Milly Williamson
Brunel University
Last summer was marked by widespread student protests at the attack on higher education and the plans to raise the cap on student fees to £9,000. But despite the widespread public anger at the cuts in public spending across the public sector, the coalition government is determined to push ahead an ill-informed and chaotic agenda for higher education. Alongside our support for protests, what can we, as academics in departments up and down the country do to resist this attack on universities in our daily activities?
Firstly we need to be clear about nature of the attack. This is not a money-saving exercise. The coalition government declared that the plan to remove the block grant that has supported teaching to higher education was part of its plans to cut public expenditure. But it has now become clear that the loan system which is to replace the block grant is actually going to be more expensive. This is partly a miscalculation on the part of the government whose initial capital expenditure estimate was based on universities charging average fees of £7,500. It was hardly a surprise to those working in higher education that most vice chancellors would set fees at the higher end of the maximum, with many setting the maximum fee of £9,000. This miscalculation serves to highlight the real intention behind this rushed-through legislation (which was actually presented to the Commons vote six months prior to the publication of the White paper that, under normal parliamentary procedure, should have preceded the drawing up of legislation). The real purpose of this legislation is to do with money – but not in the sense the government would have us believe. It is an ideological attack on the purpose of higher education and on the social role of learning as it is understood in academia – to expand and enrich our understanding of the world in a manner that is properly independent and autonomous from the pressures of powerful interests and to introduce students to the processes of inquiry. Instead this legislation aims to reorient higher education to serve the needs of industry and to subordinate learning to the pursuance of economic growth.
This has been the Conservative agenda for higher education since Thatcherism, disappointingly adopted by Labour, and it has been pushed by various measures which are surely disciplinary in the Foucauldian sense. The NSS is the latest of the ‘targets’ measures introduced to have a disciplinary effect on academics and other university staff. Where previous disciplinary measures, such as the Research Assessment Exercise and the Teaching Quality Assessment were to a significant extent subverted from within, the NSS sits more snugly with the government’s real intention in increasing students loans and removing the block grant, which is to make universities more responsive – not to students – but to government. The coalition government is using the idea of the student-as-consumer under the rubric of ‘consumer choice’ to force universities into line with government objectives. The language of ‘student choice’ and ‘student satisfaction’ is a rhetorical device – saddling students with debts of £30,000 is hardly an empowering move.
Alongside the campaigns and protests we are involved in, we can also resist this attack from the inside. We do our students a great disservice if we accept the government ideology and come to view them as ‘consumers’ instead of young citizens pursuing intellectual development and discovery. We must take every opportunity to redefine the student experience away from an ill-defined short term notion of ‘satisfaction’ towards the long term satisfaction that comes from encountering intellectual challenges and deepening knowledge and understanding. No doubt over the next few months we will all find ourselves in departmental meetings discussing ways of improving NSS scores. We can try to refocus these discussions away from ever more popular superficial proposals and towards reiterating our role as educators and the importance of a relationship of trust with those we educate. Our students are not our customers. We are our students’ guides on their voyage of discovery, and trust (which the government proposals are designed to undermine) is an essential ingredient in the process. Alongside protesting on the ‘outside’ we need to continue to subvert the language ‘consumer choice’ from the ‘inside’ and expose the agenda of academic subservience it is designed to conceal.
During my twenty years experience of Further and Higher Education I have understood the ethos of ‘widening participation’ on a profound level. My major encounter with this concept was in the mission of London Metropolitan University formally North London University and before this North London Polytechnic. The mission of these educational establishments came to hold for me a place in my heart because their prime objective of education was the student experience and the unlocking of the true potential of every student with the aim to achieve diversity in student population and to enable students to have a voice in the decision-making within their learning environment. If will allow the ethos of ‘widening participate’ to be lost the youth of this country will have no future.This governments aim is to dissolve and destroy our world wide renowned education system. It is their objective to break down the building blocks of education by removing the funding available, by setting extortionate fees for students thus eroding the assurance that everyone has equal access to a lifetime of high quality education and thus enabling and maintaining a stable and fulfilled society. Access to education and its relevance to individuals should not be class-based or profit driven. The White Paper title ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ is ironic in its naming, given that students are now referred to as customers within the business speak adopted by higher educational managers. The proposals in this white paper disrupt and undermine our global standing as world class in our delivery of higher education. These profit driven proposals will drive down quality as the focus of our educational system. The massive debts students will be saddled with as being pointed out by many unions is contradictory in that the governments supposed thinking in cutting public funding is to pay off the national debt, yet at the same time happily transferring debt to students and encouraging them to borrow more is the hypocrisy and foundation of this governments policies. Their stance is another ideological attack to destroy the working class and the most vulnerable people within our society taking away their self esteem and true potential as citizens of this country. We must fight back and become the mosquito in the ear of this government, we must continue to strengthen our resolve by becoming new super heroes, we need to call on our unions and universities to polish their shields of social justice and form our ranks under the banner of ‘Captain Relentless’ by refusing as Milly Williamson suggests to use or accept the language of ‘consumer choice’ that is cloaked in its vagueness and concealment of the truth. We are being attacked on all fronts such as education, and the National Health Service, not forgetting the erosion of our protective health and safety rules and our hard earned terms and conditions of employment. All these things traditional fought for and successfully achieved over the decades. In defending education for all we must remember that the youth of this country are our future and our responsibility, so please keep having dialogue with friends and family and explain the real issues. It is a right for everyone to have a decent education not just a privilege for the few. Lets take back the shield that belongs to the people and not to governments who continue to capitulate to the regime of Thatcher free-market policies. lets rise again to defend our education system that encourages our youth to grow and develop without limitation. Lets use the educational philosophy that bases its ideas and teachings on the highest seat of learning, a cradle of a new culture founded on widening participation not driven for profit.