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Independence of thought not required

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    Independence of thought not required

    In the world of University Professorship. The fact the Professor concerned is an outspoken critic of the privatization of education in the Russell group, I am sure is completely coincidental.

    There’s a certain irony in this happening at the University of Warwick, the institution that came under sustained attack by E.P. Thompson in his 1971 polemic Warwick University Ltd. Thompson was disgusted by the development of close business and corporate links that Warwick was fostering in the late 1960's, as well as the secret dossiers the University was holding on visiting lecturers deemed ideologically suspect. Thompson ended his polemic thus:

    "Is it inevitable that the university will be reduced to the function of providing, with increasingly authoritarian efficiency, pre-packed intellectual commodities which meet the requirements of management? Or can we by our efforts transform it into a centre of free discussion and action, tolerating and even encouraging “subversive” thought and activity, for a dynamic renewal of the whole society in which it operates?"

    This is the latest example unfortunately of the former.

    #2
    Independence of thought not required

    And lo it came to pass. Warwick University outsources hourly paid academics to a new temping agency.

    The hourly paid casualised academics will not be covered by national pay bargaining or have union representation. Effectively, academics employed this way now have the same employment status as the casualised temp cleaning, catering and security staff at the University.

    This is a pilot programme with the intention being that it will be rolled out across all UK Universities. And who owns Teach Higher, the academic temp agency? Why, Warwick University.

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      #3
      Independence of thought not required

      This is really long but if you care anything about Universities and places of higher education, it's an essential read. Excoriating from beginning to end and funny/depressing in equal measure.

      Actually, the fact I've put a warning that the article is a really long read is exactly the kind of attitude the article rails against.....

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        #4
        Independence of thought not required

        Similar has occurred in the US, where many courses are taught by adjuncts

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          #5
          Independence of thought not required

          I have a strong feeling that Gramsci is going to address the LARB piece for his real job.

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            #6
            Independence of thought not required

            Grade inflation has been around for decades, and while it would be sad if it has gotten worse, it has always been the very foreseeable outcome of the egalitarian ideal that everyone should get a college degree, which wasn't the expectation back in 1950.

            The modern system arose in response to that shift, which replaced the high school diploma with the college diploma. It would've been unrealistic to expect the overall aptitude of post-high school students to rise without the level of a college education also having to fall. Or even for the latter not to sink all the way down to high school level, or lower due to some law of momentum.

            So it strikes me as kind of an outlandish disappointment to have, that the current system didn't turn a lot of people who wouldn't have gone to college before into intelligent, literate people in the sense the author intends, when they certainly aren't arriving at college primed for that outcome.

            The real question is whether basic things like literacy and a capacity for independent thought are going away entirely, as opposed to the fact that more students than ever are failing to acquire them. It seems to me that the good universities are still pretty darn good and full of genuinely bright students. But I dunno, maybe they're in the same race to the bottom. Is it still true that a little education is a dangerous thing?

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