a return on its investment in Universities, that they are funding too much research that is without economic value. Hence the move to include "stakeholders" (i.e. Government and business people) on the Research Councils to encourage funding of projects with high economic impact.

But what is the real economic impact of the output of research intensive universities in the Arts and Humanities? And how would one measure this? Unless the government has a pretty firm idea of what the economic impact is already, and has been for the last ten years or so, presumably it cannot know if its new policy is having the desired effect.

I have not seen any plausible figures on this. What is the combined economic value of the skills, acquired by Arts and Humanities graduates and post-graduates in the course of their higher education, over a life time of work, at research intensive Universities? I would like to know what the government figures are, and how they arrive at their calculations.

The AHRC, which is, of course, anxious to show the Government that it is delivering economic impact, gives the numbers of Ph.D students flowing into the labour market, in its 2008 Delivery Plan, mentions a PricewaterhouseCooper audit (Case study on economic impact of research grant Polynesian Visual Arts: meanings and histories in Pacific and European cultural contexts. PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006), and cites another highly exceptional case study:

"Economic Impact Case Study - AHRC Research on recycled glass for structural and aesthetic applications led to a new product, TTURA that is used in public art works and is sold to the construction industry for worktops and flooring. According to PwC, the economic impact of this research includes a projected Gross Value Added from sales of TTURA in the range of £2.4m to £3.2m over 25 years and projected licensing income from intellectual property ranging from £530k to £930k over 25 years."

(Yes this is the AHRC! And it wants the exception to become the rule.)

One might reasonably infer from this that the Government is in fact pressurising the Research Councils to increase funding to research projects with a likely demonstrable economic benefit, because among other things the Government and the AHRC are part of a target culture, and for various reasons need to be able to show that they have increased (sorry, delivered a step change in) economic impact. But 1. their measures of economic impact are extremely crude, and 2. anyway increasing demonstrable (and auditable) economic impact is not the same thing as increasing economic impact. A policy that results in an increase in the former might lead to a decline in the latter.

So among the questions we should ask are these:

Is government policy going to make studying arts and humanities disciplines more attractive to the best foreign post-graduate students, than it currently is? If it has the opposite effect, what will be the economic impact on Universities?

Will one of the effects of ring-fencing large sums of money for Government strategic research priorities end up funneling academics and (Research-themed Universities) towards these lucrative areas?

Will that, in turn, lead to a decline in quality of research (and research led teaching) in other areas? What will the economic effect of that be?

What will the effects of this be on the disciplines of the Humanities?

Interdisciplinarity versus Lone Scholar Research

I'm not against interdisciplinary research where it can be done, and where there is reason to think it might be fruitful. But one hears all the time now (from government and other sages), that the days of lone scholars is over and that all the most important research is done by crews of interdisciplinary researchers. One reason that lone scholar research might be in decline (if it is) is that the effect of government policy is to make it more difficult. And one reason that much important research in the arts and humanities is being done by large crews of interdisciplinary researchers (if it is) is that the government has put in place large financial incentives, which have of course generated interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects. What the long to medium term effects of these incentives are going to be, is a good question. They will certainly change behaviour of academics. Economists know that financial incentives generate rent-seeking activity. Whether this is leading the research agenda in the right direction, it is too early to tell. No congratulations are in order yet. Let us wait and have a look at the results (deliveries) of these projects in 10 years time.

Still no amount of hand waving towards Government funded interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects will persuade me that the model of the lone scholar, driven by intellectual curiosity, is not an entirely appropriate and fruitful one for most humanities disciplines. Come to that, all the best interdisciplinary research I have read in the last ten years - whether by Habermas, Thomas Franck, or T. J. Clark - has been by, guess what, lone scholars. And so far as I can see, in most if not all Humanities disciplines, the best Universities continue to publish high quality single authored monographs. Are they living in the past, one wonders?

Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Chitty (hotmail)) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:07:00 +0000

In The Idea of the University: A Re-examination (1992) Jaroslav Pelikan used a phrase from Newman's The Idea of a University (discourse 6) to describe the chorus of political attacks on American universities as a 'storm breaking upon the university'. Today it may not be an exaggeration to that there is a storm breaking upon British universities. Beginning especially with the 2003 White Paper 'The Future of Higher Education', the government has been progressively imposing a set of demands on the sector that are at odds with the very idea of a university as we know it.

In a nutshell: students must be reconceived as customers paying for a service; teaching as the manufacture and delivery of course products to these customers; research as intellectual work carried out for payment to meet the needs of external funders; and universities themselves as private corporations that must compete to sell their products on a global market in order to survive. If they have a contribution to make to the public good beyond that of helping the government to achieve policy objectives, it is to be understood entirely in terms of a contribution to the UK economy: their role is to train students for future employment and to produce research that is usable by businesses or the government. Today the agenda set by these demands dominates the media coverage of the university sector.

This blog aims to document the present drive to marketize and instrumentalize the British university system, to investigate its consequences, and to act as a forum for a discussion of how universities can respond to it so as to preserve their essential values of knowledge and education.