Academics have an image of being intelligent, thoughtful, forward-looking, left-of-centre and free-thinking. There are, of course many individuals working within academia who score high in all the above and they play a very important role in society in promoting such values. However, there is a comparison/competition ethos in academia too that cannot be denied.
The corporate world would like to assimilate all of us, but particularly those who us who are different, into the mainstream, funneling us into a kind of standardised norm and squeezing our individuality out of us, rather than truly embracing diversity and taking the risk that it will bring a richer, more creative, and exciting society rather than the anarchic one that is obviously feared.
There are strong (and growing) links between academia and the corporate world. Is the neoliberal ethos so prominent nowadays – with the widening gap between the haves and have-nots – seeping into higher education due to these links?
The corporate ethos causes academia (in my experience anyway) to generally inhibit the development of a fair, equal, democratic society. Much of it is based on unhealthy competition and comparison that mirrors industry and business – not true education.
Of course this is not new. Some of the world’s most prestigious Universities foster and perpetuate class difference through their elite Colleges, and one, (Oxford) continues to offer a scholarship which is funded by the legacy of the estate of one of the world’s most unabashed and blatant racists – Cecil Rhodes – an unapologetic white supremacist who trampled over the human rights of black people in southern Africa to achieve his expansionist imperialist ends. And, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Universities in democratic countries that considered themselves to be in the front rank of modernity and civilisation were to the fore in promoting theories of eugenics.
One of my rudest awakenings (and, indeed, life’s education) was when the massive sixties student protest movements faded in the 1970’s and 80’s when they would have been coming to the age where they might have been of influence in society. Where did they all go? How were they not a counterbalance to the people who voted in politicians like Thatcher and Reagan? And where were they in the various financial crashes down through the decades, when they were at the age when they would have been leaders?
I remember reading an article by a journalist (whose name, I regret to say, I have forgotten) bemoaning the placidity of the campuses in the 80’s and 90’s as the English speaking world swung to the right. This might sound a little harsh and judgmental, but at that time I wondered if student protests were more teenage rebellion than desire for real change, and I suppose I began to regard rebellious students as capitalists in waiting. The cynical remark ‘if you’re not a socialist at 20, you’ve no heart, and if you’re still a socialist at 40, you’ve no brain’ comes to mind.
In harshly judging the apathy of the sixties grown-ups, I was, of course, discounting, and unaware of, the power of the corporate world which moved quickly after the sixties to snuff out radicalism, creativity and the vision of an alternative world. I learned about this later in life and I will explore it more fully in the Chapter on Power and Control in Society.
The folk singer Dick Gaughan has a lovely song on his album Lucky For Some (2006) which describes this fall-off in enthusiasm for looking for an alternative to the mainstream over the generations. The song is entitled Whatever Happened.
University education can certainly be mind-expanding and freedom-inducing, encouraging critical thought and rigorous argument of issues. For example, I have read some brilliant books about social change, exclusion etc. written by academics advocating for more equality and many of them have informed my work and indeed this website. And I feel privileged that I have been exposed to such thinking and ideas.
However university education can also fill us with a sense of superiority (we know more) and inflated entitlement (because we worked so hard and made so many sacrifices we are more entitled than others).
In the Chapter that I just referred to, Power and Control in Society, I briefly discuss colonisation. It is interesting that over the past 500 years the major colonial powers that inflicted terror – and in particular organised and systematic terror – on others to subdue them were countries that had some of the most prestigious universities in the world – i.e. European countries, thought to be places of culture, open-mindedness and liberal thought.
From that evidence I came to believe that the sense of superiority in the upper echelons of society, inculcated by University education, far outweighs the liberal, freedom-loving side, and academia is actually a conduit through which the values of the establishment of the day are passed on to students – and passed on in a very subtle and pervasive manner (high impact – low noticeability).
Students (some of whom may start out with radical views) ultimately go on to be part of the system that perpetuates inequality and unfairness and are not even aware of the change themselves.
So subtle and unnoticed is the change that sometimes people who are highly intelligent and educated are so immersed in their own way of thinking that they cannot see the wider implications.
For example, reflective, thoughtful, third-level-educated Catholic clergy who are committed to the life and work of Jesus are okay with public funds being spent on private boarding secondary schools for very wealthy boys and girls (that undoubtedly serve to perpetuate an unjust status quo in society) while other schools educating less advantaged students have rain seeping through damp pre-fab walls.