In the late nineties, the management of the Australian National University was attacking its academic staff. That may seem a little strange, until I note that acolytes of Prime Minister John Howard were trying to impose Labour Market Flexibility. However the staff resisted, and even went on strike more than once.
I wrote at the time that if the infidels won, then the ANU would cease to be a university and would become Australian National Training and Consulting Inc. That battle was won, but the war was lost and, before too long, a majority of academic staff across the country were on one-year contracts and seriously over-worked.
University income has come increasingly from milking the families and governments of overseas students, which puts a premium on processing students through the sausage machine rather than ensuring they can think. Thus have universities been gutted and, as widely remarked, corporatised. I gather some proper teaching, learning and research persist, through the dedication of those staff who are still able.
Now comes the news that the amalgamated South Australian universities, known as Adelaide University, will no longer offer face-to-face lectures. Instead students will have access to “rich digital learning activities”.
I think Dr Alison Barnes, national president of the National Tertiary Education Union, gets it right that this “completely flies in face of the nature of academic work, the very fabric of the institution”.
It is possible to ask a question of a lecturer. It is possible to approach them afterwards to seek clarification. A good educator will allow for some discussion in class. Such discussion is just as important as the organised material being presented, because we cannot know all the ways in which students might interpret what they are receiving.
To the managerial digital infidel, evidently, education involves collecting knowledge, and knowledge comprises a big collection of pieces, factoids that can be served up in small bowls for the student to consume. Thus the neoliberal mindset of isolated, asocial individuals competing through a series of fragmented transactions is carried down to its ultimate subversion of the very knowledge on which our culture and civilisation are built.
In fact, knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is never isolated. To understand this fragment of knowledge, I have to know other things that provide a context. To understand a conclusion, I need to understand the assumptions underlying an interpretation, and to evaluate the quality of evidence brought to bear. Because we all have different life experiences, every student will have their own interpretation. Misunderstandings are common upon first hearing. Discussion can highlight and clarify, it can add to each student’s understanding: a deeper context, wider dependencies and ramifications.
Whether we are considering King Solomon’s behaviour or the reasons we think the Earth’s core is made of liquid iron, these considerations apply. Remove the teacher, the educator, the guide, the sensei and the quality of the knowledge imparted degrades.
As others have already remarked, campus life, already seriously reduced, will just about disappear. Another large part of what used to comprise a university education would be denied to new students.
The shift to digital provision was already well under way, and the pandemic kicked it along further. That is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, especially for those students who are happy to work independently. But it needs to be balanced with face-to-face contact and discussions with real people.
The trouble is too many university managers see digital provision as simply a cost saving. For decades, the push has been to reduce costs, hence the attacks on academic staff. Governments have been happy to reduce funding, according to the mania for reduced taxes and small government. More people are finally beginning to realise that we need governments and their services, and that markets often fail, and always fail in the provision of human services.
The managerialists, the neoliberals, the digitisers clearly have no idea what a real university is, and what are its essential requirements. Its purpose is to hold, impart and add to knowledge. Some of the knowledge is not popular with authorities or vested interests, such as pollution created by mining or the difference between antisemitism and objections to the actions of the state of Israel. Indeed to many politicians these days any knowledge seems to be a threat. It is therefore essential that academics have secure employment, so they cannot be easily intimidated. That security is what Howard was attacking.
It is heavily ironic that loud advocates of so-called Western civilisation like Tony Abbott have been busily defunding and dismantling the institutions that carry our civilisation forward. As Abbott might say, universities will soon be dead, buried and cremated.
On top of all this we have so-called artificial intelligence, better called artificial cleverness, intruding into most human activities, including education. It seems to be widely regarded as inevitable, just a force of nature. Recent expressions are that students need to learn to use this new tool or be left behind.
But this “tool” serves up stuff that is known to be wrong, and does not document its sources. It can have no place in a proper university education. In fact it pollutes an essence of our humanity, our social communication.
When Minister John Dawkins started this nonsense with his economic-rationalist “reforms” of the university sector in 1987, the universities were not broken. They had their challenges of course, they always do. Nevertheless you could still discern an underlying purpose: to hold knowledge, to impart knowledge and to add to knowledge.
If ever our benighted society manages to regain a bit of sanity, one of its important tasks will be to restore, or re-create, proper universities, with the proper mission of a university and with sufficient government funding to carry out that mission. Yes, it will cost public money, but if we have regained that bit of sanity we will recognise that it is not just a burdensome cost, it is an investment in a healthy society carrying itself forward into whatever form of civilisation is considered to be appropriate.
Dr. Geoff Davies is an author, commentator and scientist. He is the author of A New Australia: Discarding Delusions and Organising for the Wellbeing of All (2023, https://betternaturebooks.net/my-books/regenoz/). He blogs at Thrival Economics https://thrivaleconomics.blog/.
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