Death of the Universities

Is the modern university a mausoleum or life support machine, has academia become a servant of the status quo, and are the Humanities about to disappear? Sean O’Shea questions some conventional views, and draws attention to a neglected voice in this debate: the ideas of the late radical educationalist Ivan Illich.

I was sauntering along the East Sussex coast recently and decided to pay a visit to my old alma mater Mugsborough University. Dr. Dense, distinguished professor of Humanities, was still in residence – I thought he had passed away years ago. He was somewhat frayed around the edges and looked a bit like Worzel Gummidge. He said he had time only for a quick coffee as he was snowed under with targets and publishing schedules. He reminisced wistfully about the good old days when he had the leisure to devote himself mainly to his own research interests and was not subject to rigorous performance criteria. In concluding what was largely a monologue he bemoaned the alleged demise of the universities.

In defending the humanities and what he referred to as the “classical model” of the university, he saw himself as on the side of the angels in a resistance movement against an allegedly “philistine social order” with its pre-occupation with technical training. The classical university, according to him, served the function of preserving values and ideas through teaching such subjects as history and philosophy. It was also a place which allegedly fostered and protected social criticism, free play of the mind, the struggle for social justice and alternative visions of the future. To fulfil this protective and critical function the university must be set apart from everyday social life, reinforcing the town and gown divide, even though a consequence of this is that humane study could be ineffectual.

Dr. Dense didn’t mention other aspects of the function of the university, such as its role in the formation and maintenance of the cultural elite and reproducing the social relations necessary for class domination, functions it continues to serve while accommodating some increasing access by the “masses”, access which may well decline as a consequence of the recent hike in student fees.

Now this was a curious omission and not what you would expect from a leftist scholar. Indeed Dr. Dense’s entire image of the university seemed to be quaintly traditionalist and profoundly patronising of lay people.

Now the free play of the mind on the part of intellectuals has spawned a distinct literary genre related to death. The philosopher Nietzsche (1844-1900) is possibly its main progenitor, with his announcement in the late 19th century of the death of God. Subsequently, and warming to the death theme, distinguished free-floating intellectuals from right and left of the political spectrum have vied with each other in anticipating or prophesying the death of a whole variety of hallowed institutions, such as capitalism, history, philosophy, man, the self, and, most pertinently to our current topic, the death of the university. It seems that we are dismantled in theory before we are destroyed in practice.

So, Dr. Dense, in his anticipation of the death of the university, and in his concern about the potential disappearance of the humanities, has arrived rather late to a wake that has been under way for some time.  Moreover, the trouble with wakes is that you can never be sure the person or institution whose demise you are mourning or celebrating, depending on your relation to the deceased, is in fact dead, or likely to remain dead!

Exaggerated reports of death

Marx (1818-1883) predicted the demise of capitalism, but it still appears alive and well though occasionally subject to major crises. However, while ordinary citizens continue to pay for these crises, capitalism doesn’t have much to worry about and doesn’t need to substantially change. The sociologist Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was much more accurate in his predictions. He anticipated that bankers and technicians would eventually run society and were best equipped to do so. What a prophet!

Then there is the case of Tim Finnigan described in the song, Finnigan’s Wake, who fell off a ladder and broke his skull. The people gathered his corpse to wake and in the din some whiskey was spilt over poor Tim. He revived and subsequently ran around the house like blazes, scaring the wits out of the gathered mourners. We are witnessing such a mêlée in our times as it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the living from the dead, particularly with regard to our hallowed institutions.

Yet, Dr. Dense may have some help to hand. To explain why I need to refer to another even more distinguished professor, the late Monsignor Ivan Illich (1926-2002) He was regarded by the Vatican as an awkward customer, and wrote some quite iconoclastic books on education and the professions. However, unlike Dr. Dense, the Monsignor got into quite serious bother with his ecclesiastical superiors and, in the ill-fated summer of 1968, while the rabble were disturbing the peace in Paris, he was summoned to Rome where, after some difficult meetings, he was ordered by the Holy Office to: “Get going, get going and never come back” (The Rivers North of The Future,  by David Cayley, House of Anansi Press, 2005).

By an odd coincidence this exhortation happened to be the inquisitor’s last words to the prisoner in Dostoevsky’s story of the Grand Inquisitor.

Illich as prophet

In a collection of essays called The Disabling Professions, published in 1977 by Marion Boyars, Illich writes:

“The age…will be remembered as the time when politics withered, when voters…entrusted to technocrats the power to legislate needs, renounced the authority to decide who needs what and suffered monopolistic oligarchies to determine the means by which these needs shall be met.”

What a prophet! Now you can appreciate why the Monsignor didn’t go down too well in the Vatican.

Illich questioned a number of cherished beliefs related to education, which remain articles of faith. These include the following:

a)       Learning is primarily the result of curricular teaching

b)       To learn, people must be segregated into institutions, ranked and graded in various ways and subjected to sanctions if they fail to attain prescribed standards.

c)       People who have not acquired specific certificates should not have access to college.

d)       The value of education is a function of the number of years completed, exams passed, certificates attained and the prestige and costliness of the colleges attended.

e)       Uncertified learning i.e. that which takes place outside licensed institutions is not valid, or at least, in the lexicon of Standard & Poor’s,  Moody’s and Fitch, warrants only a speculative grade of questionable credit rating, in other words is junk.

f)         Colleges and universities have legitimate claim to monopolise education, and legitimate claim to the lion’s share of associated funding and resources.

It is by means of such arbitrary and unaccountable powers that the fate of entire nations as well as mere individuals is now determined.

Illich viewed learning as an autonomous life-long activity and not primarily the result of an institutional process managed by teachers and administrators. It involved the coincidence between the changing of self and the changing of circumstances. He believed that most of what we learn is done outside schools or colleges, and what is learnt at college is mostly forgotten when the hat and gown are put in the wardrobe, the graduation picture is framed and we enter the real world of work.

Whether our universities are mausoleums or life-support machines will continue to be a matter of contention. However, Dr. Dense may have something to learn from the late Monsignor. The tactic he used to attract students to his classes on philosophy and history was to provide a hospitable table with cases of wine as a teaching aid, and he managed to get this expense written off from taxes. Plato would have been impressed.

 

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