Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

When peo­ple think about acad­e­mia, many as­sume its pur­pose is for the im­prove­ment of so­ci­ety. Most prob­a­bly al­so think the art of teach­ing must be cen­tral to this and to what an aca­d­e­m­ic does at a uni­ver­si­ty. And for many of us, teach­ing is some­thing we val­ue deeply.

Sad­ly the pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem across the world has been trans­formed great­ly in the neo-lib­er­al or­der–an eco­nom­ic time of prof­its be­fore peo­ple, per­son­al achieve­ment be­fore pub­lic de­vel­op­ment, and grade ta­bles over re­al un­der­stand­ing. This is a state­ment of fact, and to stay alive in such a cli­mate all uni­ver­si­ties have had to adapt to these new times.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly that means to con­cen­trate in­tense­ly on good teach­ing to­day is now con­sid­ered by many as a hin­drance to ca­reer ad­vance­ment. Re­search, and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of find­ings, are ad­vised to be the cen­tral pur­pose of be­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic–not to men­tion the pri­ma­ry cri­te­ria for pro­mo­tion.

As such, the qual­i­ty of class­room teach­ing has de­clined. Younger schol­ars are pushed to con­cen­trate on a pub­lish-or-per­ish par­a­digm in peer-re­viewed jour­nals in­ac­ces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic locked be­hind sub­scrip­tion pay­walls.

This does not mean do­ing re­search isn't im­por­tant. Of course it is. Rather, spend­ing lots of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey on re­search and then pub­lish­ing it in venues the pub­lic can­not reach is a mis­han­dling of the orig­i­nal pub­lic role and pur­pose of acad­e­mia. From the point of view of young aca­d­e­mics, an­oth­er fail­ure of these new eco­nom­ic times is the short­age of men­tors and col­le­gial­i­ty.

That is not to say there are not good men­tors and there is no col­le­gial­i­ty, but that such things no longer ex­ist in the abun­dance they once did. And be­fore any­one thinks this is a stab at UWI, the sit­u­a­tion I de­scribe is the same in the US and British sys­tems. It is the re­sult of new eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ties at the heart of uni­ver­si­ty ad­min­is­tra­tions around the world.

With the Lance Arm­strong gang­ster­ism mod­el of ad­vance­ment (me first and to hell with the con­se­quences for every­one else) now dom­i­nat­ing the west­ern uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem, and west­ern so­ci­eties more gen­er­al­ly, a class sys­tem has emerged with­in aca­d­e­m­ic uni­ver­si­ty staff.

Younger mem­bers of staff, along­side those with part-time con­tracts, are forced to take on work­loads that cur­tail their pro­fes­sion­al ad­vance­ment. They are the bot­tom, dis­pos­able and over­worked class. Many fall in­to such a sit­u­a­tion will­ing­ly, blind­ed by al­tru­is­tic ideas of acad­e­mia. Those with more ex­pe­ri­ence at the aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reer game of­ten see this al­tru­ism as naivety.

The ad­vice is of­ten that to do more than what is most im­por­tant for one's own ca­reer is to com­mit ca­reer sui­cide. Ob­vi­ous­ly this isn't the case for ad­vice of­fered by all se­nior staff but it is the dom­i­nant view­point, the loud­est voice one hears.

The voic­es for so­cial change, the im­prove­ment of so­ci­ety, the voic­es that chal­lenge the or­tho­dox point of view are nowhere as loud or nu­mer­ous.

This in it­self should be a wor­ry. If the ethos and essence of pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion is pri­mar­i­ly per­son­al ca­reer ad­vance­ment and eco­nom­ic prof­its then the tra­di­tion­al ideals at the heart of the uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem both here and around the world have died. Now, in one sense this is sim­ply a stab at the sta­tus quo and say­ing, "I don't like the way things are."

But in an­oth­er sense how things are in the present de­ter­mines how things will be in the fu­ture. We al­ready have school and ex­am sys­tems de­signed to re­ward stu­dents for re­gur­gi­ta­tion of in­for­ma­tion rather than in­de­pen­dent, crit­i­cal think­ing. It is so bad that some stu­dents in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools are taught to re­mem­ber es­says word for word for ex­ams, rather than learn ma­te­r­i­al to be able to write es­says by them­selves.

At uni­ver­si­ties, the ma­jor­i­ty of stu­dents don't care about think­ing skills; they care about grades. This isn't their fault; it is what we teach them is most im­por­tant. Our uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem in a sim­i­lar light is forc­ing young aca­d­e­mics to sup­port a sys­tem of ca­reerism first and so­ci­etal de­vel­op­ment on­ly rarely. Yet if every­thing is based on grade ta­bles and nu­mer­i­cal scores, the art of think­ing–the essence of learn­ing it­self–is de­stroyed.

The sim­ple ques­tion then be­comes: what sort of world do you think such a sys­tem will con­tribute to? We are lucky to have UWI and UTT. Free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion is a rare gift in to­day's world. And while our uni­ver­si­ties have to func­tion with­in a glob­al econ­o­my, we need to stop im­i­tat­ing oth­ers and be self-con­fi­dent enough to lead.

�2 Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.