June 5, 2011
Telly Don University
So Telly Don University – or the New College of Humanities – has been unveiled. Professor A.C. Grayling is the mastermind, and apparently the head honcho too. “Top” academics have been recruited to the cause. Proper academics, predictably, don’t like it.
Now don’t get me wrong, TDU definitely suggests some unpleasant prospects. As Chris Bertram has pointed out to me, an institution charging £18K a year will give other university Vice Chancellors a pre-text to both bust open the new £9K fee cap, and maybe even privatise in a bid to “compete”.
Personally, however, I see TDU as being – at most – a catalyst. My sense is that the flood gates are open on fees (not least as the maths was done so badly that the Treasury is going to have to fork out loads under the current regime anyway), and that universities not receiving significant state support may opt to privatise anyway. After all, why put up with the constant government interference if you’re not even getting the money any more?
In any case, what’s happening to British higher education looks like part of a much bigger process. Namely, the systematic marketisation of publicly provided services, coupled with a belief that in the brave new world this is the only option. Meaning that assaults on state-provided services are seen as both status quo, and as inevitable developments, by the politicians carrying them out. Thus drastically reducing any room for alternatives to find a voice, or for policies to be reconsidered and reversed.
In sum, I think that British higher education is undergoing a sea change that started (at least) with New Labour when it bought the basically pro-market vision of politics which reduces the state to the fawning provider of safe-habitats for business,whilst abandoning anything that can’t make a profit to die in the cold. I don’t know what will happen to Britain’s university system over the next 20 years, and I’m not optimistic. But I doubt Telly Don University alone is going to make that much of a difference.
Accordingly, we might like to do a spot of pointing and laughing to cheer ourselves up. TDU bills itself as attempting to rival Oxbridge (a boast Mary Beard has already queried). Its main claim to this appears to be two-fold: 1) that Famous People will do some teaching, and 2) students won’t just do arts subjects they will also have “science literacy” and business-type awareness programmes to boot.
Both of these things make me chortle. Let’s first consider some of the Famous People who will allegedly be teaching at TDU:
- Richard Dawkins: loud-mouthed pop-biologist, who writes exceptionally bad books about religion and who would fail any decent undergraduate philosophy first year course.
- Steven Pinker: pop-psychologist, generally not taken seriously by large sections of the psychology research community because he allegedly ignores and manipulates data that doesn’t fit his story-book narratives. [If anyone genuinely qualified on this subject could say one way or the other, it would be good to hear from you - this is just reporting what I've heard from people in the field.]
- Niall Ferguson: telly-don extraordinaire, who will apparently be teaching economics, even though he is not an economist. He is in fact a pop historian (who hasn’t done any serious work for donkey’s years), who has appointed himself a finance expert following his success in the oh-so-tricky world of making money in hedge funds. (Amusingly, rival telly don Tristram Hunt claims that Ferguson’s successful book on the history of money and finance – later a TV series, of course – manages to hardly mention Marx and Engels at all. So a rounded education can no doubt be expected from a man who is certainly anything but a right-wing ideologue.)
- A.C. Grayling: telly-don philosopher, who is mostly famous for writing a lot of books. The reason he writes so many books, so quickly, is of course that none of them are any good.
- Ronald Dworkin: actually a serious academic with an incredibly illustrious publishing history, who had an enormous impact upon both political and legal philosophy over the past 50 years. But still notorious at Oxford – about 30 years after he left – for being the laziest and most unhelpful supervisor imaginable (I was warned not to expect any contact with Dworkin at all if I went to NYU for a masters degree, whatever it said on their website.)
Also a huge hypocrite, given that he spent most of his career writing about egalitarianism, and is now a flagship academic at an institution which is anything but.
You get the picture. Big famous names are not the same as good, serious educators of university minds. If you go to TDU thinking you’ll get a good education just because some famous people are there, you’re a fool. As anyone who’s actually been taught well at university level knows, the best teachers are not the big public names (even if they are famous within the academy). But given that TDU will charge £18K a year, you’re a rich fool if you go there. So more fool you, as at least hopefully this will free up some places for serious young thinkers at Britains’ other, proper, universities. Who can hopefully be drawn from the state sector thanks to some reduction in competition from brats who just want a primer course for the City.
As for the second alleged benefit – science literacy and business awareness – this is highly amusing. If you want “science literacy” you can read Ben Goldacr’s book Bad Science, and then bother with some of Stephen Jay Gould’s wonderful output. If you want more than mere science “literacy”, then you have to do a science degree and become a scientist. Sorry about that, but the human mind is limited and specialization is required if you want to acquire a serious understanding of any contemporary field. TDU can’t undo the complexities and advances of modern day academic divisions of labour, whatever else it may claim.
Regarding “business awareness”, or whatever, this is also silly. You don’t get good at “real world” thinking by “studying the real world”. You get it by training your brain to think sharply and analytically, applying these skills elsewhere as and when it is fit to do so. Some people never learn to transfer these skills, and some people have them without being any good at academia. Either way, it actually turns out that the best education for business is not a business education. (You may be surprised to learn this, but apparently it’s actually philosophy.) So you’d be just fine at normal, proper university.
So overall I’m inclined to laugh at Telly Dons University. It looks like a big con, taking the money of rich people silly enough to think they can buy a proper education, at premium rates, simply because there’s some Famous People on the tin.
But, sadly, that’s not the end of the story. Because TDU is plainly responding to a certain sort of demand, and a wider and ever more entrenched expectation of what universities should be, and what they should provide. And if TDU is successful – which it may very well be – it’s exactly what Vice Chancellors and politicians will point to as the model for the rest to adopt.
Hence, we should laugh and be merry this evening, for in the morrow the hangover is coming. And it’s going to be a nasty one indeed. Even if TDU is only one small part of the bigger mess.
UPDATE: I see that Peter Singer and Simon Blackburn are also members of the Telly Don 14.
Peter Singer: Philosophical charlatan par excellence. A disseminater of complete nonsense, from a man who couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag. Even if he did do exceedingly well for himself by generally just being controversial and annoying.
Simon Blackburn: Actually one of the most distinguished and sharp-thinking philosophers of the past 30 years. A seriously impressive mind (even if he’s spent the last decade saying the same thing over and over again). However, by all accounts a close rival to Dworkin for Laziest and Least Helpful Teacher On Offer. At least judging by the reports of his supervisees. Whose testimony can be effectively summarised as: “He doesn’t read your work. Even if you’re his PhD student”.
What a stellar teching line up the TDU has on offer!
cim said,
June 6, 2011 at 10:51 am
and that universities not receiving significant state support may opt to privatise anyway. After all, why put up with the constant government interference if you’re not even getting the money any more?
Universities will be getting around 9k (less if they choose) per student from the government under the coming system. That’s fairly substantial state support, and actually marginally more than they currently get – because, as you point out, apparently no-one in DBIS knows basic economics.
The only way they could get “not much money” that way is by failing to attract students (unlikely) – in which case, I can’t see them becoming more successful at attracting students by putting prices up and requiring up-front payment.
(And, to be picky, universities are already private independent bodies, so you can’t privatise them)
Thrasymachus said,
June 7, 2011 at 6:59 am
I rate Singer more than you do, but I don’t really think it matters either how ‘good’ the faculty is as academics or how good they really are at teaching. I cannot imagine Singer, Dworkin et al. running regular supervisions or doing lecture courses. They’re there to lend their name-recognition to the NCU and are unlikely to have more than token involvement (did any of these guys have any significant teaching load at their previous positions?)
The actual quality of the teaching is pretty irrelevant if NCU can short-cut its way to prestige this way – a sort of University equivalent of New York Cosmos. On the ‘lets be whores to money’ analysis, so long as employers accept a degree there to signal value, the actual teaching quality of the humanities doesn’t matter. Sadly, I suspect the teaching there will be very good. If they have enough cash to float under the noses of already well-off big names to get them to sign on, it seems pretty easy for them to poach the best and brightest junior teaching staff from around the university of London etc., especially given the pretty unpleasant environment for budding junior academics. In this, of course, we move towards an american style Prof + TA system (get a big name to do the odd lecture and fill in with over-worked and underpaid schlubs hoping to get up the ladder) and the proletarianization of academic staff.
I thought this was a parody of the government’s reforms the first time I heard it. Although I am angry that a load of so-called liberals think selling out to something so plainly iniquitous is the right idea, I cannot get too irate about that simply because UK education is already so preposterously iniquitous I doubt changing to a full-blown American model will make matters much worse (NCU is little more than a public school that gives degrees). It is, as you say, farcical, and yet, also as you say, not so funny when you realize it is the harbinger of things to come.
The Ballbag University for Ballbags: Or the New College of the Humanities is Rubbish « Left Outside said,
June 7, 2011 at 9:05 am
[...] somewhat inclined to vulgarity, and unable to think of a funnier name than Telly Don University, I think Ballbag sums up what I think of AC Grayling’s New College of the Humanities. First [...]
Tim J said,
June 7, 2011 at 10:04 am
“Niall Ferguson: telly-don extraordinaire, who will apparently be teaching economics, even though he is not an economist. He is in fact a pop historian”
He was an extremely good economic historian at Jesus. An excellent lecturer, and a very committed tutor. I assume you’ve only read his later TV stuff.
Torquil Macneil said,
June 7, 2011 at 12:12 pm
“Also a huge hypocrite, given that he spent most of his career writing about egalitarianism, and is now a flagship academic at an institution which is anything but.”
And are graduate students at fantastically inegalitarian institutions like Oxford and Cambridge also grotesque hypocrites if they blog about egalitariansim? I think we should be told!
By said,
June 7, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Thrasymachus nailed it; I read 14 professors are only expected to give 110 lectures per year (combined). They’re there for their name brand recognition alone. Their haircuts are more important than what kind of teachers/supervisors they actually are.
RA said,
June 8, 2011 at 1:43 pm
I think you should start doing a weekly feature where you tear down well-known academics in capsule review form.
Duncan said,
June 8, 2011 at 2:51 pm
To add to the above, Niall Ferguson’s extraordinary retrospective powers of prediction:
http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2011/03/12/5482/
You may enjoy this as well:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=416422&c=1&sms_ss=twitter&at_xt=4dee04f0f4f2075f,0
Also of slight interest, the current president and two of the vice-presidents of the British Humanist Association are involved in this initiative. An odd co-incidence.
raincoatoptimism said,
June 8, 2011 at 9:47 pm
Paul, as an academic and budding don yourself, you really know how to limit your chances with the know-nothing influencers. I commend your commitment to principles. And your indefatigueability if we’re on the subject.
Kill Your Heroes! « Though Cowards Flinch said,
June 27, 2011 at 9:01 am
[...] immediately putting those students who are lesser off at a disadvantage. In so doing, the “telly dons” put paid their commitment to an education, in the words of Grayling himself – [...]
Blasmo Narcissus said,
August 27, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Paul Sagar, this is my song to you:
Paul, you are the best, du-tu-du-tu-diuuu
Smart and brilliant too
Paul, the Shining star, du-de-li-du-de-li-duuu
You will reach very far.
Clif said,
November 23, 2011 at 1:04 am
I thought the point was the Oxbridge-style tutorial system, which alone makes those two better than anything on offer to undergraduates in North America.