Book review: What Are Universities For?

By DOUGLAS OSLER
Published on Saturday 28 January 2012 00:00

“UNIVERSITIES need advocates,” says Stefan Collini, professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge, and his latest book is written in their defence. Whether it succeeds or not is another matter.

Collini rightly struggles with the definition of “university” and seems to have a yearning for the days of purely academic universities, even though he denies it. He scarcely conceals his disdain for universities that offer vocational training, although he acknowledges that it is easier to make the social and economic case for studying medicine and metallurgy than it is for studying, say, medieval history.

The problem with defining a university lies in their very diversity. Certainly there are too many institutions called universities and too many courses resulting in degree awards which would be better tackled through vocational courses and work experience. Collini uses the term “multiuniversity” to describe the range available and quotes the Victorian rhyme that “He gets degrees in making jam / At Liverpool and Birmingham”. He also quotes a chancellor who suggested that a university is “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking”. There are many who would agree with his suggestion that universities have much in common with museums and galleries because they too are to do with conservation and handing-on.

Collini defends the enquiring mindset expected of university students and staff but seems to believe that it is incompatible with the expectations governments have of their performance. But why should it be? Similarly, he argues, it is unacceptable to think of universities as just batteries powering a country’s social welfare and economic prosperity of the country. Fine. But surely it is equally unacceptable for them to indulge in the kind of irrelevant or frivolous research they often undertake? How often, after all, do we read the results of a costly research project which tells what we already knew?

Collini does not like most government policies on universities. He rejects international comparisons, arguing that these only encourage competition rather than co-operation. He acknowledges that certain disciplines were introduced centuries ago because at the time they were of practical value –classics, history, Oriental languages, anthropology, for example – have since gone on to become “scholarly disciplines in their own right”. But that surely, underlines the fact that universities grew up to serve society’s needs, which is only what government policy has been seeking to ensure in recent years.

Polytechnics and colleges of further education were often established to ensure a supply of useful knowledge and skills just because these were not being produced by the more rarefied habits of traditional universities. Unfortunately, many of the governing bodies and staff of these new institutions wanted nothing more than to become universities and so lost the distinctive role they were created for.

Inevitably, Collini devotes a chapter to defending the humanities, which he defines as including history, literature, ancient and modern languages, law, philosophy, art and music. A number of these have a clear vocational purpose and do not need to be explained. He denies being defensive but it does not read that way. He explains that “the practice I shall concentrate on is the activity of scholarship rather than of teaching”. But this is precisely the problem today’s university students face. The very fact that universities place so much emphasis on research rather than teaching can result in an unsatisfactory experience for students because their lecturers give greater importance to their personal pursuit of “scholarship”.

Certainly a civilised society must retain a place for scholarship for its own sake. Collini’s rationale for pursuing this line of thought is that studying the humanities encourages objectivity and an enquiring mind. That’s fine, but it still doesn’t answer the question of what such a course’s practical value is for students who have a living to earn. That is why humanities graduates so often need a second qualification to make them employable. It is not unreasonable that “a longing that a university should be a protected space in which thoughts can be pursued to the highest level” should be compatible with good business practice.

Part two of the book is a collection of articles and interviews which Collini has given on the same subject since 1989. It demonstrates his long opposition to attempts to make universities more accountable to their paymasters. In particular he believes that universities have nothing to learn from business in terms of management, definition of aims or the consequences of disappointing customers. He dismisses any kind of accountability saying that “the notion of ‘continuous improvement’ is conceptually incoherent”. He has been cloistered from the real world for too long.

Who should read this book? If you have been appointed to a Royal Commission on universities, it will show you what you are up against. If you are embarking on a university career in the humanities, it will help you to see off public scrutiny and accountability. The book is a bit like some university courses. It is erudite, well argued, carefully researched, a fine addition to the debate about the purpose of university education but does it achieve anything useful? No.

• What Are Universities For? by Stefan Collini

Allen Lane, 208pp, £9.99

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CharlesHedges

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 03:40 AM

How easy it is, posing as an inmate of the 'real world' to dismiss Collini as the denizen of an ivory tower. But to do that is to buy into the ideology of Browne (failed BP employee and proven liar about his private life) of Willetts and of Blair and Cameron. That you are not shocked and appalled by the wanton violence done to UK universities in the name of a flawed and simplistic monetarism does you no credit, that your wheel out these extinct volcanoes to dismiss Collini shows a predictable reliance on the commonplace. Your review is unworthy of the land of Hume and Adam Smith: you will do well running the University of Glasgow and other bastions of mock enlightenment and blatant philistinism. In the USA a country which entrusts its universities to the Department of Culture Media and Sport has proven itself to be worthy of hollow laughter and no more. But you are too complacent and complicit, it would seem , even to laugh.

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Cats Lockhart

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 11:15 PM

It isn't that universities shouldn't be 'accountable'. It is that the ways that governments and their agencies have devised of measuring accountability are shallow, ineffective and not capable of giving a sensible answer. University staff spend a lot of time jumping through hoops to no purpose to satisfy the 'accountability' agenda. This is time that they could much better spend on students.

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