Higher Education And Training: A Different Paradigm

The Guardian’s David Batty in 2013 offered up a critical review of an encouraging model at work in the UK relative to universities, art schools and an independent alternative to ‘unaffordable education’. And taken to its wider potential it’s not just art schools in universities that his thinking runs to. And by now, none of this is actually breaking news. 

If we needed it, in 2013 Batty has given us further proof that university administrations in the Western world have lost, or are in the process of loosing, the plot. Instead of building and reinforcing communities of teachers and scholars, like such ‘neo-art schools’ are apparently setting themselves up to be, ‘traditional’ universities are out there chasing dollars to support and to churn institutional salaries and benefits in a market driven ‘industry’. 

More and more, ‘academic freedom’ appears to be an idea in retreat as the corporatization of academic institutions is taking hold. 

 Seemingly, and somewhat in parallel, university ‘ticks of approval’ – Masters degrees and PhDs – are often losing value with growing numbers credentialed but underemployed candidates driving taxis, waiting tables, etc. Within ‘academe’ it is often joked that a PhD is “most useful for getting a bank loan you cannot afford or perhaps with some luck a window seat with extra legroom on an international flight”. 

For a myriad of reasons universities it seems are, collectively, imaging themselves as an industry. Furthermore, they are consequently corporatising themselves in order to ‘look the part’. However, in the search for a 21st Century modus operandi there always had to be another way than the industrial cum corporate model – and there is! 

If we are taking a serious look at the ‘alternatives’ then certainly there will need to be changes and refinements. However, on the emerging evidence and the underlying principles, indeed philosophy, informing it there are alternatives that seem to offer in-built success factors. 

If we read this contribution from David Batty carefully and think beyond the ART paradigm we may well find inspiration for applications in all kinds of situations outside the ‘art cum cultural silo.’ That is situations where higher education is failing, and has failed, its students while exposing them to long-term debt – sometimes unsustainable debt. 

Currently in Australia we are becoming all too aware of the very large, and crippling, debt commitments many students will carry for a very long time. Some may never be able to repay their HEC debt if it is only measured in dollars. 

The contributions critical thinkers can and do make to society is enormously undervalued and especially so in a corporatised cum industrial social paradigm. 

In the UK dedicated not-for-profit  ‘service providers’ have set-up and assisted in the running of these ‘neo-art-schools’. One distinguishes itself by preparing people to work in the creative departments of communications agencies – marketing, advertising, branding, public relations, etc. 

There is one where their student numbers are relatively small and there are about 15 times as many ‘volunteer mentors’ as there are students. Beyond that there are industry professionals, on a daily basis, hanging-out in the studio – a work cum learning cum training place. 

The institution’s curriculum evolves online and students work on live briefs. Indeed the institution seems to have all the hallmarks of a ‘living community of teachers/mentors and scholars/students’. 

What is being described here is a social enterprise, a not-for-profit institution, that is owned and supported by networks of professionals and businesses. In fact it’s a 21st Century community of teachers and scholars. The required funding comes from the industry that supports it. In turn this allow the ‘institution’ to award numerous scholarships. 

Approximately 40 of the 110 students to have studied at this London institution, the School of Communication Arts (SCA) have received industry-funded scholarships. 

This has been achieved through an innovative business cum enterprise model that rewards agencies for 'doing good'. 

London’s SCA is an exemplar of this new and emerging paradigm. Some fast facts about SCA: 

• The SCA is supported by over 100 advertising agencies 

• It has 36 students and a network of over 800 industry mentors 

• Its mentors include high profile professionals such as Sir John Hegarty, Rory Sutherland, Tony Brignull. et al – plus many more award winning ECDs 

• Its mentors visit the school on a daily basis, helping its students with their live briefs 

• Students leave with job-winning portfolios and an extensive network of industry professionals

• Almost all students get about six months of industry placements 

• Some leave the school and go straight into jobs without placements There are no dissertations, no tests, no exams, just a level of confidence and compedense needed to assist graduates to get that first great job 

• The reports of the school’s results are amazing and students, on the evidence, win more awards than any equivalent school/institution/course in the UK despite there being no institutional 'ticks of approval' as measures of performance and outcomes. 

The school’s goal is to help people open similar schools in other vocations, because it believes that its model would work well in many vocational and professional paradigms. 

Going by the school’s reported results, the evidence seems to be there for the model’s application more broadly. Indeed, there are other schools/operations in the UK discussed by David Batty in his Guardian article that seem to bear this out. 

As government withdraws from much of TAFE’s (Technical & Further Education) offerings, and as universities likewise withdraw from ‘cultural studies’, this ‘new paradigm’ of alternative study is ever likely to win more and more attention in Australia. 

Everything SCA does is open-source and the school is happy to share information and insights relative to its model with anyone who aspires to open similar schools. 

THE MARKET ECONOMY

In a market economy universities no longer hold some unassailable high point and increasingly they’ll need to compete more vigorously for students in an evolving, and more competitive, 21st Century environment.Australia might be well advised in taking SCA up on their apparent offer. The Guardian’s Peter Scott offered a piece on higher education, “Universities are losing their sense of public responsibility and social purpose” January 2015 and he makes some salient points relevant to the situation being played out in Tasmania – and Northern Tasmania more specifically. 

There are questions that need to be asked given that the system is becoming increasingly ‘corporatised’. Somewhat concerningly, as discussed earlier, the university sector is increasingly projecting itself as an ‘industry’. Likewise, universities are conceiving of themselves as ‘corporate organisations’ driven by business plans. That’s not all bad but it does represent something of a paradigm shift. 

Research planning and business planning have much in common but the imperatives that define them are distinctly different. 

Sadly, what can be offered up as a “business plan” all too often just does not stack up in the context within which they are framed nor the framework within which they seek to compete. In the corporate world “trust us we are a university” just does not cut it – nor should it. 

Going back to first principles, universities once were quite simply imagined as communities of teachers/mentors and scholars/students. They are, or should be, communities searching for new knowledge and new understandings – or should be if scholarship is an imperative. 

Conversely, the ‘business imperative’ does not, aught not, apply if scholarship is an imperative. Universities win their social licence on merit, social relevance and the fact that they deliver social and cultural dividends. 

Likewise, a business is an organisation where goods and services are exchanged typically for money. Businesses require investment with the imperative being finding enough customers to make it profitable. In fact, ‘business integrity’ is almost entirely dependent upon the delivery of cash profits – ultimately the only dividend that cuts it. 

Arguably the UTas “baseness plan” for its Northern Tasmania operation is in fact a ‘Concept Paper’, or in academic terms, ‘a hypothesis’. It lacks the elements business plans need in order to win the support/investments they seek, among them being evidence as opposed to assertions, case studies rather than speculative projections. 

The schism between “businesses” and “universities” needs to be better understood. The dividends businesses set out to offer are objectively measurable as cash profits relative to investment and inputs. 

Alternatively. universities’ dividends are to do with social and cultural dividends – somewhat intangible social and cultural goods, enlightenment even – but always subjectively assessed. 

Relative to universities, The Guardian’s Peter Scott points to there being three myths that need to be dispelled. He says, “the first is that the public-private distinction has something to do with legal status. All public universities, in effect, have been legally established as independent corporations.” 

However, the terms of independence may differ – statute-led instruments and articles of government, companies limited by guarantee etc. But the effects are much the same. The imagined pronounced differences between the governance of so-called private institutions are by-and-large just not there. 

In fact the only substantial difference is that all public institutions (universities!) are regulated as charities. Not all of the new ‘private higher education institutions’ discussed earlier would qualify – or would need to by necessity. 

The second myth being that the distinction between private and public as having something to do with the receipt of public money. Some private colleges/institutions can and have have attracted public money via government loans to students and possibly grants as well. 

The third myth is that private institutions are freer from state interference. They may be more sheltered from the requirements imposed by freedom of information but their offerings will often require government accreditation. Moreover, private institutions owe their licence to operate to government sometimes by virtue of being given degree-awarding powers or university titles etc. Quite simply, the more public money private institutions receive, the more they will be required to comply with government regulations. Like the saying "he who pays the piper calls the tune."

None of this is surprising. In fact, it is now clear that in Australia  ‘private colleges’ have done very nicely by way of the public purse. We are also seeing that some of these Australian institutions are failing the credibility test, the pub test, and just about any test one might apply. We are discovering that they are leaving their students in dire circumstances. The line between public and private has become, and is becoming, increasingly blurred. 

It needs to be said here that universities aiming to extend their student base via instrument like “Associate Degrees” under Australia’ HEC Scheme are potentially blowing out the cost of higher education – and consequently making it less and less affordable. This factor has only very recently emerged as a concern and it is a serious concern. 

To pretend that it is easy to assert and demand a sense of public responsibility from private institutions would be foolish. These private institutions' first obligation is to their investors/shareholders. 

Currently, universities, and especially their administrative leadership, are being encouraged to adopt corporate values and implement quasi-business strategies. Students spending longer in universities fit the emerging business paradigm quite well. Any aspiration to restore the so-called ‘public ethos’ cannot, it seems, be underpinned by the quantifications of economists, and as Peter Scott points out, “their [economists’] reductionist attempts to define the public good as a residual when all possible private benefits have been calculated”, well it all becomes somewhat problematic. In the end all this is an issue to do with morals, integrity and truthfulness. Additionally, its one that will require both courage and imagination – and possibly some politics as well – before the industrialisation and corporatisation can win the social licence the cultural paradigm shift requires needs to be evident. 

However the imagining that all this is about just a few private colleges "muscling in" is wrong-headed. Increasingly, ‘public universities’ are attempting to shift their ground on some assumed social licence. The foundations upon which higher education and training is based are changing. Looking ahead there is nothing more certain than continual change. 

Oscar Wilde, paraphrased, alerts us to “the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” There is something in this that we all might want to ponder upon when it comes to the industrialisation of, and the consequent corporatisation of, universities. 

Achieving outputs of critical thinking and innovation, as opposed to the provision of functionaries for the corporate sector’s machinery, is a real issue. Increasingly 'able functionaries' seems to be the aspirational dividend. 

However, it’s an open question as to the value/values that are ‘deliverable’ via the industrialisation and corporatisation of universities. Similarly, university degrees are not automatically valuable as is demonstrated by the number of graduates unable to establish themselves in meaningful and rewarding careers founded upon their studies – sometimes poorly supported by either pre-degree/post-degree vocational training. Typically, universities are somewhat careless about this when conscripting/enlisting their students. 

When a university qualification is perceived as having little or limited value by itself it isn’t hard to imagine that their alternative institutions, institutions that are able to demonstrate desirable outcomes via interfacing vocational opportunities/training, as being very well placed to compete in a 21st Century context.