Over the last two weeks we have seen how Rorty argues that not only is there no justification for the search for universal and eternal truth but that there is no common human condition on which to base such a search.  In other words not only is our understanding of universal truth, reason and knowledge questionable, but so too is subjectivity, the ways in which we think about and understand ourselves.  Hence, the foundations from which we make our judgements are themselves questionable.    

 

Rorty argued further the teaching of traditional philosophical perspectives which characterise higher education (which he argues are totalitarian in nature and close down the possibilities of re-creation) should be replaced with things such as the film, the novel, poetry and ethnography.  It is with such things he says, that the student can identify and thus re-describe and re-create themselves. 

 

We also began to think last week about the implications that a performative (Lyotard) higher education system might hold for the student experience and the teacher/student relationship.  If higher education must meet the needs and demands of its society, and we now live in a performative society, what does this mean for higher education now and in the future? 

 

Some of the ideas we have looked at are not easy to make sense of and fall into paradoxes and contradictions of their own.

 

This week our theorist is Ronald Barnett.  In 1990 Barnett wrote a book called The Idea of Higher Education in which he discusses the paradoxical situation that he says higher education is now in. 

 

 

The Paradox of Higher Education

 

The paradox of higher education says Barnett, is that ‘…we have no modern educational theory of higher education.’ (Barnett, 1990:4), higher education ‘…has no theory of itself’ (Barnett, 1990:4). 

 

In the past, he argues, there were agreed characteristics by which the university and higher education could be identified. 

 

·        Teaching of objective knowledge,

·        Associated with notions of culture and reason

·        Character formation of the student

·        Pursuing universal truth

·        Autonomous institutions

·        Academic freedom

 

Recent developments (in Western society, in philosophy and social theory) mean that these ideals can no longer be justified as the legitimate foundations for higher education. In short for Barnett higher education has no theoretical framework from which to understand or discuss itself in educational terms.         

 

Nonetheless, Barnett says, there is a special quality to higher education which sets it apart from other types of education.

 

‘As a description of educational processes, ‘higher education’ allows for processes of education - as normally conceived - either as having taken place earlier or as taking place at the present time.  But, crucially, it indicates that additional processes are taking place, bringing about in the individual student a special level of personal development.’ (Barnett, 1990:6).

 

In many ways higher education is ‘big business’ (Barnett, 1990), in terms of demand and student numbers.  But this raises many sociological, philosophical and political questions.  Which social classes and ethnic groups are best and worst represented in higher education?  Who should be attending? Which courses should be offered?

 

 

The ‘Double Undermining’

 

Any agreement on the aims and purpose of higher education Barnett tells us has become impossible because in recent years higher education has been undermined in two ways.

 

‘Traditionally, higher education has been founded on two axioms.  First, there is a realm of objective knowledge and there are recognized truths - to which students are to be introduced, and about which they are expected to be able to demonstrate with some assurance.  This is the epistemological axiom.’ (Barnett, 1990:10).

 

In an article written with Barnett, Paul Standish says we have reached a time when ‘It is not only that there is no J. H. Newman or Von Humboldt now but that one can scarcely imagine anyone writing in this way.’ (Standish, 2003:216). 

 

Where does higher education go from here then?

 

‘What if anything is to replace objective knowledge is unclear.  Pragmatism, relativism, ‘metacriticism’ and even “anything goes” are all proposed… As one commentator has observed, “From a post-modern perspective, the central characteristic of modernism, in a philosophical sense is …that objective truth is assumed to be in principle unobtainable”; and that means even our observations about knowledge and truth.’ (Barnett, 1990:11).

 

Secondly, says Barnett, higher education is being undermined sociologically.  Traditionally, universities have offered students an open ended relationship with ‘objective’ or liberal knowledge within what have always been, since medieval times, relatively autonomous institutions which to a large extent have enjoyed academic freedom. 

 

In 1999 Barnett (1999) wrote an article called ‘The coming of the Global Village: a tale of two enquiries’, in which he likens the traditional University to a ‘rural village’.  But more recently higher education has increasingly become a part of the global economy in which many external forces have a vested interest.  The University has now ‘…developed considerable tensions, as higher education has been swept up by the state.  As signs of this shifting relationship between the state and higher education, the concept of academic freedom, neutrality and autonomy have come to the fore as deserving attention.’ (Barnett, 1990:11).  

 

Rather than an open ended relationship with knowledge, students are

 

‘…increasingly required to undergo programmes of study that are organised to fulfil particular objectives and are designed within a restricted subject area or epistemic field… …higher education in society seems designed to prevent such an open ended relationship between student and knowledge.’ (Barnett, 1990:11).

 

In Higher Education: A Critical Business (1997), Barnett continues to examine the implications of postmodernism for higher education.  In postmodernism he says ‘there are no large stories or general descriptions of the world that are available to us any longer.  All we have are our local stories, activities and projects’ (Barnett, 1997:24).  At root he says, postmodernism is driven by the terror of totalitarianism - ‘the fear that particular pictures of the world will be paraded as if they are universal…’ (Barnett, 1997:27). 

 

‘Is there a set of processes that can justify a universal appellation such as ‘higher education’…?’ (Barnett, 1997:27).

 

In response to postmodernism, Barnett argues that if postmodernism refuses any judgements based on objective or universal principles then ‘…it may be felt that it has nothing to offer higher education’ (Barnett, 1997:29). 

 

Is the “infotainment” degree more desirable to the consumer than a traditional theoretical degree?  Should it be?

 

 

The Limits of Postmodernity

 

For Barnett, postmodern thought should be viewed with caution as it may offer only one side of the story.  He suggests that its own argument, that there are no universals, is contradictory because it becomes the new universal.  But Barnett warns against dismissing postmodernity entirely because it might offer a way forward.  It does this, he argues, because it offers some mutually agreeable beliefs and characteristics, even if those mutually agreeable beliefs are that everything is in a state of flux, uncertainty and constant change (Barnett, 1990). 

 

In Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity, (2000), Barnett tells us that we have reached an age of supercomplexity, where not only notions of universal truth, knowledge and reason are contestable, but so too are the frameworks through which we make our judgements about them.

 

Recognition of this, he argues, offers us hope for the future.      

 

 

Enlightenment – old or new?

 

‘Deep down, the university still holds to a belief in its role as a site of reason in society.  And not just any old reason: reason for a better world is still embedded deeply in the university’s self-understanding’ (Barnett, 2000:23). 

 

 ‘The university is no longer separate from the wider world: it recognizes the claims of that wider world upon it and it falls in with the shifting sands of knowing and being in that world.  Reason for a better world is now recast.  The university happily places itself under the banners of the knowledge society, the information society and the learning society.  Somewhat uneasily, it also acknowledges that it has to be part of the audit society, the enterprise society and even the modern society’ (Barnett, 2000:23).

 

This recast reason is one which looks to the university for knowledge, not to traditional objective knowledge and the pursuit of truth, but for

 

‘…forms of instrumental knowing: they assume that knowledge can be wrought upon the world with calculable and predictable effects, effects that are measurable.  Knowing is prized now that it can be measured: give us your knowledge and we’ll give you our metric comes the call from the wider world; and the university succumbs to this calling.  The vocational becomes a vocation.’ (Barnett, 1990:14).

 

Entwined with this, says Barnett, there is another tension within higher education and this tension is one of value.  The liberal education of the traditional university could claim to be based on knowledge for its own sake (Newman, 1996) because it was value free.  Objective knowledge which is its own end is without the kind of ‘value’ that can be placed on a particular knowledge that has a specific end – hence it is in a sense objective knowledge is ‘value free’.  There can be a danger in value free knowledge too because to say that knowledge is its own end is to say that it is value free and this leaves knowledge vulnerable because there is a danger of ‘anything goes’.

 

So higher education, he says, is now struggling between ‘old’ and ‘new’ values.  Postmodernity has argued that there is no universal value and therefore the university ‘…just makes its own values in the world.  This stance leads directly to the marketized university: the university’s values are those that are sustained by the markets in which it can find a living.’ (Barnett, 2000:26). 

 

For those who prefer to ‘hang on to a value basis’ (Barnett, 2000:26) the difference and fragmentations of postmodernity bring about a value basis of ‘tolerance’.  But tolerance is a difficult concept in postmodernity because without ‘tolerance’ based on mutually agreed criteria, ‘ - the tolerant university has no way of discriminating between the just and the unjust uses of its services.’ (Barnett, 2000: 26).

 

Another warning here… Barnett says the university now has a continual choice to make,

 

‘Glitz or virtue: these are the callings that appear before it.  And often glitz is chosen before virtue.  Research ‘findings’ are announced, even to the world’s news in much-heralded press conferences, but prematurely as it turns out.  Or a university’s Senate agrees to take a donation from a corporation, subsequently only to find that the sources of the donation are suspect in certain ways.  Yet virtue has the habit of having the last word.’ (Barnett, 2000:28).             

 

The point is, then, that somehow the university is struggling to find its way with old and new values.  It must find a way to exist with glitz and virtue. 

 

‘The university dare not abandon completely its modern calling of disciplinary authority for a postmodern calling of performative impact.  The university contents itself that these are not conflicting values but are complementary.  Performativity, it tells itself, only gains authority by being anchored on the bed of disciplines and their communicative networks.  Even the external world tells the university that this is so.’ (Barnett, 2000:28).   

        

 The two sets of values then are on the one hand, values which speak to ‘disinterestedness’ and on the other, to ‘action-in-the-world’.  ‘The one receives high marks on the university’s conscience; the other receives high marks from the university’s press officer.’ (Barnett, 2000:29). 

 

The tensions between the two sets of values mean that the university is pulled in two different directions.  ‘Disinterestedness is set against interestedness; critical commentary is set against action-in-the-world; understanding is set against performance; and impartiality is set against partiality.’ (Barnett, 2000:29).

 

Barnett concludes this section by saying,

 

‘Voices in the wider society speak of knowledge, breadth, critical reason, freedom and even critical conscience, but voices speak more loudly of skills, impact, standards, accountability and efficiency (NCIHE, 1997).  It is the louder and more strident voices that are noticed by the university.  Even while the wider society is hesitantly intimating that it has need of universities that live up to their own rhetoric as guardians of reason, so the university seems intent on construing itself in ever-narrower frames of self-understanding.  A trick has been missed.’ (Barnett, 2000:34).           

 

There is still a place for Enlightenment says Barnett, but the new Enlightenment of the contemporary university no longer carries the restrictions and oppressions imposed by the search for the Enlightenment ideals of universal truth, reason and knowledge.  The new Enlightenment is one which ‘sheds light by generating new forms of understanding of the world; and the wider society urges it on in this function.’ (Barnett, 2000:32). 

 

 

 

References

Barnett, R. (1990) The Idea of Higher Education, Buckingham: Open University press

Barnett, R. (1997) Higher Education: A Critical Business, Buckingham: Open University Press 

Barnett, R. (1999) ‘The Coming of the Global Village: a tale of two inquiries’ Oxford Review of Education Vol. 25 (3) pp. 302-305

Barnett, R. (2000) Realizing the University in the Age of Supercomplexity, Buckingham: Open University Press

Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R., and Standish P. (2003) The Blackwell guide to the Philosophy of Education, London: Blackwell