Michael Y's was one of the most moving posts I have read on any list for a
long time (and there's been a few). Having witnessed a number of good folks
leaving academia early in order simply to preserve their sanity, it saddens
me to think that their likely replacements will meet the selection criteria
set by the "quality" enforcers and are therefore unlikely to follow where
the retirees left off. It's not just the lefties whose passing is to be
mourned -- solid liberal and conservative educators who would be similarly
appalled at the events described by Michael Y. are leaving to be replaced by
a newly proletarianised "trainer" (as opposed to educator) thoroughly
enculturated with the values of what Charles Beard presciently called the
"hire learning". My old employer, Glasgow Caledonian University, even has a
vice-principal in charge of "research and commercialisation". Never let it
be said these guys don't speak truth to power.
I can't speak for the other guys mentioned in Michael's post, but having had
something of a run-in with Herb Gintis a few years back he seemed to me to
be much more interested in game theory than what was really going on outside
the cloisters.* Occasionally I have to be reminded why folks like Louis and
others feel so strongly about academia. Never having been privy to the kind
of system that creates "star" professors and furnishes them with big grants
and research assistants my image of academia is somewhat more grounded by an
experience of temporary contracts, heavy teaching loads and mind-numbing
administration -- all detrimental to the welfare of the students who are
themselves becoming ever more atomised and faceless. Many would prefer not
to be there at all, and are only there because without a degree they won't
get a decent job, whose necessity is what they've been pounded with since
birth. The UK government's cynical expansion of higher education as a means
of managing youth unemployment is the epitomy of this approach. In Glasgow
teaching economics to students for whom regular exposure to any news
whatsoever was entirely alien made my efforts to enliven the humdrum
material with contemporary relevance often redundant. Tutorials often became
re-runs of lectures. The ability to regurgitate lecture material and
appropriate bits of the dumbed-down text book was becoming all that would be
asked of a prospective graduate. This system suits mainstream economists
very well, of course, since what is being taught is the universal
applicability of a set of techniques for which such trifles as
appropriateness and relevance are not worthy of consideration.
Now in Finland I find myself in a much smaller institution where students
are being groomed for the business world. The higher level of educational
attainment here (not least in terms of languages) makes teaching
interesting, although here there are some of the same problems as in
Scotland, not least the lack of desire among students to question the
content of their courses (and, by extension, the conventional wisdom of
their society). However, it's gonna be a while before I can cash in my chips
at 55 (and by that time "early" retirement age will probably be at least
65). Not having had the benefit of enjoying a "golden era" (however
relative) of higher education, this proletarianisation and infantilisation
(reflective of the wider culture) is what I have known all my working life.
I will, in all likelihood, never enjoy the privileges of the professoriate
(including those of the superstar radicals) but I still believe that I am
privileged when compared with workers who earn far less and must fight
simply for the right to urinate on company time. And there are many of my
age and slightly older who have probably never had the opportunity to do
even that thanks to the mass unemployment and its attendant social costs
visited upon us by Thatcher and her ilk. So things could be worse (and in
due course will probably become so).
Thank you, Michael Yates.
Michael K.
*For a good discussion of cloistered lefty superstars, see Doug Dowd,
"Marxism for the few, or, let 'em eat theory", Monthly Review, April 1982.
