Performativity,Big Data and Higher Education: The Death of the Professor?

Abstract

In his classic work, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean-Françios Lyotard prophesised the death of the age of the Professor. Writing at the end of the 1970s, Lyotard could see that in contexts where knowledge was regarded as a commodity, and where the question of truth was becoming subservient to the question of what sells, the importance of university teachers would increasingly be questioned. In the decades that followed the publication of The Postmodern Condition, many of the trends observed by Lyotard have become cemented in policy and practice. This paper argues that while the age of the Professor is not yet dead, it is dying -slowly but steadily, in a manner that is more evident in some fields than others. Given the dominance of economic goals in shaping educational agendas, the triumph of the performativity principle, and the obsession with measuring and marketing almost everything, support for scholars in the humanities in particular has been progressively eroded. This process of dying is, however, by no means complete, and a rebirth of the age of the Professor, perhaps in a slightly different form, remains a possibility that should not be ruled out.