Killing Thinking: The Death of the Universities

Name: Killing Thinking: The Death of the Universities
Author: Mary Evans
ISBN: 1281784184

by Mary Evans

I love this book by Mary Evans. It’s one that isn’t often referred to in the debate about what’s happening to the university now. What she is arguing is that university education is becoming increasingly commercialized and that we no longer think of universities as institutions of learning but as corporate entities that are selling education. What she reminds us of are the damaging consequences of thinking of education as a commodity to be bought and sold and consumed. She mentions a slogan from the student protests, that the more university education costs, the less it’s worth. There’s a corrosive aspect to thinking of students as customers. It undermines the potential for universities to be places to foster thought, and she captures it in the title: Killing Thinking . The changes to the university are mortifying the life that education at this level can foster. It’s true that paying for your education has become completely normalized in the United States. It’s increasingly the case here as well. But the best critics in the United States—people like Christopher Newfield—show very clearly that the balance between student fees and what universities cost is always going to be one that can’t be squared. Increasing fees will never pay for what universities need, in terms of financial resources, to operate. The United States is interesting and challenging for us, but two points to make: the first one is that in the United States, the emergence of the fee-paying regime that students are accustomed to developed over a long period of time. There was also a long process whereby universities accrued assets through donations from alumni. Big expensive universities like Princeton, have a fantastic scholarship scheme that is entirely funded through the prior assets of the university. “Treating students as consumers cheapens not only students, but it also cheapens teachers, lecturers and those people who are trying to foster an environment for thought.” What has happened in the UK is that our universities became commercial enterprises at turbo speed. It was the pace of the change that, I think, is part of the problem. Although I still hold out for the vision of a university education that is a public good. If every parent in the UK thought that they had a stake for their children in a university education, maybe we’d be willing to pay for it through taxation. I still think that the idea of private debt as a way of paying for university is profoundly wrong. I don’t think it focuses the mind in a positive way. My book was an attempt to offer a few field observations from the everyday life of a university. Yes, students do say ‘I’m paying for this so I’m going to go to my lectures.’ But something else is also happening, which I haven’t noticed others commenting on. The fact that students are paying for their education sometimes means they say things like, ‘I’m paying for this, so I’m going to choose not to go.’ Or ‘I’m not going to see my tutor. I’m paying for this, so therefore I can decide.’ It is a strange paradoxical flip, that, I think, is as damaging as that sense of, ‘I’m paying for this so I need to get a financial return on my investment.’ Education and thinking just don’t work like that. Treating students as consumers cheapens not only students, but it also cheapens teachers, lecturers and those people who are trying to foster an environment for thought. I just don’t think that understanding can be traded and also bought in that way. It’s a very unhelpful way of thinking about the value of what learning can offer. Yes, I do. And it’s not that the universities aren’t thriving, they are. I just think that the corporate and commercial logic for higher education doesn’t work. It isn’t healthy, partly because it sidelines or diverts us from thinking about questions of public value. At the end of the day, that’s my own position. I think we need to have a debate about the public value of education rather than the pragmatic and commercial value of what a university degree translates into in terms of employment or financial return. I think one of the key things that Mary Evans argues in her book is that while every UK university is aiming for world-class status they are, paradoxically, becoming smaller minded and more narrow. This is because, as institutions, universities have become obsessed with audits and their levels of achievement in the National Student Survey or the measurement of research excellence. All of this, Evans argues, makes universities more ‘socially timorous.’ Also, unlike many other commentators on the contemporary university, Evans is brilliant on the gendered dimensions of campus life. There’s this brilliant and very funny deconstruction of the department ‘Away Day.’ As academic departments become more corporate the ‘Away Day’—attendance compulsory—has become the mechanism to define its ‘mission,’ plan strategy and boost competitiveness. It’s often held at a chain hotel where academics ‘invariably are welcomed by smartly dressed young women whose function remains that of the air hostess… to make men feel at home.’

Recommended by

Les Back

"I love this book by Mary Evans. It’s one that isn’t often referred to in the debate about what’s happening to the university now. What she is arguing is that university education is becoming increasingly commercialized and that we no longer think of universities as institutions of learning but as corporate entities that are selling education. What she reminds us of are the damaging consequences of thinking of education as a commodity to be bought and sold and consumed. She mentions a slogan from the student protests, that the more university education costs, the less it’s worth. There’s a corrosive aspect to thinking of students as customers. It undermines the potential for universities to be places to foster thought, and she captures it in the title: Killing Thinking . The changes to the university are mortifying the life that education at this level can foster. It’s true that paying for your education has become completely normalized in the United States. It’s increasingly the case here as well. But the best critics in the United States—people like Christopher Newfield—show very clearly that the balance between student fees and what universities cost is always going to be one that can’t be squared. Increasing fees will never pay for what universities need, in terms of financial resources, to operate. The United States is interesting and challenging for us, but two points to make: the first one is that in the United States, the emergence of the fee-paying regime that students are accustomed to developed over a long period of time. There was also a long process whereby universities accrued assets through donations from alumni. Big expensive universities like Princeton, have a fantastic scholarship scheme that is entirely funded through the prior assets of the university. “Treating students as consumers cheapens not only students, but it also cheapens teachers, lecturers and those people who are trying to foster an environment for thought.” What has happened in the UK is that our universities became commercial enterprises at turbo speed. It was the pace of the change that, I think, is part of the problem. Although I still hold out for the vision of a university education that is a public good. If every parent in the UK thought that they had a stake for their children in a university education, maybe we’d be willing to pay for it through taxation. I still think that the idea of private debt as a way of paying for university is profoundly wrong. I don’t think it focuses the mind in a positive way. My book was an attempt to offer a few field observations from the everyday life of a university. Yes, students do say ‘I’m paying for this so I’m going to go to my lectures.’ But something else is also happening, which I haven’t noticed others commenting on. The fact that students are paying for their education sometimes means they say things like, ‘I’m paying for this, so I’m going to choose not to go.’ Or ‘I’m not going to see my tutor. I’m paying for this, so therefore I can decide.’ It is a strange paradoxical flip, that, I think, is as damaging as that sense of, ‘I’m paying for this so I need to get a financial return on my investment.’ Education and thinking just don’t work like that. Treating students as consumers cheapens not only students, but it also cheapens teachers, lecturers and those people who are trying to foster an environment for thought. I just don’t think that understanding can be traded and also bought in that way. It’s a very unhelpful way of thinking about the value of what learning can offer. Yes, I do. And it’s not that the universities aren’t thriving, they are. I just think that the corporate and commercial logic for higher education doesn’t work. It isn’t healthy, partly because it sidelines or diverts us from thinking about questions of public value. At the end of the day, that’s my own position. I think we need to have a debate about the public value of education rather than the pragmatic and commercial value of what a university degree translates into in terms of employment or financial return. I think one of the key things that Mary Evans argues in her book is that while every UK university is aiming for world-class status they are, paradoxically, becoming smaller minded and more narrow. This is because, as institutions, universities have become obsessed with audits and their levels of achievement in the National Student Survey or the measurement of research excellence. All of this, Evans argues, makes universities more ‘socially timorous.’ Also, unlike many other commentators on the contemporary university, Evans is brilliant on the gendered dimensions of campus life. There’s this brilliant and very funny deconstruction of the department ‘Away Day.’ As academic departments become more corporate the ‘Away Day’—attendance compulsory—has become the mechanism to define its ‘mission,’ plan strategy and boost competitiveness. It’s often held at a chain hotel where academics ‘invariably are welcomed by smartly dressed young women whose function remains that of the air hostess… to make men feel at home.’"

Academia · fivebooks.com