Abstract
It has been a sobering couple of days in the knowledge factory. Last night one of us attended the launch of his employer’s first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). It was a strange affair: part international branding, part ‘me too-ism’, part adult education reboot, and part hyper commodification. Do 40 six minute videos, with multi choice questionnaires for desert, really qualify as ‘higher education’? Fad, fashion, foolishness or the future? It is very hard to tell at this point. Certainly the University’s chancellor was nervous. A prominent business man, he said he wanted to see the business model before things got carried away.
And speaking of questionnaires, one of us yesterday waded through the tick-boxes in his university’s new staff satisfaction survey. No mention of teaching and learning and adult education there though–just anxious questions about whether performance was being encouraged (in what?) and how well we were getting on with our managers.
Taken separately the MOOC and the staff survey are unremarkable bits and bobs from contemporary university life. Taken together and alongside the pursuit of commercial income, overseas students and higher slots in various ranking and accreditation schemes, we wonder whether the university as institution has finally succumbed to the pincer movements of commodification and managerialism; the character, strength and acuity of which has been a frequently debated topic in Organization. In this vein and in this edition we publish the last two of ten papers that have appeared in the Speaking Out series entitled: ‘What are we to do with Higher Education’.
So what have the authors in the series exposed and proposed? They have dragged into view managerial inaction to international plagiarism (Luke and Kearins, 2012). They have extracted with irony the ‘agonies’ of ‘excellence’ from the academically well-proportioned (Butler and Spoelstra, 2012). They have revealed the scandalous profitability and tax-avoiding ways of commercial journal publishers (Harvie et al., 2012), and plotted, for authors, alternatives to for-profit journal publishing (Beverungen et al., 2012). They have unpacked, in inglorious detail, the neo-colonialism in management textbooks (Murphy and Zhu, 2012), and rattled the gilded cage of the research-led universities with questions over the quality of their teaching (Marinetto, 2013). Moreover, they have pin-pointed Organization’s special position in the journal citation beauty stakes (Li and Parker, 2013) and they have put up for critical questioning the managerialist constraints facing the PhD researcher that threaten to derail ambitious and avant garde research (Prasad, 2013).
And so to our final two papers in the Special Issue series: both complementing the critical agenda of the previous eight, yet taking their critique of the twinned pincers of managerialism and commodification in different directions. The first piece by Emma Bell and Amanda Sinclair asserts the need to reclaim the love of learning, and the pleasure and nurturance of collegial and pedagogic relations. In their article, entitled ‘Reclaiming Eroticism in the Academy’, the authors present an attack on the norm of the disembodied, commodified and alienated academic. Of course, they are not so idealistic to assume that a simple call to erotic arms will turn the university to loving ways. They do claim, however, that where they have shared these ideals the response has been arresting and empowering, and has challenged the factory-like experience of many in the contemporary university.
The final piece in our Speaking Out series turns to the university-as-factory. Written by former Organization editor Martin Parker, and entitled ‘University, Ltd: Changing a Business School’, the article tells of the brief but tumultuous tenure by Parker of working in a European business school. While the story might suggest otherwise, there are no particular villains and heroes in this piece. What the case shows is just how pervasive market responses have become when hyperactive managerialism clashes with the academic gentry. Reflecting and lamenting on the lack of academic resistance, Parker notes that the only response seems to be to shut up or get out: for some at least there is the option to leave, for greener pastures, or, perhaps, a less abrasive employer elsewhere.
And so we come to the end of this Speaking Out series on Higher Education. But the end is where we started from. Our hope is that these articles, with their mix of critique and suggestions for action, will inspire responses to our starting question ‘What are we to do with Higher Education’.