Over the past few years, the ‘job’ of the academic has changed: it used to be, primarily, concerned with talking to students, discussing ideas, formulating concepts, trying to go beyond (surpass?) what existed. However, as neoliberalism/anarcho-capitalism gradually made inroads – something we can date back to Thatcher, her resentment of academia and worship of “the market” (nor should we forget that FG/FF are neoliberals, pushing the same kind of individualistic, self-interested, market devotion) – Irish education began its lurch to the right, kick-started by the 2008 recession. Education, as with all other public services and servants, paid the price for the reckless endangerment committed by bankers. Politicians who, by and large, appear to know nothing about anything except self-promotion, seized the opportunity to make academics pay for their intelligence (the academics, not the politicians) and what they (the politicians, not the academics) perceived as “ivory tower” lifestyles. Business pracitces were ‘frontloaded’, a need for centrally-controlled “quality assurance” was manufactured. A new management ‘system’ for education was created, based on mistrust and distrust. ‘Accountability’ would be guaranteed by “learning outcomes”, together with ever-proliferating streams of paperwork. Academia would shift from teaching to being assessed/seen to be teaching. At one and the same time, Administration would be elevated to primary position, expanding exponentially with each passing year. Business practices would tame the academy, make it “tow the line”, force it into “meeting the needs of industry”. In short, turn education into training and “skills acquisition”, stripping out thought, replacing it with drone-like obedience to the whims of the market.
Students have become ‘learners’ – adjusting their ‘allowance’ of individuality to what the capitalist system permits, identifying conformity as ‘choice’. Their status as ‘human’ is diminished by the replacement of the designation of ‘student’ wth that of ‘learner’: a ‘learner’ eventually finishes (in some sense or other) ‘learning’ by the arbitrary imposition of a cut-off point; by completing and passing this module, thus, meeting the “learning outcomes”. Collect the set of modules and your learning is done. You too are now permitted to enter the ‘adult’ world of ‘work’, amassing the usual markers of adulthood: mortgage; children; car; ambition; consumerism…the panoply of ‘adult’ indicators.
As the student is diminished (one can remain a student of history, of philosophy, of literature, forever) so is the academic. Indeed, the academic cannot be trusted to write “learning outcomes” without being trained to do so: they must use certain words (appropriate to particular ‘levels’ of learning) in specific ways…for which they require training (or, as it is laughably described, “continuous professional development”). Uniformity and obedience have become the primary requirements of academic positions, ideologically integrated to appear to be ‘choice’. In addition, standards must be ‘benchmarked’ – merely another way of insisting on uniformity. “The look” must always be directed towards “the other(s)” because, apparently, only by doing this can competitiveness be assured, and the market given it’s rightful place – as the guarantor of freedom.
Yet what does such ‘freedom’ consist in? Freedom to serve the system; freedom to obey; freedom to ‘choose’ the discourse of business; freedom to believe that you are a free individual…the freedom of self-deception.
In all of this, academic freedom has been lost, has become a simulacrum of freedom (as have all other ‘freedoms’). It is only a matter of time before Ireland too falls to the metrics of ‘output’: publish or be damned. As we see in America and the UK, it is not the content of publications that count, but the very fact of their publication. Quantity over quality – the university becomes little different to a factory, churning out product; it is of no importance what it is, what it says or what it does, the simple fact of its existence is validation enough. Thus, the academic becomes just another labourer, alienated from their work and themselves, whose ‘real’ life exists elsewhere.
And where does that ‘life’ exist? In consumerism – one’s value and values are displayed in what one possesses.
Murmurs from the Forest 