The Threat to Independence

UNIVERSITIES-- I

By MALCOLM BRADBURY

IN the general process of rationalisation, stan- dardisation and proletarianisation that has typified the development of post-war Britain, a familiar pattern stands out. Institutions that developed most of their sense of purpose and function in the independence of the private sector

have been drawn more and more into the public sector. Their social functions have been extended and new pressures have been brought to bear on them—many of these at odds with traditional functions. At the same time they have been spon- sored financially by welfare economics and brought into competition with one another. The result is that the supporting economics which might have enabled these extensions of function to take place without strain or sacrifice have been hard to supply. In consequence such institu- tions, particularly educational and medical, have become uncertain about their function and weak in their morale.

The pattern in education is fairly clear. Many of the primary ideas we associate with education in this country derive from an environment of semi-independence. These ideas are, of course, primarily liberal; they emphasise the general dis- interestedness of education, its roots in art and culture, and its deeply personal nature. Clearly, not all English education has been so conceived, but until a few years ago most formulations of the English educational ideal tended to be couched broadly in this way—much to the envy of, say, many in the United States, where the liberal ideal in education has had to fight harder for its existence—and, above all, the English idea of a university has been deeply marked by this kind of thinking, producing a unique and highly personal form of teaching and a strong sense of commitment toward a distinctive educational community.

In recent years universities have been made more and more 'public.' Generally in the society, education has increasingly been recognised by individuals as a means to social advancement and mobility, and by industry as a means to man- agerial and technological development. In the press, publicity about universities has grown greatly. Student lobbies have increasingly for- mulated their idea of a university, often toward the end of promoting a student culture scarcely identifiable with a context of learning. Most im- portant of all, education at all levels has been saddled with the task of promoting social trans- formation in the direction of equality. Society, or political ideology, hence has come to require more and more from its educators, and in a variety of ways the universities have become accountable—often to vaguely-expressed and ten- tative needs.

What, evidently, has made the university so open to these is its extreme dependence upon public financing through rates or taxes. Few universities in England have sufficient income derived from non-public sources to be able con- fidently to put liberal-educational values first, sad those that have—Oxbridge is the clear example —have come under pressure to divest them- selves of precisely those funds which enable them to assert their separateness. In America, where private and state universities exist side by side, the problems of economic dependence are oddly less sharp than they are here; with us every pressure seems to be elteeted in the direction of eliminating

this kind of distinction. The reasons for this are often not formulated in terms of an explicit re- sentment against the liberal idea of the university as such (though often the assault is clearly on many of the manifestations of that idea). The consequences seem evident. As an environment

for challenging the idea of a society based on immediate social needs, and the claims of demo-

cratic history, the universities have lost much of their traditional force; they are becoming a part of, rather than a corrective to, cultural laisFez- fake.

Certainly English universities have been in a paradoxical situation for some time. They have been diversified in intention and varied in their origins and purposes. Yet a powerful humane commitment has marked almost all of them in some way—as it has marked English intellectual life and our very sense of what society might be. Their methods of education, personal, intensive and, of course, expensive, and the kind of cul- ture and community they have sought to create —an effective academic community suffused with its own culture and ideals, separated from the dominant social culture—have clearly expressed this.

But the university has come to be regarded— and more and more has come to regard itself-- as a public institution subject to public condi-

tioning. It is put on an equivalence with all the other claims on the public purse, and finds itself in competition with all the other things that society requires—or is interpreted as requiring. The contest sharpens in the present winter of our discontent, when we find that society 'requires' more than it can pay for. Hence the latest significant move — to rationalise university ascounting and open it to public scrutiny. It is evident enough that, once an institution is recog- nised as being totally in the public domain, 1:ke the hospitals, all sorts of 'rationalisation' are possible. The psychological effects of the process are also familiar. The persons who work in the institution cease to be members of it; they become a self-protective proletariat, concerned to safe- guard not the institution as such, but themselves, usually against overwork and under-pay. The in- stitution no longer expresses ideals; it is un- owned, value-free. Something like this has already happened in the hospitals; and American experi- ence shows quite clearly that it can happen in universities too. The multiversity, the mass uni- versity for whom no one is specifically responsible, and in which no values reside, becomes the target of everyone's hostility and ceases to be the focus of an inherent commitment.

American experience also shows other things. The rationalised university tends to favour science and technology at the expense of the liberal arts. This is not only because there is a more obvious social need in the short term for such things, and the rationalised and fully-accountable university becomes the focus of such needs; it is because the liberal arts can no longer be identified with the essential culture the university expresses and is committed to. Again, the rationalised university also tends to be regarded primarily as plant and buildings. Teaching terms are extended, rooms are used to the optimum, plant is used during vacations. And the subjects which depend on close personal contact between staff and students, the subjects which are best taught not by profes-

sional teachers but by persons of a broader culti- vation, tend to fall into disfavour. In the long run, of course, these subjects find other grounds for self-justification (like the English departments in American universities which base their case for existence on their ability to teach all students to write grammatically), and adapt to teaching patterns not necessarily appropriate to the subject.

There may indeed be grounds for a clearer economic analysis of university accounts, but only if this assists universities to preserve their present distinctiveness and hold on to every exist- ing safeguard of autonomy. But there would be real need for concern if the tendency is to rationalise and standardise universities, and make it harder for them to assert the primacy of lareer than national needs, insist on a determined alle- giance to the community of learning, and hold to the ideal of a culturally, and intellectually, committed environment. But the really urgent question is whether the move is not symptomatic of general social tendencies that are tending to disintegrate the very idea of disinterestedness, of an educated independent culture. And the real point at issue is that the very idea of the autonomy of cultural life is threatened not only from outside but within educational circles. There, as elsewhere, voices in favour of the per- sonal, the humane, and the disinterested have tended to be rather ominously quiet.