Thursday 7 June, 2012
University of Lincoln
9am-5pm
Doing and Undoing Academic Labour
In recent decades, a wealth of information has been produced about academic labour: the financialisation of knowledge, diminution of professional autonomy and collegiality through managerialism and audit cultures; the subsumption of higher education into circulations of capital, proletarianisation of intellectual work, shift from dreams of enlightenment and emancipation to imperatives of ‘employability’, and experiences of alienation and anger amongst educators across the world.
This has also been a period of intensifying awareness about the significance of these processes, not only for teachers and students in universities, but for all labour and intellectual, social and political life as well. …
This conference brings together scholars and activists from a range of disciplines to discuss these problems, and to consider how critical knowledge about new forms of academic labour can be linked to struggles to humanise labour and knowledge production within and beyond the university.
More details here. The conference is free and open to the public but registration is required.
An event in Oxford at the Sheldonian Theatre on Tuesday 22 May from 5pm to 7pm. Organised by the Humanities Division Discussion Forum.
Why Britain? The Privatization of the World’s Best Public University System
Professor James Vernon, Astor Visiting Lecturer and Chancellor’s Chair in History, University of California, Berkeley, will lead a discussion on the development of higher education in Britain in the Sheldonian Theatre from 5 – 6.30 pm on 22 May.
There will be responses from:
Andrew McGettigan, commentator on HE through his blog ‘Critical Education’
David Sweeney, Director (Research, Innovation and Skills) Higher Education Funding Council for England
Professor Shearer West, Head of the Humanities Division and former Head of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council
Professor Vernon will argue: Disinvestment of publicly funded university systems is a global phenomena stretching across the Americas, the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. Yet the de facto privatization of the British university (Scotland partially excepted) since the Browne report has been the most rapid and complete. The past year has witnessed a good deal of protest and hand-wringing but few effective analyses of why and how this has happened. This discussion seeks to answer those questions in a historical examination of the post-Robbins university and the emergence of a critique that it failed to achieve its promise of improving access and social mobility.
All members of the University are welcome to attend.
The next meeting of the Different Class Philosophy of Education reading group will take place on the evening of Wednesday 9th May.
We will be looking at Augustine’s Confessions (Books V-VIII). Tacitly criticising Plato’s conception of education and the need for a master, Augustine develops a very modern conception of the will (and addiction) whose influence can still be seen in today’s self-help and therapy industries. The centrality of reading in his intellectual and practical struggles marks this out as a key text for thinking about learning.
All welcome.
Venue: The Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, London.
Time: 7.30pm
Scepsi have published the text of my lecture in Barcelona from before Christmas. It is an overview of my work in 2011 and somewhat lacking in detail as a result of its oral delivery.
I’ve revised my thoughts on a couple of aspects but that will become clearer in the next month with the publication of my report on student loans and public sector finances for Intergenerational Foundation.
It also resembles the talk I gave at Marxism in Culture in October.
As always, feedback very welcome, especially since it now looks like 2013 is going to be the year of the HE Bill.
The next meeting of the Different Class Philosophy of Education reading group will take place on the evening of Wednesday 9th May.
We will be looking at Augustine’s Confessions (Books V-VIII). Tacitly criticising Plato’s conception of education and the need for a master, Augustine develops a very modern conception of the will (and addiction) whose influence can still be seen in today’s self-help and therapy industries. The centrality of reading in his intellectual and practical struggles marks this out as a key text for thinking about learning.
All welcome.
Venue: The Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, London.
Time: 7.30pm
The sale of College of Law for around £200million has been confirmed. The purchasers are Montagu Private Equity. As predicted on this site, the sale was not an ‘outright’ purchase, instead Montagu now own all assets formerly belonging to College of Law, including degree awarding powers, while the proceeds of the sale will remain with an organisation to be called, Legal Education Foundation.
The latter will be the legal entity that was College of Law, maintaining its original charitable objectives and Royal Charter, but effectively operating as a trust that disperses grants and bursaries. The management team move over to run the new for-profit entity, College of Law Limited, for better remuneration in all likelihood.
I hope someone, such as UCU, investigates the possibility of a legal challenge here. The treatment of degree awarding powers as an asset that can be sold to another entity is troubling, while turning a chartered corporation into little more than a trust would seem to require some kind of primary legislation even if dissolution is not sought.
This would not simply be interfering in private business. If it stands, this is the model of purchase that could be brought to bear on most public universities (though many post-92s, as higher education corporations, and therefore quasi-public bodies, have stronger protections on assets). In addition, an additional sum would in theory have to be paid to the Treasury to compensate for the assets that had been built up with public money. (For information on this see ‘A Big Bang’ and the final page or so of ‘The Truth about Middlesex’).
There’s been a lot in press about charities recently, but this whole process looks like an abuse of that status. I imagine a signficant proportion of that trust fund will be used to finance students at College of Law Ltd.
Update 19 April 2012
Andrew Fisher, who has commented below, has now provided an alternative account of the sale here. It seems that the degree awarding powers have not transferred. This doesn’t seem to make things any clearer since College of Law’s degree awarding powers depend on having a ‘self-critical community of scholars who safeguard standards’. If all the staff transfer to the new entity, then the renewal of CoL’s powers (due this year) must be jeopardised. The White Paper did intend to extend degree awarding powers to non-teaching bodies, but that change has not happened yet (unless Willetts is proposing to give new instructions to the QAA and the Privy Council and we just haven’t been informed yet).
Jones, a columnist at the Telegraph, apparently had a ‘change of heart’ after learning about the level of fees NCH intended to set. This seems unlikely given that the headline figure of £18 000 per year has been known since the outset.
More likely, as reported here over the last year, is that the business model looks unviable and that Jones is exiting early before the scale of the flop becomes apparent.
This month’s Big Ideas pub philosophy event will host Aislinn O’Donnell. She will talk about prison education based on her experience teaching philosophy in prisons in Ireland. Dr O’DOnnell is a lecturer at both Mary Immaculate College and Associate Fellow at Dublin’s Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media.
Venue: The Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, London
Time: 8pm
All Welcome. More details here.
The NUS is running a ‘Come Clean’ campaign on student funding and tuition fees. I will be participating in two of their forthcoming April events.
Wednesday 18th April – Lobby of Parliament
Afternoon, followed by rally at Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground, Chelsea College of Art & Design from 4.30 – 5.30pm.
More details here. Facebook page here.
Wednesday 25th April – Come Clean Fringe event at NUS annual conference
1-2.30pm
Sheffield City Hall
I have agreed to lead the next six sessions of the monthly reading group, Different Class.
The theme will be philosophy of education and we commence on Wednesday 11 April with Plato’s Meno. Other planned texts include:
- Augustine’s Confessions – Books III-VIII
- Rousseau’s Emile & Macaulay Graham’s Letters on Education
- Dewey’s ‘The School and Social Progress’
- Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster
There will be scope for alternative suggestions.
I hope to see you there.
Venue: Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, London (nearest tubes – Goodge St or Tottenham Ct Rd)
Critical Education 