NEW EDUCATIONAL VALUES
I know little about the developments in higher education around the world but know that in this country we are witnessing the slow strangulation of the concept of the university as traditionally conceived, a place of learning for its own sake, for the enrichment of young lives, extending and developing their experience, a place in which to live and grow and advance the total sum of human knowledge.
Already humanities are no longer funded directly by the Department of Education and Science. Education is promoted purely in terms of its economic value; recent changes intended to introduce are now intended to ‘competition’ in the newly developing graduate production industry. The new models are the accountancy ‘schools’ or low cost institutes offering ‘no frills’ degrees to student, often whilst studying from home. Everything geared towards narrow definitions of employability. Some major universities will continue to function though primarily for those who have money or the confidence to build up enormous amounts of personal debt.
Of course the right has always instinctively distrusted universities, repositories of free thought and dangerous lefty ideas, though as a I heard a late night radio talk show host opine on LBC* “who needs more philosophers,” for that matter who needs more historians, Eng Lit graduates, musicians, anthropologists, social scientists, artists, lets get rid of the lot of this dead baggage. Then we will have a society with all the cultural vacuity of a late night radio talk show. Though for that matter what is the use of late night talk show hosts?
*Commercial radio station London Broadcasting Corporation.
Already humanities are no longer funded directly by the Department of Education and Science. Education is promoted purely in terms of its economic value; recent changes intended to introduce are now intended to ‘competition’ in the newly developing graduate production industry. The new models are the accountancy ‘schools’ or low cost institutes offering ‘no frills’ degrees to student, often whilst studying from home. Everything geared towards narrow definitions of employability. Some major universities will continue to function though primarily for those who have money or the confidence to build up enormous amounts of personal debt.
Of course the right has always instinctively distrusted universities, repositories of free thought and dangerous lefty ideas, though as a I heard a late night radio talk show host opine on LBC* “who needs more philosophers,” for that matter who needs more historians, Eng Lit graduates, musicians, anthropologists, social scientists, artists, lets get rid of the lot of this dead baggage. Then we will have a society with all the cultural vacuity of a late night radio talk show. Though for that matter what is the use of late night talk show hosts?
*Commercial radio station London Broadcasting Corporation.
