4.Education and the consumer society

Consider the following arresting caricature offered by Stefan Collini in an article he authored for the Guardian Newspaper (24/2/12) which introduced extracts of his What are Universities for? (2012).

“Take one job centre. Add several apprenticeship programmes. Combine with an industrial lab (fold in a medical research centre for extra flavour). Throw in some subsidised gigs and a large dollop of cheap beer. Don’t stir too much. Decorate with a forward-looking logo. And hey presto! – you’ve got a university.”

What has been going on that this recipe should even contain a semblance of truth?

A fundamental shift has taken place in society since the deregulation of the markets begun by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan in the 1980s. We now live in an era of so-called ‘neo-liberal economics’ (Carrette and King, 2005, pp. 4-12). Within the reach of this perspective:

• What is good for business is deemed to be good for society – thus the job of government is first and foremost to serve the interest of the national economy. The ‘nation-state’ is replaced by the ‘market-state’ (Philip Bobbitt, 2003).
• Efficiency and competition become key values, as does do customer choice and consumer virtue: it’s your civic duty to spend as much as you can afford.
• The economic world becomes the real world, all else is secondary.

Public services performed for the sake of the common good have not been immune from the influence of neo-liberalism. In consequence the notions of consumer choice, the benefits of market competition and the ideal of business efficiency have come to increasing shape the world of Higher Education. The introduction of the £9000 fees regime, the attendant withdrawal of government subsidy for certain subjects (2012), and the removal of number controls on institutions (from 2015) are just the latest manifestations of this continuing trend.

Over the past twenty years or so, changes provoked and enabled by this shift have brought a number of benefits that should not be overlooked nor underestimated.

• There has been an extraordinary expansion of opportunity in Higher Education, opening the prospect of a university education to many who would otherwise have missed out (though this has now largely stabilised)
• Accordingly there has been some success in ‘widening participation’ to groups in society under-represented in Higher Education
• Greater attention has been paid to student needs, both as prospective and current participants in universities
• Career paths that might have meant learning in relative isolation (e.g. various Health pathways) have benefitted from interaction with a more diverse community of education

These benefits, however, have not been acquired without a considerable shift in the nature of education (though the exact extent of this can vary both between departments in the same institution and between institutions). The following description while stark, and perhaps lacking a level of nuance, is nevertheless pertinent.

• Students, once members of an academic community, are turned into customers; students become ‘purchasers of degrees’ or consumers of ‘student experience’.
• Education becomes a commodity to be bought and sold (in a market driven by price and brand).
• Pedagogy is constrained to the popular in overly modular offerings that give people what they want, but no longer form them into a tradition of thought and practice. Consumerism which concerns immediate, present satisfaction dominates over concern for long-term goals.
• What is of value is assumed to be that for which there is a demand (that which sells).
• Education veers towards entertainment: the ‘customer’ must be kept content so as to give positive feedback in the National Student Satisfaction survey – which, in turn, builds an institution’s marketing position.
• The primary relationship between institutions is that of competition. Collaboration, for example in research, though still possible needs to be carefully constructed.
• Universities need to strive for marketing advantage through the building of ‘brand personality’.
• The purpose of education is to increase the economic advantage of the nation and to increase the earning potential of individuals (to help offset the investment made via fees). Some subjects are in danger of being viewed as luxuries that can no longer be afforded.
• What is taught and how it is taught is less important than its contribution to the construction of a competitive workforce (Carrette and King, 2005, p.165f).
• Academic freedom is curtailed as areas of research are increasingly determined by that for which someone will pay.
• Immediate employability is key, with less attention to career-length employment or other longer term cultural benefits
• Universities are valued less as sources of independent criticism of society than for their economic contribution to society. They thus risk undermining a sense of their intrinsic vocation. What remains is the vocation to simple financial viability via enhancing competitiveness.
• The university is thus changed from within, transferring its gaze from a concern that ultimately transcends the immediate world of (currently assumed) utilitarian objectives to that very world itself.

I think this catalogue of changes can useful be understood through the analogy of climate change. Just as long-term alterations in the climate force a shifting balance of plant and animal species – as some respond favourably and others less favourably to the new conditions, and some forced to migrate elsewhere or face extinction – so too there has been a re-balancing of what we might think of as ‘species’ of academic activity. In the new environment of economic supremacy ‘species’ of activity which fit this climate have prospered, while others – some of which one might argue are of intrinsic value to the nature of a university – have been discouraged. No one institution on its own can change the climate in which it operates, thus some adaptation is both necessary and essential. But there is also a degree of choice which, small and marginal though it might be, could help preserve valued and endangered ‘species’ from extinction. Much turns on the question with which we begun: What are universities for?