Response to the Book Review Symposium: Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For?

Abstract

Do the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular, have an important contribution to make to reflection on the character and role of universities in contemporary society? I believe they do, and I am grateful to the editors of Sociology for, first, devoting a symposium to the review of my book What Are Universities For?, and, second, for allowing me the space for this brief response to some of the points raised by the contributors to that symposium.In a particularly helpful comment, John Holmwood suggests that, by its very constitution as a discipline, sociology entails a focus on 'the "social self" and the critique of the disembedded individual', which in turn encourages an understanding of the social character of publics as opposed to the individualist premise of markets (p. 403). There is certainly a recognisable genealogy for the discpline, in the classics of late 19th-and early 20th-century social thought, in which this identity is prominent, defining itself above all as a repudiation of the atomistic axioms held to be at the root of neoclassical economic theory. It is an interesting question how the present fruits of this tradition of thought might best be harnessed to helping to make the case for universities as a kind of public good, but I do believe that sociological theory of this kind continues to have a distinctive capacity to challenge the kind of everyday individualism that experience of life in market societies can otherwise naturalise as common sense. There is surely a valuable role to be played by such perspectives in debate about the character of the university as a public good. This may be one of the reasons why, as Michael Bailey rightly notes, social scientists have been disproportionately prominent in the activist networks and campaigns that have sprung up in the past decade or so in response to the higher education policies of recent British

In defence of utility: the medical humanities and medical education

“…In short, there is no non-arbitrary line between the pure and applied, the theoretical and the practicable. As Collini observes, “Human understanding, when not chained to a particular instrumental task, is restless, always pushing onwards, though not in a fixed or entirely knowable direction, and there is no one moment along that journey where one can say…that the degree of understanding being sought has passed from the useful to the useless.”19 Or, as the medical educator Abraham Flexner argued in his essay “The usefulness of useless knowledge”—nearly 80 years ago, in 1939—when it comes to scientific innovation, as with other scholarly research:Almost every discovery has a long and precarious history….Even in the pursuit of strictly practical aims an enormous amount of apparently useless activity goes on. Out of this useless activity there come discoveries which may prove of infinitely more importance to the human mind and to the human spirit than the accomplishment of the useful ends for which [professional] schools were founded 20…”

Putting Business at the Heart of Higher Education: On Neoliberal Interventionism and Audit Culture in UK Universities

“…1 First, marketization is held significantly to devalue education by presenting it solely as a means to gain economic advantage (Collini, 2012;Giroux, 2013;Holmwood, 2011(a);2011(b); 2015(a); 2015(b); Molesworth, Scullion and Nixon, 2011;Readings, 1996;Tuchman, 2009). …”

“…Audit culture is meant to ensure that professionals ' deliver' ' excellence' in terms of teaching and research ' outputs', with management having more ability to increase the 'performance' of professionals, in a 'market' environment. The general criticism levelled against this is that it further instrumentalizes education, and increases stress in a workplace culture dominated by targets (Barcan, 2013;Collini, 2012;Donoghue, 2008;Ginsberg, 2011;Hall, 2015;Readings, 1996;Holmwood, 2014;Tuchman, 2009). Third, casualization of the workforce increases to reduce costs in a market environment (AAUP, no date; Donoghue, 2008;Ginsberg, 2011).…”

“…The marketization of higher education is linked to neoliberal capitalism (Barcan, 2013;Collini, 2012;Giroux, 2013;Hall, 2014;Hall and Stahl, 2012;Holmwood, 2011(b);McGettigan, 2013). For neoliberals, the stated problem to solve is the stifling of freedom and innovation that they claim is caused by state intervention, professional-vested interests, and producer-vested interests such as 'sluggish' corporations dominating a market while providing poor quality services and products.…”

“…consumers can be 'sovereign', with their ' demands' ensuring that the best quality products and services are supplied at the best price (Collini, 2012;Giroux, 2014;Harvey, 2005;Hay, 2007).…”