Trusting in the University

Citation

Flood, A. (2007), "Trusting in the University", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 369-372. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880710773228

In Trusting in the University, Paul Gibbs begins his discussion by acknowledging the work of Paul Friere as “inspirational”. He takes Friere's position of advocacy for the voice of the individual and applies it to rich post‐industrial countries where, “the individual voice has been, or is going to be silenced by the totalizing of the education system by the market.” (p. 1). He warns us of those who would “make mute” those who may see the future in any other ways except those driven by monetary value.

The World Bank, Gibbs tells us, sees the tertiary sector as a significant influence on national productivity by reducing poverty through access to better employment while also increasing social capital. While this may be seen as positive, he alerts us to the evolving vision of education as a “product rather than a public good”(p. 2).

Gibbs argues that education is about “personal growth, understanding, tolerance, empathy and trust”. To me, these words are like pearls of wisdom in a sea of ongoing turbulence and unremitting swell. As an educator who works to enhance the learning and teaching in a university, how could I believe anything else. From the first days of teaching I saw myself in this frame: as someone who should help others to learn and to understand the good that comes from knowledge and thought. Now I find myself in a world of commodification that Gibbs describes only too clearly. He tells us that the USA, Europe and Australia provide transparent examples of the apologistic use of market indicators to justify higher education as an “enframent of education as a preparation for Being not just a life.”

He asks for a review of what university education ought to be and highlights the distinction between what he describes as tertiary education as opposed to university education. The notion of what a University is and does is core to his discussion. He suggests that Universities have become compliant; they have allowed totalisation to occur. He suggests that this totalisation; the funding, assessing and rewarding by market forces fosters “bad faith between academics and their increasingly independent, market salaried chief administrators” (p. 7).

This begins to ring bells for me. I see all around me in institutions leaders being wooed by big corporations with trips to Silicone Valley to view the latest trends in technology with a view to being the first; the best; the biggest University provider. This happens while the University's academics struggle to provide quality learning in bigger class sizes, with rushed and cramped timetables and with more teaching periods being added in a year to move the “products” through the degree/diploma mill. However, I diverge from the text!

In chapter 1, Gibbs introduces us to his fears that there exists in the University Sector a crisis that goes beyond problems that are about quality assurance, access or financial concerns. He argues that there is a serious concern that faces us all: that the essential crisis is one concerning “the very essence of a university.” He proceeds by arguing that the current need to restructure is to accommodate decreased funding as the participation rates rise in most countries. However he warns that: “lack of clarity of what higher education ought to be threatens increased alienation for students, particularly if to satisfy an economic model of education” (p. 28).

Gibbs engages the reader with his discussions regarding the development of philosophical positions; asking us if there is a real purpose of liberal education and its related limits on freedom. He argues that through a consistent individualization and protection of rights there has been a loss of any sense of a “worthy purpose” (p. 30). He also suggests that the shift to mass higher education has led to a loss of confidence in the educational values previously attached to the university sector. He contends this has led to universities competing in ranking and ordering systems that have been imposed by external bodies.

Applying Lyotard's question “Is it saleable?” (p. 34) Gibbs provides a sadly recognizable situation that is becoming more and more common; that institutional learning, through its audits, may become regarded as fit for purpose only when it equips graduates cost effectively with the skills for employment in a wide range of occupations … and sidelines its contribution to the student being “educated in order to maximize the speed of the market of these skill carriers”(p. 35).

The movement towards vocationalism has had pronounced effects on the undergraduate programs through the use of explicit behavioural outcomes (see p. 39) and Gibbs argues that this managerially constructed reliance on competencies contributes to the reduction of an individual's authenticity and reflects strongly the “essential desire to shift the project of higher education to the production of measurable knowledge”(p. 41). The market drivers he suggests, create universities that provide “disembodied notions of excellence” (p. 42).

He highlights this by drawing the reader's attention to the market‐speak now employed: students become clients or customers, education is a product, and the university exists within an educational market and so on. It is the blurring of function and responsibility for knowledge production and the manner in which universities work more closely with business leaders that Gibbs suggests has reduced the possibility for unencumbered research or the pursuit of knowledge within the university sector.

At the core of a humanistic vision of education is the desire to develop good citizens (see p. 67) and it is at this point that Gibbs identifies the core of his argument; the need for individuals to be well informed and enabled to participate in the market as opposed to being controlled by the market (see p. 68). He further questions whether business can provide a model for education and whether we can trust the market with our education system.

To answer these questions, Gibbs provides a lengthy discussion on the nature of trust; what it means to be trustworthy and the nature of existential trust of the individual. This discourse involves ideas of trustworthiness with regard to education, the processes of assessment, empathetic trust and the goodwill that evolves between students and teachers.

Gibbs tells us that universities “shape the future in trust, that the form of knowledge that prevails is not to be restricted”. He argues that the commercialization of ideas limits any forward vision to the desired investment returns.

I can imagine that those researchers who work within industry might argue the opposite and say that often commercialization adds to the development of innovative technologies to help us in a modern and changing world.

His primary concern is not what is produced, but rather, what might a university be. He suggests the following simple explanation that it is: “the future orientation of the scholarly community which it creates and nurtures that sets the University apart.” (p. 106). This is encompassed in a well‐researched and clearly‐argued discussion that reflects upon the place of a student's own agency and the importance of the University providing an authentic experience.

Gibbs explores ideas of truth, trust, and engages with the Heideggerian position of learning and thinking referred to as originary thinking (see p. 142). The ideas of Heidegger, and Foucault are discussed at length in chapter 8 and interrogated in terms of future educational possibilities. Gibbs further posits the notion that: “education is clearly futural. It is the facing of the future and confronting fate”(p. 175).

This book in itself “futural”. Written in 2004, the current practice evident in universities has travelled further down commodified lines. For example, in Australia research is now quantified and controlled in universities through government prescribed guidelines that demand outcomes that are industry based and economically driven. The guidelines as introduced by the Minister for Education were devised by individuals external to the sector (see Minister Julie Bishop's RQF launch July 2006) with drivers that are industry linked (and bound?). We are experiencing a deliberate fracture between research and teaching staff with outcomes based learning that refers to “how” rather than open ended discovery being encouraged and rewarded.

Gibbs calls for universities to resist any form of “external non scholarly interference” (p. 193) and reiterates his misgivings regarding any form of external control in terms of content and how it is taught. While I am in agreement with his observations and support his assertions that trust in all aspects of teaching and learning is essential to enable academics to “let learn” I see little hope at this time for any reversal of practice or change. If education is “futural” then I see nothing to indicate there will be a repositioning of Universities in this age of consumerism and self‐interested fiscal growth.

As governments continue to tighten the purse strings with one hand while offering inducements based on prescribed outcomes with the other, there can be no room for change.

Trusting in the University is a well‐written, tightly constructed and engaging discussion that places what some may consider idealistic notions of learning from another time within a scholarly context supported by philosophical arguments related to liberalism, mass education and a loss of academic trust. The argument focuses specifically on the identity of a university institution. With a strong emphasis on delineating how and why university education is under close scrutiny from external bodies it reveals how it is losing the trust of the students and the community.

I would like to say this publication in its bright red cover should be a warning signal to us all; a metaphoric stop sign inviting us to review and reposition the universities so that they return to the institutions we believe we once had; institutions where the “flourishing of the individual is measured in terms other than economic”(p. 194).

I think it is only fair to say that the institutions we remember from the past were universities of the privileged; that they provided an élite class with opportunities to think and discover their new ideas in secluded and removed communities of intellectual practice. Today we live in a different world, where individuals from all walks of life and from across all social strata have, and desire, access to places of further learning.

I am not sure that the economic tide can be turned back to fully encompass the flourishing individualism in these times of economically‐driven imperatives and mass education. I fear that Gibbs and others (myself included) may be like King Canute, sitting on his throne at the edge of the sea commanding that the waves recede; hoping that the pearls of wisdom we value; personal growth, understanding, tolerance, empathy and trust, can once again surface long enough for us to gather them up in the wash.