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Weekend Reading: What really goes on at university?

  • 12 October 2024
  • By Liz Morrish

This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Liz Morrish, an independent scholar and visiting fellow at York St John University, UK. She has previously written two reports for HEPI on the topic of staff mental health, which are available here and here.

It is often thought that vice-chancellors monitor the social media posts of university staff, fearful of any reputational damage that might befall the inattentive. If they are really curious about what fuels the ire of academic staff, they might benefit from reading The Secret Lecturer’s candid, if despondent, account of life on the frontline of teaching and research in a contemporary university. Working in a top 20 research university may offer more autonomy or better access to research funding, but equally brings pressure to publish in prestigious journals and replenish the money with successful grant applications. At teaching institutions, staff regard themselves as considerably less privileged. Their stress derives from teaching students who may be the first in their families to attend higher education, are more likely to reside in the locality or have long commutes from the family home. They may be less well qualified and their engagement may be diluted by the need to earn money. So, while we appreciate there is no universal experience of being a lecturer in UK higher education today, the narrative of the book will, nevertheless, be relatable to most academics.

There is some welcome myth-busting, for example: universities are not noticeably woke. The prevailing ethos is of a ruthless corporate culture undergirded by some rather non-woke partnerships. When research funding comes from the defence industries, the author claims some academics have been forced to abandon principles and become sordid hustlers developing surveillance tools for authoritarian regimes. We are reminded that universities were recently declared institutionally racist by Professor David Richardson of Universities UK. And freedom of expression can be risky too; some academics who have been critical of Israel (p.43) or who have defended Palestinians on social media have been the subject of scrutiny by university managers, often at the behest of politicians or right-wing media. Here’s one recent case.

The writer presents a picture of universities as very unhappy places, and readers of the HEPI blog will be familiar with reports evidencing the rise in mental health issues for both staff and students, with access to support lagging behind the demand for services.

Redundancies and cutbacks loom over all universities, and lecturers may feel coerced into inflating student grades, fearing that any lapse in ‘satisfaction’ may see their courses closed down. The emphasis on what happens after a student graduates with a degree leads them to assume it is legitimate to take shortcuts through learning. There is a well-camouflaged decline in the curricular quality and choice offered to students too. The academic workforce is now heavily casualised, so students curious to learn more from a well-regarded lecturer might find the person’s contract has expired and the optional module cancelled. But if their learning is compromised by penny-pinching, students’ physical comfort has never been a higher priority. They can enjoy the climbing wall or luxuriate on the leather sofas in their extortionately-priced accommodation at 170-200 pounds per week (confirmed as accurate in Nottingham).

Nor will students be disappointed in the campus aesthetics. Universities have used much of the money introduced by the current funding model to upgrade their estate. Academics have grumbled as lustrous atriums have replaced older buildings, with students and staff marginalised into glass-walled ‘hubs’ furnished with untethered ‘node chairs’ designed for ‘active learning.’ But the irony is that the new builds may have usurped the latter, ostensive function of a university as the culture of customer service has outranked active learning to the point where zero attendance is unremarkable. Perhaps it has something to do with all the forbidding barriers. If you forget your swipe card, you will not be able to access much of the campus. Gone are the days when a curious visitor might roam freely around the university library; indeed a modern university has eliminated books in favour of electronic ‘resources’.

Though campuses may be visually pleasing, they resemble airport departure lounges or banks in their alienating uniformity. They exemplify, above all, Marc Augé’s Non-Places with their excessive focus on space and information. I wonder, are students so overwhelmed with invitations, reminders, cautions and advisory notices that they just tune out?  In our globalised, urbanised world, walls, partitions and barriers proliferate in all kinds of spaces. We are kept at bay, deterred from full participation, as if captured in a cinematic long shot.

As the late Mark Fisher (2012) noted, universities owe a lot to Stalinist Russia in elevating bureaucracy and symbols over actual achievements. The Secret Lecturer captures some of the more exasperating obstacles confronted by academics trying to accomplish routine tasks, for example, the endless emails and risk assessments just in order to organise an event after 5pm.

The book might not be an entirely faithful narrative and probably not based on contemporaneous notes – the giveaway is a few fictitious dates such as 30 February. However, it succeeds in bearing witness to the problems currently faced by the sector and in raising consciousness for academics who feel isolated in their frustration. There is an entreaty in the epilogue for “someone, somewhere [to] read this book and be cheesed off enough to clear up the mess’. It seems unlikely that saviours will be found among university managers, who are slighted as being ‘thick’ and ‘dense’. This is one of several irritating generalisations, and the proposed solutions to the sector’s problems are fanciful. Despite this, it is an optimistic book. Universities, aside from some chancers and self-promoters, are staffed by academics who believe in higher education for personal transformation and public good. That is what allows us to retain faith in them, regardless of how far politicians, the media and some managers might undermine that goodwill.

References

Augé, Marc. 2023. Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. Verso Books.  

Fisher, Mark. 2012. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books.

1 comment

  1. Dr Olufunke Aluko-Daniels says:

    Thanks, Liz. The political class seems less aware of the sector’s contributions to the public good. If the current trend is not arrested very quickly, the sector may take a while to bounce back.

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