The question for everyone going to university this autumn is not whether you will get to the end of your course, but whether your university will.
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Both universities and education need to reinvent their purpose. Any organisation or institution that loses touch suits purpose loses touch with its customers and staff… trust is lost. When staff loses belief they lose the courage to challenge what needs to change. Weak purpose makes for poor decision-making and a lack of direction.
Here’s one thought as to that new purpose. On so many levels universities can be primary drivers of community wealth building. There are significant opportunities to build new value. I’d suggest that the necessary culture change to do that would be welcomed by most people working in the sector.
Please expand on what you mean by “wealth”, “community wealth building” and “value”. I don’t find the meaning obvious.
Surely another problem has been the extraordinary expansion of the number of universities? In the 1960s there were about 50 universities in the whole country. I gather there are now 22 in London alone.
That does not avoid the problem of their closing.
I was thinking of causes rather than cures.
Is it possible to gradually widen the curriculum to give a broader range of people access to many different practical as well as academic subjects? I realise this would not be easy but is this not the time for a “revolution” Murphy style?
I like the idea
University education has been deliberately undermined by making them accountable for their own funding. The finger points at neoliberal ideology:
“In 1947, Hayek formed the first organization to promote neoliberalism, the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS).[8] There, he and others began to create what has been described as a “Neoliberal International”[9]—a transatlantic network of academics, journalists, and businesspeople seeking to develop a new way of seeing and running the world.” [..]
“The same rich backers also underwrote academic departments in universities, such as the University of Chicago[11], [12] and the University of Virginia.[13], [14] Again, these departments presented themselves as independent and objective, but the main effect of their work was to propagate and amplify the ideology. The University of Chicago in particular, thanks to this generous patronage, established itself as a laboratory for the extension of neoliberal ideas, and remains a crucible of the doctrine to this day.”
Source: The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life) (2024) by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison. https://amzn.eu/d/hWvMzE6
The secret history of Neoliberalism | The Invisible Doctrine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR4eSEetKP0&t=26s
Thank you
Very good.
The only thing I would say is you underplay the role of universities in their local communities, the benefit is not just economic but also creative – with creativity not just in the arts but also the sciences. And surprisingly given your own contributions, you fail to acknowledge the role of universities in research. That is an extraordinary driver of innovative business, but is kept in a separate silo from the degree courses during government assessment of universities. It is a huge part of the way universities are for everyone’s benefit and shouldn’t be judged on the individual value to a single student paying fees.
As a comment the current situation justifies the “thin end of the wedge” fear about any change, a modest charging of fees under Blair led to complete undermining of the historic funding model under Cameron. But many universities have to be held partly culpable themselves, given how they welcomed the Cameron settlement.
You can’t blame the universities – you can blame their leadership – corrupted, in my opinion, by the pots of gold laid in their paths.
Otherwise, much to agree with.
Sheffield, has two Universities, University of Sheffield (a Russell University) and Hallam. (We also have a Sheffield College.) Both are in constant crisis, closing down world leading departments like archaeology. Any course that doesnt make money for their businesses has been closed or under constant threat.
University staff, from porters, to lecturers are forever at loggerheads with management with Unions playing a vital role in supporting them. More senior academics are overstretched and exausted from pressure to publish research, and angry that they cannot provide proper face to face time tutoring students. Many teaching staff are on short term contracts, not knowing until a week before a course is about to start whether they have a job to go to, prepare course material or pushed into teaching a subject they have any backgroud in.
Communities surrounding the universities are in constant flux as what were once homes have dormitoritories. Students under constant pressure financially, moving every term from one proprty to another. Settled communuties find it vertually impossible to engage with the student population living on streets where vertually every home is now, multi occupation property owned by a myrad of landlords or agencies.
The skyline of the city is now dominated by tower blocks of expensive to rent student accomodation catering for overseas student which have become the sole businesx fous of the univerities.
Should the Univerities fail the impact on Sheffieild as a city would bs devastating.
This is neoliberalism as its ideololgy was always going to collapse.
It’s a humungous time bomb of a disaster waiting to happen.
Very much agreed