Transcript Can Universities survive the Market?

The changing uses of the university;
neo-liberalism and the values of
public higher education
John Holmwood
• Issue is the impact of the market on higher education and, in particular on
its public benefits.
• It is isn’t straightforwardly an issue of money, but an issue of how funding
is raised and how it is distributed.
• I will talk of a ‘neo-liberal knowledge regime’ in research and teaching (I
will focus on the latter, but similar arguments can be made about the
commercialisation of research in the impact agenda) , linked to a neoliberal conception of a globalised knowledge economy.
• This, in turn, is linked to wide and widening social inequalities and, thus,
the policy places universities at the centre of the production and
reproduction of inequality, rather than its amelioration.
• Not directly evident yet in recruitment overall, but recent HEFCE Report
and sharp drop in part-time students and recruitment of mature students.
Between two moments…
• Uses of the University is the title of Clark Kerr’s book with its idea of the
university’s multiple functions – the multiversity. Kerr, architect of the
Californian Master Plan for a system of public further and higher
education; its demise was officially declared last year.
• Sir Michael Barber et al, An Avalanche is Coming. Barber was a member of
the Browne Review and architect of ‘deliverology’. Applied to the
university it involves the ‘unbundling of its multiple functions’ and
separately commodifying them and making them opportunities for profit.
Figure 2 Breakdown of teaching-related income 2009-10 to 2010-11 actual and 201112 to 2014-15 forecast
(HEFCE. Financial health of the higher education sector : 2011-12 to 2014-15 forecasts)
140%
120%
Cumulative changes in income (real-terms)
100%
Funding council grants
80%
Overseas income
60%
40%
Tuition fees and education
contracts (home and EU)
20%
Research grants and contracts
0%
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11
2011-12
2012-13
2013-14
2014-15
-20%
-40%
-60%
-80%
Data based on actual income for the period up to and including 2010-11 and forecast income for the period 2011-12 to 2014-15
Other operating income
Distribution of HEI incomes in England, 2009/10 (Source: HESA 2011)
(Where does the elite, ‘bundled’ university begin? – first cut off, gives us 5, next gives 10, then 16 (with just a
further 28 above the mean, providing 44 on the most generous estimate)
Robbins, the inauguration of mass higher education and its
public benefits: one principle and four benefits…
“courses of higher education should be available for all those who are
qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and who wish to do so”
(1963: para 30)
• the public benefit of a skilled and educated workforce (1963: para 25),
• the public benefit of higher education in producing cultivated men and
women (1963: para 26),
• the public benefit of securing the advancement of learning through the
combination of teaching and research within institutions (1963: para 27),
• and the public benefit of providing a common culture and standards of
citizenship (1963: para 28).
The Browne Report and subsequent White Paper: ‘putting the
market at the heart of the system’…
• The only major engagements with HE since 1960s to make no reference to
these public benefits, nor how they might be secured after marketisation:
– Just education as a private investment in human capital, by students
(and their families)
– Contribution of universities to economic growth (itself a wider public
benefit, as well as a benefit to private companies, but to be funded by
student fees alone).
• But was the system broken? In a report for the EU, Aubyn et al identify the
UK higher education system as providing the best research and teaching
outcomes of all and best value for money.
• Aim, instead, is global higher education and position of individual
institutions in an international rank order of HEIs. Yet those institutions
serve few students and are not oriented to local needs.
The present position…
• Removal of HEFCE direct grant of public funds for undergraduate
programmes in arts, humanities and social sciences.
• Differential fees (£6-9,000)
• Facilitated entry of for-profit providers, funded by private equity
companies , granting of university title, access to students carrying
guaranteed loans (where 30-35% of revenues go on marketing, dividends
to shareholders and executive salaries).
• Permitting of (public) universities to pursue ‘for-profit activities’
• Future cost of loan system similar to that of the system it replaces, but
removes immediate costs to present taxpayers, while building debt for
new students who are also the future taxpayers responsible for its costs.
• Restriction on student numbers, but zero-sum competition between
universities.
• Instability in recruitment to universities and subjects within university
across the sector.
Direction of travel…
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Removal of fee cap of £9000 to reduce clustering at £9000
Privatise loan system and individuate it according to returns to particular
courses. Plus reduce income threshold for repayment.
Encouragement of low cost mass-provision, via use of Open Access/ MOOCS,
with teaching support provided by casual staff (Pearson model).
Polarisation of institutions between high status ‘bundled’ elite , selective
universities serving social elites (alignment of university fees with those of
private secondary schools) and ‘unbundled’ teaching only institutions unable
to provide wider functions of university (including local benefits of research
and employment), plus a for-profit ‘lifelong learning mechanism’.
[This is similar to the situation in US, where Moody’s reduced the credit rating
for its higher education system as a whole in January of this year from ‘stable’
to ‘negative’; Keele and De Monfort were downgraded yesterday for reasons
of weakening oversight of the sector. ]
An economy serving society, or society serving the economy and elite
advantage?
UN Development Report 2013
• The report shows that the poorest 40 per cent of Britons share a lower
proportion of the national wealth - 14.6 per cent - than in any other
Western country.
• The richest fifth of Britons enjoy, on average, incomes 10 times as high as
the poorest fifth. Britain ties for the worst performance by this yardstick
among Western nations with Australia.
• The British poor are much better off in absolute terms than the poor in
most Third World countries, but they are worse off than those in other
Western nations.
• The poorest fifth of Britons have an average per capita income 32 per cent
lower than their equivalents in the US and 44 per cent lower than in the
Netherlands.
• And Child Poverty Action (conservatively) estimate that 27% of children
live in poverty
But what are public attitudes?...
Before the introduction of differential fees and the removal of direct public
funding:
• 65% thought tuition fees should be the same across all universities
• 70% thought there were more advantages to a university education than
simply being paid more.
• 75% thought cost of going to university left students with debts they
couldn’t afford to repay.
• 80% thought children from better-off families have many more advantages
than children from less well-off families.
• Just 27% thought people in Britain have similar opportunities regardless of
income
[Public has been asked about HE and inequality in British Social Attitudes
Survey: Discussed in McKay and Rowlingson (2011)]
And why should those who don’t go to university pay?…
• The aspiration to university has been universalised, while the
opportunities are beginning to be restricted: 98% of mothers of small
children wish their child to go to university. (Wolf Report)
• The fall in support since the introduction of the new regime is greatest
among those with qualifications:
– Among those with graduate level qualifications, 42% support the idea
that students should pay for the costs of higher education, while 30%
believe there should be a reduction in the numbers studying at
university.
– Among those without qualifications , only 11% support the idea that
students should pay for the costs of higher education ,and only 19%
believe there should be a reduction in student numbers.
• This is the emergence of education as a ‘positional good’. Achieved by
attendance in the ‘bundled, elite university’.
Some references…
• Stephen McKay and Karen Rowlingson ‘ The religion of inequality’ in John
Holmwood A Manifesto for the Public University (Bloomsbury 2011)
Available free online at: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AManifesto-for-the-Public-University/book-ba-9781849666459.xml
• On ‘markets’ versus ‘publics’ in higher education:
• http://hir.harvard.edu/youth-on-fire/markets-versus-publics
• On open access and moocs:
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/02/27/openaccess-and-moocs-follow-the-money/
• On ‘for profit’ providers:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=422733&se
ctioncode=26
• On ‘unbundling’ the university:
• http://publicuniversity.org.uk/2013/03/14/unbundling-the-university/