The democratic academy?
As has been mentioned repeatedly in this blog, higher education has over recent years been under unprecedented pressure. This has been caused by a number of converging factors, including funding cuts, public criticism of standards, and internal criticism of organisational and managerial methods. Mostly the pressures have created an environment which has become less than happy for those working within it, but it has at least prompted a lively debate on what universities are actually for. But has this debate really answered any of our questions?
Today’s universities are often – and in my view correctly – seen as institutions that are essential for a thriving economy. But perhaps another key issue to reflect upon during these turbulent times is how universities either reinforce or undermine the values of democracy. Until fairly recently universities were the gatekeepers of economic and social privilege, while maintaining internal values of equality and democracy. Then, with the massification of higher education, universities became educational destinations for almost anyone in society with the intellectual talent, but internally they have increasingly been seen by some as being directed by a managerial class. What we may be experiencing right now is a growing separation between the top universities catering more and more for the privileged (described recently as ‘finishing schools for the elite’) and those without the same resources but a more representative student body.
How we arrange higher education is more than a matter of fine-tuning educational standards. It is about securing a better, more just, more open, more successful, more productive society. It is about having institutions that raise both educational and living standards and add to the development of culture and scholarship across society as a whole; but also about having institutions that organise themselves in a way that reflects those ideals.
We need an academy that doesn’t unnecessarily squander public money; but that is not the primary aim. We need to discover what we actually want the academy to be. As a society we have never really known that.
Explore posts in the same categories: higher educationTags: democracy
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
University Blog 
November 1, 2011 at 11:34 am
Very interesting one here.
Can the Academy be democratic?
Surely expertise establishes an aristocracy based on merit?
Can there be both in a mutually beneficial sense?
November 1, 2011 at 11:52 am
So is the macro culture of elitism linked to greater autonomy and democracy at the micro level? And is the problem of managerialism in the ‘all-comers’ institutions that they need to become more elitist and less dependent on state funding in order to achieve sublime levels of democracy? Perhaps ‘democratic public institution’ will become an oxymoron… or perhaps that is too simplistic a parallel.
November 1, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Regina, your definition of ‘democratic public institution’ as an oxymoron is far from simplistic, it is actually rather fitting in the current cultural/political context where established set of concepts/ideologies (democracy, public-ness, liberal capitalism,) are put into questions by events like the Euro-crisis, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street global movement. To paraphrase the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, ‘now the field is open’, all is up for grabs, in urgent need of re-definition. Concerned about the future of the existing western democratic capitalism Zizek believes that the current “system has lost its self-evidence, its automatic legitimacy”. Any discussion about a truly democratic academy cannot ignore such paradigmatic cultural shifts, of course. More on Zizek at http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/talktojazeera/2011/10/2011102813360731764.html
November 1, 2011 at 1:59 pm
If these questions are addressed to me, I don’t think I can help you with the answers…
November 1, 2011 at 1:14 pm
A very interesting distillation of ideas and questions.
November 2, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Very true. We just accepted university as it had always been and no matter what huge changes happen around it we fail to demand university to evolve with the new times. Same lectures, same methods, same activities, same ways of doing things. And goals aren’t clear either… few come to university for knowledge anymore. A factory of giving titles. Regards all.
November 2, 2011 at 11:01 pm
the democratic intellect v2.0