We inhabit a university system in which Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) policies proliferate. Each university must have one and, apparently, to ensure these policies are followed, there is also a requirement for Universal Design (UD). Together, these ensure that lecturers do not populate their lecture series’ according to their own prejudices and biases which, left to their own devices, they would, apparently, be sure to do.
Or at least this is the thinking behind this ‘innovation’ which, as with the introduction of “learning outcomes” some years’ ago – whereby I am able to ‘predict’ what each and every student (oops, ‘learner’ according to DEI & UD) will know after the completion of my ‘module’. I have referred to “lecture series” in the paragraph above but, nowadays, the favoured term is ‘module’…Modules are, apparently, discrete, self-contained units which, once completed, can be forgotten as the student moves on to the next. Fragmentation in action. Not only do these modules have to be formatted in a particular way, the language that one can use is prescribed by management diktat. “Continuous Professional Development” sessions are run to teach lecturers how to write these “learning outcomes”: certain words are prohibited, as are certain phrases…in other words, the discourse is controlled, dictated by people who have never set foot in a lecture theatre or, if they have, did so many years ago. What one never hears is a rational argument in regard to why this word but not that one.
“Learning outcomes” form, as Thomas Docherty puts it in The English Question, part of the “paper trail” of managerialism that has blighted education for over twenty years. These established a structure of control which DEI and UD continue and reinforce. Academics are not to be trusted, should be distrusted from the outset. After all, primary and secondary teachers are already engulfed by paperwork to ‘prove’ that they are “doing their jobs”, so why not extend this to third level? Another victory in the war against intelligence – conformity and uniformity are imposed by bureaucrats, and the careerists in universities who are determined to compromise the integrity of everyone else in service of their “climbing the ladder”, whose goal is a “pat on the head” from those in power (that they, one day, might become them).
This is, of course, another instance of imposing metrics on the unmeasurable. How can I possible predict what someone else will ‘learn’ from my lectures/seminars/tutorials? I can offer combinations of: what I’ve found interesting; what has intrigued me; what the current state of knowledge in regard to this subject is (according to my research); a political analysis of the subject (bearing in mind that all analyses are political); identification of the discourse. What do I hope? That the people I meet will take these ‘pointers’, then use them in their own work. That they will develop perceptions that I have not – ways of seeing that I have missed or been blind to. These might not be immediate, but come months or years later. Education is about providing a “current state”, then seeing what people come up with.
Unfortunately, this does not ‘fit’ with the business model being imposed on education: metrics are demanded; inputs and outputs; a constant ‘judging’; conformity; uniformity; a demand that people meet ‘standards’ – no matter how arbitrary and absurd those ‘standards’ might be.
With the imposition of DEI and UD the control of academics reaches another level, what one can describe as the “supreme dream” of the bureaucrats and careerists: a standardised curriculum for each and every subject. The ‘perfect’ business model, inculcating measured uniformity and, above all, conformity. A model that produces workers who will obey, without question, the profit motive; who accept the profit motive as the only ‘realistic’ motive there is. Creativity, thinking for oneself and dissent from the ‘norm’ must be banished. In short, the narrative of university is being rewritten from one with no final act of closure to one that is sealed shut. The sham of completeness…again, a sham that transfers the inadequacies of the capitalist system to the individual: “If you don’t think like this, accept this as your motivation, pass this by regurgitating X, Y and Z , then you are a failure, a misfit whose hardship is of their own making.”
The capitalist dream über alles… a different conception to what used to happen when you went to university and were working class: the general tenor of the place was “get rid of those tarnished, dull values of yours, have these shiny new bright ones”. Once universities opened up (in the late 50s and early 60s) with the introduction of maintenance grants, we began to see changes. “Popular culture” began to be taken seriously, the notion of “High Culture” was challenged, syllabi changed radically; lecturers with “regional accents”(!) appeared, film became an actual subject (admittedly, even when I was a student in the 80s, it was still a “special subject” contained within the English department), theory became increasingly important as we moved away from the idea of accepting the metanarrative. Patriarchy was attacked, as was colonialism, capitalism and “the establishment”. The Arts and Culture were recognised as being as important as other more ‘tangible’ subjects. Lecturers were trusted to engage in self-analysis and, therefore, analysis of what they were teaching.
So, as the cliché has it, “Where did it all go wrong?” When Regan and Thatcher took power. The beginning of populist politics – greed and petty nationalism were paraded as ‘goods’. The individual became the basic unit of society. The mainstream left crumbled – look at Blair or the craven cowardice of the Labour Party in Ireland. All culminating in the recession, the irony of which is that it was caused by individual greed yet, in true disaster capitalist sleight of hand, was used to retrench capitalism as the only ‘solution’. In the post-recession world (in Ireland “post-Celtic Tiger world”), every aspect of society had to, and must, be bent in the service of profit. The lazy academics, with their government salaries and long holidays, were an easy target. They had to be brought into line.
Which is where we are now.
Murmurs from the Forest 