November 3, 2009
An Open Letter to the Conservative Leadership
Dear Conservative Party Leadership,
I spend a lot of time attacking you and your party. But I’m prepared to cut a deal. If you do just one thing for me, I promise I will stop pointing at your insane economic policies, your amazing broken promise on a Lisbon referendum (the first government to break a key promise before being elected?), your far-right allies in Europe, your netroots maniacs, and your complete lack of policies regarding basically everything apart from destroying the economy.
Sounds good? OK, what I want you to do for me is this: abandon wholesale New Labour’s stupid, short-sighted, naive, utterly idiotic, meddling, creativity-destroying philistinism towards Britain’s universities.
I’m thinking not just of the (leaked) proposals to rate university courses on the same model as food packaging here, though it is my inspiration for writing to you. I’m actually thinking much more widely. About, for example, the mind-blowing stupidity of aspects of the Research Assesment Exercise, which virtually dictates how institutions receive funding (although now Mr Mandelson is complaining that institutions are too research-driven and not offering a “consumer-driven choice” to undergraduate students!) Of New Labour’s persistant attempts to meddle with top universities, claiming this is justified because they don’t accept enough state-sector students due to some implied bias in favour of posh kids, when in fact anyone who has done access work (e.g. yours truly) knows that the biggest problem is that state schools as a general rule are simply not as good as fee-paying ones and are far less likely to encourage students to aim for the top, thus meaning that, by age 18, applicants from the independent sector outnumber, and simply look better (even if they are in truth not), than their state-educated competitors. In general, I’m thinking of New Labour’s obsession with targets, control and denying autonomy and independence to anything within its grasp.
In general, I’m thinking of New Labour’s obsession with targets, control and denying autonomy and independence to anything within its grasp.
Of course, I’m biased. After attending a less-than-great state school (though admittedly, there are far worse around, and mine benefited enormously from New Labour cash), I beat the odds and made it to Oxford. There I had the unbelievable privilege of an intense course of study, where I was permitted to abandon “useful” subjects like economics and political science, and instead focus on philosophy and political thought. I also received another immense privilege, for which I am eternally grateful: being tutored by individuals who were likewise able to pursue their own interests and ideas without their purse-strings being (overtly) yanked by the state, thus pulling them into line and forcing them to research something “useful”. Indeed, after a post-graduation spell in the so-called “real world” (I prefer “world of integrity-destroying boredom”), I am back studying something entirely “useless” in the eyes of that fabled business sector which has done so well of the past 18 months. But I can presently do so without myself or my tutors being told that this must cease because it doesn’t have “economic benefits”.
But don’t just take my biased word for it. Consider for a start that most of my undergraduate peers – thanks to the education we received – have gone on to do all sorts of “useful” jobs for banks, lawyers, management consultants, political parties and other such parasitical greed-factories wealth creators.
Think also of something else. If I continue to post-doctoral level, I will myself teach the future cogs in the parasitical machines innovators and entrepreneurs to think independently and for themselves. Of course, only a platinum fool would be unable to see that this really matters. Because it is impossible – contra fashionable rhetoric – to teach “the skills of the future”. Mostly because nobody knows – by definition – what the skills of the future are yet. The best we can do is teach people to think for themselves with an ability to adapt to the new and the changing. People who can do that will be able to acquire the skills of the future, when we find out what they are. That’s why our universities have for decades turned-out vast numbers of articulate, intelligent, highly adaptable and self-reliant individuals able to acquire the requisite skills of the moment. That they read classics, English literature, philosophy, maths, French, engineering, biology or whatever at university is irrelevant. It was the skills that the process of learning equiped them with that mattered.
Only a platinum fool could fail to understand that universities cannot be graded on a check-box system, with priority given only to those studies that have “economic value”. All study has economic value, somewhere down the line – it just might take rather a while for it all to become apparent. And anyway, it’s abundantly clear that many of our institutions at present already contribute vast sums to the national economy. Take Cambridge University, which is estimated to contribute £50billion per annum and employ 110,000 people already. Surely only an ignoramus of monolithic proportions would think it wise to increasingly meddle with this, believing that check-box inspection and hoop-jumping for cash could do anything but stifle and constrain.
But then, even if study didn’t render economic benefits – had no instrumental value whatsoever – would that be such a bad thing? Surely only a philistine of gargantuan scale would claim that it was therefore valueless, and should be cut-down to privilege the “economically valuable” pursuits?
I confess, dear Tory leadership, that I do indeed hold Peter Mandelson to be such a platinum fool, monolithic ignoramus and gargantuan philistine. Indeed, I could go on and on and on about how wrong-headed the present administration is. But Mary Beard, Simon Blackburn and David Mitchell have made many good points already.
Instead I will simply say this. David Cameron has declared his love of decentralisation (though some have found it more complex than he supposes). Michael Gove announced that he wants more “traditional” and “proper” subjects on the school curriculum. Now, whatever the deficiencies of these two men and their rhetoric may be, I implore you to put your Tory money where your mouth is: leave the universities be, ease the grip on the purse strings, reverse New Labour’s attacks, restore academic freedoms and sit back and watch as the economy, the country, students, academics and – ultimately – the government all benefit.
Do that, and I promise I will spend the rest of my blogging days telling people about how amazing I think Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is (because it is, and once you’ve read it you will sympathise with me*), and recommending people simply ignore the nasty party and listen to Philosophy Bites all day instead.
Your Sincerely,
Paul Sagar
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*That’s a little joke for philosophers there. Mandy won’t get it – will you, Dave?
David Weber said,
November 5, 2009 at 5:55 pm
“your amazing broken promise on a Lisbon referendum (the first government to break a key promise before being elected?)”
I have little lost love with the Conservatives, but it’s not a broken promise. It was patently clear that things would change were Lisbon to be ratified.
Even from a Eurosceptic point of view, it would make no sense to hold a referendum on Lisbon post-ratification.
Tom said,
November 7, 2009 at 11:23 pm
FYI: the link: “All study has economic value, somewhere down the line – it just might take rather a while for it all to become apparent.” leads to your WordPress admin page.