Towards an economy of higher education

Abstract

This paper draws a distinction between ways of thinking and acting, and hence of policy and practice in higher education, in terms of different kinds of economy: economies of exchange and economies of excess. Crucial features of economies of exchange are outlined and their presence in prevailing conceptions of teaching and learning is illustrated. These are contrasted with other possible forms of practice, which in turn bring to light the nature of an economy of excess. In more philosophical terms, and to expand on the picture, economies of excess are elaborated with reference, first, to the understanding of alterity in the work of Emmanuel Levinas and, second, to the idea of Dionysian intensity that is to be found in Nietzsche. In the light of critical comment on some current directions in policy and practice, the implications of these ways of thinking for the administrator, the teacher and the student in higher education are explored.

Reflections in the Classroom: Learning to Market Education

“…I am more worried that in the course of regulation, despite the possibility of creativity and resistance (Standish 2005;Cote et al 2007) valuable lessons will be unthinkable and lost. One day, I played dead lions with a group of Spanish students.…”

The problems of ‘competence’ and alternatives from the Scandinavian perspective ofBildung

“…In Britain the rise of competence-based learning was pioneered by the National Council for Vocational Qualifications in 1986, where competence was understood in terms of performance criteria laid down by employers, leading to increasing vocationally based assessment in curricula informed by a behaviourist model of learning (Hyland, 1991). Education was influenced by a political rhetoric of enterprise, culture and economic exchange (Hyland, 1991;Smith, 2012;Standish, 2005), an issue also addressed by researchers in Scandinavia (Elstad & Sivesind, 2010;Langfeldt et al, 2008). Competence as an educational concept emerged as the educational dream (Wulf, 2003) of equipping young generations with the ability to manage an increasingly complex society.…”

Reconsidering an Economy of Teacher Education

“…1–2), and, furthermore, preoccupation with ‘efficiency and effectiveness’, ‘assessment and evaluation, and quality control’ (p. 2). It is apparent that Standish's concern about the market‐oriented tendencies of education was one of the main forces which drove him to write his first book. Moreover, further connections can be drawn when one considers how he reorganised the book for its translation.…”

“…Readers of the 2012 version of Beyond the Self would again come across this sense of absorption experienced in daily practices in the final chapter. Standish argues for ‘intense absorption’ (Standish, , p. 58; , p. 65) in elucidating the Dionysian aspect of learning, in which a learner somehow touches upon Nietzsche's later emphasis, namely, ‘the affirmation of life in the upsurge of energy’ (Standish, , p. 57; , p. 64). This is elucidated, in Chapter 9, by looking at an example of a student who is hesitant to write an essay:

At one sitting, however, there comes a point where the words start to flow, and the student, almost in spite of herself, so it seems, suddenly finds that an hour has gone past while she has been writing, an hour not noticed, and that she is in the thick of the argument … She finds herself preoccupied with this work and eager to get back to it when she is away, and for a while, at least, this intensity is sustained (Standish, , p. 580; , p. 64).

Is the similarity of these two examples, which appear in the first and the last chapter respectively, a mere coincidence?…”

“…Paul Standish casts doubt on this view. In an essay in which he criticises an oversimplified perception of higher education which equates learning in a certain course to the purchasing of a set of knowledge and skills, he states: ‘What is taught, in higher education especially, should not be conceived in terms of banks of knowledge or transferable skills or competences of whatever kind’ (Standish, , p. 61). He believes this because:

In fact subjects of study can never be rightly understood as brute facts about the world or as free‐floating skills: they are always in some sense linguistically constituted practices (ibid.

…”